| Welcome to Bw Reads, our new weekend newsletter that brings a delightful magazine story from Bloomberg Businessweek right to your inbox, in its entirety—and for free! This week, we're giving you Tyler J. Kelley's insightful look into what happens when a rich and famous person begins buying up a small town—in this case, it's Dave Chappelle, who has had a profound effect on an Ohio hamlet. It's one of those stories without clear heroes or villains but a sense of growing unease: at what point does a self-appointed savior go too far? If you like what you see, tell your friends! Sign up here. *** America's most reclusive comedian isn't hard to find. Dave Chappelle hangs around downtown, buys coffee and shops like any other resident of Yellow Springs, Ohio. He smokes cigarettes and chats with passersby. He knows people, and they know him. Yellow Springs is a special place. "Growing up here, literally on any given Saturday or Sunday, in any house that you walked into, there was going to be someone who was Jewish, someone who was an atheist, someone from a different country, somebody who was a person of color," says Carmen Brown, a Black village council member whose family has lived in the town for 150 years. "There was going to be a clown, an astrophysicist, a janitor and a doctor—all hanging out." Chappelle is a product of this environment, this culture of "discourse without discord," she says.  Entering town. Photographer: John-David Richardson for Bloomberg Businessweek A sign at First Presbyterian Church sums up village politics: "10:30 a.m. Sunday, an eco-feminist interpretation of Genesis 1:3, in person, masks required." Chappelle has called Yellow Springs, population 3,700, "a Bernie Sanders island in a Trump sea." The town was a stop on the underground railroad and an early home for formerly enslaved people who'd bought or escaped with their freedom. Coretta Scott King was one of the first Black pupils at Antioch College, the famously liberal outpost where Chappelle's father, Bill, taught in the music department and co-founded the civil rights organization Help Us Make a Nation, or H.U.M.A.N. *** For decades, good jobs could be found at several innovative companies incubated at Antioch. The best-known, Vernay Laboratories Inc., invented a widely used thermostat for internal combustion engines. But as with many Midwestern industries, the manufacturing jobs these companies created have mostly disappeared. Vernay demolished its plant in 2009, leaving the village with a library, a day-care center and toxic groundwater to remember it by. Antioch itself shut down in 2008. It reopened three years later, but enrollment now hovers around 100, compared with nearly 2,500 in 1972. What remains for Yellow Springs is tourism, a draw since the early 19th century, when wealthy Cincinnatians began arriving to bathe in the ferric waters that give the village its name. These days, tourism is mostly a crystals-and-tie-dye affair.  Chappelle. Photographer: Maarten De Boer Yellow Springs owes its sense of community and its desirability as a place to live in part to farsighted planning decisions that emphasized its downtown core and preserved a greenbelt of parks and farms around it. "If there was just one retail focus, then socially you're more likely to bump into your buddy across town," says Don Hollister, a township trustee who chaired a 1972 task force that decided against developing three commercial strips on the village's outskirts. When housing supply is constant and demand rises, though, so do prices. A two-bedroom, one-bath home on 0.3 acres can cost as much as $275,000; Airbnbs have proliferated, and potential long-term rentals are being "gobbled up by older villagers who want to subsidize their ability to continue to live in town," says Reilly Dixon, a reporter for the Yellow Springs News. The tight housing supply has left Yellow Springs richer, older and Whiter. As of 2020, the village was less than 11% Black, down from 26% in 1970. With no condos or apartments to downsize into, retirees keep their underoccupied homes off the market, while young families and service workers end up in the unexceptional but cheaper cities nearby. Chappelle spent most of his childhood with his mother in Washington, DC, but lived with his father in Yellow Springs while attending middle school. He bought a home in Ohio in the late 1990s and moved back full time in 2004, after giving up the Comedy Central show that made him a megastar and millions of the dollars that went with it. Chappelle's Show, which featured the comic playing characters such as Prince, Rick James and a Black White supremacist named Clayton Bigsby, drew widespread praise for satirizing the realities of Black life and the tensions between White and Black Americans. But sparked by what Chappelle later said was hearing the wrong kind of laugh while performing a skit in blackface, he abruptly left the show. While rumors spread that he was on drugs, in rehab, in a psych ward or on a spiritual journey in South Africa, Chappelle was in fact mostly in Yellow Springs with his family.  Chappelle in Yellow Springs. Courtesy: Pilot Boy Productions Nationally, he continued to tour, do stand-up and make films, but locally he kept a low profile—at least for a while. In 2015 he began hosting occasional concerts in a nearby barn, calling the shows Juke Joints. Two years later, CNN covered a "rare public appearance" in which Chappelle went before the village council to call for police reform after officers tackled a man and tried to tase him during a New Year's Eve celebration. The year after that—armed with a contract from Netflix promising $20 million per comedy special, according to the New York Post—he incorporated Iron Table Holdings LLC and began buying properties downtown. In June 2020, with live performances around the world canceled because of the pandemic, Chappelle received permission from the governor of Ohio to begin a series of outdoor stand-up shows at an ornate wooden pavilion owned by a friend. Unlike the Juke Joints, these shows took place almost every weekend, which led several of the pavilion's neighbors to complain to the zoning inspector, who determined that the performances were a code violation. Chappelle discussed the controversy in a monologue on Saturday Night Live that November. "My town was dying," he said, so "I did shows in my neighbor's cornfield, and these shows were very successful and may have even helped save the town." A report he commissioned claimed that the events generated $12 million in direct and indirect economic activity for the state of Ohio, including $4 million for the village. (Hollister says he's "very skeptical" of the numbers.) *** Chappelle made national news again when he fought to block a housing development planned for a field abutting his home. Locally, his ongoing property purchases were making people nervous. Yellow Springers are used to having input on practically everything that happens in their village, and Chappelle hadn't invited the kind of collaboration they were accustomed to, even as he talks freely with people in town and his representatives regularly present selected projects at public hearings. He also almost never talks to reporters, though he did provide one quote for this story through a representative. "With the decline of Antioch College several years ago, Yellow Springs lost its cultural anchor," Chappelle said. "My interest has always been in restoring the cultural and creative economy Antioch helped to foster and which made Yellow Springs a haven for art, music, culture and academia." Chappelle has a strong base of support in the village, where many institutions and businesses have benefited from his activities. The pandemic performances "brought magic and energy at a time when we needed it the most," wrote Brittany Baum, a business owner, in a typical letter to the zoning board. "A few local businesses would not exist today if it weren't for the shows," Matthew Cole, the area's only CPA, wrote in another letter. "When I look out on the street I see other people of color, I see people of other cultures," says Jamie Sharp, proprietor of Yellow Springs Toy Co., who grew up in the village during the same astrophysicist-and-clown era as Brown.  Sharp. Photographer: John-David Richardson for Bloomberg Businessweek Few people will say anything critical of Chappelle on the record, citing fear of losing their jobs or customers. Off the record, locals from different racial backgrounds and different generations say things like: Chappelle is "a force that's turning us into the place that we're all trying to stay away from." "Dave's got to be the biggest contentious thing that I've ever seen pit neighbor against neighbor." "If you close ranks, and then you decimate anybody that speaks against an idea you have, then how does that inform community, or build community, and how does that save a community?" Several villagers compared Chappelle to former President Donald Trump for his propensity to, as one put it, "never apologize, double down and blame the other person." Chappelle has continued making headlines this year. He's been attacked during his act, and he's joked about "the Jews," "the gays" and being a "TERF" (trans-exclusionary radical feminist); he's also been boycotted by Netflix staff and bro'd down—to boos—onstage in San Francisco with Elon Musk. But with some notable exceptions, most Yellow Springers don't seem exercised about what Chappelle does when he leaves town. They're more concerned about how their village is changing and what one wealthy resident is doing with his money. For years after Chappelle moved back to Yellow Springs, his public presence was negligible: modest property purchases, occasional shows. Locals prided themselves on leaving him alone. He only became a controversial figure around town in the summer of 2020, when crowds started flocking to the Wirrig Pavilion, a sort of ornate wooden gazebo that sits on 34 acres of grass and trees ("cornfield show" moniker notwithstanding). By all accounts, it was a magical place to be that year, unless you lived nearby and objected to the noise and traffic. The experience began as you and a guest were shuttled down a dark country road. At the entrance, you were temperature-checked or Covid-tested, then handed a mask with Chappelle's logo, a white "C" with a red stripe above it and a green one below. You either left your phone in the car or let it be sealed in a special pouch, then you were free to select socially distanced bistro chairs on the lawn. Food trucks and a swanky bathroom trailer were parked on-site. The shows, billed as Dave Chappelle and Friends, might include comedy with David Letterman, Chris Rock, Sarah Silverman or Jon Stewart; music from Erykah Badu, Common, Talib Kweli or John Mayer; or fireworks, DJ sets and appearances by celebrities such as Jon Hamm. Ticket prices started at $200 per pair in 2020 and have gone as high as $500, with capacity rising, too, from 400 to 1,000. But while many residents were grateful for the shows, some didn't want an entertainment venue in their backyard. It fell to Richard Zopf, the township zoning inspector, to point out that local code prohibited large-scale commercial activity on such properties unless the activity was agricultural. Zopf ruled soon after the shows began that they didn't qualify and ordered them to stop.  Chappelle onstage in Yellow Springs. Courtesy: Pilot Boy Productions In response, Chappelle's spokesperson, Carla Sims, appealed to the community's need for safe outdoor activities during the pandemic. "He's employing local residents, revitalizing local business and, hopefully, returning a sense of normalcy to the community," she wrote in a statement to the Yellow Springs News. Steve Wirrig, the owner of the pavilion property, ignored Zopf's order and filed an appeal. The shows continued in violation of the code for two months until Wirrig won a variance—an exemption, essentially—in August 2020. He was granted another in 2021. Wirrig, who until March was chief executive officer of Rohrer Corp., a leading packaging manufacturer with more than $200 million in revenue, penned at least one op-ed calling Zopf biased and obstructionist. Wirrig didn't respond to multiple requests for comment. Zopf says, "I've been made out to be a bad guy by the property owner—so what." He points out that in 20 years as a zoning inspector—a "tiny little job" for which he's paid about $300 a month—he's "never had to deal with anything like the furor that has surrounded these shows." In his SNL monologue, Chappelle said, "The local farmers, my neighbors, started to complain that my shows were too noisy—in a cornfield!" He described the ensuing town meeting as "embarrassing" and said, "I resented it, I resented that these country farmers could decide a guy like me's fate. People don't deserve to do that. They haven't seen enough. They don't know anything." He then joked at their expense for a few minutes, wondering whether someone who complained about their kids hearing "the N-word" was overhearing it from Chappelle or saying it themselves. *** The cornfield-shows controversy dovetailed with Chappelle's increasing presence as a landholder in town. By 2020 he was flush with Netflix money, and over the next two years he bought eight properties through Iron Table Holdings and one in his own name, bringing his total in the county to 20. Chappelle's holdings are clustered along the village's three major thoroughfares, and they run the gamut from newly renovated to nearly abandoned. In August, a brief tour showed carpentry underway at the brick home beside the library (bought for $390,000), while insulation appeared to be going into the old schoolhouse ($480,000) where Chappelle is building a new home for the local NPR affiliate. The former firehouse ($424,000), where a comedy club and restaurant have been promised, stood vacant (renovations began in January). There was no sign of a proposed overhaul of the property where Chappelle maintains an unofficial office, a white brick storefront that he's owned along with the buildings on either side since 2018 ($582,000 for all three). On the same block is another storefront, once home to Earth Rose, a retailer of Birkenstocks and hippie novelties, which Chappelle bought when the owner died in 2021 ($400,000). It sits empty, but in December his architect announced plans to tear it down and build a modernist two-story structure in its place. A block away in the other direction is a whimsical brick building ($485,000) that houses a tobacconist called the Smoking Octopus and Chappelle's merchandise store, where "C"-branded socks go for $12, wristbands for $5 and hats for $20. One hoodie, displaying Chappelle's face above ominous-looking flames, reads "Kindness Conspiracy," a motto he's cast as a rebuke to cancel culture: Instead of being offended and censorious, let's be empathetic, kind and tolerant. In June 2021, Sharp organized a meeting of downtown business owners, including Chappelle. She thought they needed to have a stronger voice in local government, and the agenda included a slide show on the history of business in Yellow Springs and a presentation by the chamber of commerce. The meeting wasn't supposed to be about Chappelle per se, though another item listed on the agenda was "Dave is up to something." Discord—what Sharp calls "wild speculation"—was growing over Chappelle's activities, and she thought it was "important for people to understand what his plans were, what his vision was." For some attendees the meeting's setting—the Wirrig Pavilion, at Chappelle's invitation—made it feel one-sided from the start. Chappelle introduced Sharp; his consultants later touted the economic benefits of his cornfield shows; and an architect showed slides of the schoolhouse remodel. When Chappelle returned to the stage at the end, he "shared his vision of the town being a cultural mecca," Sharp says, "and invited us to climb on board." In the process, he also offered an expletive-laden accounting of everything he was doing for Yellow Springs. He'd bought new uniforms for school basketball teams, hadn't charged his tenants rent during the pandemic and had hosted concerts and fundraisers for the victims of a shooting in nearby Dayton. He was bringing in millions of dollars, he said, yet the assembled businesspeople remained suspicious of his efforts. This made him feel insulted and disrespected, he went on. Some neighbors had shot guns on their property during his shows, and others were writing letters to get the events canceled. He claimed that if the shows stopped, at least 20 locals would lose their jobs. One attendee characterized it as a half-hour of him "talking to us about what we weren't doing right." Another says, "I have never seen anything more disrespectful to a group of people in my life." "Because he has money, he was made to feel like he was an outsider in his own town, and that's wrong" Sharp felt the meeting was a success; it brought people together and led to the creation of a downtown business association. Mark Heise, co-owner of Yellow Springer Tees & Promotions and president of the chamber of commerce, says he took Chappelle's story of hurt and disrespect to heart. "Because he has money," Heise recalls, "he was made to feel like he was an outsider in his own town, and that's wrong." The morning after the meeting, Heise went to his shop and printed scores of window signs reading "Thanks Dave! Respect," with Chappelle's logo for the "c." Soon more than half the downtown businesses had a sign. "If you didn't put it up, it meant something," Sharp says. For some, the sign meant thanking the comedian for keeping businesses afloat during the pandemic; for others, it meant pledging fealty to a cult of personality. Sharp says she put hers up for the first reason. As Chappelle became more divisive at home, he continued to reintroduce himself to America, with sold-out performances, Netflix specials and Saturday Night Live hosting gigs. He developed lengthy monologues that were more earnest and political than his earlier work. He also took on a wider array of subjects, applying his trademark willingness to offend and his knack for verbalizing what many Americans are thinking but—for better or worse—are unwilling to say out loud. One person who watched with particular interest was Iden Crockett, the self-described "only Black trans woman who is neighbors with Dave in the world." Crockett grew up in Yellow Springs, the child of a jeweler and an art teacher. She was a firefighter and paramedic for 24 years and now works solely as the latter.  Crockett. Photographer: John-David Richardson for Bloomberg Businessweek Crockett counts herself a fan of Chappelle's and thinks some of the criticism he's faced is unfair. People see Chappelle buying property and proposing renovations, she says, "and they then extrapolate inappropriately," thinking things like "It's Dave's fault I can't afford to live here anymore." On the other hand: "There's a lot of people around here who go along with whatever Dave says, good or bad. There's very few people who evaluate each of his actions as a separate thing. People, maybe even subconsciously, want to rally for Dave." They want "that splatter effect of coolness." Everyone seems to take Chappelle's words and deeds personally, Crockett says. She tries not to, but when Chappelle released his Netflix special The Closer in October 2021, she decided to say something. The special included jokes about trans people that were widely condemned as cruel and hateful. Netflix employees staged a walkout over its release, and Chappelle said it led distributors to back away from a documentary he'd made. He'd been doing versions of the same material at the Wirrig Pavilion all summer, prior to the special's filming in Detroit—to muted local response, despite the pride flags that seem to adorn every window and lawn in town. Crockett took exception, though, particularly to Chappelle's comparison of trans women to blackface performers. In a letter published in the Yellow Springs News after the special came out, she wrote: "My reaction to hearing my life, my day-to-day existence, compared casually to one of the most infamous and widely condemned racist traditions in the country, was shock. It was outrage. It was heartbreak." Sitting at a table at the Underdog Cafe, sketching a figure with its mouth sewn shut, she elaborated: "Because what he says in regards to the life of Black men in the country is so spot on and so insightful, he gets a lot of credit, people go to him for his opinions. He is an expert on that, because he is a Black man in America." But "he's not a trans woman in America. And to speak with authority on trans-ness when you're not—and you clearly don't understand—is problematic and dangerous, because other people who don't understand look at you and assume that you do." *** In a town like Yellow Springs, Crockett says, where there are no other celebrities, "he's a huge deal," so the things he says and does "have a weight assigned to them that is disproportionate to their real-world effect." At the same time, she's skeptical of the response to Chappelle's property purchases. "I hope that it's not racial," she says, "but you kind of can't help read it that way." Bomani Moyenda, a Black community organizer who worked with Dave's father, recalls a White woman telling him in a grocery-store parking lot, "I never thought I'd be living in a town owned by a Black man." Then, Moyenda says, "she said something about not feeling safe, as if his presence presented some sort of threat." The incident reminded him of a scene in the film Malcolm X, in which Denzel Washington, playing the title role, goes into a police station to demand the release of a Black prisoner who'd been beaten. A group of his followers waits outside. When Malcolm X is satisfied that the man is being treated decently, he returns to the street and raises his hand, and his dapper, disciplined supporters march off in lockstep. "This cop says, 'That's way too much power for a Black man,' and I really think it's related to that," Moyenda says. "White people here are for the most part OK with Black folks being middle-class, or affluent even, as long as they don't make any waves." White people in Yellow Springs can't control what Chappelle is doing with his power and money, Moyenda says, and that disturbs them.  Moyenda. Photographer: John-David Richardson for Bloomberg Businessweek Last year Chappelle brought his power to bear on 53 undeveloped acres next to his home at the south end of the village. Sometime before November 2020, the owners had offered to sell the property to Chappelle, who declined. They sold it instead to Oberer Land Developers, a regional homebuilder, for $1.7 million. Oberer worked with the village of Yellow Springs to design a residential development that would include 64 single-family homes, 52 duplexes and 24 townhomes, with prices starting in the mid-$200,000s. Oberer would also donate 1.75 acres to the village where up to 30 affordable housing units could one day be built. When the plan became public in the fall of 2021, Chappelle began rallying opposition to it. His spokesperson, Sims, later told the Daily Mail: "It was going to attract interlopers. Dave was trying to make sure that the people that live in Yellow Springs can stay and afford to live in Yellow Springs." The village council held a virtual public meeting on Feb. 7, 2022, to be followed immediately by a vote on whether to approve the plan. The "vote no" contingent rented a hotel ballroom and arranged to broadcast their public comments from there. Many of those present wore Chappelle-branded face masks; they cheered and laughed, and at times it felt as though the soul of the community opposed the plan. The development would "begin the erosion of cultural diversity and our uniqueness" and open the door to "Panera Bread, Walmart, Cracker Barrel," one speaker said. The plan was "disingenuous," "offensive," "predatory," said another. The "yes" voters, isolated on their webcams, argued that more housing stock would ultimately lead to lower prices. "The fact that we stopped development for decades is why we're in the problem we have with a lack of housing, a lack of diversity and a lack of availability," one said. Another argued that a new development would free up some of the village's older, cheaper homes for first-time buyers. "You look like clowns," Chappelle said. "I am not bluffing. I will take it all off the table" Chappelle took the mic last. Over the past few years, according to a person familiar with the situation who wasn't authorized to speak publicly about Chappelle's affairs, the comedian had grown frustrated with what he perceived as local opposition to his development projects. He thought his initiatives took longer and faced more scrutiny than other people's. He'd previously threatened to liquidate his holdings in the village, and his comments that night were understood as a reiteration of that threat. "I cannot believe you would make me audition—for you," he said. "You look like clowns. I am not bluffing. I will take it all off the table. That's all. Thank you." (In a later statement to Bloomberg Businessweek, Sims said: "Unfortunately, the Council's decision to open its doors to developers who would compromise the unique character and culture of the village is completely inconsistent with Dave's development plans and their otherwise shared vision. It was as if some Council members would have rather opened the gates to a Trojan Horse than accept a gifted horse of their own." Oberer didn't respond to multiple requests for comment.) *** The vote was 2-2 with one recusal, meaning the motion failed. "Had he not threatened to take his toys and go home," says Dixon, the reporter, "had he not rallied a cabal of acolytes, I really think it would have passed." Dixon supports the goal of creating more homes in the community. "I certainly could not afford to buy a $300,000 single-family home, but I probably could afford to pay $1,200 a month with my fiancée for a newly furnished duplex," he says. Carmen Brown cast the final "no" vote. At the time the newest council member, she'd been elected on a platform of helping the working class of Yellow Springs—servers, retail clerks and others "who make this place move," she says. "None of them were going to be able to afford a $200,000 house." She herself had been a barista and occasional server when Chappelle's cornfield shows began, and she'd watched as her tips quintupled on show nights. The planned development, in her view, wouldn't have done anything for people in similar situations.  Brown. Photographer: John-David Richardson for Bloomberg Businessweek The vote became national news. "Dave Chappelle's Latest Achievement: Helping Kill an Affordable Housing Development," read a headline from Rolling Stone. Never mind that it never had been an affordable housing development. "It's insulting for me—and a lot of people—to assume that just because another human being says something, that we are instantly influenced regardless of who that person is," Brown says. There's an "entirely incorrect" assumption, she added later, "that people of color are inherently influenced by the opinions of others." In the aftermath of the vote, a new crop of "Thanks Dave" signs appeared around town. County records show that this past April, Chappelle quietly bought the 52-acre site. No one knows his plans for the property. While Chappelle was acquiring the Oberer land, Wirrig was going before the zoning board of appeals to get a new variance for the 2022 cornfield shows. The pandemic justification was mostly gone, opening up the question of whether an exception for large-scale nonagricultural commercial activity was still warranted. At least one board member, Linda Parsons, felt it wasn't. On the day of the vote last April, Parsons, a White retiree who lives a few miles from Wirrig's field, arrived at the firehouse where the board would make its decision. The building was crammed with Chappelle supporters. "People are glaring at you," she recalls. "We didn't know who the heck they were." Dozens spoke in favor of granting the variance, mostly touting the economic benefit of the shows. Despite her doubts, Parsons voted yes. The measure passed unanimously. "When push came to shove, we caved," she says. "I felt so dirty afterwards." She took the weekend to think it over, then quit the board. "If I haven't got enough guts to stand up for what I believe, I'm not serving the people," she says. The village has always been "weirdly dysfunctional," she went on, but "now it's not a fun dysfunction, and there's people who are afraid." With the variance granted, the shows carried on until the end of the summer. In the village, the T-shirt shop sold more T-shirts, the restaurants sold more dinners, and the record store sold more comedy records. The celebrities arrived, the fans were happy, the jokes were funny. Meanwhile, the tensions of past years continued to bubble beneath the surface like sulfurous spring water.  Sign posted in support of Chappelle. Photographer: John-David Richardson for Bloomberg Businessweek Chappelle seems aware that his fame is both a help and a hindrance in Yellow Springs. During his SNL monologue back in 2020, he imagined a fellow villager saying, "Honey, come quick, come quick, the guy from the grocery store is on television!" Chappelle's response: "No, you big dummy, the guy from television is at the grocery store." He certainly couldn't have put on his cornfield shows if he weren't the guy from television first. Yet in discussing Chappelle's property purchases, Sims stresses that he should be afforded the same right to privacy as any other citizen. "None of his neighbors have had press conferences about what they're doing with their personal property," she says. On the streets of Yellow Springs, Chappelle is clearly viewed as someone exceptional. One sunny Friday morning last August, the village manager, Josue Salmeron, who'd represented Yellow Springs in negotiations with Oberer, was chatting with Cole, the CPA, outside the Underdog Cafe. "The town needs a Joan of Arc to push for change or die trying," Salmeron said. "I think Dave is that person." "Is Dave that person?" Cole replied. Others are wondering, too. Sharp doesn't want Yellow Springs to become any less affordable or any less diverse, but she knows it will if the free market has its way. "Dave can be a savior, or he can not be," she says. "He doesn't really owe us anything."—Tyler J. Kelley, Businessweek | 
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