SandwHich

If Hicham and Janet Elbetri, owners of Franklin Street's tasty SandwHich, were anything but the extremely genial folks they are, Chapel Hill could have its own Seinfeldian lunchtime legend.

• by Jane Hobson Snyder

New restaurants and happenings

Restaurant and food happenings this week

• by Sheryl Cornett

Film times & brief film reviews

A city-by-city list of movie times this week, with brief reviews of what's playing on silver screens around the Triangle

The dogs of war

Why is Warner Bros. opening two high-profile movies about the World War II era, Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima and Steven Soderbergh's The Good German, in a single Triangle multiplex this weekend?

• by Godfrey Cheshire

High school horrors

The world of Sid Davis is one where even the slightest infraction can result in injury, imprisonment or death.

• by Zack Smith

UNC Inc.

North Carolinians have long taken pride in our university system and UNC Hospitals, whose missions have been service to all the people of North Carolina.

• by John Hammond
• Tags: News Feature, Cover Story

Tree task force may reconvene

The 21-page tree ordinance and its corresponding 37-page handbook are as dense as the Amazon jungle, but one aspect of it is clear-cut: Few people are pleased with the final product, which took a task force appointed by Mayor Charles Meeker three years to complete.

• by Lisa Sorg

UNC Inc. sidebars

Opening numbers

• by John Hammond

NCSU hesitates; Hillsborough St. plans in limbo

When Mitch Silver came to Raleigh as the city's new planning director 18 months ago, he naturally started looking around for the cool redevelopment opportunities in town.

• by Bob Geary

Escalation protest

• by Jenny Warburg

Passing the torch

• by V.C. Rogers

A mission

Florence Gray Soltys remembers when there was a plaque at N.C. Memorial Hospital (now UNC Hospitals) that read: "Operated for and by the people of North Carolina."

• by Richard Hart

Meanwhile in our nation's capital

It has been difficult to sort out the new Congress without a scorecard, but if anything was noticeable in the first week or so, it was the splitting of what had been a solid GOP bloc.

• by Kirk Ross

Last exit

I imagine it was sometime after 4 a.m. Sunday when I approached the final corner of the Monet exhibit.

• by Grayson Currin

Purge the surge

Twenty-one thousand troops: To deploy that number of additional American soldiers to Iraq is akin to sending every citizen in Carrboro and Hillsborough to war.

• by Lisa Sorg

Fin Fang Foom

It's difficult, if not impossible, to consider Fin Fang Foom's Native Tongue apart from its compelling backstory.

• by Grayson Currin

Whose limbs shatter mountains

Names have power. Fin Fang Foom, Chapel Hill's preeminent post-rock band, named themselves after Marvel Comics' giant green dragon on a lark.

• by Brian Howe
• Tags: Music Feature, Audio

Fall Out Boy is dead

Until a month ago, Fall Out Boy was pretty uninteresting: Aside from having a bassist who wrote all the lyrics and a singer who never talked, the most fascinating thing about the Illinois pop-punk quartet was the fact no one understood the words to their songs.

• by Robbie Mackey

Long and winding road

The "almost magical effect" on those who drive the Blue Ridge Parkway today, Anne Mitchell Whisnant notes early in her book, Super-scenic Motorway: a Blue Ridge Parkway History, shows how "the thoughtfulness of design and the love of the mountains and the outdoors that underpinned much of the Parkway's planning are palpably evident."

• by Roy Pattishall

Eyes on the prizery

Independent readers know by now that the paper has moved its Durham office to someplace called the Venable.

• by Kate Dobbs Ariail

Silent partners

Judging by the eager, near-capacity crowd in Durham's Common Ground Theater last Saturday, I wasn't the only one who had missed Jordan Smith's presence on the regional stage last year.

• by Byron Woods

Jan. 17 crossword solution

Jan. 17 sudoku solution

Changing Temperatures

• by Ben Tausig

Kathy Norcross Watts

Winston-Salem writer Kathy Norcross Watts formed a close friendship with North Carolina potter and painter Sid Oakley.

Pan's Labyrinth

Mexican filmmakers may be doing for fantasy in film what Japan once did for animation.

• by Zack Smith

The GFOS in Raleee, Nawfkehalinah

James Brown sang of Agustuh, Gee Aay, as where he was from. Augusta was one of the poles of his most famed driving experiments. Barnwell, S.C., was the other, where he was slapped alive, stillborn in a shack in the woods. JB was "a complicated man."

• by Peter Eichenberger

The Pope Center defends itself

Surely Toby Parcel, dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at N.C. State University, had little idea of the dustup she would cause by approaching the Pope Foundation to explore funding for academic programs.

• by Jane S. Shaw

1.17 ~ 1.23

United States of Roe; The Dears and Annuals; Sekou Sundiata's the 51st (dream) state; The Ying Quartet; Stones in His Pockets & In the Doghouse; A Flock of Dodos

Durham's Culture Crawl

Durham's Culture Crawl is alive and kicking...

• by Fiona Morgan

For the week of January 18 ~ 24

The Daredevil Christopher Wright at Bickett Gallery; Kings of Prussia and Three Christs at Marvel Event Center; more...

As King said, we can't just look away

Did you see President Bush Sunday on 60 Minutes re: Saddam's hanging? Asked if he'd seen the video, Bush said yeah, part of it, but then—and he literally turned up his nose at this point—he said he quit watching before the body fell and the neck snapped.

• by Bob Geary