When Black Men Stood Up for Kavanaugh | Would You Try Eating in a Silent Cafe?

This is what happens when 100 Black men discuss race, Donald Trump, policing and fatherhood.

What happens when you get a room of 100 Black men from Baltimore discussing Brett Kavanaugh? Or Colin Kaepernick and policing? What about President Donald Trump and the economy?

You get the first episode of Take On America with OZY, taped at the War Memorial in Charm City with the midterm elections right around the corner. Unlike most town halls, this wasn’t about politicians answering questions from a cherry-picked crowd. The spotlight wasn’t on the celebrity guests but the people: civic leaders, businessmen, activists, students, educators and everyone in between. Before a televised audience, they tackled stereotypes and assumptions head-on. And they had plenty to say.

At a growing number of silent cafés around the world, deaf waiters and restaurateurs are bringing their world to people through food.

On a weekday evening at 1000 & 1 Signes, a Moroccan café on the Rue de Charonne in Paris, every walk-in follows the same pattern. They enter, in pairs or small groups, ask for a table and take a step back when they realize the waiter can’t hear them. It’s a process expertly navigated by Sid Nouar, 1000 & 1 Signes’ waiter and founder: With a few gestures and a swiftly maneuvered menu, he communicates not just the restaurant’s unusual nature — the waiter and cooks are all deaf, and patrons order by pointing, signing or writing their selections on a whiteboard — but also that everyone is welcome.

This is a place to eat, yes, but it’s also a place to learn.

Since the 2011 opening of 1000 & 1 Signes, the first deaf-owned café in France, at least four other deaf-owned restaurants have followed. And France isn’t alone: Since 2016, more than a dozen such establishments have opened in Zagreb, Croatia; Cologne, Germany; London; Delhi; Cape Town, South Africa; Bangkok and Bogotá, Colombia.

If a skateboarder does a 360 in Australia, does she spin the opposite way?

In the eight years since he turned pro, freestyle BMX rider Kyle Baldock’s life has been marked by plane rides. Whether it’s Atlanta, Los Angeles, Austin or Minneapolis — or even Barcelona — the Gold Coast, Australia, native has always had to travel to compete in BMX contests at a pro level.

Until this year.

Beginning today, X Games is hosting its first-ever event on Australian soil at X Games Sydney. The annual contest, which debuted in 1995 with a summer competition in Newport, Rhode Island, and a winter competition in Stowe, Vermont, remained stateside for the first three years of its existence. Since expanding internationally to Phuket in 1998, X Games has hosted contests on two other continents — Europe and South America. But this month’s competition marks its first foray into Oceania.