Your704 Weekender: Here's what's happening in Charlotte June 13-15
Please use the links provided to confirm hours and to check for last-minute updates before you go.
The Charlotte Checkers will face off against the Abbotsford Canucks in the Calder Cup Finals at Bojangles Coliseum on Friday and Sunday. Game 1 will start at 7 p.m. and Game 2 at 4 p.m.
Experience the beauty of music and nature at Juneberry Jams, a three-day summer festival at Juneberry Ridge in Stanly County. The second day of the festival is Saturday and features guest speakers, locally farmed foods and a lively lineup of rock, funk and soul music.
'A great place': Concord unveils new downtown after years of construction
'Good news is on the way' because Modest Mouse is playing at The Fillmore Sunday night. The Oregon-based band burst onto the scene with the hit 2004 single 'Float On.'
Calling all Tina Turner fans — Blumenthal Arts presents TINA — The Tina Turner Musical at the Belk Theater this weekend. The show opened Wednesday and will run throughout the weekend. The musical features Turner's biggest hits and chronicles her journey to becoming the 'Queen of Rock n' Roll.'
Grab a blanket, chairs and snacks to enjoy a night full of free family fun at Movies in the Park Uptown. Saturday's showing at Fourth Ward Park is the classic dramedy starring Robin Williams, 'Mrs. Doubtfire.'
Next weekend is the last to see the Tianyu Lights Festival at Concord Mills. The festival features 25 larger-than-life glowing art installations, live performances and a marketplace with crafts and souvenirs.
The Rooster in Gastonia will host a Pride benefit show for Time Out Youth Charlotte on Saturday, a local nonprofit centered around providing services, support and housing for LGBTQ+ youth. Local LGBTQ+ bands will headline the all-ages event.
Embark on an oceanic adventure at Discovery Place with its latest traveling exhibition, OceanXperience. This full-scale interactive exhibit allows visitors to climb aboard a replica of an ocean research vessel and explore the waters for themselves. The exhibit is included with general admission and runs through September 7.
Head to the Whitewater Center for fresh air and live music at River Jam. Songwriter Veronica Lewis performs on Friday, and Asheville Americana-funk band, Hustle Souls, are set to play Saturday night.
Visit Free Range Bar at Camp North End for Mimosa Sunday, featuring a variety of mimosa flavors half off.
Looking for a more relaxing outing this weekend? Check out the Mint Museum's latest exhibition in Uptown — Collidoscope: de la Torre Brothers Retro-Perspective. The exhibit celebrates 30 years of the internationally renowned artists Einar and Jamex de la Torre. The de la Torre brothers were born in Guadalajara, Mexico and are most known for their vibrant glass, mixed-media sculptures.
VIDEO: 'Part of the fabric': Charlotte council eyes rules for NoDa street vendors
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USA Today
2 hours ago
- USA Today
Metal heads, TikTokers, shiny new airports: Greenland, but not as you think you know it
Special Report: Greenland's relatively isolated indigenous Inuit culture finds itself increasingly exposed to the world just as President Donald Trump pushes to take over the territory. NUUK, Greenland − Musicians Pani and Sebastian Enequist sport once-suppressed Inuit face tattoos, hunt seals for food in remote fjords and honor nature "like a God." But they found their calling − and each other − while they were obsessing over the American heavy metal band Slipknot. For thousands of years, Greenland's Inuit people survived the world's harshest conditions by living off whales, seals, polar bears, fish and caribou. Now, gleaming new airports are opening up. TikTok stars are proliferating. A relatively isolated indigenous culture, long dominated by ruling Denmark, finds itself increasingly exposed to the world just as President Donald Trump pushes to take over the Arctic territory. Still, if music can tell ancient and modern stories alike, then the Sound of the Damned, the Enequists' Nuuk-based hardcore metal band, has a musical plotline that wends across time and place. The group's raspy, guttural-growl vocals, introspective lyrics and aggressive beats are old and young. Native and foreign-born. They illustrate how change is sweeping through the island's unique heritage, even as some things stay the same. 'Buy us!': Greenlanders shocked, intrigued, bewildered by Trump zeal for Arctic territory "We want to play metal. We also want to represent our culture," said Pani Enequist, 32, who writes Sound of the Damned's lyrics and recently began performing with them. Her husband Sebastian, 29, is the band's lead singer and guitarist. The group's new material incorporates an Inuit drum called a "qilaat," mask dancing and throat singing, where hums, gasps and grunts mimic the sounds of animals, streams and icebergs. The Enequists said that in 2016, they were among the first of a new generation of Greenlanders to get face tattoos, known in Greenlandic as Kakiuineq, as a way to reclaim and celebrate their Inuit ancestral roots, traditions and spirituality. They also view them as a way of rejecting the legacy of Denmark's 18th-century Christian missionaries, who labeled the practice as pagan and sought to have it banned. Their meanings are linked to Inuit cosmology and rites of passage. Trump wants to buy Greenland: Denmark's first move? Alter its royal coat of arms Greenland's music scene: small but mighty Greenland's music scene is small, with the number of musicians and bands working in Nuuk estimated in the low dozens, according to Christian Elsner, whose family owns Atlantic Music, a record label and music store in Greenland's capital that sells instruments and albums. Greenland has a Spotify-style streaming service called Tusass Music, linked to its postal service, only accessible to users in Greenland and Denmark. Atlantic Music also houses one of Greenland's few full-blown recording studios. It sits in the basement of a squat, gabled house framed by a veranda-style front porch. Across the street is Nuuk Center, an eight-story ultra-modern office tower, which would not look out of place in a European city. Greenland's not for sale: It is welcoming Americans with direct flights. On Trump's birthday Nuuk Center is Greenland's tallest building. It is also home to its first shopping mall, which opened in 2012. On its upper floors are offices for the Naalakkersuisut or Greenlandic government, which is trying to boost tourism and the local economy by rebuilding and expanding three new airports for direct international flights. The first direct U.S. flights to Greenland began on June 14 − Trump's birthday. This is something many Greenlanders feel ambivalent about. They want American tourists to visit. They don't want to become part of the United States, polls show. Sounds of the Arctic Laura Lennert Jensen works for Arctic Sounds, a Greenland-based music management company that represents and promotes local artists. Arctic Sounds also stages an annual music festival − the Arctic Sounds Festival − in Sisimiut, in central western Greenland, which showcases original music acts from Nordic countries. About 90% of Greenland's 57,000 people identify as Inuit. Jensen said Greenlanders first started making popular music that wasn't traditional Inuit music in the 1970s. In keeping with the times, it was influenced by popular British rock and roll acts of the day, such as Pink Floyd and Deep Purple. Over time, access to the internet improved. So did the advent of software that made it easier for musicians to write and record music without a professional studio. Greenland's music has diversified to include rap, reggae, electronica, country, pop and everything in between. 'One way or the other': Five ways Trump's Greenland saga could play out On a recent evening in Nuuk, Jensen took USA TODAY on a whistle-stop tour of a few of Nuuk's live music hotspots, where the acts included lounge singers, folk rock bands and jazz artists. All sang in Greenlandic to attentive local audiences. As did Kuuna, an up-and-coming pop singer who strode self-assuredly around the ring, belting out tunes in between rounds at a Thai boxing event like a fledgling Greenlandic version of Beyoncé. "Some of our musicians do not carry a single trace of Inuit music in what they create," Jensen said. "Others carry it as symbolism, to reflect history or to revitalize techniques that have been lost." Denmark's Greenland experiment Greenland was a Danish colony until 1953. For hundreds of years prior, it was under Danish authority. That era began with the arrival of a Danish-Norwegian Lutheran missionary priest named Hans Egede in 1721. In 1979, Greenland was granted home rule. Thirty years later, it became a self-governing entity. Today, Denmark retains control over Greenland's foreign affairs, defense and macro-economic policy. The Greenlandic government manages areas such as education, healthcare, natural resources and culture. During colonial rule, Denmark enforced assimilation policies for the Inuit population. It unofficially prohibited the Greenlandic language. In 1951, it removed 22 children from their families and put them in Danish homes, an experiment aimed at turning them into model "Little Danes." 'We want to be Greenlanders': Slow independence party wins vote, but pro-US party gains In the 1960s and 1970s, as many as 4,500 women and girls − half of the fertile women in Greenland, according to Danish authorities − were subjected to forced sterilization by government physicians, using painful intrauterine devices. Greenland was in the early stages of its modernization. This included a construction boom that attracted many Danish workers and led to a high birth rate among Inuit women. Denmark's city planners wanted to limit Greenland's population growth. The Danish government has issued formal apologies for these policies. But many Greenlanders remain shocked and bitter about these episodes, which helped fuel calls for independence from Denmark. Greenlanders also believe that deep-rooted biases remain and a broader pattern of ongoing systemic discrimination favors Danes in areas such as access to lucrative jobs and promotions, according to Ulrik Pram Gad, a researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies in Copenhagen. "Many of us feel like there is discrimination in the workplace in Greenland when it comes to high-ranking positions," said Orla Joelsen, a prison official in Nuuk whose job falls under the authority of Denmark's justice department. Joelsen said he was speaking in a private capacity. Greenlanders are underrepresented in the upper echelons of the island's corporate world, according to Gad, the Denmark-based researcher. In his spare time, Joelsen runs a popular X account about Greenland that has been highly critical of Trump's interest in Greenland. "It's going to be a long four years," he said. Greenland's influencers Some Greenlanders appear more ready than others for Greenland's shifting cultural tectonic plates. "On my TikTok account, I talk a lot about what groceries I'm buying," said Malu Falck, 32, a singer and graphic designer in Nuuk whose short-form social videos about everyday life in Greenland have helped bring her a whole new following. Falck has almost 10,000 followers on TikTok. She is not yet making money off of TikTok, she said, though her image was displayed as part of an ad in the window of a Nuuk storefront. "It's new in Greenland, but people are getting used to it," Falck said of TikTok. She estimated that about 100 Greenlanders are "very active" on YouTube, TikTok and other social media. One of them is Qupanuk Olsen, a Greenlandic mining engineer and politician known for her vlogs about Greenland's culture, history and traditional Inuit life. Olsen's posts on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube routinely reach half a million people. But it is in music where Greenland's overlapping identities are perhaps most directly observable. Varna Marianne Nielsen, 44, is a Greenlandic filmmaker, music producer and practitioner of traditional drum dancing and drum singing. The latter involves performing with a stick made of bone or wood that is rhythmically struck against a frame drum or qilaat to make an echoing beat. Distorted maps have misled you: Greenland isn't as big as you think. Nielsen descends from a long line of drum dancers, but grew up listening to American blues, jazz and rock music. "I have both of these traditions in me," she said. Nielsen described her music as "sweeping from the ice and the land." In 2014, she had a role in an episode of the TV series "True Detective," for which she co-produced multiple original scores. Nielsen said that, as a child, she was proud of her Greenlandic heritage but didn't necessarily understand how her identity had been shaped and influenced by Denmark. As an adult, Nielsen said, she has felt compelled to help revive the drum dancing and drum singing tradition that was neglected by earlier generations. Her work includes field recordings and electronically-composed beats. Nielsen was surprised to learn recently, while doing research in Denmark, that her grandfather's drum was exhibited in the National Museum in Copenhagen. She found this discovery upsetting because it illustrated how, even now, Greenland's culture is being expropriated by Denmark. "It is still difficult to access our treasures when they are in a different country and not home where they belong," she said, adding that she hoped Danish authorities would repatriate Greenland's drums. Like Pani Enequist from Sound of the Damned, Nielsen's fingers are encircled by tattoos. Their meaning connects to Sassuma Arnaa, or "Mother of the Sea," an Inuit creation myth about the goddess Sedna. Versions of the myth vary. But the story tells how Sedna came to rule over the Inuit underworld. In one version, Sassuma was a woman who was mistreated by her family and thrown into the sea by her father, when her fingers were severed and became seals, whales and other marine life for which the Arctic is known. Sound of the Damned is spending several weeks this summer touring Danish schools, where band members will talk to children about Greenland's Inuit culture. On stage, they wear "corpse paint"– a style of makeup that gives them a macabre look. Enequist said this has little to do with Greenland and everything to do with music from Metallica to Slipknot that shaped the band's sound and formed the backdrop to her courtship with her husband. "There is no contradiction in that," she said. Keeping it Greenlandic Elsner, whose family owns Atlantic Music, is also a musician. He plays in Nanook, perhaps Greenland's most successful band of the modern era. The group's name refers to Greenland's mythological polar bear, which is on the territory's coat of arms and symbolizes Greenland's wildness. Since the band formed in 2008, Nanook's brand of melancholic folk-pop has sold around 5,000 records in Greenland − meaning that about 1 in 10 Greenlanders, 1 in 4 or 5 households, could own one. Nanook refused an offer to sign with the Sony record label early on in the band's career because it wanted them to sing in English. Elsner said he and his brother, also a vocalist in Nanook, found the idea "too awkward and unnatural." They also worried it would be a kind of betrayal of their Greenlandic inheritance. Not many international music artists travel to Greenland, Elsner said. Distance and expense are factors. Also, there are no roads connecting Greenland's settlements. Nanook has toured Greenland by boat, plane, helicopter, dog sled and snowmobile. Never a tour bus. Elsner said that even though the American metal band Metallica has a Danish drummer in Lars Ulrich, the California-based group has never made the trip. But in the late 1990s, a British band called Blur did show up in Greenland. They played to about 1,000 people in a now-defunct Nuuk bowling alley. And Damon Albarn, Blur's lead singer, endeared himself to Greenlanders, Elsner said, because he did an interview that featured in a documentary saying it was hypocritical for Westerners to criticize Greenlanders for eating seals, whales and other Arctic marine life when there wasn't any major livestock industry in Greenland. "Seals," Albarn said, were "the cows of Greenland" and they had much better lives – and deaths − than Western industrial livestock, which are often raised in intense confinement in pens and cages. Elsner said Greenland is a paradox. "It's this crazy beautiful place where there is a dark side," he said, referring to high rates of alcoholism, suicide and incest in some communities. He said Greenland's good and bad, old and new, seeps into its music. Socially conscious rappers talk about colonization. Metal bands like Sound of the Damned sing about "how they want their culture back." Other musicians address the idea of independence from Denmark. And others still, like Elsner's own band, write songs about nature and "stuff that happens to us" and deliberately avoid writing political songs. And if they do, couch them in metaphors "so it doesn't affect some people the wrong way," he said. Greenland's music, Elsner said, is, like the place, staying true to its origins yet also evolving. There are signs, beyond music, of Greenland on the move. A reporter saw one Tesla hum and whir by in Nuuk. There's rumored to be a second one among Greenland's approximately 6,500 cars for an island that's about half the size of the Indian subcontinent and has fewer than 60 miles of road and just three traffic lights. A local boat captain who sails with tourists in Nuuk and elsewhere said that he'd seen only one polar bear in his entire life. It was in a zoo in Copenhagen.
Yahoo
16 hours ago
- Yahoo
Creswell Parade celebrates freedom on Fourth of July
Thousands flooded the streets of Creswell for the city's annual Fourth of July parade. The parade featured participants like local fire departments, school bands and cheerleaders, the Lane County Sheriff's Office horseback Mounted Posse, Rosie the Riveters, loggers, vintage cars, bubble blowers and candy tossers. There were also food trucks, vendors, live music and plenty of space to lay back and have fun at Harry Holt Memorial Park. Camping chairs and wagons dotted the sidewalks along the parade route hours before the event began. People were also hosting barbecues in their front yards. The parade started with a bang just after 11 a.m. as a planned military fly-over produced claps and cheers from the crowd. "I do this because I love this community. It's one time when everyone comes together and really celebrates our freedom that we're given. We don't take it for granted, that's for sure," said Kelly Makinson, parade organizer and vice president of the Creswell Chamber of Commerce. "My favorite part about the parade is the community that's really coming together and everybody is so helpful and so excited about it that working with them the day of is the best part." The community aspect was echoed by Dolly Marshall, 96, a Rosie the Riveter who worked as a plane spotter and civil air control cadet in New Jersey during World War II. "I am so impressed with the enthusiasm and the size of the turnout for such a small town. It just blows me away," Marshall said. "It's so much fun." The Creswell Fourth of July Celebration is coordinated by a volunteer nonprofit committee dedicated to presenting an event to connect Creswell and surrounding communities, sharing the spirit of independence. "To our family, it's our favorite holiday and it means that we have freedom and we live in a country better than any other country in the world," Makinson said. "It just shows everybody's patriotism for this country and our community and how much everybody supports each other." Franchesca Robertson attended the parade with her partner, children, friends and co-workers. She's attended the parade with her family for more than 10 years. "It's just an amazing show of community here. It's just really fun and festive and kind of the best part about Fourth of July for us," Robertson said. "It's about spending time with our friends and family for us and of course, the food is great." Events continued past the morning's parade with an abundance of opportunities for attendees to enjoy shaved ice, cotton candy, tacos and more with fireworks set off at dusk. Register-Guard reporter Hannarose McGuinness contributed to this report. Haleigh Kochanski is a breaking news and public safety reporter for The Register-Guard. You may reach her at HKochanski@ This article originally appeared on Register-Guard: Creswell Parade celebrates freedom on Fourth of July
New York Post
17 hours ago
- New York Post
Boomer bummer: Cuomo's over-the-hill campaign strategy no match for Mamdani's fresh approach
He won by playing it cool. Mayoral Dem primary winner Zohran Mamdani shot up in popularity with younger voters as comedians and influencers lambasted out-of-touch ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Democratic observers say. The winning 33-year-old socialist's online stature — bolstered by his own masterfully produced social content — tapped into the zeitgeisty humor of Millennials and Gen Z, making the 67-year-old Cuomo's social strategy look like something out of a history book, they said. 'We really need young men in their 30s and 40s who still listen to podcasts (to come out and vote),' New York City-based comedian Nick Mullen said sarcastically, ribbing Cuomo, in a video posted to Instagram alongside Madmani the day before the primaries. 5 City socialist Zohran Mamdani celebrates his mayoral Dem primary-race win In Long Island City, Queens, last month. Stephen Yang 'I cannot listen to Andrew Cuomo ever again,' added Mullen, who donated to Mamdani's campaign, to his 213,000 followers in a video that scored more than 50,000 likes. While Mamdani's primary win last month seemed to come out of nowhere to some, it didn't to 20- to 30-somethings across the five boroughs. Nearly every major poll projected a fairly easy Cuomo victory — but they clearly neglected to capture to the scope of Mamdani's digital grassroots mega-movement. 5 Mamdani joins comedian Nick Mullen in encouraging young people to vote for the 33-year-old pol. Instagram/@mulldogforever 5 On the morning of the primaries, Mamdani filmed another social video with supermodel Emily Ratajkowski. Instagram/@emrata Mullen's post was one of many reels and TikTok videos from Mamdani's base that garnered hundreds of thousands of views, reaching young voters in a way Cuomo's didn't, a review by The Post found. In exchange for $2,000 from the Mamdani campaign, comedian Jeffrey Seal wrote, directed and starred in a nearly 6-minute video that follows the 'Journalist' around the Big Apple as he tried to find the elusive Cuomo. The cheeky short — which racked up 1.2 million views — is chockful of hits to Cuomo's record and features iconic New Yorkers including comedian Ilana Glaser of 'Broad City' and musician Reggie Watts. On the morning of the primaries, Mamdani also filmed another social video with supermodel Emily Ratajkowski. The proof of Mamdani's sleeper popularity was in the primary results — with him destroying Cuomo in a historic upset, taking home a 56% to 44% victory in the third round of the city's ranked choice voting — and winning the popular vote in every round before that. While complete voter age data won't be released by election officials until July 15, polls by Emerson and Marist from May and June had shown Mamdani leading with voters under 45 by as much as a 2:1 ratio against the former governor. 5 Jeffrey Seal was paid $2,000 by the Mamdani campaign to direct a video poking fun at Cuomo. Instagram/@zohrankmamdani Zohran spent more than $85,000 on video production, not including TV Ads, while Cuomo's strategy hinged heavily on staid union endorsements along with name recognition and an older voter base. Alyssa Cass, a partner at Sling Shot Strategies who ran Scott Stringer's failed bid for mayor, gave props to Mamdani's strategy. 'It really mattered, it made it part of the culture in a way that none of us were seeing,' she said of his online, take-it-to-the-streets tactics. 'Visibly matters a lot in mayoral races, and he became the only candidate that anyone talked about. 'I even forgot Cuomo had a logo. He ran it like it was Bill Clinton, like it was 1992 race,' she said. A Post review of the ex-governor's social-media accounts found no instances of the legacy politician intentionally engaging with voters under 45. The former governor notoriously conducted most of his appearances in secure venues and used concert-style paper wrist bands to identify attendees of his events, which became a laughing matter among reporters and others attending them. 5 'He ran it like it was Bill Clinton, like it was a 1992 race,' a political operative said of Cuomo's campaign. Luiz C. Ribeiro for New York Post 'This may come as a surprise to Cuomo and his irrelevant consultant friends, but only going to protected event spaces filled with paid attendees is more outdated than a North Korean military parade,' a Dem strategist said. Rich Azzopardi, a spokesman for the Cuomo campaign, told The Post, 'There is no doubt we could have done more to reach out to younger voters, and that's one of the issues currently under review as we consider next steps.' One standout moment of Mamdani's campaign came the Friday before the primary, when the Queens state assemblyman traversed the length of Manhattan — of course capturing the 13.4 mile journey on video to share with his 1.1 million followers on TikTok. 'On Friday night, we walked the length of Manhattan, from Inwood Hill to Battery Park. Because New Yorkers deserve a Mayor they can hear, see and even yell at if they need to. We out here,' Mamdani wrote in the caption. Mamdani's rep did not respond to Post requests for comment.
