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upfront
Editors-in-Chief Zoë Hoffman Claire Luchette Managing Editor of Features Kathy Nguyen Managing Editor of Arts & Culture Ben Resnik Managing Editor of Lifestyle Lily Goodspeed Features Editors Mintaka Angell Piper French Arts & Culture Editors Adam Asher Caitlin Kennedy Lifestyle Editor Caroline Bologna Copy Chief Kyle Giddon Serif Sheriffs Clara Beyer Allison Hamburger Large Plaid Asian Phil F*ckin’ Lai Web Editor Sam Knowles Staff Writers Jane Brendlinger Adam Davis Dillon O’Carroll Rémy Robert Tanya Singh Ben Wofford Staff Illustrators Madeleine Denman Marissa Ilardi Emily Reif Sheila Sitaram Grace Sun Robyn Sundlee Adela Wu
illustrations by Cover Robyn Sundlee
Bear with Me, Pair with You Phil “f*ckin” Lai Flights of Fantasy Shiela Sitaram An Unexpected Resignation Emily Reif Farewell, Fair Farmstead Lily Goodspeed The Legend, The Lore, The Lager Phil Lai
contents 3 upfront
sexicon MM bear with me, pair with you Eugenia Lulo
4 feature flights of fantasy Leslie Shen
5 arts & culture an unexpected resignation Alice Preminger someday it’s going to disappear Will Fesperman
7 lifestyle
farewell, fair farmstead Rémy Robert & Jane Brendlinger
8 lifestyle
top ten post- it notes the legend, the lore, the lager Phil Lai & Jennie Young Carr
editors’ note Dear readers, We started off this semester with a couple games of champagne flip cup, and we’ll finish it off with two boxes of wine. In between, we’ve had a heckuva semester. Cut-out valentines, a special Bill Murray issue, the glossy and saucy Spring Weekend magazine. “What is to come?” –Virginia Woolf We don’t know, Ginny, but don’t undermine our authority. This year, we’ve been lucky enough to share a bathroom in the Pink House and the privilege of Chiefing this publication. And now we’ll share with you some words of wisdom (future Posties, take note). Don’t buy Beck’s. Peruse clichesite.com for every head/subhead and paper title. If in doubt, it’s one word. Don’t forget to print Post-. Before we leave you for good, we’d like to express some gratitude. To you, dear readers, for sticking with us this semester. To you, deer readers, for eating our leftover papers. To Spiritus, for supplying us with the good, the bad, and the Guinness (occasionally). To our writers, luv ya. To our editors, hayyy. And finally, to Beyoncé, for everything. If you need us, you can find us sharing a sleeping bag on the floor of a rando’s Brooklyn apartment, eating pudding and missing Post-. Thank you. Good night and good luck!
claire and zoë
upfront
3
sexodus
n.a sexicon farewell
MM
sexpert
Every week for the past three years, I’ve written this column. Every week, I’ve devoted a few hours to contemplating my relationship with sex and sexuality, and every week, I’ve learned something about myself. Every week, I’ve tried to convey my feelings, my opinions, and occasionally my knowledge to the Brown community. This is my last column, and I’d like to make it a site for reflection, memory, and saying goodbye. When I first started writing Sexicon in 2010, I was in a monogamous relationship with a man I didn’t love anymore. It was a long-distance thing, a painful and overwrought high-school thing, a mostly nonsexual thing. When we finally broke up, I spent a while hooking up with people because I thought it was expected of me. I thought that in order to be an empowered, sex-positive 20-year-old, I had to master the art of casual sex. I was pretty bad at it; instead of doing all the things I recommend to my readers, I was communicating poorly, consenting unenthusiastically, and forgetting to ask the hard questions: about STI risks, sexual expectations,
and relationship statuses. I was writing my column every week about healthy relationships and sexual pleasure, but I wasn’t experiencing either one. During that time, I didn’t think I deserved to have pleasurable sex, to be adored, or to get help. At the end of that year, I started seeing someone who did all the right things on his own initiative. He made sure we practiced safe sex, communicated, and enjoyed each other. After sex, he’d put on Electrelane or Lil B and kiss my shoulders. While it started out fairly casual, it wasn’t a relationship predicated on its own casualness; in other words, neither of us had a staunch or defensive attitude about remaining single, independent, and nonmonogamous. While we were sexual from the get-go, our emotional relationship developed slowly and deliberately. Over two years later, it’s still developing. We’re still together. There have been periods of long distance, of polyamory, and of general strife. But I’m more in love with my partner than I ever knew I could be. I have never stopped learning from him, and our relationship has chal-
lenged me to communicate better, regulate my emotions better, and have better sex. I’ve gotten comfortable experimenting sexually. I’ve realized that I am entitled to the sex I want: safe, fun, pleasurable, communicative, consensual, fast or slow, gentle or rough, tender or aggressive, partnered or masturbatory, committed or polygamous, hetero- or homo- or bi- or trans- or pan-sexual sex. I always knew this intellectually, but it took me a while to know it emotionally. And while my partner was a helper and a catalyst, I was the one who enabled my empowerment and ultimately chose to grow. The takeaway here is that all of us can and should have the sex we want. It might take a lot of waiting, a lot of missed encounters and misadventures, a lot of partners and a lot of optimism. Your narrative probably won’t look like mine; you have different desires and preferences and histories. I also don’t mean to suggest that there’s a moment of actualization—an endpoint or a climax—in any sex life. There’s no point at which we’re made whole or we’re done growing. But
some spaces are healthier than others, and those are the ones we deserve. It’s also been interesting to be a sex columnist during these three years because politicians and power-players have increasingly appropriated sex and reproductive rights as part of a conservative effort to take back “family values.” There’s been plenty of outrageous, variously misogynistic and homophobic crosstalk about women’s bodies and sexual health access in the news for me to analyze and respond to. From politicians who make offhand comments about rape to bills that threaten to ban abortion to charities rescinding their funding for Planned Parenthood, there’s been a lot to absorb and resent. And it’s harder than ever, I think, to parse the positive messages from the destructive ones, to remain committed to high personal and cultural standards for sex and relationships. But, even after this column, I know I’ll remain dedicated to health and happiness— for myself and for everyone. I hope you will too. Thanks for rocking, Brown, and thanks for reading.
bear with me, pair with you
students and staff buddy up
EUGENIA LULO
contributing writer
The first staff member I got to know at Brown was a Dominican woman who works in the VDub. Being from the island myself, I talked with her about the warm weather we had both left behind for opportunities in the University, and by the end of our first conversation she had already invited me to her house for lunch. I would have loved a traditional Dominican meal that reminded me of home during those first weeks of adjustment to life at Brown, but I never took her up on the offer. I wasn’t sure if it was encouraged, appropriate, or even allowed for students to develop friendships with members of the staff. For those students who don’t have an immediately clear connection with staff members, the boundaries are even more ambiguous. As a consequence, most Brown students restrict their encounters with University staff members to specific requests or small talk at the Ratty. This limited interaction has several detrimental effects on campus. First, many students take for granted much of the staff’s work that goes into their daily lives. Second, many staff members unfortunately never have meaningful interactions with the students they support, which can perpetuate stereotypes of Brown elitism in the eyes of the community. This disconnect could be a consequence of the placement of staff members outside of the circle of academia that unites students and faculty members. Although I rarely see any students being blatantly rude to staff members, I also rarely see genuine interest in exchanges between the two. Jake Karr ’13 and Melissa Chin ’13, who met while studying abroad in Cuba, decided to address this issue in their junior year. They had noticed that many students were uncertain regarding the etiquette of speaking to and developing friendships with staff members. “Many students don’t know if it’s appropriate to approach a staff member,”
Karr said, “which, of course, it is. And staff members do all this hard work and have no idea who they’re doing it for.” To remedy the divide, Karr and Chin came up with a dozen potential integrated student–staff experiences, which they presented to the Staff Advisory Council in order to gauge the level of support from the staff. The proposal considered most feasible because of its flexibility was the Brown Buddies program—now renamed Bear
website. The form included questions such as “What is your favorite television show?” and “If there was one thing you would want a student/staff member to know about you, what would that be?” Karr and Chin then used the answers to pair up students with staff members that they have something in common with, so that both partners could get a meaningful experience and relationship out of the program. One student, Christina DiFabio ’14, was
Pairs—which provides a space for regular engagement between students and staff on an individual level. The premise of the program is to match students and staff members so they can meet a few times a semester for themed activities. March was “Museum Month,” when students and their buddies were encouraged to go to the RISD Museum, the Heffrenreffer, or other museums around Providence, and April has been designated “Off the Hill” month. This theme has highlighted another benefit of the program: exploring Providence with a new friend or mentor. Karr and Chin sent an application out through Morning Mail and advertised the program on the Staff Advisory Council
paired with Geralyn Ducady, the curator of Programs and Education at the Haffrenreffer Museum of Anthropology, after answering that she was interested in pursuing archaeology or museum studies after Brown. But even if partners don’t have the same career interests in common, these pairings have proved worthwhile and rewarding. Another participant, Lan Mei ’14, said that she has enjoyed spending time with her Bear Pair mentor because she likes “having an adult to talk to who’s not your parent or that you otherwise know in some academic setting as an advisor or faculty member.” Currently, there are more students than staff members waiting to be paired. One of the biggest obstacles in launching the
program was the difficulty in spreading the word to the staff, who may also have less time and motivation to participate in the program. However, the initiative recently received official recognition from UCS as a Category I campus group, an important step in achieving legitimacy, as it opens the door to funding and administrative support. Before the group became official, event organization was rough. The founders once had trouble reserving a room for a program-wide reception and had to use personal funds for food and refreshments. With the momentum from UCS approval, they were able to host another collective event on April 1 much more easily. These gatherings provide a larger sense of community, as pairs have a chance to meet one another, share their experiences, and give feedback. Karr said he has “ambitious goals” for the program. He envisions Bear Pairs hosting an activity at Orientation at Brown as a way to open up the community to more students and staff. This could open up incoming students to the idea of building relationships with staff members from the beginning of their Brown careers—so maybe the next homesick freshman can actually take up that friendly offer of a home-cooked meal at a staff member’s house. Karr and Chin’s successors, DiFabio and Mei, will continue to pursue this long-term goal of changing the campus dynamic when they take over coordinating the program after the current leaders graduate. “I think there is currently a disconnect between students and staff,” DiFabio summarized, “and Bear Pairs has great potential to expand this relationship. The staff members are so essential to the University, and it is clear that they share the same passion for the community that students and faculty show!” Illustration by Phil Lai
4
feature
flights of fantasy you can’t crush the dream LESLIE SHEN contributing writer becomes life, so that the prepos- stand, transfixed by the sudden attention of they have money (money = swords)—and If you are a dreamer, written terous becomes not just plausible but also 40 badasses in tunics, robes, pieces of ar- because unlike you they were not only livyours. Dreams—if dreams are what they mor you can’t identify—greaves, spaulders, ing but also past toddlerhood during the come in. are—work anywhere, if you can read a story vambraces. You quail, and in an instant the heyday of D&D. One of these superiors, empathize or see promise in another life badasses are upon you in a flurry of magic a motherly type, says, “Yeah, we’re dorks. If you are a dreamer, a orunbound by the restrictions of your own. and brisk blows. Your 10 vitality dwindles Here, have a samosa.” Costumes make the illusion festive; you to nothing, and gratefully you find the wisher, a liar, make the illusion true. ground, pleased to leave the fight to other, Interlude for Terminology In one of a thousand variations, the hebetter monsters. “This,” you think as the OOG: Out of game. Providence. NaviA hope-er, a pray-er, a ro’s journey goes roughly as follows: skirmish surges on above you, “is the end of gating a fast-food establishment. Broken the adventure.” glass everywhere, the ground solid and not magic bean buyer … I. Departure But no, that’s not so; you know it’s not Live-Action Role Play (LARP) is both sparer and richer, more innocent and more unholy than life, and maybe it’s for these extremes that roleplayers return to it time and time again. Suppose you’re a gunslinging Van Helsing on city streets, or a ronin journeying west. Suppose an incantation can slay or revive. Of people who indulge in such fantasies an onlooker might think, “There but for the grace of God go I.” But among the suppositions and foam swords and surgically tricked-out Nerf abominations, there is nothing so harmless and dear as our procession of cute maladroits, reenacting the hero’s journey. Some weekends, Brown’s Fantasy Gaming Society holes up in certain buildings on campus to dress as faeries or demons or giant rats and fight among themselves, as outside the world lives on in relative sanity and safety. In Wilson Hall, a vampiress bleeds an urchin and discards his drained corpse in an alley. The Sandman casts a spell of eternal sleep. And once or twice a month, these individuals you like and trust vanish into a Massachusetts forest, presumably to perform satanic rituals. They return soiled, famished, and sometimes in armor. On their drive back to Providence, they disembark at a Wendy’s long enough for respectable patrons to get spooked. Interlude for Terminology: IG: In-Game. This way lies madness. Suspend your disbelief, so that what’s
“Join us,” they say, “you’re just the type.” To which you reply defensively, “I have friends.” But dwarves have seen that your door is marked, and next thing you know, you’re feeling tremulous and newly born as they give you swords and nudge you from the nest into sheeting, unlit rain. Interlude for Terminology PC (player character): Protagonist. Lives life. Has background, hopes and fears, friends and enemies, skills (healing, ancient languages, lockpicking), goals, growth. NPC (non-player character): Provides interactions for players navigating the game. Similar to the programmed villagers, merchants, or magicians you talk to in a video game. Speaking and nonspeaking roles, frequently monsters. GM (gamemaster): The powers that be. World builder, plot writer, sadist. Dungeons & Dragons exists on a grand scale. It involves a massive tradition of beautifully cerebral games, limitless stories to be lived and won without leaving a room. But it is only a matter of time before the dream leaves the table top, acquires dimension, and engages the body as well as the mind. Repeat transformation for video games. Repeat for fantasy books. Repeat for every form of storytelling—and LARP is what you get. II. Initiation Now the task of navigating the slope and muck, up to the tavern that warms the night, toward its threshold, where you then
so, because—Jesus H. Christmas!—you are a blood zombie, and sure enough you rise like the deathless SOB you are, and this time you hew; you slice. Interlude for Terminology HP (hit points): Also known as vitality, health. The amount of damage a character can withstand before (roleplaying) unconsciousness.
It can hurt, but not often, not much. There are precautions: fairly soft swords; the possibility of breaking character long enough to warn about branches, stumps, overhangs. Unlike movie depictions, it’s not a battle royale. It’s people pretending. Why the absence of a stage makes it taboo, I’ll never know. III. Return Having played as both silk-wearing imperial and ragged undead, you banish your fripperies to bins labeled “Scarves,” “Kimonos,” “Zombies,” “Masks.” Two nights and two days’ cavorting has tuckered you out, and you regress, a grub in a sleeping bag. You know little about the mythology or politics of your imagined world—even less about the names, ambitions, treacheries, or loves. But hearing these tales is like soaking in a bath of lore, finding yourself privy to apocalyptic secrets. You are in awe of the grown-up LARPers around you, because never leaving College Hill means you don’t know many non-professorial adults and because they are like you but mightier—which is to say,
treacherous, the passersby with wonderfully mundane faces—no rot or pincers whatsoever. This world is a slow second-rate party, but it’s our slow second-rate party, the one we can always go to, and it takes a brief separation to learn to love that no giant bugs spew acid at you in the mornings by the coffee machine.
What makes you so sure you’re well adjusted? What convinces you you’ve woken up? A LARP is a performance and a production, an exercise in imagination. It’s popularly interpreted, and therefore popularly misconstrued, as fit for misfits rather than for any truly imaginative artist, actor, writer, dreamer, hope-er, wisher, pray-er. But I hereby justify it—in the name of Lovecraft, and by all Keats’s dreamers, and by all of Coleridge’s poetic faith. Illustration by Shiela Sitaram
… If you’re a pretender, come sit by my fire, For we have some flax golden tales to spin. Come in! Come in! —Shel Silverstein
arts & culture
an unexpected resignation
5
making peace with a theater-free major ALICE PREMINGER contributing writer I wasn’t planning to write a resignation letter. I meant to write this article about what it’s like to be an MFA candidate in the Brown-Trinity Repertory acting and directing program. So things are about to get a bit awkward. You see, I’ve recently decided I’m quitting theater. Well, maybe not quitting. More like “taking an indefinite hiatus from.” And maybe not this second. But very, very soon. After two semesters of watching my grades fall, spending late nights in the black box, and taken frantic afternoons playing academic catchup, the balancing act is finally over. I’m done. At least for now. Before I realized that I wasn’t going to write a feel-good article about my theatrical aspirations, I enlisted Bari, a third-year acting MFA candidate, to share her experiences with me. We talked about all the things you’d expect—Trinity Rep’s curriculum, Bari’s plans for after graduation, and a certain ghastly ventriloquist dummy involved in a recent “Writing is Live” production. I came away from the conversation hideously envious. As a person who grew up bullying her brother into performing impromptu musical numbers for relatives (and who still fantasizes about having the title of “Best New Director” attached to her name), nothing sounds more appealing than three years of intensive acting,
directing, and playwriting—spending my days devising performances and learning how to stage a play in twenty minutes. Compared to the monstrous literary-theory Bibles I’m currently facing, even the more exotic components of the curriculum—say, “contact improvisation” or the “Alexander Technique” (think a 45-minute exploration of different ways to sit down on a chair)—are alluring. During our interview, it was hard to acknowledge, even to myself, that my questions weren’t based on my curiosity as a prospective student. For a few moments, I indulged the notion that Bari was advising me rather than responding to stock interview questions. I imagined her bits of wisdom regarding the application and audition processes were for my personal benefit. Briefly, I was able to ignore my gross lack of qualification for the programs Bari was talking about. “Fuck it,” I thought, “I could totally do this.” They say “do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.” It’s not like I loved all parts of theater. (Not loved. Love. Present tense.) Does anyone love striking sets after even the most hardcore SciLi-dwellers have crawled back to their beds? Or forfeiting a weekend’s worth of sunlight to do tech? But that’s the entire point, I suppose. You wouldn’t go through
that shit if you didn’t love it. Love is pain; love is sacrifice. Love is submitting to a life of chronic uncertainty. (Although, to be fair, it’s not like creative writing, or playwriting, or whatever it is I want to do, comes with a terrible amount of certainty either). It’s not a matter of love. I love theater. I love it enough to stay at Production Workshop until 2 a.m. to strike sets, and to watch my Saturday disappear into a hazy bath of warm red backlighting. This isn’t a question of love. Nor is it a matter of confidence, which Bari identified as the most fundamental criterion for surviving in the theater industry. That’s why she was at Trinity Rep, she said: to gain confidence. To be able to “walk into the audition room and know I could get the part.” No doubt, being confident in my competence as an actor and director could probably get me further than the (relatively) informal student theater in which I currently participate. Confidence is something I can cultivate. I’m sure I’d hit a critical mass of rejection after which I wouldn’t be fazed by unanswered job inquiries. With enough practice, I could probably even walk into an audition room without wanting to throw up. But let’s be real. Unlike my literary pursuits, I have little to no formal theater training. I’ve never taken a movement class. Or
done intensive scene studies. I don’t know the difference between a Texas accent and a Louisiana one. If I’d been serious about a career in theater, I would have addressed these oversights years ago. I would have spent my time away from school doing summer stock and auditioning for everything, not enrolling in fiction-writing workshops or blogging about food. At this point, as a rising senior, it’s time to accept that my time as an active theater participant is finite. It’s an inevitable truth. The diploma destined to collect dust in a box somewhere won’t have “Theatre Arts and Performance Studies” written on it. My future most likely isn’t going to involve acting or directing MFA programs. Do I regret not pursuing theater more seriously? No, not really. I’m perfectly content with my writing-oriented course of study. What I regret is that I had to choose. I evaded “choices” as long as I could. Or maybe I didn’t. Given how lopsided my curricular and pre-professional history is, I must have chosen writing a long time ago. It’s just taken until now to see the consequences of that choice. Maybe this isn’t a resignation letter after all. It’s an apology to the choice I didn’t make. Illustration by Emily Reif
someday it’s going to disappear WILL FESPERMAN contributing writer The first thing I learned about the Providence zine scene was that I should never, ever call it a “zine scene.” Kate Schapira, my nonfiction professor, told me this and then wrote down a list of names. I hadn’t expected her be so knowledgeable about Rhode Island zinesters (I probably shouldn’t use that word, either), and it all felt very secretive and exciting. That’s the impression you get from zines: There’s a devastatingly cool underground out there somewhere, if only you could find it. My exploration of zines in Providence was an attempt to locate, in concrete terms, that elusive underground. But I’m getting ahead of myself. You might be wondering, “What’s a zine?” Anyone trying to define zines will soon realize that the boundaries of zineship are murky. Is a comic book a zine? What about a poetry chapbook or a political pamphlet? THE DIRT PALACE I talked about defining zines with Xander Marro, a founding member of the Dirt Palace, and Mimi Chrzanowski, an
exposing the secrets of the providence zine scene artist in residence there. The Dirt Palace is a feminist art collective in Olneyville. It occupies an old public-library building, a dimly lit, labyrinthine space. The rooms are packed with art, books, and old curios: the brass horn of a gramophone, hoop skirts, a lampshade of shedded snake skin. “It’s definitely kind of a playground,” Mimi said of the place. She and Xander led me down a dark hall to the library, which houses an extensive zine collection. Taking a box of zines off the shelf, Xander showed me examples of what Mimi alternately calls “traditional zines” and “those crappy xeroxed things.” (Mimi later clarified that by “crappy” she in no way means bad. “That ‘lo-fi’ aesthetic is often totally intentional/necessary in order to be economical,” she wrote in an email.) Traditional zines are the ones you’re most likely to be familiar with. They’re usually printed in black and white on 8.5” x 11” paper that’s folded in half and bound with a couple staples. Content ranges from politics to interviews to memoir, and
most come in editions of 200 or fewer. Perhaps to distance their work from the xeroxed-zine image, some artists call their zines ‘art books,’ Mimi said. These art books are meticulously crafted, some with screenprinted covers or pages. Other artists label their work ‘pamphlets,’ ‘chapbooks,’ or ‘mini-comics.’ Xander said the Internet has made the traditional zine more or less irrelevant. “I see kids making classic zines,” she said, “and I’m like, this is fetishizing.” The interviews, musings, and personal stories in such zines would make more sense in a blog post, she explained. I argued that handmade, limited-edition zines have a unique appeal that blog posts do not. But Mimi agreed with Xander. “So many oldstyle zines are like blogs,” she said. Xander started making zines before the Internet, when zines were distributed as “mail art.” People would send money to an address, and, days or weeks later, receive a zine in the mail. Xander showed me old issues of Factsheet Five, a magazine that served as a directory for zines in the ‘80s
and early ‘90s. Factsheet Five and periodicals like it helped build a loose community of zine artists. But the arrival of the Internet rendered such directories unnecessary. Mimi—who started making zines a few years ago in college—said she usually finds zines by looking up people’s work online. Occasionally, she will later meet the artists in person at comic conventions. Listening to Mimi and Xander—artists from different eras of zine production—I was struck by their mutual embrace of the Internet. I had expected creators of selfpublished, laboriously crafted booklets to be more ambivalent about the digital age. Though the traditional zines have given way to blogs, zine culture has adapted, and the medium persists. ADA BOOKS No zine-tour of Providence would be complete without a stop at Ada Books, a used-book store on Westminster Street. If you decide to stop by, it’s best to call beforehand and check that it’s open—the continued on page 6
6
arts & culture “It will be a clean sheet until The words, like scars, are Carved into paper to be kept, Folded, filed Until it burns, disintegrates, Or is thrown away.”
Zines, continued from page 5 store hours posted online are followed by a dreamy “-ish.” Brent Legault presides over Ada Books; he can usually be found hunched over his laptop in the center of the store. Brent keeps shelves of comic zines in the store window and a rack of other zines near the front, about half of which are verified Providence zines. But Brent said he doesn’t count himself a member of Providence’s zine culture—“I don’t think they really like me,” he joked. “They’re not the kind of people who would invite me over to dinner.” Even so, he calls himself “a fan” of their work. Artists come into the store with zines to sell, and Brent resells whatever they offer for a small profit. But “no one makes any money in zines, really,” he admitted. Brent sometimes hosts “zine parties” in his store, but he said that “usually those guys prefer more underground spaces, less commercial-type spaces.” According to Brent, zines evolved from the pamphlets and underground publications of the ‘60s, including samizdat (reproductions of censored publications) in the Soviet bloc. During the ‘70s and ‘80s, Brent said, photocopying became cheaper and more accessible. Once this infrastructure was in place, zines proliferated. Considering Brent’s knowledge of Providence zines, I thought he was more involved in the zine community than he let on. Though he said zine artists prefer more “underground” spaces than Ada Books for their release parties, I had trouble thinking of a used bookstore as a “commercial” or mainstream space. What exactly did it take to be counted as part of the zine community?
AS220 I sat down with Walker Mettling, one of the big names in the Providence zine and comic scene, in the printshop at AS220. AS220 is a community art space and a valuable resource for zine artists in and around Rhode Island. Walker was putting together copies of a zine for the Providence Comics Consortium. On the table in front of us were stacks of each page. He plucked a page from each stack, arranged and folded them, and stapled the pages into a booklet. Then he laid the fresh zine aside for the “guillotine,” a contraption that slices the pages for a clean edge. When I asked Walker about the history of zines in Providence, he didn’t show much interest. “I think there was a big zine, comic culture,” he said softly, haltingly, thumbing through pages, “during the Fort Thunder time period or whatever.” This wasn’t the first time I’d heard about Fort Thunder. Brent had mentioned the “old Fort Thunder days” like a legendary, bygone era—which, perhaps, it is. Mimi, who has only been in Providence for a year and a half, spoke of the era vaguely: “It’s kind of far away now. Everyone still knows about it.” Fort Thunder was an art collective founded by RISD graduates in 1995. In 2002, the city evicted the artists, and the building was demolished for development. In that seven-year window, however, the Fort Thunder artists produced a significant body of work. Brent mentioned two comic artists— Mat Brinkman and Bryan Chippendale, founding members of Fort Thunder—
Zines and related publications Kingfisher - Rob Pecchia and others The Providence Comics Consortium RAV zine - Mickey Zacchilli Sweaty + Shivery Books - Michelle (Mimi) Chrzanowski Zines at xandermarro.com Flyways 1 and 2 - Lella My (Rob Pecchia) Mothers News - Jacob Berendes
as standout talents from that time. He showed me a small but thick book by Chippendale called Maggots: hundreds of pages of white figures, their contours defined by a dark background sketched over Japanese texts. I never managed to talk to anyone with firsthand involvement in the Fort Thunder collective; everyone I spoke to was either a recent Providence transplant or, in Brent’s case, too removed from the scene to talk about it. Except for Xander, that is; she’s been in Providence for 19 years. But Xander only gave a few details. She remembered that the Dirt Palace inherited boxes of zines and comics from Fort Thunder in 2002, when the collective disbanded. There were “many boxes … and scraps that a cat had peed on,” she recalled. In a way, it seems fitting that the “Fort Thunder days” should remain fuzzy in my mind. Most Providence zine artists, it seems, keep their gaze toward the future. “People don’t dwell on the nostalgia, the golden days” of the ’90s, Mimi said. At AS220, Walker appeared much more eager to talk about his current projects than the glory days. When I was making ready to leave, he suddenly said, “Wait, hold on. Aren’t you going to ask me more about the Providence Comics Consortium?” Walker is in charge of the Consortium, which makes comic zines based on characters and stories dreamed up by kids in Providence. He meets with kids twice monthly in Providence community libraries, where he leads drawing games to help get the kids thinking creatively. The kids generate “a stockpile of images” and incorporate these into character sheets and panels. Then Walker and other comic artists—from places as far off as Britain and Australia—use the kids’ drawings to produce comic zines, which Walker distributes back to the kids. Seeing the finished zines tends to give the kids confidence to pursue “crazier and crazier and more ambitious” ideas, Walker said. He added that the kids’ content can be “pretty morbid and dark.” I opened a copy of “Providence Comics Consortium Showcase 7,” for example, and the first page read, “our planet is ripe with mystery and tragedy. ... They killed my mother.” The consortium involves local artists, including Mimi and Mickey Zacchilli, a past Dirt Palace resident. Smiling, Walker told me he and Zachilli had once taken the kids on a tour of
the Palace. I wondered how my nine-yearold self would have experienced it—probably with a potent mix of fascination and fear. WHY ZINES? I still didn’t quite understand why zine artists put so much effort into work that will only ever be seen by a couple hundred people. Mimi said that she enjoys the complete artistic control, being the “master of all aesthetic decisions.” Rob Pecchia, Walker’s friend and housemate, said he enjoys the combination of text and image. I agreed to meet Rob one night at the Blue Room, scanning the booths for “a messenger bag w/ a bandana and a handlebar mustache!” Pecchia only discovered his passion for comics four years ago, when he moved back to his home state of Rhode Island and found himself with lots of free time. He began to educate himself about comics by visiting the RISD library and Ada Books. Now, Pecchia is a founder and regular contributor of a zine called Kingfisher. Currently in its ninth issue, Kingfisher accepts one-page submissions related to a theme that changes with each issue—the forthcoming zine is on the theme of “transit.” Pecchia has also produced two issues of a zine called Flyways under the pseudonym Lella My. Pecchia draws Flyways when he’s on the road with the What Cheer? Brigade, a Providence-based marching band in which he plays trumpet. Pecchia enjoys the ephemeral nature of zines, especially their serendipitous, handto-hand distribution. “We’ll put out 200 copies [of Kingfisher],” he said, “and then they’re gone.” I admired Pecchia’s humility. I knew I could never have such a healthy detachment from my own work. When Pecchia found a copy of Kingfisher at a yardsale, marked at a dollar, he was elated: “That felt awesome … like, someone is now done with it, it’s no longer of use, and so it’s for sale.” Brent echoed these thoughts. “[A handmade zine] goes through people’s lives differently,” he said. “It gets handed off to people … each copy is unique.” Legault picked up a zine as he told me this. “Like this one,” he said, “I didn’t get this from the person who made it, and eventually someone will buy it and it will keep passing hand to hand.” And he added, indifferently, “someday it’s going to disappear.” Photos by flickr users CAVE CANEM and moirabot.
lifestyle Farmstead – 186 Wayland Ave.
French doors separate the upscale restaurant from the cheese shop, both of which are run by a husband-and-wife team. I’m partial to the cheese shop, which is most notable to me for its badass sandwiches and baked goods. Pro tip: Order takeout and have a picnic. Life doesn’t get much better than when it’s spent eating the Cuban sandwich, with two kinds of pork and house pickles, in the secret garden behind the MCM building. –RR
Garden Grille - 727 East Ave., Pawtucket
Perhaps I’m biased, loving all things vegetarian, but this might just be the restaurant I’ll miss the most in Providence. Korean Tempeh Tacos, Roasted Root Vegetable Risotto Cakes, Butternut Squash Quesadilla. Give me a large plate of I-don’t-even-know-what vegetable and I will eat it all, every bite of that giant portion, no damn take-away box. I’m off to Wildflour for a cupcake. - JB
Eastside Pockets 278 Thayer St.
Nowhere else on Thayer—nay, perhaps on this earth, have I found anything as consistently delicious as the Eastside Pocket. It’s a high standard of excellence, folks, and every $6 dollars I spend there I know I’ll get that same perfect crispy falafel, doughy pita, that special hot sauce. I now measure most amounts of money in terms of Pockets: $50 for a t-shirt? That’s 9 pockets. –JB
farewell, fair farmstead Dok’s – 146 Ives St.
Madeira - 174 Ives St.
What’s it like not to live fifteen seconds from a liquor store? To think at 9:50 p.m. on a Friday, “Damn, too late.” More than the proximity, I’ll miss the ladies. The women of Madeira, so sweet and helpful to us students, with their budget recommendations and knowledge of the less-fine wines. I guess, wherever I move next, I’ll have to start my friendships from the bottom. Start with a Pinot Grigio, ascend to a hearty Cabernet. –JB
Y’all can have Geoff’s, but unless it’s Tuesday, I’ll stick with this deli in my neighborhood. On any given day, scruffy men cure hunks of meat in the kitchen and throw together some of the most epic sandwiches I’ve had the privilege of tasting. I cannot order one thing without having FOMO over the rest of the menu, yet I can do no wrong in my choice. Their bacon onion jam is all the defense I need for my omnivorism. –RR
I’ve spent so many collective hours here that I don’t even know if the food is good (though I’m certain the vanilla bean syrup makes lattés taste like toasted marshmallows, and I still suspect that the so-called Nutella brownies contain no trace of hazelnut spread). The wobbly tables and constant stream of familiar faces have made this place a second home and an ideal place to go when I want to be seen pretending to do work. –RR
My relationship with Rocket is ever blossoming. They’re on first-name basis with me and Lily; they retweet our dumb shit, stay late to make us lastminute dinner, and almost catered my birthday party. On top of it all, they make my favorite burger in Providence. I love it classic, with grilled onions and mustard, and I love it all fancy with things like Gruyère or green chile. My heart will always do somersaults at the image of this beloved white truck parked on Thayer. –RR
Seven Stars – 820 Hope St.
Oh man, I just adore everything about this place. Bagel Gourmet Olé – 288 Thayer St. Writing at the communal My allegiance is to the table. Nibbling their toasted Thayer outpost, in part focaccia and addictive little lemon cakes. Peoplebecause they accept cards watching the toddlers, but largely out of nostalgia grandparents, and young for my freshman year, when professionals that flood it on these bagels cured my first weekends. Most of all, I’ll hangovers. Back then, I miss spending lazy mornings played with combos like slowly devouring their pecan spinach and sundried tomato sticky buns, plucking off the cream cheese. Now that I’ve toasted nuts and eating the grown up, I’ll never stray caramel-glazed roll from the from the sunflower seed outside in. –RR bagel, but I still grapple with the existential dilemma of sausage-egg-and-cheese versus veggie cream cheese. –RR
Dear Brown, Man, what a trip. When I think of my freshman self, wide-eyed and long-haired, and compare her to my current self, incredibly sage and much shorter-haired, I think, what did I eat then? A lot of cereal. But what a delightful journey it’s been, writing for Post-. Exploring the Providence food scene, starting at the Ratty then venturing timidly off the Hill. And Post- has been there through it all, from the failed kitchen ventures to the questaurants, and that quirky Wednesday crew nomming on pizza and boozing on booze. It’s with love and nostalgia that I say goodbye. Post-, to you I’ll raise a glass of Madeira’s finest. - Jane Brendlinger
White Electric Coffee – 711 Westminster St.
Full disclosure: Much of my affection for this place stems from its graphic design. The logo just triggers happy brain chemicals. Also, they serve hazelnut mochas in huge, cozy mugs, and they have bagels with avocado for, like, $2. Also, they have half-off drink refills. The array of seating makes it easy to get comfy, and even when it’s packed, it’s never too loud. I love to sit beneath the kitschy art and bask in its quintessential caféness. –RR
what our outgoing food writers will miss most about providence RÉMY ROBERT & JANE BRENDLINGER
editor emerita & staff writer
Sawaddee – 93 Hope St.
Rocket Truck @RocketTruck Bookstore Blue State – 244 Thayer St.
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AS220 – 115 Empire St.
I do not need to discuss anything more than $2 spicy pan-fried chickpeas, but I will. I love the platter of mac and cheese with broccoli and toasty breadcrumbs. I’m head over heels for the spinach pasta with crispy pulled pork and sweet potatoes. I’ll miss the DGAF hipster vibe, the murky bar, and how damn special it feels to jaunt down the hill and tuck myself into a window seat looking out at our funny little city’s downtown scene. –RR
A perennial favorite for first dates, this restaurant—whose dining room is roughly the length of a sedan—is also a constant site of agonized indecision. I have yet to determine whether the dirty noodles are truly better than the green curry, but I’ll gladly keep up my field research. I’ll snag some carrot and red cabbage salad, bracing with lime and fish sauce, or kingfish cakes with spicypeanutty-cucumber sauce while I’m at it. –RR
Coffee Exchange – 207 Wickenden St.
I started going to Coffee Exchange to work on my thesis (what better excuse to buy yourself a vegan scone, a reward for work yet to be done?). It’s not a library, it’s true, but I fell a tad in love with the atmosphere: the rhythm of grinding, brewing, steaming, mixed with the local Providence chatter. I’d make friends in line, I’d feel like part of a community. Good people, good coffee. –JB
Sakura – 231 Wickenden St.
There’s something about the combination of cheap sushi, BYOB, and terrible service that kept me and my friends going back to Sakura. They’d shove us in that back room as if they’d never want to speak to us again, and we’d settle in for a leisurely night, barreling through our six packs, and then later, our five Love Boats for Two. Red Bean ice cream, you remain on my bucket list. –JB
Dear Brown, Here I am at the end of my road, and I never foresaw how schmoopy I’d feel looking back on my last four years with Post-. How many times, I wonder, have I thrown my hands up in the despair of writer’s block, struggling to come up with the perfectly pithy, Post-y phrase to put on paper? Yet our goofy little insert keeps me coming back every week, for its cynicism and its Sexicon and its Top Ten, and now I can’t believe it’s time to say goodbye. It’s been an absolute joy to be Pastiche - 92 Spruce St. part of the mix as a bumbling Ten minutes after my columnist. Below are my worst breakup in college, preemptively nostalgic, ocI went to Pastiche with casionally weepy food faves. my bff and ate a banana Providence, I love you. cream tart. Then I spent a summer working in the kitchen, filling cakes and snacking on blondie edges, and it now feels like a bit of myself is there, the love of a customer and the care of an employee. To those of you who haven’t made it to this spot on Federal Hill, I implore you—go and find your favorite. –JB
- Remy Robert
Illustration by Lily Goodspeed
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lifestyle
topten
tent tops
1. American flag. 2. Pirate flag. 3. Little chimney. music is 4. Bell tower & hunchback. Shaking the Habitual, after much anticipation. 5. Waterproof tarp. film is 6. Rooster. worrying Tobey Maguire will 7. Hat Dog. ruin The Great Gatsby. 8. Disco ball. tv is speaking my mother tongue ... 9. Windsock. Valyrian. *DRAGON BURNS 10. Second, smaller tent. EVERYTHING*. *FLAMES EVERYWHERE.* And then she, like, leads the troops and they all start banging their spears on the ground and stuff and it’s sweet.
books is
asking Michael Pollan, “Who cares.”
food is
grilling up some mean soy burgers in the nice spring weather.
booze is
whining about two boxers— err, drinking two boxes of wine.
weekendfive Brown/RISD Lawn Party, Sat 4/27 1-5 p.m., Benefit St. Unheard Tent Shows, 4/26 10 p.m.–midnight, Main Green. WORD! Spring Show 2013, Fri & Sat 7.30 p.m., Sun 3 p.m., Rites & Reason Theater Musical Forum presents Bat Boy: The Musical! Fri, Sat, & Mon 8 p.m., Sat 6 & 10 p.m., PW @ TF Green POST-POST-PARTY YEAAAAA
the legend, the lore, the lager PHIL F*CKIN’ LAI & JENNIE YOUNG CARR large plaid asian & editor emerita It began as a nagging question. The sort of thing that hovers above the slowmoving depths of the unconscious, but beneath the swift, shallow current of everyday concerns (Is the front door locked? Was that meeting today?). It surfaced in the grey hours of the morning, that time when once-familiar shapes of bedroom furniture acquire a menacing cast, and a fog of exhaustion clouds the perception. The question entered my restless mind fully formed, as a sentence drifts into view through the small window of a Magic 8 Ball: “Isn’t there something a little ... off ... about the GCB?” Once thought, such a suspicion cannot be wished out of existence. My paradise of all-too-reasonably-priced drinks had been infiltrated by a serpent, or should I say a cigarette-smoking lizard? If the reference escapes you, I urge you to look more closely at your surroundings. Take in the papier-mâché owl staring down at you from above the bar. Is its gaze benevolent or baleful? Consider that, each time you descend the cinderblock-lined staircase into the bowels of the Graduate Center, you enter a space in which there are no bouncers, the music is consistently good but not eardrum-rupturing, and even the most unrecognizable stranger is only two or three degrees of separation removed from you. What secrets must lurk beneath this idyllic exterior? Forgotten Origins The year was 1969. Nixon was president, and a middle-aged man named John J. Breckenridge [name changed for confidentiality] was passed out in a Tokyo flophouse. A brief dalliance with ornithology and herpetology had given way to unsatisfying careers in deck swabbing and wifebeater modeling. Fading green-inked ropes and anchors wound around his torso, testament to long years on choppy seas. An overturned lobster on his forearm offered a wry nod to his hometown of Boston. Leashed to his wristwatch by a length of twine, a subadult green iguana perched on his shoulder, smoking a cigarette. Wit-
a partially true history of the GCB nesses recall that Breckenridge awoke with a start at the stroke of midnight. Head heavy with sake, he dimly perceived a majestic, feathered silhouette tugging at the edges of his frayed consciousness. The remaining events of that fateful day are lost to history, but what is known is that Breckenridge returned to the U.S. a man transformed. Selling his Fox Point houseboat, he moved all his possessions into an unused basement-level cafeteria space leased out from Brown University’s then-newly-constructed Graduate Center complex. Three months later, Mayor Joseph A. Doorley, Jr. presided over the opening of a not-for-profit, members-only club, unimaginatively named the “Graduate Center Bar.” Early Development Breckenridge’s chosen moniker proved unpopular in the bar’s early years. An inexpertly taxidermied subadult green iguana, displayed in a desert terrarium by the entrance with a plastic cigarette superglued to its labial scales, led early patrons to dub the place the “Lizard Lounge.” It was clear from the beginning that this was not your average neighborhood watering hole. Nestled under reinforced concrete “student quarters,” boasting thick walls, restricted ingress and emergency lighting, the GCB resembled nothing so much as a fortified bunker. A bright pink, fourfoot papier-mâché owl held court over the counter, resembling no known species in proportions or plumage. The bar saw few regulars as drinks averaged four bucks, a king’s ransom in 1970s dollars. Yet year after year beer continued to flow from the bar’s many taps. Pale ales, brown ales, Scotch and Belgian, lagers, pilsners, porters, stouts. Always a tap for Guinness, Heineken instead banished to a display case, left to languish between the spiked jaws of a “bad beer trap.” The GCB’s mystique proved self-perpetuating. No one was quite sure how it was run, or how it stayed in operation. Rumors grew, of secret passageways, of corporate sponsorship, of secret psych de-
partment experiments, of fallen barkeeps buried between the walls. Local bartenders vyed for a position at this exclusive joint. Those lucky enough to win the honor were obligated to defend it against all challengers every night between 1 a.m. and two. Modes of challenge included handto-hand combat (eventually leading to a popular Wednesday-night fight club in the mid-90s) and eight-ball pool. After reassurances of strict anonymity, one bartender revealed that each member of the GCB has a tattoo of an owl in an “undisclosed location.” Remaining Mysteries There are idiosyncrasies in every corner of the GCB, and we have neither the space nor the inclination to divulge all of the bar’s secrets to you. Consider the comic strips in the bathroom. Are they a playful attempt to liven up the bar’s decor, or the basis for a secret code which, if cracked, allows its solver to drink free for a semester? Why is nobody ever thrown out? Why is the clock set to Tokyo time? And where the hell is the other owl on the flyer? This, we will reveal to you: Members of the Geology Department dominate the board of the GCB, and a reliable source tells us that it is officially registered as a bunker for the exclusive use of the faculty of Brown University. Come the zombie apocalypse, you will find all of your professors huddled in a war council in the Map Room, working their way through the top-shelf Scotch. ...but seriously. This much is true. The GCB is a timehonored Brown institution, as much a part of our endearingly off-kilter student culture as the naked donut run or the Scili challenge. Your membership pays for overhead, while drink sales go to charity; tipping is greatly appreciated. Be kind to the bartenders, and be kind to the space. Keep the mystery alive. Treat the GCB with respect, and it will be for you, as it has been for us, a home away from home. Illustration by Phil Lai