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Saturday, July 28, 2018
'Creative Loafing' Writers Win Five Awards and an Honorable Mention at National AAN Convention
Posted By CL Staff on Sat, Jul 28, 2018 at 11:00 PM
Creative Loafing took home five awards and an honorable mention at the 2018 Association of Alternative Newsmedia convention in San Diego on Saturday, including First Place in the Arts Feature category for contributor Kia O. Moore.
Moore was awarded for her February 2017 cover story '5 Artists Who Will Not Be Ignored.'
Editor-in-Chief Mark Kemp won two awards: Second Place in the Music Writing category for a series of feature stories, including coverage of the Bla/Alt black alternative music festival, and Third Place in Columns for a series of editor's notes including a September 20, 2017, reflection on the Charlotte Uprising one year later.
News Editor Ryan Pitkin won Second Place in the new LGBT Coverage category for his cover story on Time Out Youth, and received an Honorable Mention in the Beat Reporting category for a series of crime stories.
CL contributor Lara Americo won Second Place in the Multimedia category for their series "Muslims in Charlotte."
Two other N.C. alt-weeklies also won awards at the AAN convention:
The IndyWeek in the Triangle was nominated for six awards and took three First Place honors: Brian Howe for Arts Criticism; Victoria Bouloubasis, Erica Hellerstein and Sarah Willets for Immigration Coverage; and VC Rogers for Best Cartoon.
And the Triad City Beat in Greensboro won two awards: Senior Editor Jordan Green took Second Place in Political Columns and freelancer Jonathen Michels won Third Place in the Longform News category.
See the full list of winners here; read all of the stories for which Creative Loafing was recognized under "related stories" below.
Thursday, July 26, 2018
Listen Up: Dollar Signs Cash In on 'Local Vibes'
Episode 52
Posted By Ryan Pitkin and Mark Kemp on Thu, Jul 26, 2018 at 8:00 AM
A whole 52 episodes! By our horrible math that means we've been up to this Local Vibes thing for a year (we missed two weeks, so maybe a little longer). To celebrate, we brought in local favorites Dollar Signs — or three of them, anyway — to discuss open mics, anxiety, and the new album, This Will Haunt Me. [In the photo (from left): Mark Kemp, Luke Gunn, Dylan Thomas, Erik Button and Ryan Pitkin]
As always, make sure to catch up with the rest of our team at the Queen City Podcast Network. You can also catch up with all our past episodes on iTunes, Stitcher or simply by typing "Local Vibes" into your Spotify search bar.
Thursday, July 19, 2018
Listen Up: Cyanca Brings 'Local Vibes' to 'The Isle of Queens'
Episode 51
Posted By Mark Kemp on Thu, Jul 19, 2018 at 10:40 AM
You've seen her at Made From Scratch Fest. You've seen her on the cover of Creative Loafing. Now hear her story on Local Vibes, as up-and-coming R&B/neo-soul singer Cyanca (pictured above, right) blesses the booth alongside her friend and manager Megan Wolford (left), whose poetry skills are featured on a track that the two share with me (center) in this fun and illuminating episode. Cyanca discusses her inspirations — both personally and artistically — and her friendships with local hip-hop luminaries Lute and Elevator Jay. And don't forget to watch the terrific video for Cyanca's song "New Phone, Who Dis?" (below), which we talk about in the podcast.
As always, be sure to catch up with the rest of our team over at Queen City Podcast Network, where we've joined with some of the *other* best podcasts in town. And you can catch up with all our past episodes on iTunes, Stitcher or simply by typing "Local Vibes" into your Spotify search bar.
Wednesday, July 18, 2018
News Community Rallies in Support of Couple Targeted by Racist Ranter
Posted By Ryan Pitkin on Wed, Jul 18, 2018 at 1:22 PM
More than 30 people rallied outside the home of Tin Nguyen and Cat Bao Le on Tuesday night just two days after the couple posted a video showing a man harassing them in their front yard.
The man, who can be seen on the video yelling "I'm going to get you" at the couple and calling them the N-word, was apparently upset that the couple had a sign in their yard that read, "Fuck Donald Trump."
During a press conference in front of the home on Tuesday evening, Le said she was in the shower when she heard someone banging loudly on her door. She said she grabbed a towel and her phone and began recording when she realized the man was acting belligerent.
Le, executive director at the Southeast Asian Coalition, said she believes the man's actions were part of a bigger pattern of harassment aimed at minorities and immigrants during Donald Trump's presidency.
"The Trump administration has allowed white supremacists to feel emboldened and to escalate attacks against our communities," she said. "And when I say our community, I mean a lot of the communities that are facing these attacks under this administration and continue to fear for their lives."
This just happened to our family in Charlotte. Please retweet!!!! pic.twitter.com/t51mMqMT5Z
— Charlotte Uprising (@cltuprising) July 15, 2018
Multiple online sources have identified the man as Charlotte's Cullen Heald, although Creative Loafing has not yet confirmed this. Heald's arrest record shows 31 infractions and arrests, including multiple charges of assault on a woman and domestic violence.
Nguyen, a local lawyer, said he did not trust the police to take action against Heald, so he did not call them, but that he appreciates the response both from the community around him and from the online community, in which the video has been shared thousands of times and made headlines.
"We know what happens to people like him," Nguyen said. "In the past few months, just turn on your TV, turn on your Facebook, you will see some white person wanting to police somebody just for breathing ... and so we know that that’s our justice. This video went viral within hours, it got picked up by all the different news networks, so that’s the kind of transformative justice that we believe in."
Nguyen said it's not the first time he and Le have been confronted over the yard sign, but that a previous call to local code enforcement was fruitless, as they hadn't broken any city ordinance.
"We have these signs here because we know that the president deserves this sign, he deserves this big middle finger," Nguyen said. He then referenced other signs in the yard stating, "Black Lives Matter" and "Refugees Welcome."
"We know that Cullen Heald was not just perturbed by the 'F Trump' sign, but he was perturbed by all of this," he said, referencing the multiple signs. "And the signs that we have here is the vision of the community that we believe in. We believe that refugees are welcome here. We elevate black lives and queer and trans black lives. We believe in all the immigrants that are in this community, and we do not stand with Trump one bit."
Thursday, July 12, 2018
Listen Up: Styles&Complete Bring It Home on 'Local Vibes'
Episode 50
Posted on Thu, Jul 12, 2018 at 8:00 AM
![[From left] DJ Complete, Ryan Pitkin and A. Styles.](https://media.fdncms-media.com/charlotte/imager/u/blog/10432174/stylescomplete.webp?cb=1734159991)
We've reached the half-century mark, so we brought in the big guns straight from L.A. Up until 6 months ago, A. Styles and DJ Complete were a pair split between coasts. Early this year, Complete made the move out from CLT to Los Angeles to join the other half of his electronic hip-hop DJ duo, but while they were recently in town for a homecoming show, Ryan sat down with the both of them to talk about their come up through plenty of PBR burps.
As always, make sure to go check out Queen City Podcast Network to find out what our friends with all of Charlotte's other coolest podcasts are doing. You can catch up with all our past episodes there, or do it on iTunes or Stitcher. Of course, another simple way of catching up is just by typing "Local Vibes" into your Spotify search bar.
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