LEXINGTON, Ky. (WTVQ) – Lexington Police are on the scene of another shooting, this one just off Broadway down from the Thornton’s gas station at 802 Broadway.
The initial call went out as a person shot in the head. Fire and police units were dispatched at about 4:50 p.m.
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Police have taped off the entrance to a mobile home park off Loudon and a small SUV is in the middle of Loudon with a dented front end and a bullet hole in the windshield.
Witnesses at the scene said it was some kind of argument between a young man and woman but they weren’t sure of details.
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When asked how business was going at his downtown Neopolitan Italian restaurant Partenope, still in its first year of operation, chef and co-owner Dino Santonicola’s answer was to the point — “I have one word for you: bad.”
Santonicola opened Partenope, his first restaurant, in the Titche-Goettinger building on Main Street after seven years of working as the pizza director at Jay Jerrier’s hit pizzeria chain Cane Rosso. Owning a restaurant was something the Italian-born chef had dreamed of since he was 13, as he told The Dallas Morning News for the story on the restaurant’s opening. He strategically chose downtown Dallas for the location of his restaurant because, as he says, before March, “downtown Dallas was at its peak.”
Chef Dino Santonicola owns Partenope Ristorante.(Lynda M. Gonzalez / Staff Photographer)
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the flourishing commerce of Dallas had the world’s attention. In October 2018, Esquire Singapore warned other “heavyweight” cities about a “thriving metropolis keen to take a meaty slice out of their tourism share.” Dallas is described as “booming” with “unique entertainment options, plush hotels, big portions, and good ol’ fashioned American charm.”
The next year, Visit Dallas’ 2019 annual report recorded 27.7 million visitors, a group that spent $5.2 billion while here. The majority of visitors came for conventions, business meetings and vacation, and 54 percent of them stayed in hotels, including the most historic ones in downtown. Visitors most certainly visited spots the Esquire article recommended: The Statler; the French Room’s bar; Bullion, now a to-go restaurant selling COVID-19 tests; and Mirador, once a fine dining restaurant, now a special event space.
Dallas’ suitability for conventions has been consistently lauded by Cvent, a global meeting and event management provider that ranked Dallas as No. 5 on their Top 50 Meeting Destinations in the United States in 2019 — the only Texas city included. In 2018, Dallas was previously in the top 10 at No. 6.
Added to tourist and convention traffic on any given night in downtown were sports fans and concert-goers drifting over from American Airlines Center.
Now, there are far fewer hotel guests, no sports games or concerts, and scarcely any office workers, leaving downtown restaurants relying on residents and intrepid diners to stay open.
“I used to get phone calls asking, ‘Where can I park?’ Now, people are calling to ask, ‘Is it safe down there?’” Santonicola says.
His PPP money is “long gone.” He’s reduced the staff to five while he works 14-hour shifts five days a week to try to keep his dream alive. If something doesn’t turn soon, Santonicola says he’ll “really have no choice but to walk away.”
In an attempt to raise awareness of the plight of independent restaurants, he includes a SaveRestaurants.com flyer with every to-go order. “The little guy? They’re suffering,” Santonicola adds.
On the bright side, he likes to tell people, “Now is the best time to come to downtown Dallas. There is parking everywhere.”
Cafe Izmir owner Beau Nazary shows Kourtney Garrett, President and CEO of Downtown Dallas Inc, a rock that was thrown through his cafe last night on Saturday morning, May 30, 2020, in Dallas. Nazary said he showed up to looters drinking beer last night at 11:30 and stayed until five in the morning watching over his business.(Juan Figueroa / Staff Photographer)
More “little guys”
Another independent restaurateur, Beau Nazary owns the 24-year-old Mediterranean restaurant Cafe Izmir. He opened the restaurant’s second location downtown on the corner of Ervay and Pacific in 2016. He says before March, the lunch crowd along with catered office lunches were the restaurant’s “bread and butter.” In a typical hour and a half on weekdays, he was able to count on serving approximately 200 people his Persian mother’s famous hummus and tapas.
Worsening the the loss of the office lunch crowd, Nazary’s downtown location suffered considerable damage on May 29 after the protests. At the time he was guarding his own downtown apartment, he received a call that people were busting windows out at his restaurant. Armed with a gun, he went to defend against further theft and destruction until the next morning.
With multiple windows broken and a dashed stock of wine and liquor, Nazary estimates $10,000 in damages from that night and says he is “90 percent sure” he will not reopen the downtown location. His employees are gone, and he will not be restocking the kitchen. As he says: “Downtown is dead. This virus is not going to be over for at least another eight to nine months.”
His focus now is on sustaining to-go orders at the original Greenville location, where due to its small size, he is waiting to resume dine-in until permissible restaurant capacity is at 100 percent.
Dude, Sweet Chocolate owner Katherine Clapner echoes Santonicola and Nazary about the loss of a “viable weekday business.” The windows of her Main Street shop were also broken the night of May 29, but fortunately for her, Headington Companies, which owns 1604 Main Street, paid for her repairs.
Of the protests, she says, “I agree with safe protesting, but we got hit with anger. And I get it — they should be angry.”
After cleaning up with the help of volunteers, she reopened the shop but closed again shortly afterward due to lack of business. This month, she’s trying again with preorders and pick-up on Fridays through Sundays.
Downtown’s biggest obstacle today, as she sees it, is the lack of foot traffic due to racing and scooters that overtake the streets at night. The fact that so many businesses remain closed has created wide open streets that one resident described as a “literal playground.”
“The protests were a hiccup” and not the source of the problems present today, Clapner says. In her view, what downtown needs is people walking around again. “Places have to be open. If only half of us are open and the other half are not, it’s really difficult. And if we’re going to have a tourist area, visitors are going to have to feel safe.”
Dallas Police Department’s media relations team did not respond to a request for comment on street racing or scooters violating traffic rules.
Chef Miriam Jimenez is head chef at Miriam Cocina Latina in Dallas.(Jason Janik / Special Contributor)
Corporately-owned restaurants
Though still facing challenges, corporate-owned restaurants provide a slightly more positive recovery report.
Kevin Lillis, the CEO of Hospitality Alliance, says business at Jaxon Texas Kitchen & Beer Garden has “generally continued to grow each week” since reopening. The busy periods have simply flipped from weekday lunches and happy hours to dinners and weekend brunches.
Hospitality Alliance was the company hired by AT&T to install Jaxon Texas Kitchen in the AT&T Discovery District as part of a hefty campus improvement project. Lillis attributes Jaxon’s success to an approachable menu with sandwiches, salads and barbecue, as well as the restaurant’s expansive outdoor space that includes a wide second-floor porch.
Lillis reports there have been “frequent protests,” partly due to the restaurant’s proximity to City Hall and police headquarters, but that the majority of interactions have been positive and have “opened an important dialogue.”
“We’re happy to be a haven of sorts for people coping in an extremely difficult time — so the challenge is trying to protect that experience for our guests while respecting the protestors’ message and rights to express that message.”
Miriam Jimenez, who partnered with mega-restaurateur Shannon Wynne to open Miriam Cocina Latina across from Klyde Warren Park, says business has been “up and down” since reopening on May 1. The main entry door of the restaurant was broken on the first night of protests, costing $3,000, but she is working to attract customers back downtown with drink promotions and margarita kits to-go.
In order to return to steady business again, she says guests need to feel confident they can have an enjoyable time in a clean and socially-distanced environment.
Exterior of Wild Salsa in downtown Dallas (Robert W. Hart / Special Contributor)
DRG Concepts, which owns downtown’s Wild Salsa, Chop House Burger and Dallas Fish Market, is keeping eight of their nine full-service dining locations closed. Only Chop House Burger is operating with curbside pickup and delivery.
Nafees Alam, CEO of DRG Concepts, says in order to feel confident about a reopening plan, there will need to be a “very full containment of the virus.”
A State of the Market report by Downtown Dallas, Inc. states that the impact to the hospitality operators downtown from the pandemic has been “significant” but short-term. “Longer impacts to the industry at large will be influenced by the speed of the overall market rebound fueled by a rapid stabilization in public health,” the report states.
“We ALL have to do our part to make that happen,” says Lillis of Hospitality Alliance. “We have to wear masks when we can’t socially distance (and even when we can), respect the fact that we’re part of a larger community and something bigger than ourselves. And ultimately, we all just have to take this seriously. The sooner we do that, the sooner we’re back to ‘normal.’”
IDAHO FALLS – Several people were hospitalized following a two-vehicle crash in Idaho Falls Monday afternoon.
The crash occurred around 12:20 p.m. at 17th Street and Ashment Avenue.
Idaho Falls Police Department spokeswoman Jessica Clements tells EastIdahoNews.com the driver of a green Lexus was headed east on 17th Street. It ran a red light and hit a silver Mazda as it was pulling out of the mall parking lot.
The Mazda ended up flipping upside down and the Lexus had major damage on the front.
A driver and a passenger in the Mazda were taken by ambulance to Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center. The extent of their injuries is unknown. There was also a driver in the Lexus. It’s not clear if they were injured.
Everyone involved was wearing a seatbelt, according to Clements.
A minor fender bender occurred as people gathered to look at the crash.
As of 1:36, the wreckage is cleaned up and traffic has resumed to normal.
The Idaho Falls Fire Department assisted IFPD in the response.
ORIGINAL STORY:
IDAHO FALLS — Police are on the scene of a two-vehicle crash on 17th Street near the Grand Teton Mall.
One vehicle flipped onto its top and the second vehicle sustained major damage at the intersection of 17th Street and Ashment Avenue. Idaho Falls Fire, Idaho Falls Ambulance and the Idaho Falls Police Department responded to the crash.
At this point, it’s unknown how many people were involved and the extent of their injuries.
Officers ask drivers to avoid the area while they investigate the wreck.
EastIdahoNews.com will update this story as we learn more.
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Phineas and Ferb: Candace Against the Universe isn’t the first Phineas and Ferb movie. That title belongs to Phineas and Ferb: Across the Second Dimension, which premiered on Disney Channel in 2011 while the show was airing. And this month’s Disney Plus release would have been the third movie, if a planned, theatrical spinoff of the series had actually come to pass.
In a recent interview ahead of Candace Against the Universe’s premiere, Phineas and Ferb creators Dan Povenmire and Jeff “Swampy” Marsh spoke about the original concept, which was announced after Across the Second Dimension and given a tentative, big-screen release date in 2013. The film was eventually shelved due to changing studio heads and shifting priorities.
When it came to Candace Against the Universe, the creators went with an entirely different concept and plot — but they did lift something directly from their original drafts.
“The only scene that we stole from that was one that John Barry, one of our writers who is also writing on this new movie, had done that just stuck in my mind all the time,” explains Povenmire.
[Ed. note: This post contains spoilers for Phineas and Ferb: Candace Against the Universe]
In Candace Against the Universe, the recovered scene occurs when the kids are headed back to Earth to stop alien leader Super Super Big Doctor (Ali Wong) from conquering the planet. Their spaceship reaches light speed — and reality starts to break down, stripping the the characters of their color, rendering them into crude sketches, then storyboards, before panning back to show Povenmire and Marsh pitching the sequence.
Image: Disney Plus
“That scene is word for word what [Barry] had put in this one version of that script. And because I was like, ‘Oh, hey, we’re gonna go, they can go past the speed of light. We can do that thing that you had.’ It was in a slightly different context and the other way,” recounts Povenmire. “‘Does anybody have that draft?’ We had to go archive back through stuff. And he said, ‘Okay, I know, I’ve got it somewhere.’ And it took him a day or two to find. He found it. He brought it in and we just snipped it out and put it right in the script by the way it was, because I read it again. I was like, ‘Wep, this is it. This is the thing that makes me laugh.’”
The original theatrical feature was never formally canceled, per se, but put on hold. Back in 2018, Povenmire and Marsh revealed at a San Diego Comic-Con panel that the movie’s continuation was dependent on the success of the Phineas and Ferb and Milo Murphy’s Law crossover special. But with no further news on that front, it would appear that the theatrical movie is still floating around in development.
Phineas and Ferb: Candace Against the Universe is available to stream on Disney Plus.
blogjewishscene.blogspot.com The Disney Wonder cruise ship docks near the ship loader at Skagway’s ore terminal. (Photo by Henry Leasia, KHNS – Haines)
As Skagway’s long standing waterfront lease with tourist attraction White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad draws to a close, the municipality plans to diversify its port traffic. Yukon mining interests are paying close attention.
Skagway municipal officials are in talks with the Yukon mineral industry about a long term relationship between the port city and Canada’s interior mine operations.
“Skagway is an essential part of the Yukon’s mining industry,” said Jonas Smith, the co-project manager for the Yukon Producer’s group—an industry group for mining and mineral exploration companies.
“Skagway is a considerably shorter sailing from Asian markets than other Western North American ports. So, it’s very strategic and useful for accessing those international markets.”
Skagway’s port has been dominated by tourism interests in the last few decades, but this blossoming commercial relationship is in line with Skagway’s less recent history. Skagway was founded as the railhead for Yukon mines. The tiny Alaska port town was a gateway to the Klondike—and a gateway to the rest of the world for the Yukon.
Smith said there’s considerable mineral development moving towards actual producing mines in the Yukon. He said most of the mine projects are five to ten years out, but building the relationship is important now. The municipality is poised to regain control over its waterfront when its lease with White Pass ends in 2023.
“We saw this as a key time to get in on the ground floor, so to speak, make sure that we were speaking to everyone involved and let them know our perspectives and our projected needs for the port, so that could be considered as this begins to take shape and the moves towards the Municipality of Skagway taking over control in 2023,” Smith said.
Smith said that as more mining projects come online in the coming decade, ore shipping could open up year round jobs for Skagway residents.
Skagway Mayor Andrew Cremata said year round work that’s not tied to the tourist industry is especially attractive in light of the pandemic, as he and the municipal assembly work to manage a summer without tourism.
“I see that as a really promising way to diversify our portfolio moving forward which, obviously, we’re seeing more and more as a necessity because if tourism is impacted like it is during COVID, having something to fall back on if this ever happens again, it’s paramount,” Cremata said.
Assembly member Orion Hansen and Mayor Cremata attended the Mineral Roundup convention— an annual regional mining conference—in January to learn more about industrial possibilities for the port.
Then the Yukon Producer’s Group gave a presentation to the community at an assembly meeting in June. Smith joins Skagway’s Port Commission meetings via Zoom.
Cremata says that the municipality plans to dedicate a portion of the port solely to commercial users, to eliminate conflict between cruise ships and industry. He wants to get feedback from future partners now.
“We want to know, when it comes time to build out that part of the port, what types of modern equipment will be used, what we want to include in that design, so that when we build it out, we have a facility that it prepares us for the next 30 to 50 years of doing commerce with our partners in the Yukon,” he said.
When the waterfront lease expires in 2023, the municipality plans to control its deepwater port for the first time in over half a century. Last fall, White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad lawyers staked claim to the waterfront, but backed off after the municipal attorney rejected its bid to renew the lease. A recent letter from White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad President Bob Berto expressed willingness to cede the Tidelands to the municipality.
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Here are some scenes from a recent afternoon at Sail Bay just south of Pacific Beach Drive.
If you have photos of local people, places and things that you’d like to share with PB Monthly readers, email them with caption information to robert.vardon@lajollalight.com.
Canadian Pacific (NYSE: CP) and CN (NYSE: CNI) are vying to be the top freight railroad in Eastern Canada, with both companies seeing the Atlantic Canada ports as having untapped potential.
The ports at Saint John and Halifax have access not only to Eastern and Central Canada, but also to the coveted U.S. Midwestern market and the Eastern U.S. CN has access to both ports, while CP — with its recent acquisition of the Central Maine and Quebec Railway — has direct access to Port Saint John.
Expanding the rail network capacity in eastern Canada complements the strategy of importers or beneficial cargo owners (BCOs) that have adopted a “four corners” approach to access the North American markets, Jonathan Wahba, CP’s executive vice president of sales and marketing for intermodal and automotive, told FreightWaves in an interview.
The four corners are ports on the northern and southern ends of the North American West Coast and the northern and southern ends of the North American East Coast.
“Whether there are changes in the supply chain or nearshoring, the large global shippers are going to want flexibility in their supply chains,” Wahba said. “They’re going to want to be nimble. The COVID experience has taught them that people procure goods wherever they can get it.”
Both the Canadian East and West Coast ports see a sizable portion of their traffic as having a final destination in the U.S. About 40% of CP’s containers in Vancouver are bound for the U.S., while nearly 50% of CP’s containers that are handled in Montreal have U.S. destinations, Wahba said.
Meanwhile, CN in recent earnings calls has expressed interest in expanding its network capacity, citing its exclusive access to the Port of Halifax. CN’s executives have painted the port’s potential as being the “Prince Rupert of the East,” in part because of PSA’s ownership of the Halterm intermodal terminal at the port.
In “the Eastern network [from] Halifax to Chicago, we [have] capacity galore, meaning [that] as the industrial space in North America [has been] in slow decline for the last 25 years, we need to be relevant to … [the] consumers [who] generate freight that is a typical container freight,” said CN President and CEO JJ Ruest during his company’s fourth-quarter 2019 earnings call in January. Ruest was referring to the Eastern network’s relationship with domestic intermodal.
Jonathan Wahba, CP’s executive vice president of sales and marketing for intermodal and automotive (Photo: Canadian Pacific)
CP sees the acquisition of the CMQ as being the linchpin in its strategy to expand network capacity in Eastern Canada.
The railway had access to Atlantic Canada for about 100 years after its founding, but then it lost it in the 1990s and CP subsequently started to lose market share in Eastern Canada to its competitor CN in the 2000s, according to Wahba.
Following former CEO Hunter Harrison’s tenure from 2012 to 2017 and current CEO Keith Creel’s tenure from 2017 up to now, CP has been steadily gaining back market share, but it lacked direct access to a deepwater Atlantic port — until the CMQ came along, Wahba said.
“The executive team at CP would’ve said six months, one year ago that the Achilles’ heel in our network was that we didn’t have deepwater Atlantic access and our competitor CN does at [the port of] Halifax,” Wahba said.
But when the opportunity to acquire the CMQ presented itself, CP’s leadership realized this was a unique opportunity.
“There won’t be any more railroads built in North America. The only way we would get Atlantic access is if we purchased it,” Wahba said. The only other time in recent history where a similar opportunity arose was CN’s acquisition of lines connecting to the Port of Prince Rupert on the Canadian West Coast, he said.
CP sees numerous benefits to have access to Port Saint John. It provides Canadian exporters and importers with direct access to the trans-Atlantic-to-Europe trade lane, Wahba said.
It also enabled CP to grow its market share in Atlantic Canada. For instance, on Tuesday, CP will be responsible for handling Kia and Hyundai’s finished vehicles into Atlantic Canada. The railway will use its access to Saint John and a mothballed terminal in Saint John that will come back to life, Wahba said.
“That part of Canada is critical to serve for retailers, food shippers, automotive distributors, and then coming out of that part of the world, there’s a lot of forest products that move inland to Canada or into the United States that we didn’t have the reach to access before.”
Access to Port Saint John will be a win-win for the railway, shippers and the port, Wahba continued. Shippers will have just one length of haul operation, which is more efficient than the previous practice of having a short-line connection with the CMQ in Montreal, he said. It’s more efficient because of the consolidation of maintenance operations and the need for fewer crew changes.
Shippers that choose CP over CN will also experience a route that’s 200 miles shorter between the Atlantic Canada ports and the Toronto/Montreal metropolitan region, and that translates into less route miles, lower greenhouse gases and lower transit times and costs, Wahba said.
Meanwhile, CP will be seeking to attract “house accounts” such as food shippers and big box stores, automotive customers, international intermodal customers and pulp, paper and tissue shippers.
Concurrently, CP, Port Saint John and terminal operator DP World will be working to secure a long-term anchor tenant at Saint John.
“Our purchase of the CMQ is going to allow the port and DP World to accelerate their expansion plans and bring new business there faster. That ecosystem in the Port of St. John is just going to get bigger, faster,” said Wahba.
Truckers, warehousing companies and transloading operations could also see the fruits of these efforts, he said.
“We believe in the next two to three years we will see that ecosystem build out in Saint John now that we’re able to aggressively push traffic in and out of North America via that gateway,” Wahba said.
Ports’ expansion plans
CP’s and CN’s desire to increase market share in Eastern Canada complement Port Saint John and the Port of Halifax’s expansion plans.
Port Saint John is in the middle of a $205 million expansion aimed at expanding port capacity from 150,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) to 300,000 TEUs annually. The expansion includes dredging the harbor and expanding one of the piers, and it will be completed in 2023.
An announcement about the port’s next expansion phase could come out in the next month or two, Wahba said.
“The presence of two Class I railways here is a critical advantage to both shippers and our existing and future growth. DP World and Port Saint John have diligently worked at building its market position as a viable and reliable gateway to Canada and the United States,” Copeland said.
She cited Port Saint John’s $205 million expansion plan, plus strategic relationships with CP and CN, the port’s labor workforce and DP World’s international presence as being factors that would help Port Saint John “grow our market position in the Atlantic to serve North American importers and exporters” in Eastern and Central Canada and the U.S. Midwest and Eastern U.S.
Port Saint John currently has marine connections with CMA CGM and MSC, and it recently had spot calls from Hapag-Lloyd and Maersk on European routing, Copeland said.
At Halifax, the port received a super-post-Panamax ship-to-shore container gantry crane in June at the developing South End Container Terminal. Hailed as the largest ship-to-shore crane in Eastern Canada, it can lift cargo by more than 170 feet, or 51 meters, from the ground and it has an outreach of 217 feet, or 66 meters, that can span across 24 containers. This is the fifth crane of this type at Halifax.
The Halifax Port Authority is also nearing the completion of a deepwater berth extension that will help meet the growing deployment of ultra-class vessels.
“The Port of Halifax recently welcomed our first vessel over 14,000 TEU, and we anticipate receiving the first 15,000-plus TEU vessel in the coming months. The arrival of this new crane at PSA Halifax is a significant piece of the overall strategy to ensure the Port of Halifax remains an efficient and reliable deepwater international gateway,” said Allan Gray, president and CEO of the Halifax Port Authority, in June.
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APM Terminals Pipavav in Gujarat, India has given the approval for an expansion plan worth Rs.7bn ($95.6m).
The investment will aid in the upgrade of the existing facilities in the port to enable the handling of larger ships and to boost the annual container capacity to 1.6 million TEUs.
The execution of a Western Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC) supply chain and inland logistics is expected to improve the reliability and decrease the transit time in the future.
Additionally, it will boost the total import and export cargo volume. Around 40% of the total investments in the 1,535km-long DFC is expected to be from Gujarat.
APM Terminals Pipavav managing director Jakob Friis Sorenson said: “With this investment, we aim to strengthen our network and continue to provide best in-class services to all our stakeholders.
“We are however awaiting the confirmation of concession extension from Gujarat Maritime Board (GMB) to execute the expansion plan.
“The container yard capacity will be expanded once the cargo growth is visible post commissioning of DFC. We expect the world economy and business to follow an expanded ‘U’ curve and normalcy in business to be restored by the second quarter of 2021.”
Port operations are said to be important to ensure that the supply chains are operational, and the supply of essential items is maintained.
APM Terminals Pipavav was operational during the Covid-19 lockdown and has not reported any positive cases of Covid-19 in its workforce.
Sony is planning on porting more of its first-party PlayStation games over to the PC in the future, it has emerged.
This nugget comes from the firm’s corporate report for 2020, in which Sony wrote: “We will explore expanding our first-party titles to the PC platform, in order to promote further growth in our profitability.”
As you doubtless know, this follows Sony bringing Horizon Zero Dawn onto the PC recently, which was a major signal of the company’s intentions – albeit that port had its serious problems, sadly.
Still, this is another promising comment from Sony for those PC gamers who are keen to get their hands on PlayStation exclusives (eventually – because of course the PC ports will have a suitable delay, no doubt).
Good fit
This follows comments from PlayStation’s Head of Worldwide Studios Hermen Hulst earlier this year, who placated console fans by clarifying that Sony’s new policy wasn’t going to be to port over every first-party game – but just the ones that make sense and are a good fit for PC.
Hulst said: “And to maybe put a few minds at ease, releasing one first-party AAA title to PC doesn’t necessarily mean that every game now will come to PC. In my mind, Horizon Zero Dawn was just a great fit in this particular instance.”
Clearly, though, it would seem other exclusives will be coming over to the PC, it’s just a question of which ones. Logically, it’ll be games that benefit most from the capabilities of PC hardware, particularly on the control front, such as shooters (or action RPGs like Horizon Zero Dawn) using a mouse and keyboard.
Lovecraft Country is moving fast. Only three episodes in, and the HBO series has already killed off a major character, shifted tones, and gotten its two leads in “bed” together. Lovecraft Country Episode 3 “Holy Ghost” not only gave us some haunted house chills, but also a hot and heavy sex scene between Tic (Jonathan Majors) and Leti (Jurnee Smollett). While the two protagonists have been checking each other out for a few weeks, their quick bathroom hookup wound out being awkward, hot, and insanely real. It was also…Leti’s first time?!? Let’s break down why the sex scene in Lovecraft Country Episode 3 “Holy Ghost” wasn’t just hot, but incredibly important for Tic and Leti.
The first two episodes of Lovecraft Country, “Sundown” and “Whitey’s on the Moon”, were essentially a two-part adaptation of the first chapter in Matt Ruff’s book. While Lovecraft Country showrunner Misha Green didn’t wildly deviate from Ruff’s version of events — with the big exception being Uncle George’s (Courtney B. Vance) death — Episode 3 sees the show breaking away from the book a ton. While Lovecraft Country’s second chapter “Dreams of the Which House” is indeed a ghost story involving Leti’s new Victorian home, it’s far more grisly in the show than in the book.
There’s also the fact that Tic and Leti don’t have sex in the book at this time and they most certainly do in the show.
Okay, let’s talk about the sex scene. Tic and Leti’s extremely quick hookup happens about halfway through the episode. We learn early on that Tic has been keeping his distance from Leti after the events at Ardham. When he arrives at her newly purchased home on the North Side, he announces that he is there only to say goodbye. Leti convinces him to stay long enough for a massive housewarming bash. She just isn’t trying to keep him in Chicago, but Tic’s presence in full military uniform might help keep the house safe from assault by Leti’s racist white neighbors.
Photo: HBO
However during the party, it soon becomes extremely obvious that Tic is jealous of the interest Leti is getting from other men at the party. When Leti goes to the bathroom, he follows. And then he passionately swoops her up. Soon the two are making out and undressing each other. Tic lifts Leti onto the sink countertop and she undoes his fly (in an almost liberating reversal from her nightmare vision last week). They have quick, hard, steamy sex. In less than a minute, it’s done. And Tic sees that Leti is bleeding.
At first she seems to apologize for not realizing she was on her period, but the tone shift in the soundtrack suggests something else is wrong. For the next sequence, Leti looks heartbroken. Empty even. Until she sees a burning cross on her lawn and then springs into vengeful action. Only later do we learn that Leti wasn’t on her period. That extremely passionate moment was her first time having sex.
Now here’s what’s fascinating about this revelation. From the jump, Lovecraft Country has painted Tic as the pure-of-heart hero. He is chivalrous to a fault and a nerd to boot. Leti is the glamorous one. The one who constantly gets into trouble bailing out friends from jail. She’s well-traveled, flirtatious, and confident beyond belief. Stereotypically, we are led to believe that Tic is probably the less sexually experienced one and Leti an independent woman who has embraced free love and all the ups and downs that come with it. This sex scene completely reverses that assumption, though. Moreover, it suggests that Tic might be capable of darker things than we’d expect, while Leti might wear her confidence as a mask.
Indeed, she later explains that she doesn’t regret their hot quickie because she needed to feel something. Lovecraft Country Episode 3 doesn’t just mix up the show’s approach to genre or continue the saga with the Sons of Adam. It helps us understand our heroine like never before. She’s a lot more complicated than a perfect dream girl. She’s a real woman full of heart and hurt.
DAKAR, Senegal — At Dakar’s congested port last week, men in neon orange and yellow jackets waved their arms to speed up a line of trucks carrying away sacks of ammonium nitrate — the compound that exploded at the port in Beirut, Lebanon, three weeks before.
Dock workers in this West African coastal city raised the alarm, port staff said, after news of the massive blast in Beirut, which killed around 200 people and injured at least 6,500. Soon Senegal was scrambling to transport more than 3,000 tons of ammonium nitrate — slightly more than exploded in Beirut — out of Dakar, its densely populated capital.
The trucks were destined for gold mines in neighboring Mali, a landlocked country that has been grappling for eight years with insurgents and instability. And Mali is now in even more tumult, since less than two weeks ago its president was overthrown in a coup d’état.
The disaster in Beirut has prompted countries around the world to scrutinize their own stockpiles of ammonium nitrate and other hazardous chemicals routinely transported on ships, and sitting in ports, experts say. Sometimes, they are adjacent to large population centers.
A truck loaded with cargo waited to leave Dakar’s port last Tuesday, where gridlock made any progress slow.Credit...Ricci Shryock for The New York Times
Ammonium nitrate, used as fertilizer and as explosives in mines, is usually harmless by itself but can be dangerous under intense heat and pressure. It has been an ingredient in industrial accidents and acts of terrorism, as in 1995 when white supremacists blew up the federal building in Oklahoma City.
“After what happened in Beirut, many ports, many authorities are checking, reviewing their policies,” said Alfredo Parroquín-Ohlson, head of cargoes and technical cooperation coordination at the International Maritime Organization, a United Nations agency, “and of course, what they have in the storage.”
Since the blast in Beirut, Egypt has been trying to get rid of dangerous material abandoned at its ports, and the police in Romania have seized 8,500 tons of ammonium nitrate, news reports say. And in India, 700 tons of it lying near the port city of Chennai for five years was moved to Hyderabad, according to other reports.
More than 20 million tons of ammonium nitrate is produced every year, nearly half by Russia.
Inside Dakar’s port last week, trucks topped with tarpaulins and loaded with sacks of the chemical edged past trucks carrying metal wire and Buffalo brand rice.
As they awaited their chance to inch ahead in the gridlock, drivers leaned out of the windows of cabs decorated with pictures of sheikhs and slogans like Alhamdoulillahi — Praise be to God.
“Fourteen hundred tons of it are already gone,” said Seydou Toure, a senior policeman at the port, last Wednesday. That was 40 trucks’ worth, he said.
Cargo trucks, some carrying ammonium nitrate, waiting to leave the Dakar port.Credit...Ricci Shryock for The New York Times
Port officials in Dakar refused to say how long the ammonium nitrate had been stored at the port, which ship or ships carried it in or why the stockpile had built up.
At least seven hundred tons was moved for the chemical company Maxam, destined for use in gold mines in Loulo and Gounkoto, said Marc Dabou, secretary general of Mali’s ministry of transport and urban mobility.
These mines are not in northern or central Mali, where armed groups operate, but in the west, near the Senegalese border.
Mr. Dabou said that about 20,000 tons of ammonium nitrate is brought into Mali every year, and that the material was moved “in perfect conformity with the transportation rules for dangerous merchandise.”
On its own, ammonium nitrate is not particularly combustible, experts say, but if contaminated with gasoline or oil, or stored in containers that burn easily, like wooden boxes, it can become extremely flammable.
In normal times, around 700 trucks leave Dakar every day for Mali, to the east.Credit...Ricci Shryock for The New York Times
Internationally agreed-upon recommendations apply to the transport of dangerous cargoes like oils, liquefied gases and materials like ammonium nitrate. But it is up to states themselves to enforce them.
“These recommendations are not mandatory, because all ports are different, all administrations are different,” said Mr. Parroquín-Ohlson at the International Maritime Organization.
This means there is room for serious gaps in policy, port procedures or staff training, he said.
In normal times, around 700 trucks leave Dakar for Mali every day. But coronavirus restrictions and instability in Mali have slowed the traffic, some port officials said.
At a truckers’ parking spot in Dakar’s warehouse district last week, Malian drivers looked at pictures of ammonium nitrate on their cellphones as they waited to get on the road, sitting on broken chairs and plastic mats by a weigh station.
The conversation on their truckers’ trade union WhatsApp group was all about the chemical.
“It’s the first I’ve heard of that product,” said Oudou Bamba, the head of his convoy of truck drivers, “but we got a message from one of our friends saying this is not something new. He’s been driving it for years.”
“It’s a bit dangerous, though,” said Salif Koné, another Malian driver.
Daouda Diop transports candy between Senegal and Mali. On Sunday he cleaned his truck in Dakar before leaving for Bamako, Mali’s capital.Credit...Ricci Shryock for The New York Times
They had already had a tough year. If the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting extra regulations at borders had been bad for business, Mr. Koné said, the Mali coup was going to make things even worse because of the uncertainty it brought.
They and more than 100 unionized colleagues met last Tuesday to discuss the dangers of products like ammonium nitrate and how best to load and drive it.
Gorgui Diouf, a truck driver setting off for Mali with a load of ammonium nitrate for the border post at Kidira, Senegal, said over the phone on Wednesday that he was unsure whether it would be open. The rules had changed so often over the past few months, from the coronavirus, then a temporary relaxation of controls because of Senegal’s most important festival, Tabaski, and then, after the coup in Mali on Aug. 18, border closures threatened by the regional organization of states.
But once the trucks do cross the border into Mali, one Senegalese port official said, the cargo is no longer his responsibility.
“How the stuff is organized when it gets to Mali, I don’t know. It’s not my job,” said the port official, who declined to be identified by name because he was not authorized to speak by his superiors. Many port officials, including those superiors, refused or ignored requests to speak.
“In all ports around the world you have the passage of dangerous cargo,” the official said.
Dakar’s port is one of West Africa’s oldest and used to have more of a monopoly on goods going to landlocked countries in the region.Credit...Ricci Shryock for The New York Times
If Dakar had not accepted the ammonium nitrate, a port in Ivory Coast or Ghana might have, and Senegal would have lost business.
Dakar has one of the oldest ports in West Africa, dating from 1867, and used to have a greater share of the goods going to landlocked countries in the region. But now Dakar faces competition.
Many of the region’s ports are trying to increase their capacity. Dakar is building a new container terminal. The port in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, is undergoing a $1.8 billion expansion financed mainly by China’s Eximbank.
But restrictions on movement during the coronavirus pandemic and the associated economic downturns mean ports are more backed up than usual, experts said — so cargoes can sit around for longer, increasing the risk that they could be contaminated or forgotten.
As thunderclouds rolled over Senegal’s peninsular capital, prematurely darkening the late-afternoon sky, the lights coming from ships on the horizon began to gleam. They were waiting to dock.
“The threat is there,” said the port official who declined to be named. “We can’t deny it.”
Ousmane Balde contributed reporting from Dakar, and John Ismay from Washington.
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Eye on Beirut, Senegal Port Rushes to Truck Away Tons of Ammonium Nitrate - The New York Times
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In this seventh month of the pandemic, neighborhood cheer continues, and we’re always happy to hear about it. Thanks to Judith for sending this video of a neighborhood serenade last night near 41st and Charlestown – klezmer music! Judith ID’d the band as “Samson and the Katz” (anyone with more info on the front-yard concert, please let us know!).
just off Broadway down from the Thornton’s gas station at 802 Broadway.
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