Lena Geller

5 days ago | indyweek.com | Lena Geller

Before I even set foot inside Imbibe, my restaurant experience is off to an endearing, slightly chaotic start: While trying to preview the menu on their website, I click a link that inexplicably opens the FaceTime app on my laptop. Imbibe is located just off Franklin Street in Chapel Hill. The restaurant has been through some identity shifts since opening in 2016: at some point, it started incorporating “Rougarou”— “werewolf,” in Cajun French—into its name.

1 week ago | indyweek.com | Lena Geller

The 50 Chapel Hill High School students who walked out of class Thursday morning and marched across the street, a quarter mile into the woods, to protest what they called the “intensification of Israel’s genocide in Gaza,” would’ve preferred to stage their demonstration on campus. “We wanted to work with the administration to hold the walkout on campus and make the event as safe as possible,” says sophomore Finn McElwee.

1 week ago | indyweek.com | Lena Geller

A small group of activists gathered in a Mebane park Tuesday morning to say that their fight against a Buc-ee’s location coming to the town is not over, despite the city council’s approval of the project over a year ago. The gathering was pegged to the release of “Buc-ee’s Burden,” a 34-page report examining the health, environmental, and economic impacts of mega gas stations.

1 week ago | indyweek.com | Lena Geller

I live in an apartment building in downtown Durham that houses more Duke University undergrads than any other category of person—a friend once characterized it as an “adult dorm”—so it wasn’t all that surprising when, last week, I found a cute little table in the trash room on my floor. At the end of the school year, a lot gets thrown away. The table was in great condition, amid stacks of linens and unopened boxes of date-nut energy bites.

2 weeks ago | indyweek.com | Lena Geller

When I walk into Yagg Sii Tenn, an African restaurant in Apex that shares a building with an urgent care center, the dining room is empty, so I take a few minutes to look around. There’s a lot to take in. Tables and chairs are painted with flags from African countries—a visual representation of the restaurant’s pan-African approach rather than focusing on just one cuisine.