The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
After new investment, Trap Sushi looks to expand
Local gaming and esports marketing company Cxmmunity Media has purchased a minority stake in the nightlife brand.
On a recent Friday night, nearly 800 people converged on Monday Night Garage for Trap Sushi, a party that blends anime, hip-hop and gaming culture into a vibrant, welcoming event.
Cosplayers and anime fans, some dressed like Mojo Jojo from “The Powerpuff Girls” or Aang from “Avatar: The Last Airbender,” danced as trap music blared across the 22,000-square-foot warehouse space off the West End Beltline and a chef made fresh-to-order sushi.
Now, a new partnership between Trap Sushi and Cxmmunity Media, an Atlanta-based gaming and esports marketing company, is helping the party expand its cadence and its global reach.
Cxmmunity has purchased a 15% stake in Trap Sushi, uniting two burgeoning local Blackowned media companies. The deal was finalized at the beginning of this year after about eight months of talks between the two sides. They did not disclose the amount of the investment.
Trap Sushi started small, just 25 people at the first event in February 2020, according to co-founder and CEO Tolden “Troop” Williams. He and his wife, Stephanie, got the idea for the party after attending an anime convention in Atlanta, seeing the enthusiasm for the event and realizing there needed to be more regular spaces for fans.
“I was just like, ‘Yo, we actually don’t even have a place for this other than this once-ayear thing that happens with these conventions,’” Williams said. “So, I was like I already know how to throw events, let me just, you know, take some of these elements that I already love and then combine them together.”
After the first Trap Sushi in early 2020, the party had to take an unexpected hiatus when the pandemic hit. It came back in late 2021 and from there, grew mostly through word of mouth, regularly attracting hundreds of attendees. Last May was its biggest event yet, with about 3,500 people attending.
Now with Cxmmunity’s backing, Trap Sushi is going from every other month to a monthly cadence and will be hosted internationally for the first time – in early April, Williams is taking the party, fittingly, to Tokyo.
“We invested in the Trap Sushi because of the community and everything that Troop’s been able to build, but also Troop as a visionary,” said Chris Peay, co-founder and chief marketing officer for Cxmmunity.
Word of the party has spread across the country to anime fans and celebrities alike. Actor Khleo Thomas, most wellknown for his role as Hector “Zero” Zeroni in the movie “Holes,” flew from Los Angeles to attend Trap Sushi last fall.
Having people come from other states to Trap Sushi made Williams realize what he had created was more than just a party, but a place where people felt safe.
For Quenel Meheux, an anime fan from Lawrenceville who is part of the group Beltline Cosplay, Trap Sushi fills a void in the city for anime and hip-hop fans.
“I love being a part of this community,” Meheux, 33, said. “It’s just been really enriching and it’s good to see, you know, like-minded people coming together to just be a part of something that makes them happy and is positive and isn’t hurting anyone.”
Cxmmunity’s investment in Trap Sushi also goes beyond the financial. The company will provide legal, marketing and accounting resources because the ultimate goal is to grow both companies together.
Cxmmunity has had deals with Twitch, Amazon, Mountain Dew and Spotify, worked with athletes Cam Newton and Chad Ochocinco and rappers including NLE Choppa and Duke Deuce. They are bringing their know-how and connections to Trap Sushi to help build the brand and its intellectual property, according to Ryan Johnson, co-founder and CEO of Cxmmunity.
“I don’t look at Trap Sushi as just a party … they’re an IP holder – their parties will turn into TV shows, their TV shows will turn potentially into movies, this could turn into animated series, we’re creating comic books,” Johnson said.
But Williams, Johnson and Peay’s visions for this partnership go beyond just how far Trap Sushi can expand. Ultimately, they hope to create new standards for how local Black-owned companies can collaborate, for Black nightlife in Atlanta and for Black representation in the media.
“In a lot of scenarios, people would say, you know, ‘Let’s try and defeat or compete with Trap Sushi,” Johnson said. “I think we’re just being very hyper intentional of ... trying to set an example and tone of here’s actually how you support one another and it’s literally not just with words, it’s not just on social media, but it’s actually with financial support.”
one, in 2020, it’s going to come with some intense emotion and probably some confusion over voting regulations.
A significant portion of the American population is losing confidence in our election process. After Joe Biden’s controversial victory in the last presidential race, state legislatures around the country began passing a host of new laws that often reflected a partisan bent.
“There remains a stark divide between states,” asserts a study by the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan law and policy institute. “On one side are those that are broadening democratic participation. On the other are those making it harder to vote and easier for partisan officials to interfere in democratic processes. Many states passing new restrictive laws are the places where it is already hard to vote.”
In Georgia, a new voting law, first tested during the 2022 midterm elections, made the rules for absentee ballots more stringent and made it more challenging for voters who arrived at the wrong polling place to use provisional ballots.
There were complaints of long wait times and challenges to voter eligibility. But some state officials have argued that Georgia’s high turnout during the midterm elections, the highest of any state in the South, indicated that the new voting laws did not suppress voters.
Now Georgia lawmakers are pushing a series of bills related to election administration, such as security watermarks on ballots and increasing audits of certain state races. More contentious proposals, such as ending automatic voter registrations and decreasing the number of voting machines, failed to pass but could be resurrected.
Lawmakers supporting the bills say the objective is to restore voter confidence, but it feels as if their actions might just promote more voter confusion.
Poll chaplains could be more crucial than ever in helping to protect the integrity of voting in the 2024 election.
Letitia Campbell, an assistant professor at Emory’s Candler School of Theology, trained years ago with the New Georgia Project as a poll chaplain.
Supporting voters at the polls is a way to show moral leadership, she told me when we talked by phone.
Civilians can also train to be poll chaplains, but the ranks are largely drawn from faith leaders, seminarians and faithbased organizers.
Campbell reminded me of the long history of religious leaders’ involvement in democracy and voting.
“Many of the places I have voted in my life have been in churches,” she said. “These are often places that encourage people to vote and exercise their responsibility as citizens and to think about how to vote in ways that reflect their principles and faith commitment.”
The rise of poll chaplains signals a new expression of that historical commitment to voting and voting rights. And a highly polarized political moment can make voting a source of anxiety.
In past years when she has served as a poll chaplain, Campbell said, people showed up to the polls stressing about their access. Would they be turned away? Would they have the correct identification? Were they even at the right polling place?
Poll chaplains can answer those questions or provide resources when they can’t answer a question.
Campbell said it is crucial that poll chaplains are trained in every voting cycle in every state to stay on top of new regulations.
We are living in unnerving times.
This year when I head to the polls, I’ll be looking for the calming presence of a poll chaplain. If not for assistance, then simply for reassurance.
here,’” Executive Director Rena Youngblood says.
Bringing modems to the people
In the early days, big businesses and universities could use expensive modems to connect computers through phone lines. But hobbyists relying on kits to piece together computers had fewer good, affordable ways to do the same.
Hayes and Heatherington launched their first modem in the 1970s, before even the internet existed, and continued to roll out new dial-up versions. They gave the general public a far easier, more automated option than the clunky acoustic couplers that had been in use and were prone to disconnections.
The devices Heatherington designed worked with lots of computers and were perfectly timed with the rise of what became the internet in the 1980s. Behind-thescenes commands that Heatherington developed became the standard for years and inspired later developments in how computers and other devices communicate with one another.
“Every time you connect to the internet, you have to thank these guys who figured out how to do that,” says Arijit Raychowdhury, the chair of Georgia Tech’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
Rivals licensed Hayes technology, then later moved faster and cheaper to build modems that could handle higher-speed connections. Eventually, many consumers got their internet service through cable TV providers that supplied modems in their own equipment packages.
Twice, the company filed for bankruptcy court protection in the 1990s, before it ended operations in 1999.
The pace of technological change often is brutally fast. Obsolescence can follow close behind the leading edge.
“You catch a good wave, you can have a nice ride. But the wave and the ride don’t last forever,” says Hayes, who is now 74 and living in Spartanburg, S.C.
Heatherington jumped off the wave long before it petered out.
Hayes, who was chief executive officer and contributed technical ideas, said he was shocked when his business partner announced in 1984 that he would be leaving. Heatherington turned in his ownership stake, collecting a gradual payout that was never publicly detailed but thought to be on the order of $20 million. He was 36 years old.
“I just wanted out of the rat race,” Heatherington told a reporter years later when asked why he left the company while it was still growing.
Ann Heatherington, his widow, says her husband didn’t pursue the limelight. “He would be very humble. He never sought that.”
When Heatherington left the company, his title was simply senior design engineer.
Chevy mechanic, stereo repair man
As a kid, Heatherington was constantly pursuing ideas. He made wind-powered carts, worked with little rockets, created his own radio and TV transmissions. He described flunking out of his first college, where he focused mostly on changing out the engine in his ‘57 Chevy.
At his second college, Southern Technical Institute, now part of Kennesaw State University, he had a “C” average. He earned an associate degree while pursuing other interests, including scouring for electronic parts, creating a master key to open campus doors and devising an intercom system between dorm rooms.
He got a job repairing stereo receivers. He met Hayes later in the 1970s when they both worked at National Data Corp. in Atlanta. They’d eat lunch together and discuss evolving technology. They came up with concepts for a new modem and agreed to start a business.
Hayes says Heatherington suggested putting just the Hayes name on the company because that’s who would be out drumming up customers. Ann Heatherington says her husband told her using his own name would be too long.
Heatherington was always most comfortable at the workbench, rather than managing people or pursuing sales.
He was quiet at industry gatherings, and people probably mistakenly thought he was just another
Charles Guan, then a high school student, digs into the guts of a robot to make fixes. Guan was a teenager when he met Heatherington at robot club gatherings. “I only knew him as Dale, one of the club guys,” says Guan, now a Georgia Tech Research Institute research engineer.
engineer with the company, says Richard Bodor, who in the 1980s worked for a local computer manufacturer and only years later got to know Heatherington personally.
Hayes and Heatherington could disagree on technical innovations, but they appeared to respect one another. They did not stay in close contact after Heatherington left the company, “but they were cordial with one another,” says Heatherington’s widow.
The Heatheringtons went on a blind date in the early 1980s, when she was a senior research scientist at the Georgia Tech Research Institute. She had a doctorate in computer science. By the third date, she knew he was the one.
“It was absolutely his brain I fell in love with,” she says.
They were married for 32 years. When Heatherington retired from the company, he indulged in what he loved as a kid: pursuing whatever engineering adventure called to him.
He enjoyed the luxury of time, but he preferred fast food and pizza to fine dining. He didn’t care for extravagance or crave travel.
“He was generally a homebody,” Ann Heatherington says.
He put a giant radio tower in their yard, set up a radar detector for speeders on the street out front and stationed monitors to track everything from the climate inside their home to whether postal workers had slipped letters into the mailbox.
But Heatherington eventually discovered some of his greatest joys were designing competitive battle robots and contemplating every detail, such as experimenting with putty and sticky foam insulation to improve the grip of his bots’ tires.
He joined the Atlanta Hobby Robot Club and frequently won local battle robot competitions, including at the annual Dragon Con convention in Atlanta. He donated homemade robots for a fellow club member to take on demonstrations for school kids around the state. He also made donations for a mechatronics lab at Kennesaw State University that it named after him.
Ann Heatherington says her husband died in 2021 of “an electrical failure in his heart, which I found ironic because he was an electrical engineer.”
Had he known of the problem, she says, “you know he would have been trying to fix himself.”
A nod on ‘Jeopardy’
While Heatherington was still with the company, a local business magazine described Hayes as “the wonder boy of Atlanta business in the 1980s.” Hayes was inducted into the Georgia Technology Hall of Fame, and he traveled to Las Vegas when he was named to the IT industry’s Hall of Fame in 2003, along with computer titan Michael Dell and others.
About five years ago, Heatherington was invited to join Hayes at a Peachtree Corners gathering celebrating the Atlanta technology pioneers. And once he caught sight of this question on TV’s “Jeopardy” game show: “In 1977 Dennis Hayes & Dale Heatherington invented this, enabling a PC to transmit data via phone lines.”
Over the years, though, modems became just another behind-thescenes piece of equipment. And memories of even Hayes faded some.
Hayes later opened a local bar briefly, joined other companies, worked as a part-time executive and recently helped start an organization to mentor entrepreneurs.
He says he now has a seeing-eye dog and can no longer see what’s on the internet, relying on his phone or Alexa to read text aloud.
Financially, “I’m not wealthy, but I’m OK,” Hayes says.
As for Heatherington, Hayes says it would be great for people to know what he did.
“He took a soldering iron and turned piles of chips and wires into gold.”
Hall of Fame for both, eventually
The new hall of fame at the Computer Museum of America in Roswell won’t take up much space.
A plaque will be put up in Heatherington’s honor. It will hang near a Hayes modem that is part of the museum’s regular display. The small device, initially designed to fit under the base of a landline phone, is nestled between cases filled with other items once considered to be the new hot things, only to be eclipsed.
There’s a TRS-80 portable computer, a 3.5″ diskette of the CubeMaster computer game, a Nintendo GAME Boy, a Sony Walkman with headphones, a GE Carfone 5000 with its zip-up case. Nearby are other early computers, nostalgic arcade games, an electric typewriter, bulky servers and technology tied to space exploration.
About 200 guests are expected at the museum’s annual fundraiser on Thursday, when Heatherington will be named the first winner of its Visionary Award.
Ann Heatherington says she’s thrilled, even if it’s not something her husband would have pursued.
Charles Guan was a young teenager when he met Heatherington at robot club gatherings.
“I only knew him as Dale, one of the club guys,” says Guan, now a Georgia Tech Research Institute research engineer.
Heatherington was a mentor and taught him humility, he says. And they shared a bit of the same perspective: taking satisfaction from being part of creating something important, regardless of who gets remembered for it.
“Society forgets 99.999% of everyone who ever lived,” Guan says. “You always hear about King Tut. You never hear about the guy who built the tomb, who was the chief engineer of the pyramid.”