Gate City Journal

Wednesday Afternoon Book Club

One of Greensboro’s oldest book clubs is still going strong today

The year 1897 was a pretty big year in America.

Thomas Edison perfected his kinetograph camera, forerunner of the first film projector. William Faulkner and Amelia Earhart were born. Boston opened the first subway system in the nation, and the Library of Congress opened its doors to the public.

Here in Greensboro, a city fast approaching 25,000 in population, a dozen prominent Gate City women with names like Bynum, Mebane, Caldwell and Schenck formed the city’s second “study” club for discussion of literature, history and current events, adopting the practice of circulating timely books among its members with the aim of keeping abreast of the day’s key social issues, including the cause of women’s suffrage.

“Remember ladies,” club founder Mrs. Sterling Jones advised her colleagues, “the club comes first in your lives, and your husbands second, and never the twain shall meet!”

Initially, meeting every fortnight at the home of a member — many of whom, in those fleeting days of the horse and buggy, conveniently resided along North Elm Street — on Wednesday afternoons at 3 p.m., the members soon voted to change its name to the Wednesday Afternoon Book Club.

And so it remains to this day — 125 years after the city’s second book club was born.

“It really has had a remarkable history,” notes longtime club secretary and incoming president, Chris Garton, “attracting women of the city who had a great interest in improving their minds and the quality of life in Greensboro.”

Garton notes that the WABC was one of the early benefactors of the city’s first public library, which opened its doors in 1911, donating research books and other titles from the club’s own library, along with significant funds collected directly from its members.

As the 20th century dawned, membership rose to 16. At that time, member Mrs. Frank Dalton presented the club with a handsome monogram and fitting motto: “Nulla Vestigia Retrorsum” (“No retreat/We never go backwards”). Club members studied in depth the works of Shakespeare and Jonson, and printed their first booklet on the history of North Carolina.

Club members also sponsored popular monthly lectures by prominent speakers at the original downtown O.Henry Hotel and wrote papers on a range of timely subjects — travel, war, literary biography, poetry and local history were major themes — to share with fellow members at their regular Wednesday afternoon gatherings that ran from May to October annually.

“Whatever the topic, these women took a deep dive into their subjects,” says Garton. “It’s amazing what these women lived through. So much was happening in America then — World War I and lots of social change. During the Second World War, club members worked at the Red Cross and presented programs on rationing, a timely subject for everyone.”

Today, the Wednesday Afternoon Book Club presents only four or five programs a year, but the spirit of the organization’s fellowship is very much alive among its 27 active members. During the COVID shutdown, members were forced to meet via Zoom but continued paying dues, which led to a significant donation this past spring to the Greensboro Bound literary festival and a return of in-person readings in honor of the club’s 125th anniversary.

“We like to say that we’re putting the ‘book’ back in book club,” quips Chris Garton. “Because we have refocused on books that speak to the moment and interest of our members. At heart, though, it is really about the friendship we share — along with good books — that matters most.”

“I have belonged to so many organizations in my long lifetime,” early club historian Louise Meyers once wrote. “But none with a sweeter spirit than our club.”  OH

Gate City Journal

The Little Restaurant that Could

In spite of its surroundings in a construction zone, Cincy’s Café carries on and soothes the soul with great cooking

By Cynthia Adams

It’s 10 a.m. at Cincy’s Café — at the best of times a place that is tucked out of sight on the street level of the historic Dixie building facing February One Place. The building itself once housed the Dixie Fire Insurance Company. Now, the only fire here comes from the Cincinnati-style chili, the café’s namesake dish. If you haven’t tried it, this toothsome, complex and oh-so-satisfying delight is not really all that spicy. But it’s definitely addictive, more closely resembling Greek spaghetti sauce than Southwestern chili, with bursts of allspice, a hint clove and subtle notes of chocolate. And, surprisingly, it’s served on a bed of spaghetti.

Only a couple of years ago, a hair salon was next door and the street was busy with foot and car traffic. But for over a year now, Cincy’s has been largely concealed by a forbidding construction zone. Outside, two orange scissor lifts are hoisting workers who are repointing brick on the side of the six-story building that has been Cincy’s home for decades. Two parking decks underway and a future hotel encircle the area.

For the faithful, and there are quite a few, there is only a narrow pathway open from Elm Street to the restaurant, flanked with orange construction tape.

February One Place remains closed except to foot traffic into Cincy’s — now looking more like a-behind-the-ropes setting for a Prohibition-era Speakeasy than a café. 

Despite the commotion outside, the eatery continues to be a popular and much-loved restaurant, where lawyers and business types in tailored suits quite literally rub shoulders in close confines with construction and office workers. Inside, Cincy’s owner Bonnie Kays is all business, clad in her no-nonsense black work uniform as she prepares for the lunch crowd, which can, despite all the obstacles, still be quite a crowd of regulars. A real dynamo with graying hair tucked beneath a black fedora, Kays greets me, as she does her customers, with blue eyes and dimples that crinkle into a smile. She is cracking open her first energy drink of the day.  (“It’s by V-8,” she says with a grin. “Very low sugar. Healthy, I hope.”) 

With only four or five hours’ nightly sleep, Kays is in a serious sleep deficit. She chugs the energy drink down and smiles.

Go juice.

“It’s funny,” she says. “Being in the business you can find yourself going all day without eating.” 

The eatery she and Cindi Long purchased in 1996 from the original owner, Linda Schwoeppe, first opened in 1986. 

Cincy’s is entering 33 years of operation, making it one of two of the oldest surviving downtown lunch spots (the other one I’ll get to below). Lunch crowd mainstays like the Southeastern Soda Shop and The Mantelworks, along with Woolworths, are long closed. Only the Acropolis on Eugene Street is older and still operational, having opened in 1967.  Like Cincy’s, it has battled with construction and parking losses as development has encroached.

Despite all odds, the low-profile Cincy’s (its name a riff on the aforementioned Cincinnati-style chili, layered with Greek-style seasonings) endures. The distinctive chili with its aromatic come-hither aroma accounts for at least half of daily sales. Half turkey, half ground beef, is offered, like traditional Cincinnati chili in five variations. Two-way is just chili and spaghetti noodles. Three-way involves an additional topping of cheeses. The “five-way” chili translates into spaghetti, chili, chopped onion, and kidney beans. And don’t write off the vegetarian offerings without trying them. One nonvegetarian foodie friend insists that the veggie version of Cincy’s chili is superior to the meated variety and it’s definitely spicier.

The chili recipe is a tribute dish, one Schwoeppe remembered from her native Ohio.  The former jeans and sportswear designer came from the Buckeye State to Greensboro to work at VF Corporation, while privately nursing a dream of starting a restaurant that served her very own chili recipe. Over two years Schwoeppe perfected her culinary specialty. When she felt it was ready to debut, she opened a restaurant in the Quaker Village Shopping Center, serving lunch and dinner, and eventually hired Kays to manage it.  Meanwhile, Schwoeppe expanded, opening a lunch-only restaurant at the current location downtown.

After 10 years, Schwoeppe sold the Guilford College location, and offered to sell the downtown Cincy’s to Kays and another employee, Cindi Long. They promised not to screw it up, Kays laughs.

Kays eventually bought out Long, who remains a colleague and close friend.  Employee Minnie Crowder, now in her 80s, came to work at Cincy’s in 1992 —  after 26 years working at the McCrory Drugstore counter located at Four Seasons Mall. “I bet she served many a grilled cheese to me there,” muses Kays.

Kays admits that Crowder is her rock. A woman who has worked since she can recall, she adds.

Both Crowder and Long offer a ready smile and kind word to customers, and know many regulars by name. “Cindi and Minnie are due much credit for Cincy’s success,” says Kays.

But it’s Kays’ creativity in the kitchen that really distinguishes this hidden gem. Nothing on the menu is same-old, same-old. Everything is served with care and flair. For instance, Kays offers five varieties of veggie burgers, one with grilled onions topped with a sauce savory with horseradish and rich with cream. Her 100-percent Angus burgers come six different ways, with a spicy, raging Cajun cooled down with ranch dressing and cheese. Add seven types of salads, an eclectic roster of tantalizing sandwiches plus chocolate-brownie pie or cobbler for dessert and it’s no surprise that Kays’ “long-term, true-blue customers” are willing to navigate past the cranes, sawhorses and a street closure to come eat in this woman-powered cafe. At least half of the true-blue have continued, even now that dedicated parking has been apportioned for a future city parking deck. Kays doesn’t object to more parking. “We need it,” she affirms. But it is part of a one-two punch, as construction continues making customer access difficult.

Like the regulars who fill those seats, Kays commitment to the job is also true-blue. She has been in the business since she got her first work permit. “My first job was waitressing at Heckle’s Big Steer out on Mt. Hope Church Road, a little restaurant that is now a truck stop, when I was 15. Once I started making money, I paid for my first car, a blue Pinto.” She was still a junior at Southeastern High School, and buying preppy chinos and jackets from the Limited with her own hard-earned waitressing money. 

If there was anything she liked better than being in the bustle of a kitchen, it was self-sufficiency. Kays soon bought a silver Mercury Capri . . . again with her earnings.  “I moved out into an apartment at Sans Souci as soon as I graduated.” 

Her first true management job was at age 20 working in the cafeteria at Sears, where “I learned everything from accounting up.” She took it upon herself to go in at 5 a.m. (“I learned my work ethic from my Daddy”) and work with the chef. 

“The first time I made a biscuit, I had to make 1,000. It was a huge kitchen, and I learned how to feed the masses.”

Feeding the masses is something Kays does, even when it doesn’t net her a dime.  One of her friends, Sally Randall, began a nonprofit charity Re4Him, to help those in need.

“Sally helps people get off the street. I started helping her and feeding the homeless, so now, I do it every week except the third week of the month when Domino’s does it.” The group, whose name is a compression of “Him” and a short reference to four words (to the fourth power), each starting with “re” — renew, restore, refocus, repurpose — sets up tables in front of the Greene Street parking deck and feeds anywhere from 175–200 people after hours. One day a week, Randall also works at Cincy’s.

Kays donates some of the food distributed. “The hunger problem is bad,” she says.

So, she counts herself lucky, and has a determination to survive a worrying transitional period.

These days, Cincy’s proprietor is counting on Kays’ catering business (“The spring furniture market saved us,” she says quietly) to stay afloat through a turbulent year of downtown construction, which eliminated a parking lot and on-street parking, and has put a serious dent into her usual traffic.

Before construction took the parking behind them and eventually closed off February One off completely, the restaurant was having a boom period — feeding 120 during lunch in 2017. Now, they are doing well to serve half that many.

“For the period before construction, things were going pretty smoothly. We were kicking it with record-breaking sales . . . making double chili batches. The best it had ever done. Even after Christmas, we didn’t see a lull . . . then they started construction.”

Adding to the headaches, the restaurant flooded last July due to a construction snafu — and for a heartbeat the entire Dixie building was condemned and evacuated. The next day, Cincy’s was back in business.

As their 33rd year of operation begins, the menu is being updated and tweaked.  Kays says their burgers, veggie burgers, hot dogs and sandwiches are well-followed, and not that much has changed in its history since she became the owner. Cincy’s homemade soups are widely reviewed online by several hundred fans. The chili must remain as is.

“Our staff and customers are the reason for not forgetting our chili by any means,” Kays allows.

Comfort food for the true-blue.  OH

Cynthia Adams is a true-blue regular at Cincy’s and a contributing editor to O.Henry.

Gate City Journal

Deep Dish

Free Pizza, a Greensboro podcast that celebrates up-and-coming creatives, bites into its third year

By Maria Johnson

Welcome to the Free Pizza studio.

Actually, it’s a sunroom on the back of a 1948 rental house that has sheltered roughly 1,948 students and others who orbit in the gravitational field of UNCG.

That’s an exaggeration, of course.

Two thousand people have not lived here.

It just looks like it.

But back to the studio, which is adorned with — among other things — strings of bistro lights, anime posters, a photo of the Washington Monument, speakers, a turntable, a guitar, chess pieces, an empty water bottle, a container of ibuprofen, and a covey of furniture thrifted from yard sales and estate auctions.

One of the finer pieces, a marshmallow of a black recliner in the corner, absorbs the frame of Kenrick Jobe, an affable 23-year-old portrait painter who grew up in Lexington, graduated from ECU and now lives in Durham.

A few feet and a couple of microphones away, on another puffy recliner, perches his interviewer, Daniel White, an effusive fellow who wears a wide smile, beard and watch cap as a seemingly inseparable unit. He consults an extra large iPad that’s propped in front of him on someone’s grandmother’s side table, complete with water rings.

“You guys ready?” says Jacob Beeson, whose back is turned to the duo. He’s earplugged to a laptop that’s running an audio recording app.

Nods and yeps all around.

“Today, we have the wonderful Kenrick here,” says White. “You are an amazing painter and graphic designer . . .”

Thus begins another episode of Free Pizza, a weekly podcast featuring interviews with artists you’ve probably never heard of.

Podcasts, for the untuned, are basically radio shows on the internet.

They cover scads of topics including politics, art, science, travel and all manner of exotica. Some podcasts spring from slick studios affiliated with major media outlets, like NPR. Others — most, in fact — come from grassroots creators who record in basements, garages and, ta-da, sunrooms.

Worldwide, more than half a million podcasts are zipping around the cybersphere. According to a recent survey, in this country alone, an estimated 44 percent of people older than 12 have listened to a podcast.

Which brings us back to Greensboro’s own Daniel White and Jacob Beeson, who are 28 and 26 respectively. This month, they celebrate, with a smidgeon of surprise, Free Pizza’s second anniversary.

“Obviously, we were hoping for the best, but I definitely didn’t think we’d still be going with this much momentum and steam,” says Beeson. “We’ve been overwhelmed by support.”

Listeners tap into the show on several platforms. Earlier this year, Free Pizza started uploading episodes onto Spotify, a major audio streaming service. Apple iTunes and SoundCloud also distribute the show, and there’s always the show’s website, freepizzapodcast.com.

All told, Free Pizza gets 100 to 300 downloads per episode from all sources combined, according to Beeson. Since they started, they’ve racked up north of 20,000 downloads on about 80 episodes.

Their traffic resembles that of other locally produced podcasts, including the city government’s Gate City Chatter, which is recorded in a community podcasting studio in the Greensboro Cultural Center, and a podcast called The Open Micers, which is run by comedians J.D. Etheridge and Micah Hanner.

Another area podcast, Name Redacted, is recorded in Colfax and leans toward comics and gaming. Alexander Folmar, who created Name Redacted with his friend Chris Nielsen six years ago, says Free Pizza fills a niche — showcasing grassroots artists — with easy style.

“Those dudes crush, and the reason they crush is Daniel has been a Greensboro staple for so long. He’s so personable, and his personality is not over-the-top. He does a really, really good job of asking the question and stepping away,” says Folmar.

Nielsen concurs: “In terms of local artists and creatives, they really have their finger on the beat like nobody else.”

All of this because of cars and music — with a 21st-century twist.

In the late aughts, White and Beeson, both from High Point, were teenagers swimming in the hardcore punk music scene around Greensboro. Beeson played bass in a band called Barrow. White was a fan and budding photographer who snapped pics at concerts. They had lots of mutual friends and contacts on social media.

Then, around 2011, White, who graduated with a degree in information systems at UNCG, was cruising Facebook for a job, and Beeson — who’d dallied in business studies at High Point University and Gardner-Webb University before surrendering to music — responded that there were vacancies at CarMax, where he worked. White jumped on board as a photographer for the used-car dealer, and a friendship was born.

Both guys were big fans of podcasts, then in their infancy. White was hooked on No Jumper, a Los Angeles–based program heavy on underground rappers. Jacob was tuned into Serial, an early NPR podcast. A few DIYers were streaming around Greensboro.

White and Beeson were drawn by the close-to-the-ground nature of the medium.

“I wanted to do that here, with artists and people who were not super on-the-radar,” says White. “It’s mind-blowing how many artists are around here.”

He was determined to avoid musicians because he felt they had enough exposure in zines, or small special-interest magazines.

“I think his first text said, ‘I want to do a podcast for everybody but musicians,’” Beeson remembers. “He was like, ‘How many podcasts have you ever seen where they interview painters?’”

Beeson — a sound geek who already had most of the recording equipment they would need — would be the audio engineer.

White would do most of the interviewing. He wanted to catch creatives early in their careers before their struggles and mistakes faded from memory. He wanted other artists to take heart and know that they weren’t alone.

Beeson was in. They would record several episodes on the weekends, and they would post one interview — lasting an average 30 to 45 minutes — every week.

They had no journalistic experience — they’d been interviewed by small publications about their photography and music, but that was it — so they prepared by listening to podcasts and by sharing links and notes on their phones.

They dissected interviews, figuring out how to ask questions so the session flowed naturally, as a conversation rather than an inquisition.

White came up with the name Free Pizza because . . . who isn’t attracted by free pizza? Not that they would serve free pizza because, hey, no money. But still, it had a nice ring.

After three months of preparation, Beeson opened a recording app, Apple’s Logic Pro X, on his laptop, and White sat across from his subjects, pen and pad in hand.

“I was terrified,” says White.

“The first episodes were pretty bad,” says Beeson laughing. “It was mostly us interviewing our friends. It’s the easiest thing to do when you have no credentials.”

They invited interviewees to the basement of the home where Beeson was living at the time.

“It was kinda sketchy,” admits Beeson. “It was a little damp, very cold, overwhelming concrete.”

Their first guest was their friend Savannah Patterson, an illustrator and graphic designer from Greensboro.

Another early interview: Winston-Salem videographer Justin Reich, who has worked with musicians including Ozzy Osbourne and Zakk Wylde.

Beeson was shocked by how quickly people agreed to be interviewed. He and White started reaching out to artists who lived beyond the Triad; if their audience could be anywhere, via the internet, so could their subjects.

Example: a May 2018 interview with Jessamyn Stanley, a Durham yoga instructor who has been featured in Forbes and People magazines and on BuzzFeed.

“Her story touched me on an emotional level,” says White.

At first, episodes of Free Pizza appeared only as a tab on Amplifier, a now defunct Greensboro arts and entertainment website. Free Pizza had no website of its own. But White and Beeson had lots of friends who told other friends, on social media, about Free Pizza.

A year into the project, the podcast caught the ear of Jeremy Hyler, creative director at PhotoBiz and its sister firm Zibster, website design companies in Greensboro.

Hyler was intrigued by the show’s emphasis on up-and-coming artists. Growing up in Eden, N.C., Hyler had felt the isolation of being a creative kid who knew very few kindred spirits. Free Pizza was full of those souls.

“Their stories really captured me,” he says. “We’re all kind of cut from the same fabric.”

Hyler offered White and Beeson a sponsorship agreement — a website in exchange for shout-outs during the interviews. Every couple of months, the trio huddles to map out their next steps. They’re talking about adding video and other website content for a nominal fee.

White and Beeson plan other activities for the coming year. They hope to dish up real free pizza — as in slices — at a public party and podcast with a new partner, Greensboro’s Center for Visual Artists, a nonprofit gallery that also focuses on emerging artists.

Half of Free Pizza’s subjects live in the Greensboro area, and three-quarters call North Carolina home, but the duo plan to keep expanding their geographic reach. Last year, they interviewed people — whom they knew personally or through Instagram — in Scotland and England.

“I think it’s important to know what’s going on in other places,” says White.

They also plan a road trip, maybe to Wilmington. Last spring, they did a three-day swing through Winston-Salem and the Triangle. They recorded almost 20 episodes, enough to last several months.

The pair haven’t quit their day jobs yet — White still works at CarMax, though he’s moved into doing appraisals, and Beeson works at an insurance company in Burlington.

They cling to their own creative dreams: White nurtures his photography business (www.danielwhitephoto.com) and Beeson refines his audio skills.

“Please hire me to make your record,” he says unabashedly to the universe.

Meanwhile, they’ll serve Free Pizza as long as they’re able. Financially, there’s no incentive — not yet, anyway.

“I don’t think either one of us has even gotten a dollar from it,” says Beeson.

“It’s a passion,” says White. “That’s what you see here.”

Back in the studio/sunroom, White prompts Jobe to share his story — how he started calling himself an artist at age 17 because a career aptitude test said that’s what he was; how he began by doing portraits of TV personalities like Miley Cyrus and Raven Symoné; how he carries a sketchbook and pencil at all times, but he paints in a program called Procreate on his iPad Pro; how his parents worry about him putting his work on Instagram where people could rip it off (“I’m like, ‘Mom and Dad, I gotta get it out there.’”); and how his Instagram account, @KenrickJobe, is probably his biggest marketing tool. Among his followers: Actor Caleb McLaughlin of the Netflix series Stranger Things.

“I know if the right person sees it, that’s all it takes,” says Jobe. “I just want to be able to do this for a living while providing for a family. If I’ve done that, I’ve made it, in my opinion.”

“I feel like so many people are just one break away,” says White.

Maria Johnson is a contributing editor of O.Henry. She can be reached at ohenrymaria@gmail.com