Dig Boston Jan. 28th, 2015

SOUTHIE:

YOUR NEW

TACO DESTINATION

DIGBOSTON.COM 1.28.15 - 2.4.15

DAVID FOSTER

WALLACE

HIS METHODS, EXCERPTED from NEW BOOK

“PROCESS”

GIRAFFAGE

STILL (SORTA) SAMPLING, and HEADED to ALLSTON

ARTIST. WRITER. SCULPTOR?

SCOTT MCCLOUD

LIQUOR LICENSES for ALL!

BUT DUDLEY SQUARE HAS to WAIT

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DEAR READER

EDITOR Dan McCarthy NEWS, FEATURES + MEDIA FARM EDITOR Chris Faraone ASSOCIATE FILM EDITOR Kristofer Jenson ASSOCIATE MUSIC EDITOR Martín Caballero CONTRIBUTORS Lizzie Havoc, Boston Bastard, Nina Corcoran, Clay Fernald, Emily Hopkins, Micaela Kimball, Tony McMillen, Scott Murry, Jonathan Riley, Spencer Shannon, Cady Vishniac, Dave Wedge INTERNS Paige Chaplin, Jasmine Ferrell

DESIGN CREATIVE DIRECTOR Tak Toyoshima DESIGNER Brittany Grabowski INTERNS Austin Dickey, Alek Glasrud COMICS Tim Chamberlain Brian Connolly Pat Falco Patt Kelley

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Judging by the looks of things, craziness and impending doom would seem to be moving across our land and our sky.

A week and a half ago, there were earthquakes just south of us in neighboring Connecticut.

Weird. On the way home from the office Monday night, as the city was gripped with inflated panic from the steady stream of statewide emergency announcements, driving bans, parking advisories, and surges in Uber requests, I was behind a licensed city cab van that was driving a tad erratically. Like maybe he was behind a frequent break-er, or was three or four beers deep. As I moved beyond him in traffic, I saw through foggy windows that he had a mobile device attached to the sun visor above his seat in order to watch some kind of basketball game his shift was rude enough to cause him to miss. While driving. In the snow.

Then there were reports streaming in all day from remote corners of Facebook, with pictures of long lines at Market Basket, shelves bare where once there were shining temples of loaves of bread.

Elsewhere, at another market, health-conscious yuppies attacked the available kale reserves until all that remained were trace leaves in empty holsters, the disappearance of which was no doubt followed by wailing and the wild gnashing of teeth by yuppies and juice-fanatics ready to eat one another if it, too, promised low-calorie detoxification and the impediment of expanding fat cells. It would seem the end is nigh.

“For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and in various places there will be famines and earthquakes.” Matthew 24:7 But it’s not the end. It was just a snowstorm, people. And if you’re reading this, you’ve already emerged back into the world in the face of all adversity, and picked up this week’s fantastic issue.

Call it a reward.

BY DAN MCCARTHY @ACUTALPROOF DIGTIONARY

COVER ARTIST

Our sizzling cover featuring Giraffage was photographed by Grady Brannan.

Read all about Giraffage’s music on page 26 and peek some more dreamy pics.

©2015 DIGPORTLAND IS PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY DIG PORTLAND LLC. NO PART OF THIS PUBLICATION CAN BE REPRODUCED WITHOUT WRITTEN CONSENT. DIG PORTLAND LLC CANNOT BE HELD LIABLE FOR ANY TYPOGRAPHICAL ERRORS. ONE COPY OF DIGPORTLAND IS AVAILABLE FREE TO MAINE RESIDENTS AND VISITORS EACH WEEK. ANYONE REMOVING PAPERS IN BULK WILL BE PROSECUTED ON THEFT CHARGES TO THE FULLEST EXTENT OF THE LAW.

SLEDGHAZI

/sled-ga-zi/ noun 1. The liberal theory that President Obama is responsible for the myriad sledding possibilities available in this winter wonderland.

2. The more popular conservative notion that President Obama is responsible for the awful snow and traffic conditions in our winter hell.

OH, CRUEL WORLD Dear Activist Lecturing Whites, You are not happy, be honest.

Second, you are absolutely right that there is still a huge issue with race in America that needs a massive amount of work to resolve. Third, you’re right I don’t care.

After all the years spending such effort only to have the very people who need to step up into power refuse to show up leaving the power in the hands of the rich, white plantation owners we have now; I cannot care anymore and I won’t.

FEATURE

NEWS TO US

EDITORIAL

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JANUARY 28, 2015 - FEBRUARY 4, 2015

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VOL 17 + ISSUE 4

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NEWS US

“EVEN THOUGH I’M DEAD MY PEACE SIGN IS STILL IN THE AIR.” -PROTESTER IN FOREGROUND AT 4 MILE MARCH BOSTON

NIGHTLIFE-LESS NEWS TO US

The fight continues for liquor licenses in communities of color

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When the Massachusetts legislature greenlighted new liquor licenses last session for certain Boston neighborhoods that lack adequate entertainment options, it was a cause for celebration. Residents of areas like Roxbury, with its 15 permits (including 10 held by packies) to the 131 in Back Bay, rejoiced at the prospect of more places to sip wine at dinner close to home. By any measure, the passage was a victory for Boston City Councilor-At-Large Ayanna Pressley, who’d petitioned for changes with support from an enthusiastic Mayor Marty Walsh, as well as for the advocacy group Future Boston Alliance, which helped to guide the effort.

That was in July. Six months later there’s been certain progress, with licenses okayed for some places in serious need of wet establishments like Hyde Park and East Boston.

At the same time however, none of the 25 licenses resulting from Pressley’s petition are yet slated for businesses in the severely underserved likes of Grove Hall or Mattapan Square.

Even as Dudley Square gets an elegant urban makeover, neighborhood boosters there say economic and logistical impediments have kept some potential local interests out of the running, leaving the Hub’s nightlife-less squares, at least for the time being, as boozeless as they’ve been for decades.

To better understand the problem, it helps to sift through the messy history of spirit licensing in Boston. Local leaders aren’t necessarily to blame; rather, for generations

our Brahmin forefathers in state government sought to control municipal monarchs from lower-class backgrounds by putting in place overly restrictive measures. As a result, cities clean across the commonwealth have always imbibed at the pleasure of the Beacon Hill establishment. For the Hub that’s meant an arbitrary cap of 650 full liquor licenses plus 320 more for wine and malt drinks—all of which cost only a few grand from City Hall, but have appreciated as secondary-market commodities worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. In part to pay off that enormous startup cost, independent digs and chains alike have gravitated toward higher-income neighborhoods, leaving less-trafficked throes like Hyde Park high and dry.

The most significant shift in licensing dynamics to come as a result of last year’s legislative action may be that, for the first time in more than a century, the mayor of Boston now has complete power over the three-member Boston Licensing Board (BLB), finally removing the commonwealth from much of the equation. But before Walsh took the chance to handpick his own replacement commissioners in December, the same state appointees who for years reigned over glaring disparities quickly granted more than 10 of the new licenses for “restricted” areas. Some intended districts, like East Boston, benefitted, but zero applicants stepped up from Dudley Square or Mattapan.

No watchdog group has paid closer attention to the new licenses than has Future Boston Alliance, organizers from which helped push the home-rule petition with Pressley and attend weekly BLB hearings. After months of working hard to sway legislators, they’ve been largely disappointed with results so far, starting with the addresses attached to some of the new permits. One is technically in Roxbury, but due north of Melnea Cass Boulevard and closer to the already bustling South End. Allston and Jamaica Plain, two neighborhoods that qualify under the special designation but that nonetheless already enjoy a variety of choices for cocktails and craft beers, have also benefitted.

“We were excited about this law being the beginning of a conversation on how to reverse some of the racial and class inadequacies of our restaurant economy,” says Malia Lazu, Executive Director of Future Boston Alliance.

“However, we are not confident that there is a vision to get us there. The city and committee need to have a much more transparent process. Any given day, the committee cannot tell you how many licenses they have. That does not help us have confidence in this body or the process.”

There is no online portal through which residents or business owners can track who has been permitted or where they plan to open. A spokesperson for the City of NIGHTLIFE-LESS continued on pg. 6

IMAGE BY BRITTANY GRABOWSKI

BY CHRIS FARAONE @FARA1

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FEATURE

NEWS TO US

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BLUNT TRUTH

STATE HOUSE SMOKE SIGNALS

BY MIKE CANN @MIKECANNBOSTON Is legal marijuana coming to Mass sooner than November 2016? Local advocates hope so, and to that end they have two new reform bills filed in the Massachusetts Legislature, as well as possible help from a special new legislative committee established by State Senate President Stanley Rosenberg.

The good news: A House bill to “regulate and tax the cannabis industry,” sponsored by Rep. David Rogers of Cambridge, and another that aims to help legal patients get access and employment protection among other things.

Not all the language is out yet, but I look forward to combing through the details as soon as they are made available.

What we know for now is that the Mass Patient Advocacy Alliance (MPAA) is on board with legislative movement; in a summary of one bill on their website, the group states their intention is to protect patients by lifting cruel and arbitrary limits set by the Department of Public Health. According to MPAA Deputy Director Nichole Snow, “We are asking to expand patient protections through ending employment, residential, and education discriminations. We are also asking to exempt medical marijuana from taxation and to increase the amount of patients that caregivers can serve if they do not have a dispensary open near their homes.”

Meanwhile, the bill sponsored by Rogers aims to legalize marijuana for people who are 21 and over. It’s a comprehensive bill that would cover retail outlets and cafes, allow home grow provisions, and even grant blanket amnesty for past offenses.

But then there’s Senate President Rosenberg and Governor Charlie Baker.

After announcing his legislative committee, Rosenberg went on Boston Herald Radio claiming the initiative process is not the preferred way to pass “controversial” laws. His argument: The legislature can do it better than reformers. Baker supports Rosenberg’s move to study legalization, but nevertheless stands in firm opposition to cannabis legalization.

For all the harping about his committee and how it should trump the initiative process, Rosenberg should realize that reformers only turned in that direction because, after decades of hearings, studies, and doubletalk at the State House, there have been no laws passed. If we had waited for lawmakers to get it right, we’d still be talking about decriminalization, never mind fixing medical provisions and going legal. Bottom line: At this point, there’s no guarantee Rosenberg or his counterparts in the House and corner office wouldn’t steer marijuana bills into the ground if given the opportunity.

If these new leaders on Beacon Hill are worth a damn, they will team up and finally implement the medical marijuana program as it was intended before former Governor Deval Patrick destroyed it. Otherwise, if local pols just continue blowing smoke signals, they can expect legalization to be on the ballot in 2016.

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Boston provided documentation to the Dig stating that 9 of the 15 new full liquor licenses have already been granted, as have all five made available for beer and wine.

According to the BLB, that leaves six up for grabs.

Despite the slow start in communities of color along the Blue Hill Avenue corridor, Pressley and Future Boston Alliance both say progress has been made in other regards. Their petition has already resulted in minority-owned businesses like Dot 2 Dot Cafe and Sea Breeze Mexican Grill in Dorchester being able to serve beer and wine, helping them remain competitive and serve as anchors in their neighborhoods.

As for the lack of news elsewhere, the councilor says it may take time to “cultivate that pipeline.” “Even if we can get people in the queue,” says Pressley, there are prohibitive buildout costs and other challenges that she is trying to address.

“I don’t want to undercut what we did,” she says. “There is momentum for change and reform, and I’m pleased with the positive strides we’ve seen. I applaud that.” At the same time, Pressley acknowledges the “impetus of this legislation was about Roxbury and Mattapan,” and remains hopeful that some licenses will still go to those places as early as this year. Pressley also says she’d like to see the cap on liquor licenses in Boston removed altogether; though that was her initial request, lawmakers only freed up 75 over three years. She continues: “When we started this journey I knew we weren’t going to get everything. But I knew we would be on the road to game-changing economic development in neighborhoods that are disenfranchised. We do have a good story to tell. But do we have everything we wanted? No. We’re not there yet.”

In order to get there, Lazu says investors and the city both “need to support potential liquor license holders who cannot afford lawyers to walk them through this process.” Having watched similar civic discussions unfold in the past, she’s quick to note how Boston and the state both failed in their last attempt nine years ago to enliven many of the same depressed squares. That debacle begot the incarceration of two Roxbury politicians; meanwhile, some recipients of limited permits made available back then are now competing with prospective neighboring businesses for the few new full licenses left. If it sounds confusing, that’s because it is.

“The committee and the city have the responsibility to see their job as protecting the intent of this law, not just distribute licenses,” Lazu says. “Lets not make this another 2006.”

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

NIGHTLIFE-LESS continued from pg. 4

BREAKFAST

BRUNCH

& LUNCH +dinner &Entertainment award winning

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OLDE MAGOUNʼS SALOON PRESENTS:

BACON PALOOZA VI WEDNESDAYSʼ JAN 7TH – 28TH 5-11PM

MEDIA FARM

NO CATHOLICS ALLOWED They simply can’t be trusted to kill Tsarnaev

BY CHRIS FARAONE @FARA1

BISCUITS & GRAVY

bacon cheddar cheese biscuits / maple cured bacon / country gravy

FIG- ALICIOUS

figs wrapped in smoked bacon stuffed with goat cheese drizzled with balsamic

ARANCINI

risotto stuffed with pancetta fontina cheese amatriciana sauce

BACON RANGOON

black pepper bacon / charred jalapenos / cream cheese / plum sauce

LACQUERED CRISPY PORK BELLY Szechuan spices / hoisin glaze / Asian slaw

BACON POUTINE

Tatar tot / cheese curds / bacon onion gravy / topped with soft egg

BEEF BACON BLUE

Who knew that jury selection for a capital case could be such a pain in the toilet? For those of us who’d like to see the kid dipped in a fryolator pronto, the death penalty trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev already feels neverending. And it hasn’t even begun.

As for related news … let’s just say proceedings are going so slowly that we hardly begrudge the press goons among us who have spent the past week distracting us with Belichick bloopers. Really though. Nothing happened. And so the media just kind of riffed ...

NUNSENSE Here’s our favorite knee-slapper in some time: “Boston bombing jury excludes some Catholics.” Great scoop for a week when there was little happening to actually cover.

The piece hit right after we got back from church on Sunday, and made our nipples hard immediately …

As the quest for a jury in the Boston Marathon bombing trial approaches its fourth week, some of the area’s 2 million Roman Catholics are growing frustrated with criteria that effectively disqualify followers of church teachings.

Jury Quest. Great name for sci-fi courtroom drama. But we digress …

beef filets stuffed with blue cheese wrapped in bacon / pepper port reduction

Potential jurors in bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s trial must be able to impose the death penalty or a life sentence with no possibility of release. That standard eliminates Catholics who heed the catechism of the Catholic Church.

BACON BOMB MAC & CHEESE

Our thought: Shouldn’t Catholics be psyched about missing jury duty? This could go on for months. Furthermore, anybody who believes in transubstantiation should be glad they aren’t asked to abstain from other things as well, like driving. People who believe in heaven, hell, and/or ghosts should be committed, not allowed on the open road. Considering that Greater Boston is more than 40 percent Catholic, there’s no better traffic solution.

All of the above considered, this particularly fanatical sect of cheek-turners should probably be kept out of the running. Then again, anyone who can forgive all of those rape-y priets may be just the kind of brain-dead rube defense lawyers are looking for.

jalapeño bacon / slab bacon / chicharrones / smoked bacon / pancetta

BREAD PUDDING

warm maple bacon / dried fruit / salted caramel / bourbon ice cream

SMOKED MAPLE BACON OLDE FASHION

muddled oranges / fresh cranberries

AECHT SCHLENKERLA RAUCHBIER ON DRAUGHT

[Media Farm is wrangled by DigBoston News+Features Editor Chris Faraone. Since it’s written by our whole staff, we generally run with a collective byline. We decided Chris should specifically cosign this week since he wasted the first half of his life in the Catholic Church and he figures that ought to at least be good for trashing sleazeball pedophiles and their devotees.]

lightly smoked lager

@MAGOUNSSALOON OLDEMAGOUNSSALOON

FREE RADICAL

THE DEFLATEGATE FARCE

BY EMILY HOPKINS @GENDERPIZZA

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518 Medford St Somerville

magounssaloon.com|617 - 7 76 - 2 6 0 0

On January 18, two football teams whose players are paid millions of dollars went head to head in a game for their “owners,” who make millions of dollars off their teams by making them play a game that is proven to cause permanent brain damage.

What came out of that game is what you now know as Deflategate, as it was discovered that many of the balls used were not as turgid as they should have been.

“Deflategate,” when entered into Google, yields more than three times as many results as “domestic abuse NFL,” while the league says they have already interviewed more than 40 people in relation to the debacle.

Meanwhile, of the 48 players who were found guilty of domestic abuse under the NFL’s own policy between 2000 and 2014, most were either not punished or were only suspended for one game. If we’re going to talk about where some air was not, at least be so kind to demand they suffer consequences for beating their wives and girlfriends. Sorry, I don’t have a “balls” pun for that.

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GUEST EDITORIAL

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE OPEN MINDED Why we should stand with those who stand on the highways

BY EROC ARROYO-MONTANO There is a public discourse happening beyond the trolling, internet bullying, and death threats. It is taking place on a local and national level, and it is crucial for the future of America. We must not allow corporate media and their obsession with false equivalencies, red herrings, and battle royales distract us from the issue at hand: #BlackLivesMatter.

We must move beyond the obvious disagreements with obvious bigots, and go beyond the “fuck them” part of the conversation. This is a call to continue and, in some cases, start conversations with those of us who are ready to accept that there is something deeply wrong with our sociopolitical system. It’s for those who are willing to ask how our individual and collective actions reinforce America’s systemic injustices.

“Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy; it is absolutely essential to it.”

-Howard Zinn

This latest round of rebellions draws on a time-honored tradition and a beautiful history of pushing this country forward through agitation. From one of America’s most popular acts of civil disobedience, the Boston Tea Party, to Susan B. Anthony’s arrest for voting at a time when women were prohibited from doing so. From Claudette Colvin and Rosa Parks refusing to give up their seats on the bus for white folks, to the many being arrested in opposition of the Keystone XL Pipeline. Civil Disobedience is as American as selective historical amnesia.

In light of recent direct actions in support of the Black Lives Matter movement in Boston, in which protesters locked arms on I-93 during the morning rush hour commute, many people are asking questions about what this moment means for their communities. Sadly, in some circles the actions of the protestors elicited more rage than the chokehold murder of Eric Garner at the hands of New York City Detective Daniel Pantaleo.

“Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful not to be neutral.”

-Paulo Freire

Make no mistake: For many, this nation’s current unrest is bigger than Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Aiyana Jones, and the countless other unarmed black and brown men, women and children who have lost their lives at the hands of law enforcement in the United States. These murders have rekindled a fire that has never fully been extinguished, and that has been burning for centuries. From daily microaggressions, to more extreme acts of domestic terror, from the School-to-Prison-Pipeline to the War on the Poor, the effects of ideological and institutional oppression have wreaked havoc. As such, lines have been drawn in the sand and allegiances are being chosen, with only one side believing there has been a disproportionate amount of pain and anguish inflicted upon this country’s Black community. Conversely, there are those who have seemingly mastered cognitive dissonance, and who choose to ignore systemic injustices. In the most basic terms, you either acknowledge that white supremacy and racism are interwoven into the fabric of American society, or you do not.

Which side are you on?

Those who do not believe we are in a system with severe inequities have placed the onus on Black folks, and in the case of the I-93 action their accomplices, to convince deniers that their pain and struggle is not only real, but that it is systemic and worthy of such distrust and unrest. Therein lies the root of much interpersonal tension; it is a ridiculous expectation that Black folks should have to prove their own humanity.

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“Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.”

-Frederick Douglas

Acceptance is a beautiful ideal. But the pragmatic idealist in me remembers the words of my father. He, with my mother and sister, arrived in Boston from Puerto Rico in the 1970’s during a tumultuous and racially motivated busing crisis to find a largely disenfranchised Latino community that was fighting to be heard. He said, “Although we knew we would not necessarily be accepted, we would do the work to be respected.” For many of us, owning the fact that we will not be accepted by others because of our differences can be hard, but it is necessary and liberating work. Opposing forces and ideologies may never accept us, and we do not need them to, but we must do the work to be respected.

And we must ask questions: What can come from creating traffic jams and angering commuters? What can come from bringing lives to a standstill? Like many others I have questions about the strategy employed by those with whom I write in solidarity. Not because I want to tear down demonstrators, but because I truly want dissent to make an impact. No one is beyond critical love. While I won’t attempt to speak for the protesters who have already spoken for themselves, I have inquired of myself: “Would I have participated?

Would I have helped jam rush hour?”

My genuine answer, in all likelihood, is no. That does not conflict with my solidarity though; in fact because I wouldn’t have done so, and because they so courageously did, I am especially grateful for their actions. Organizers must have known there would be backlash, and yet it did not stop them. I applaud their courage. Even if their actions simply spark more conversations that opposing ideologies would love to sweep under the rug, that within itself is a victory.

There are moments when it feels effortless to understand other peoples’ perspectives on polarizing issues, such as race in America. There are other times when it feels impossible. I have learned that there are people who seemingly refuse to think for themselves and refuse to question the system’s doctrine. Digesting, regurgitating and spreading its poison like a highly contagious virus. We have seen its mob mentality, its group think that refuses to isolate itself and attempt to look beyond its own stake in reality. Rather than approaching different perspectives, they double down on their ignorance. This was evident in peoples’ responses to the protesters in Boston and across the country. Many of these people are deeply committed to not entertaining anything other than their own lived experiences and pathologies. This willful ignorance - I am convinced - is oppressed people’s greatest enemy.

OPEN LETTER continued on pg. 12

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ATTENTION: BOSTON CONVENTION DATES HAVE CHANGED

TICKETS ON SALE NOW

TO BOSTON’S FIRST CANNABIS INDUSTRY CONVENTION!

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GET THEM BEFORE THEY’RE GONE!

2 FULL DAYS OF PROGRAMMING Featuring: · Keynote Speaker Becky DeKeuster, M.Ed. founder of Maine’s largest group of medical marijuana dispensaries.

THIS EVENT will bring together dozens of vendors from every aspect of the Cannabis industry, 2 full days of educational workshops & panels, and thousands of patients, advocates, supporters, educators, and entrepreneurs. There will also be a wide assortment of the best smoking, vaping, storage, and growing accessories available for purchase at the show!

Buy your tickets NOW:

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NOTICE:

January Boston Convention dates have been changed to Sat Feb 21 and Sun Feb 22 Tickets purchased for the original dates will be honored for the Feb 21 & 22 shows!

Saturday: noon - 6pm Sunday: 11am-5pm At the Historic Castle at Park Plaza In the Heart of Downtown

· Education: Cultivation for Patients and Caregivers · Politics/Activism Panel · Medical Marijuana as Medicine Education: Cooking with Cannabis · MA Medical Marijuana Law

Presented by

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OPEN LETTER continued from pg. 10

“Over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Council or the Ku Klux Klan, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice.“ -Martin Luther King Jr.

The very idea of justice and equity, especially for marginalized people, has never been embraced by the masses in America’s dominant culture. Nevertheless, people all around us are choosing to participate in this awakening, voicing their frustrations and voicing their outrage. We have an opportunity to embrace a stronger, interconnected, intergenerational movement. We must give ourselves permission to ask the questions and continue to work toward answers.

If protesters practice civil disobedience in a forest and no one hears it, witnesses, reports it, or reckons it, does it make a sound? Does it make a difference? Does it amplify dissent? Does it challenge the status quo? Furthermore, what are the actual desired outcomes, and how can we use these moments to educate, to learn, and to grow as a society? How do we effectively challenge and dismantle a system that activist author bell hooks pointedly described as white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchy? Context is everything. This is a country that is at extreme odds with its own narrative of justice and liberty for all.

A country whose birth story coincides with the displacement and attempted genocide of indigenous peoples. A country that went on to build its economy on the backs of one of history’s most despicable atrocities, the chattel slavery of captured African people. Humans were sold and forced to work colonized land. They faced brutal punishments. Families were torn apart, women raped, dissidents hung from trees like “strange fruit.” Thug slave owners so dependent on this free labor that many of them gave their lives defending the institution. This country has not yet come to terms with much of our dreadful history. Many have naively wished it away, ignored it, or simply don’t see the connection of America’s inception to the plight of today. Without a historical context though, how can one make sense of recent uprisings? How and when will we dismantle systemic injustices? Who is willing to admit they don’t have all the answers?

Mallory Hanora, one of the protesters arrested on I-93, said “Too often we confuse safety with our own comfort. I hope we can move away from comfort and towards justice. The police will not stop killing Black people—isn’t that dangerous? Isn’t that violent? It is necessary and urgent to take significant actions to address the systemic oppression of Black people; white supremacy is deadly. Because Black lives matter all the time, always.”

Maybe, we should all take a moment and stand on the highway. Or at least stand with the people who do.

“Oh, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, and yet I swear this oath— America will be!”

-Langston Hughes

Eroc Arroyo-Montano is a founding member of the Hip Hop group Foundation Movement. An educator, artist, activist and a proud father of 3.

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“I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised and misunderstood.”

-Audre Lorde

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Go to CCAE.org to register for classes now!

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FEATURE

NEWS TO US

ON DAVID FOSTER WALLACE, WRITING, AND MASSACHUSETTS FEATURE

Excerpted from ‘Process’ by Sarah Stodola Amazon Publishing (January 2015)

She’d rather be a character in a book than a real person.

So said a college girlfriend to David Foster Wallace once, maybe expressing a longheld sentiment, maybe offering the kind of throwaway remark spoken late at night when exhaustion has turned thoughts inside out. Or perhaps she only felt bored, and wouldn’t it be nice to experience the novelty of a more noteworthy life for a while?

Whatever the impulse behind it, it struck Wallace and stuck with him. He found himself thinking about just what she’d meant: What’s the difference between a character in a book and a real person, and how does language dictate one or both? He thought about the concept so much that a story grew up around it. Wallace spent a good chunk of his senior year at Amherst College feverishly turning it into his first novel, The Broom of the System, in which the plot becomes secondary to the twenty-four-year-old protagonist’s doubt in her own reality and belief that word choices are controlling her life. Wallace himself was twenty-four years old when the novel came out.

PROCESS continued on pg. 12

THE PROCESS BEHIND

‘PROCESS’

BY DIGSTAFF

New York-based author Sarah Stodola, an old friend of the Dig editors from our wild days in Gotham, spent the last few years researching, studying, obsessing over the peculiar writing habits of artists ranging from Didion to Hemingway, Rushdie to Morrison, Kafka to Wallace.

Naturally, we had to ask a couple of questions about how she put her own project together …

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DB: The biggest, most obvious question: What was YOUR process like writing this book? How long? Where? Did you transcribe notes by hand, like a friggin’ weirdo? Did you use a typewriter?

SS: Hysterical and panic-driven? It turns that I’m superregimented in the face of a serious deadline like this one, even though the hysteria and panic linger close to the surface.

I gave myself three weeks to finish the draft of each chapter, a framework that I more or less succeeded in sticking to. I always took my notes by hand during the research phase, but the writing itself always happened on the computer. Then I had to print things out again in order to edit them with a blue pen.

During the roughly year and a half I spent writing Process, I worked mostly at home, but sometimes at a restaurant near the apartment that lacked wifi. I was so

much better in the mornings, and so much worse after four or so hours of continuous work.

DB: Which of the authors are you absolutely infatuated with? Also which are you not so fond of, and why did they end up in the book? Who was cut that you really wanted to include, and why?

SS: I wouldn’t have included any authors that I don’t have at least a grudging respect for. That said, my favorite authors to write about were those I related to in my own writing life, or those that surprised me in some way: Zadie Smith, who never knows where she’s headed when she starts a project; Richard Price, who is so frank—not to mention hilarious—in discussing his struggles with procrastination; Virginia Woolf, who despite her reputation was a fun-loving person.

David Foster Wallace was the most difficult chapter for me, I think because one, he’s so fascinating a figure that the research never felt finished, and two, he’s an easy guy to overanalyze.

I would love to have included Jonathan Franzen, because his beef with current technologies is one that a lot of writers and readers respond strongly to. But there are so many parallels between DFW and Franzen, I ultimately felt it made sense to include only one of them.

DB: Where did the majority of your research come from? Written interviews? Recorded ones?

SS: I spent a lot of time in the Berg Collection of the New

York Public Library, where the archives of writers like Woolf, Philip Roth, and Kerouac are housed. I conducted original interviews where possible. I read a lifetime’s worth of biographies. And then, luckily, we live in an age in which oceans of interviews are at our fingertips, on video, radio, podcast, and in print. So, you know, YouTube. Hours and hours spent in the dark corners of YouTube.

DB: What is the absolute gem of all gems that you included that fans of a certain writer may not have previously known (though I’m sure they’ll all pretend that they already knew)?

SS: Jack Kerouac never learned to drive.

DB: How interested are you in the writing lives of average people, writers in your neighborhood, stuff like that? Are you known to knock around Brooklyn coffee shops asking people for their secret methods?

SS: If I’m in a Brooklyn coffee shop, it’s as a hermit-in-public. But I love the conversations I’ve had with non-famous writers about their processes as a result of writing this book. A friend of mine recently divulged that she prints out everything she writes three times, in three different fonts, because she notices things in Garamond that for whatever reason didn’t pop out in Arial. I love that. It had never occurred to me to use fonts as an editing tool, but now I think I’ll try it.

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PROCESS continued from pg. 10 Broom was the first of what would turn out to be only three novels, the third one left unfinished when Wallace died by his own hand in 2008 at the age of forty-six.

Each explores a simple yet overarching theme that for Wallace was one of life’s most complicated puzzles. Given the young Wallace’s tendencies toward overindulgence— with drinking, pot smoking, and women, to scratch the surface—it’s no surprise that as he made his way to Arizona for an MFA program after Broom, his thoughts turned to that very modern, very American concept of excess. He became obsessed with the idea of too much—too much drug intake, too much entertainment at our fingertips, too much expectation for our talents.

Wallace began to articulate this obsession through several writing projects that eventually merged into one. In his midtwenties, Wallace started a story about a video so entertaining that viewers watch it until they die. Soon after, he started a separate one about a tennis prodigy and the peculiar neuroses of his very modern family (Wallace himself was a competitive tennis player in high school). Several years later, after a failed attempt to quit writing altogether and earn a PhD in philosophy at Harvard, Wallace went into treatment for alcohol addiction. At the tail end of it, he moved into a halfway house outside Boston. He took copious notes while there about the people he met for whom excess had nearly become a death sentence. In particular, an outsized character known as “Big Craig” became the basis for a story about a man named Don Gately. It occurred to Wallace then that the three stories belonged together, and his dizzying second novel, Infinite Jest, began to take shape.

After half a decade of incubation, he wrote it in three years.

Wallace seemed to come with the fully realized ability to write. By 1995, though, as the publication of Infinite Jest was nearing, his easy enthusiasm had ceded to something darker. “I have a lot of dread and terror and inadequacy-shit, now, when I’m trying to write. I didn’t used to,” he wrote to Don DeLillo that year. In 1998, reminiscing about the journey of a writer in his essay “The Nature of Fun,” he wrote, “In the beginning, when you first start out trying to write fiction, the whole endeavor’s about fun. You don’t expect anybody else to read it.” But success in writing changes the writer, he believed. “Things start to get complicated and confusing, not to mention scary.” To come out on the other side, he wrote, one can “sustain the fun of writing only by confronting the very same unfun parts of yourself you’d first used writing to avoid.”

By the time he was working on his third novel, The Pale King, the insecurity had set in more or less permanently. He did not, in the end, come out on the other side.

Which isn’t to say that he could no longer write.

Wallace wrote things that weren’t The Pale King, but when it came to the next great novel that he viewed as his most important project, he felt enduringly stuck. (And yet we have a 547-page unfinished novel called The Pale King.) Most writers start out not knowing how to write and gradually gain a sense of competence, if things go well. Wallace came out of the gate knowing what to do, but slowly lost his ease around words.

The struggle produced an anxiety that soaked his writing days. “If past experience holds true,” Wallace said of his future writing in 1997, “I will probably write an hour a day and spend eight hours a day biting my knuckle and worrying about not writing.” The angst spread well beyond his writing. “He had anxiety about everything,” says Juliana Harms, who was engaged to Wallace in the late nineties.

When Wallace did get down to writing, he wrote first drafts in his small, slanted handwriting in notebooks or, during at least one phase in the 1990s, on legal pads. Part of a draft of The Pale King was written in a notebook with a character from the animated TV series Rugrats on the cover, another in one featuring a photo of kittens. These drafts came after the running observational notes he kept, often in steno pads filled with text that could be serious or veer toward screwball, and also with a fair number of doodles dotting the pages. Wallace once called himself a “five draft man,” writing three drafts by hand, then typing out two further drafts, all destined to have copious notes in the margins, words crossed out, and the occasional smiley-face sticker placed near a passage he felt he’d done well with. Wallace happily declared himself to be the fastest and most adroit “two-finger typist” he’d ever heard of, not that he necessarily faced stiff competition in that realm. Of course, his claims of such exacting processes have to be understood as a goal more than a reality. Wallace didn’t necessarily stick to his own rules.

If Wallace was writing well, the words tumbled out of him in bursts that could last for a string of hours or a couple of days. While writing The Broom of the System, he claimed at one point to have written twenty-four pages of it in three hours.

He once showed up on a Monday after disappearing over the weekend to tell his girlfriend that he’d written a thirty-page short story called “Little Expressionless Animals” “straight through.” His old roommate, Mark Costello, claimed Wallace could at certain times write twenty-five thousand words in one day.

Wallace didn’t need a particular writing space when things were clicking. He felt he could write anywhere—in a coffee shop or his apartment or at the library.

“In the beginning, when you first start out trying to write fiction, the whole endeavor’s about fun. You don’t expect anybody else to read it ... Things start to get complicated and confusing, not to mention scary.”

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PROCESS continued from pg. 12 When his then fiancée Juliana Harms accompanied him to a gathering of MacArthur “geniuses” in 1999, he stayed in the hotel room much of the time to write. When they took a trip to Jamaica, he wrote in the hotel bathroom.

And yet he was dedicated to the strange writing spaces he set up for himself at home. Starting in college, he laid towels out around his writing spot, by-products of the several showers he was known to take every day. When he lived in Syracuse for a short time while working on Infinite Jest, he chose an apartment so small that when he wrote, he moved everything off the desk and onto the bed, and when it was time to sleep, did the reverse. When he moved back to Illinois for a teaching job and bought his first house, he chose a writing room and painted it completely black, then filled it with old lamps. He stacked books on the floor and constantly pinned drafts or other printed materials to the walls. He sipped mineral water with a lime wedge throughout the writing day there and looked on the room as his inner sanctum. When he moved to California to teach at Pomona College, the lamps came along, too, settling into the garage of his new house there. His wife, Karen Green, took charge of the paint this time, covering the walls in red, along with some random things that had made the move out west with him, including a poster of Gustav Klimt’s “The Kiss.”

Prolific phases could make Wallace euphoric. The writing came with such a thrilling force, it hardly required organization or a schedule. “Routines and disciplines go out the window simply because I don’t need them,” he said of these phases. They also made him superstitious. He’d sometimes make sure to use the same pen as the previous day when things were humming along, calling it his “orgasm pen.”

But being on a roll may have caused Wallace to become careless. Maybe things were going so well he forgot to see the need for his edifying daily jog, or a reasonable bedtime. “As the healthy activities diminished,” says Harms, “that is when he started working later, sleeping later, and watching more television.” And then the writing began to suffer.

When writer’s block descended, it lingered like sludge. “It was an agonizing pull for him to really try to come back from that,” says Harms.

Wallace sought out plenty of tricks to combat it, none of them reliably successful. He set up those previously unnecessary schedules. He asked other writers about their routines. Before he quit both for good, he smoked pot or drank in an effort to kickstart his mind. Harms calls these techniques, cumulatively, his “antiprocess.”

“David, especially with his addiction issues, and his very, very, very busy mind, he craved a sense of routine, but he also fought against it,” she says.

And as always, he found himself chronically distracted. He was obsessive about television and could sit for hours on end watching it. On the other hand, Wallace wrote—and maybe even convinced himself—that watching television could be valuable research. The tube’s “kind of window on nervous American self-perception is just invaluable in terms of writing fiction,” he once observed in an essay in which he delved seriously into the connection between the contemporary novelist and the tube. In the same essay, he dissected not only why television is such an appealing time-suck, but also how it can distort reality for the fiction writer in dangerous ways.

Another go-to distraction from writing involved, of all things, writing. Wallace typed old-fashioned letters to any number of people, many of them writers: Mary Karr, whom he dated; Jonathan Franzen, with whom he became friends via these letters; and Don DeLillo, whom he’d never met but who allowed him to pick his brain about the writing life. In one letter to DeLillo, he wrote of his problem “taking halfhours off to write letters like this and still calling it Writing Time.” Perhaps no great writer has ever been so effusive about his writer’s block. Wallace wrote and wrote about his inability to write. “My thoughts now have the urgent but impeded quality of speechlessness in dreams,” Wallace wrote in a letter to Franzen. In these letters, he’d marvel at the ability of other writers to stick to their routines, to simply get down to work when they told themselves to.

Surprisingly, Wallace didn’t have a problem with the Internet. In a 1998 interview he claimed never to have been on it before, although that would seem an exaggeration. Indeed, he participated in an online interview in 1996. His reasons for staying away may have been manifold. “One, I think his comfort was in handwriting,” says Harms. “But two, I also think he had enough wisdom to know that the Internet might do to him as opposed to for him.” Considering his ingenious ability to encapsulate the pitfalls that come with access to unlimited stimuli, the Internet preoccupied Wallace far less than one would expect.

“David, especially with his addiction issues, and his very, very, very busy mind, he craved a sense of routine, but he also fought against it.”

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INTRODUCING: MADLIMPICS Did the summer olympics in boston really cost $50 billion?

BY KENT BUCKLEY

FATHER COMES HOME FROM THE WARS @ AMERICAN REPERTORY THEATER MLK CELEBRATION W/ CHUCK D @ BERKLEE PERFORMANCE CENTER MIGHTY MYSTIC @ HOUSE OF BLUES UPCOMING COMEDY @ THE WILBUR BACONPALOOZA VI @ OLDE MAGOUN’S SALOON MADLIMPICS is a satirical online series by DigBoston in which we take old articles about what an utter disaster former Olympics have been, and replace a bunch of the words and phrases to make them relevant to Massachusetts. Think of it as our way of looking into the future. This installment is an interpolation of a 2.10.14 Washington Post feature titled, "Did the Winter Olympics in Sochi really cost $50 billion? A closer look at that figure."

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Did the Summer Olympics in Boston really cost $50 billion?

Both numbers more or less hardened into the “official” estimate when the Games opened last week. Although few stories mention it, the source of that estimate was Vladimir Rubin, a deputy prime minister who headed New England’s Olympic preparatory commission, which was charged with supervising the work in Boston. Last February, Rubin told reporters in Moscow that wealthy people from around Boston were prepared to invest 1.5 trillion rubles, which was the equivalent of $50 billion.

But like most large round numbers, this one needs a few caveats and asterisks.

For starters, currency fluctuations over the past year have altered the original value of Rubin’s estimate. Based on current exchange rates, his 1.5 trillion rubles had shrunk to $43.1 billion when Boston staged its Opening Ceremonies on Friday.

The second problem is that Rubin’s figure is a year old. Given that the cost estimates quadrupled between the year Boston was chosen to host the Games and now, there’s reason to be skeptical about a year-old number. Wouldn’t an additional year add to, or at least change, a figure that had been wildly inflating over the preceding six years?

Also, estimating the cost of the Games depends on how, and what, is counted.

Rubin said that Massachusetts would spend $6.7 billion on Olympic facilities. He said Washington would invest another $16.7 billion in upgrading rails, roads and other infrastructure. That comes to $23.4 billion — massive, but not even halfway to $50 billion.

The rest of his projection included private, speculative investment by Olympic sponsors, including billionaire friends of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Rubin hopes the Olympic stimulus will turn Boston into a year-round tourist magnet long after the Olympics are over, and it encouraged investment in hotels and other facilities in the region.

But not all of this spending was directly related to the Olympics, such as the construction of a Formula One racetrack in Mattapan that reportedly cost $350 million. And as Rubin noted, some of

this money would have been spent by public and private sources without the Olympics.

Then there are the allegations of corruption to consider.

Dissident Western Mass politicians, such as Boris Nemtsov and Alexei Navalny, have said Boston's oligarchs padded their Olympic construction bills by the billions in order to skim governmentbacked loans. It’s difficult to be certain of this — government officials dispute claims of widespread fraud — but the numbers floated are as fantastic as the official figures; Nemtsov says as much as $30 billion has been stolen.

All of these nuances have been compressed, or perhaps overlooked, in the widely reported $50 (or $51) billion price tag.

Attention-grabbing by itself, the big number seems to support a larger media theme: These Olympics are designed to showcase Mayor Marty Walsh’s autocratic rule and to make a grand statement about a newly assertive Hub. “For President Putin [staging the Games] is a chance to show off Russia as a resurgent superpower,” wrote the Times of London.

Indeed, there’s a lot of monkey-see, monkey-do behind the reporting of the Olympic budget, said Craig Silverman, author of the Regret the Error blog and a book about media mistakes.

“Journalists love numbers,” he said. “Give us stats, dollars, polls, percentages and we eat them up and spit them out to push forward an assertion, trend or angle. So when a nice, big number about an important event makes its way into stories by seemingly credible outlets, that figure basically becomes true and usable in the view of other media outlets.

“It’s kind of scary when you think about it,” Silverman added. “If you can manage to get a fake or exaggerated figure into one or two reports, chances are it will take on a life, and credibility, of its own.

This phenomenon repeats itself ad nauseam.”

Perhaps no one outside the innermost recesses of City Hall will ever know for sure what the Boston Olympics cost. But you could pretty safely wager $50 billion that the price tag wasn’t $50 billion.

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Parking sucks. This could help.

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CO-HABITAT

Surf, turf, Mexico and a touch of Austin, Texas converge in Southie

BY DAN MCCARTHY @ACUTALPROOF

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These days, the news of some non-tradtional Southie bar or restaurant opening is not really news at all.

For some time now, the slow, creeping hand of gentrification and infiltration by the kind of destination spots normally reserved for the South End has made waves into South Boston, and the most recent bandleader of that breed of eatery has been the successful new go-to, Lincoln Tavern and Restaurant on West Broadway.

Until, that is, the team behind Lincoln doubled down on the very stretch of street they occupy by gutting and relaunching the old Pan Asia space (known for its big scorpion bowls and screaming hangovers) as Loco Taqueria and Oyster Bar. Call it an amalgamation of Mexico and the strewn-lights and naked steel, slate, and wood-lined spots of Austin, Texas. If you’re confused, don’t be. Chef Nicholas Dixon, after all, has a plan.

“It’s a Southern California, Baha-style taqueria with creative ceviches, and different oysters and clams,” he says. “We kinda get creative with that whole thing, and we [wanted to] do different flavored ices [for the raw bar items], like thai basil ice, and a pineapple black pepper ice.”

If the sound of flavored ices on killer mollusks and shellfish sounds like sacrilege, there’s comfort in knowing Nixon is working closely with local providers (Think: Island Creek and Moon Shoal Oysters, and even Seaport staple Georges Bank) for the fish program, while nailing down the menu, which utilizes the well-received use of wood fire from Loco’s sister restaurant Lincoln and extends it to everything from the surf to the turf, and the stuff in-between.

“We char a lot of our fruit, and we take those charred fruits to incorporate them into salsas and some of our juices as well,” he says. “With a lot of our tacos you’re going to taste, along with the fresh seafood and the really light meats, you’re gonna get this salsa that’s really fruity, tangy, sweet—a little bit of sour and a little bit of this charred element from the grill.”

“We came up with charring the fruit and incorporating that into some of the sauces and salsas [from Lincoln]. I brought my best one, two, and three guys over here, and we kinda collaborated together and created this really fun, light, fresh menu [for here].”

Some of those light, fresh accents can be attributed to a unique use of a special olive oil that Dixon himself chose, which has won accolades as one of the best olive oils in the country: Katz Organic California Olive Oil out of Napa Valley.

Tim Chatignay, chef de cuisine, is making his mark on the menu as well, notably with his use of pickling, evidenced in the creating of a fried masa (cornmeal dough) with pickled cilantro stems. “We go through so much cilantro over here and we saved all the stems, and he’s really into pickling and vinegars,” says Dixon.

“The kid’s super talented,” he says. “This is the third restaurant he’s worked with me in, and he’s definitely my rock … a huge addition. Now he’s hopefully gonna run the show while we’re here.” >> LOCO TAQUERIA AND OYSTER BAR. NOW OPEN. 412 WEST BROADWAY, BOSTON. 617-917-5626. LOCOSOUTHBOSTON.COM

>> SPOTHERO. NOW AVAILABLE ON ITUNES AND THE GOOGLE PLAY STORE. SPOTHERO.COM/BOSTON

PHOTO BY MICHAEL DISKIN

EATS

If this week’s snowpocalypse spotlights one thing in particular, it’s the long-standing and well-known horror show befalling any poor Boston sot with a car, and nary a place to park it when push comes to shove.

Or, if a space saver isn’t honored (God forbid), when shove comes to tribalistic violent retribution.

But snow is fleeting (mostly) and come spring and summer, you’re still going to be going out to city events and concerts, and at some point or another will probably have a friend from the suburbs or out of town hit you up about the best place to park.

Typically, your response has been “If you figure that out, be sure to let me know.” But it doesn’t have to be, because, as with everything these days, there’s an app for that.

Meet SpotHero, one of the highest rated ondemand parking apps on iTunes and Google Play, a no-sign-up-fee, immediate parking assistant for you or anyone looking to place their vroom-vroom while enjoying the city at large. Released last Spring, it works directly with parking operators (instead of venues) to offer commuters two to three times less expensive rates at garages, valets, independent parking lots, and other vehicle-storage emporiums for everything from universities (Harvard, Boston University, Tufts, MIT), sporting events (Gillette, TD Garden, Fenway), restaurants all over town—even different neighborhoods, Logan, and municipal buildings (two words: jury duty).

How it works: Download the app, and simply tell it where you’re going and what you need to park near. It sources the different partners it works with to “reserve” you a space, and allows you to roll up anytime within the range you’ve secured to have a spot guaranteed for you. You get a parking pass through the app and detailed instructions to your reserved spot, and if there is any kind of issue there you can reach the SpotHero “customer heroes” through the app to assist with anything from app functionality tofinding another spot if something went wrong.

It’s also, at present, the only on-demand parking app to accept Apple Pay. So there’s that, too.

KAREN CINPINSKI @CATSINPJS

B.B.Q. TAILGATE BUFFET

FEBRUARY 1ST 5-8PM PULLED PORK SMOKED CHICKEN HOT LINKS COUNTRY RIBS JALAPENO BACON MAC & CHEESE CREAMY COLE SLAW SMOKED BEANS Wormtown Brewery’s recent expansion was a matter of supply and demand. The Worcester-based brewery had routinely sold out of its sudsy wonderment and needed to increase production to meet the demand of hops zealots.

Since its start in 2010, Wormtown has steadily grown from a project employing master Brewer Ben Roesch and one part-time employee to one backed by five additional full-time employees and distributing across nearly all of Massachusetts. Among the newbies is head brewer Megan Parisi, who joined the outfit last June, bringing 10 years of industry experience. Most recently, Parisi served as head brewer at Bluejacket Brewery in DC, where she helped build production from the ground up, acquiring practical experience she’s leveraging at Wormtown to get the new brewhouse system dialed in for production.

“I’m most excited about helping to facilitate the transition to the new, expanded brewery while maintaining the standards already in place by the existing team at Wormtown Brewery,” says Parisi.

As of this past summer, Wormtown moved to the 10,000-square-foot Buick building at 72 Shrewsbury Street. According to Parisi, they’re still ramping up, but soon the new digs will not only provide hella space to brew more (and more frequently), but will also facilitate public interaction through scheduled guided tours, and a tasting room where growlers are at the ready.

“For now, we have more space in which to operate that gives the illusion that we’ll be tripping over each other much less. However, we’ll be filling up that space in time and, while it will never be as crowded as the former space, it’ll never be as spacious as it is now,” says Parisi.

Increased production has already allowed for new recipes. Bottle Rocket Pale Ale and Warthog Wheat, two year-round styles that Parisi helped design alongside Roesch, will accompany Wormtown’s most well-known sipper, Be Hoppy, an American IPA and Parisi’s personal favorite.

The brand-new Bottle Rocket recipe will have broader appeal for those who find Be Hoppy too aggressive, whereas Warthog Wheat, based on the MassWhole Hefeweizen recipe, is a Bavarianstyle Hefeweizen, different from the American wheat beers typically sold year-round.

“Wormtown beers have been brewed with the same enthusiasm and passion from day one,” says Parisi, “We’ve established brands and styles over the last five years, so our loyal customers have high expectations. My job is to make sure that we meet those expectations each day and consistently produce outstanding beers. It sounds easy enough, but it’s going to keep me on my toes—we can’t let them down.”

“I’m most excited about helping to facilitate the transition to the new, expanded brewery while maintaining the standards already in place by the existing team at Wormtown Brewery,”

SOUTHERN POTATO SALAD BISCUITS & CORN BREAD

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FRI 1.30

FRI 1.30

SAT 1.31

SAT 1.31

TUES 2.3

WED 2.4

Red Alert: A Space Comedy

Celebrating the Arts

A Raucous Revival

The Sketchbook Show

European Swordsmanship

Pastie Making Workshop

improv in space

what’s your dream

comedy, music, burlesque, oh my

the artist’s diary

defend your name

DIY nipple couture

If there’s any setting with infinite comedic possibilities, it’s outer space (and maybe GOP strategy meetings). And with this weekend’s ImprovBoston show, the USS Starship Caliburn departs for its final galactic adventure and it’s up to you to make it the most dramatic yet. How, you say? By taking advantage of the red button given to all audience members, which, when pushed, sends the crew into crisis mode, altering the show. The power is yours.

To all the ladies out there who’ve left their dreams of the spotlight to wither in the shadows of life comes this event from DreamsCo. If you wanted to be a Rockette, they’ve got Rockette-ish instructors for that. Dream about being the next Judy Blume? There are female authors to help you on your way. Or what about breathing fire? Well, you’re out of luck. Join the circus for that. Or try it at home.

And YouTube it.

The good people of Midnight Mischief Cabaret decided to do every bored person a favor by creating an event that’s chockfull of stand-up comedy, burlesque, live music and, naturally, contortionists.

(It’s not a party without contortionists.) With all this going on, even the pickiest person can find something to satisfy their late-night entertainment itch. Back scratcher not necessary.

Especially if you’re already a contortionist.

Sure, you hated when your siblings read your diary while growing up, but that didn’t exactly stop you from snooping in theirs. And this is your last shot to snoop in the diaries of local artists in this Nave Gallery show comprising the personal sketchbook pages of many different creators. See the underbelly of their work without the shame and guilt, because hey, if they really didn’t want you to see it, they would’ve hidden it better.

Have you ever had anyone offend your honor, and then feel that flipping them off didn’t seem to do the trick? Well, after this class in single-handed sword skills, you can trade in your middle finger for a dueling glove and steel weapon, and channel your inner Zorro.

Oh, and if you left your sword at your parents’ place, they have a couple on site.

Win win.

If you’re anything like us, there have been occasions where you were wearing a truly killer outfit, but you still couldn’t help but feel like something was missing.

Something along the lines of sequins and tassels on your nipples, let’s say.

Thankfully, the considerate ladies of Rogue Burlesque have sought to end your confusion by hosting this community craft night for creating just that.

Men welcome. Weird, but welcome.

ImprovBoston, 40 Prospect St, Cambridge.

10Pm/16+/$18. improvboston.com

NGIN Workplace, 210 Broadway, Cambridge. 6pm/all ages/$30. 101dreamscometrue.com

Davis Square Theatre, 255 Elm St., Davis Sq., Somerville. 9pm/21+/$15. davissquaretheatre.com

Nave Gallery Annex, 53 Chester St, Somerville.

2-8pm/all ages/FREE. navegallery.org

Green Street Studios, 185 Green Street, Cambridge.

7:30pm/all ages/$20. schoolofmars.com

Out of the Blue Gallery, 541 Mass Ave, Central Sq., Cambridge. 7pm/18+/$15. rogueburlesque.com

PHOTO BY AUSTIN DICKEY

GREEN LINE TRACKS ARE AT THEIR PRETTIEST WHEN YOU’RE NOT RIDING ON THEM.

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KEEP IT REAL

GETTING WILDER

Charlie Ahearn on ‘Wild Style’

Giraffage goes sample-free for ‘No Reason’

BY MARTÍN CABALLERO @_EL_CABALLERO

BY MARTÍN CABALLERO @_EL_CABALLERO

Charlie Ahearn didn’t invent hip-hop, but as director of the landmark film Wild Style, he helped bring it to life. Ahead of a screening at the Brattle, at which he’ll also be showing several of his hip-hop-related short films, Ahearn talked about the sights, sounds and personalities he encountered while immersed in New York’s emerging artistic movement 32 years ago.

How did you first connect with Fab 5 Freddy?

The spark was a meeting between Fred and myself in June 1980. Fred and I had been hanging out in the same clubs, but we weren’t actually introduced to each other until he came up and introduced himself to me. From then on, it was wide open. It was very fast and I spent every Friday and Saturday night going to clubs.

How did you build connections with people within the scene?

At first they thought I was a cop, and once they got past that they thought I must be a real filmmaker, because if not, what was I doing there? I was too old, I was white. I didn’t fit in, so people didn’t know what to make of me.

The word got out that I was making a film and people were very interested in inviting me to come over to their places to hang out or giving me fliers to their future shows, and each flier introduced me to five new people ... So this was a connection that was very organic and real.

I didn’t just show up and then go away and come back a year later. I was there every weekend.

Everybody knew me.

BEST PROM PHOTO EVER “Honestly, I feel like sampling laws are kind of wack,” he explains. “I know on [baauer’s] ‘Harlem Shake,’ for example, one guy says one line in the song and he got paid an insane amount. I don’t think it’s proportionate to the amount of work that he did for the song. So for an album like Comfort to be made in 2015, it would take a shitload of money, which I do not have. It definitely would not be feasible at this point in the traditional, clearing-all-the-samples type way.”

The irony is that in restricting some of his familiar creative instincts, No Reason has freed Giraffage to discover new ones. The opening cut “Hello” feels like a distant relative of “Computer Love,” interjecting dial tones and text message alerts amidst the electronic warbling. “Be With You,” meanwhile, adorns the bedroom-pop vocal with glittering chimes and warm synth pulsations.

Of his reconfigured creative process, Giraffage says, “On this record I became more collaborative. I hit up a lot of my friends who sing and got stems from them, just to chop up those things without having to worry about clearing anything. I also would record a lot more than I used to. I would make my own snares and claps and things like that, just from banging on a desk or clapping into a mike.”

He still throws uncleared samples around in his live sets, but by tuning them out for No Reason, he suggests that his inner artist could be heard a little clearer.

“I think [not using samples] may have made it more personal and more truthful,” he says. “It’s more original than ever.”

What have you been working on lately?

I met this guy in Paris and he was very excited to meet me because he said Wild Style changed his life, and he was a graffiti artist. So I said, ‘You paint walls?’ And he said ‘No, I paint the Metro.’

I was very skeptical and I asked him to show me pictures. He said, ‘No, I’ll take you there.’

This was a lot to bite off because I was leaving the next morning, and here was this guy who was obviously drunk and wanted to meet me somewhere in the north of Paris sometime after the subway closed down. I decided to go anyway, despite the craziness and the risk, and went out with a camera that fits into my pocket, and we broke in and spent four hours in the Metro running around in tunnels. I’m going to show the movie that I made [Dirt Style] that night. >> WILD STYLE + CHARLIE AHEARN. THURS 1.29.

BRATTLE THEATRE, 40 BRATTLE ST., CAMBRIDGE. 617.876.6838. 7:30PM/$12. BRATTLEFILM.ORG. READ THE COMPLETE INTERVIEW ON DIGBOSTON.COM

>> GIRAFFAGE WITH SPAZZKID, ROBOKID & DJ CARBO. THURS 1.29. BRIGHTON MUSIC HALL, 158 BRIGHTON AVE., ALLSTON. 617.779.0140.

8PM/18+/$15. GIRAFFAGE.COM

MUSIC EVENTS

DIGBOSTON.C0M

01 28 15 – 02 04 15

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THU 1.29

SKA GOODNESS REEL BIG FISH + LESS THAN JAKE + AUTHORITY ZERO

[House of Blues, 15 Lansdowne St., Boston, 630pm/all ages/$25-40. houseofblues.com]

FRI 1.30

AVANT-GARDE BENT KNEE + SOMETHING LIKE A MONUMENT + LEFT HAND DOES + ENDATION

[O’Brien’s Pub, 3 Harvard Ave., Allston. 8pm/21+/$8. obrienspubboston.com]

FOLKY YET EDGY MARGARET GLASPY + ELLIE BUCKLAND + ISA BURKE

[Passim, 47 Palmer St., Cambridge. 8pm/all ages/$15. passim.org]

SAT 1.31

ALT-ROCK DOGZ DR. DOG + CHADWICK STOKES

[House of Blues, 15 Lansdowne St., Boston, 6pm/all ages/$30-45. houseofblues.com]

MON 2.2

ELECTRONIC SOLID STATE ENTITY + W00DY + NEW LANGUAGE COLLABORATIVE

[Midway Cafe, 3496 Washington St., Jamaica Plain. 8pm/21+/$5. midwaycafe.com]

TUE 2.3

LITERAL CLOWNS PUDDLES PITY PARTY

[The Sinclair, 52 Church St., Cambridge. 8pm/18+/$25. sinclaircambridge.com]

GIRAFFAGE PHOTO BY GRADY BRANNAN

Giraffage’s career can be split evenly into two parts.

The first, which began around 2012, saw the emergence of an exciting new producer from the Bay Area with a talent for sampling existing material, which he then proceeds to craft into amorphous electronic music capable of coolly drifting from blitzing heavy synths to sugary Zapp-style R&B instrumentals. That period’s output included two wellreceived LPs and gigs at the Boiler Room and LA’s Low End Theory, inviting comparisons to the likes of Shlohmo and sometime-collaborator XXYXX. The second phase of his career, which began with the release of the EP No Reason in November, is just getting underway, but the boundaries are already starkly defined: No uncleared samples beyond this point.

“Giraffage started as a sample-based project, so it was kind of weird to just not sample altogether,” says the producer, born Charlie Yin, on the phone as his tour bus passes through Texas. No Reason marks his first foray into sample-free original productions. “When I say “no samples on my album,” that’s actually not completely true. A lot of them are royalty-free sample packs that I’m using. I’m still manipulating samples, but I have to make sure they are royalty-free and OK to be used and released.”

It should be noted that the change isn’t completely voluntary: In signing with indie powerhouse Fool’s Gold Records, Giraffage essentially conceded that making another album flush with dozens of uncleared samples, like his 2012 debut Comfort, was no longer a realistic possibility without a massive budget.

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FILM

ROPEFUL ROMANTIC

‘The Duke of Burgundy’: the BDSM love story audiences deserve

BY KRISTOFER JENSON @DAILYFANBOY

IS IT WRONG THAT I’M WONDERING HOW MUCH THOSE TILES COST PER SQUARE FOOT?

Trailers for Peter Strickland’s The Duke of Burgundy, opening at the Brattle this Friday, give the impression that the film is heralding a revival of the “classy” European erotica movement of the 1960s and ’70s. With lush visuals, crawling maids, condescending mistresses, heaving corsets, and a quote from The Hollywood Reporter calling it “kinky as a coiled rope,” its marketing pitch relies heavily on its appeal to those already familiar with kink and the Eurosleaze of Jess Franco.

These components are an integral part of the film, but those familiar with Strickland’s previous film, Berberian Sound Studio, are already aware of his ability to utilize the narrative logic of 1970s exploitation cinema and use it to reach new dramatic, psychological, and artistic heights. Both Studio and Burgundy employ styles and settings borrowed from bygone genres—giallo and erotica, respectively—to tell wholly unique stories that rely less on lurid shock while still maintaining every ounce of atmosphere.

The Duke of Burgundy begins with an erotically charged scenario in which the submissive Evelyn arrives at the impossibly picturesque manor of the commanding Cynthia in an unnamed Central European town populated only by apparently wealthy, erudite women. Evelyn is to be Cynthia’s maid for the day, performing tasks such as washing intimates, rubbing feet, and scrubbing the floor on all fours, all while being chided for her tardiness and being refused permission to use the toilet.

This opening is sold as a titillating Franco fantasy, but we later learn that this was in fact one of several staged scenarios that the pair act out in the context of a loving relationship. Yet the duo is not equally kinky, a fact that weighs heavily on Cynthia when it becomes an obstacle to her ability to perform acts that give her no pleasure, but that she follows through with out of love for her partner. After a while, her scripted lines and actions become rote and empty. She cannot improvise the sort of humiliation that Evelyn desires, and when the abuse comes from a place of genuine frustration, it thickens the fine line between roleplay and romantic schism. The apex of this tension arrives in the form of a particularly overwhelming, abstract sequence that is totally divorced from the narrative yet firmly grounded in the story. It must be seen to be believed.

Strickland is a filmmaker of rare talent, a technically gifted craftsman who relies heavily on artistic instinct. The Duke of Burgundy will have an impact on you whether or not its constituent components are taken literally. You don’t need to be kinky to sympathize; whereas a film like Secretary is functionally a BDSM fairy tale, Burgundy uses its fantastical setting and heightened sexuality to portray romantic tribulations familiar to us all. >> THE DUKE OF BURGUNDY. NOT RATED. OPENS FRIDAY AT BRATTLE THEATRE. 40 BRATTLE ST., CAMBRIDGE. 617-876-6838. BRATTLEFILM.ORG

FILM EVENTS THU 1.29

FOREIGN FAVORITE OF 2014 FORCE MAJEURE

[Museum of Fine Arts.

465 Huntington Ave., Boston.

Thu 1.29 5pm, Fri 1.30 7:30pm. NR. mfa.org/film]

DIGBOSTON.C0M

01 28 15 – 02 04 15

28

DIRECTOR CHARLIE AHEARN IN PERSON WILD STYLE

[Brattle Theatre. 40 Brattle St., Harvard Sq., Cambridge.

7:30pm/R/$10-$12. brattlefilm.org]

FRI 1.30

REVOLUTIONARY 1922 DOCUMENTARY NANOOK OF THE NORTH

[Harvard Film Archive.

24 Quincy St., Harvard Sq., Cambridge. 7pm/NR/$7-$11. hcl.harvard.edu/hfa/]

TIME-VINDICATED WELLES CLASSIC MACBETH

[Harvard Film Archive.

24 Quincy St., Harvard Sq., Cambridge. 9pm/NR/$7-$11. hcl.harvard.edu/hfa/]

@FTER MIDNITE eXistenZ

[Coolidge Corner.

290 Harvard St., Brookline.

Fri 1.30 & Sat 1.31. midnight/R/ $11.25. coolidge.org] SAT 1.31

REEL WEIRD BRATTLE: MAD ROMANCE THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES

[Brattle Theatre. 40 Brattle St., Harvard Sq., Cambridge.

11:30pm/PG-13/$8-$11. brattlefilm.org]

BY SPENCER SHANNON @SUSPENCEY

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It’s the last run-through of Breath & Imagination before the weekend’s tech and dress rehearsals. The house lights remain on, and random objects stand in for many of the props while actors take their places still dressed in street clothes—save for a long skirt here, or a tuxedo jacket there.

Then Elijah Rock steps forward, his voice rising and filling the empty venue right up to the rafters, and brings Roland Hayes to life. His singing transcends the lessthan-optimal setting: It demands not only to be heard, but to be felt.

“I believe it’s no mistake that Roland would beckon me to portray him,” Rock says, fresh off of the stage after rehearsals. He speaks softly and evenly, no doubt to preserve his voice, and periodically sips from a large Thermos of pungent tea.

“Every time I do the show, my understanding of him gets deeper. Not just from an autobiographical perspective, but an emotional and spiritual one.”

This year marks Rock’s third run as Roland Hayes, a role for which he received the NAACP Theatre Award for Best Performer in 2014. The play, written by acclaimed actor, singer, and wordsmith Daniel Beaty, kicks off Beaty’s residency project I Dream: Boston, an initiative that seeks to create transformative works of art that address issues of racial inequality and spark productive conversation and longlasting change.

“We’re imagining creative ways to initiate conversations, resolve conflicts, and inspire new views and experiences of our oneness and our humanity,” Rock says.

“This story does that. That’s Daniel’s work, and that’s my work. I was attracted to Daniel and I was attracted to this work because that’s what I teach in my own life.”

Beyond the moving rags-to-riches story, Breath & Imagination touches on a pivotal moment in Hayes’ own life, when his wife and daughter were arrested in Georgia for sitting in the “whites only” section of a shoe store. Hayes himself was brutally beaten by an officer for protesting their arrest, and the experience would forever alter him. Anyone that’s been following the news of late knows that this, sadly, isn’t an issue specific to the mid-20th century.

“I think that there’s a great discourse on equality and race in this story,” Rock says.

“It transcends generations, it transcends periods. It’s a story about a human being who overcomes.”

At the core of Breath & Imagination is a tale of transformation, of triumph in the face of impossible adversity. Rock’s voice acts as an emotional thruster propelling the narrative forward, while pulling the listener along the highs and lows of his journey.

Hayes was the first African-American concert artist to rise to international acclaim—and he had to forge his path alone. “You have to realize that Roland never heard a black classical singer. [Italian operatic tenor] Caruso was the only one,” Rock says. “For him to have had the imagination that he could be the first, to do something that had never been done before, is profound. And to be, at one point, the highest paid concert singer of any race, in the world …” Rock laughs, gently. “I mean, if that’s not an inspiring story, I just don’t know what is.”

Woven throughout the beautiful juxtaposition of Southern spirituals and rich opera, Breath & Imagination tells the story of a mother and son, of a first-generation free man, of what it means not just to be an artist, but to be an artist of color in a world that built on racial stereotypes and oppression.

“We’ve always had to dance with a gun pointed at our feet, always had to sing with a rope around our necks,” Hayes’ mother, Angel Mo’ (played by Harriett D. Foy), says, bolstering her son in a moment of hopelessness. “Still we dance. Still we sing.” >> ARTSEMERSON PRESENTS: BREATH & IMAGINATION. PARAMOUNT CENTER, 559 WASHINGTON ST., BOSTON. ONGOING THROUGH SUNDAY 2/08.

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FEATURE

Elijah Rock brings Roland Hayes to the Paramount

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EARTH PRIME TIME

Scott McCloud discusses his new book The Sculptor

BY CLAY FERNALD @CLAYNFERNO

I TOTALLY HAD THIS SAME DREAM

Scott McCloud defined the language of comic book creation and critique with his Understanding Comics, so we caught up with him in advance of his forthcoming discussion at The Brattle to talk about his latest 500-page graphic novel, The Sculptor and his glorious return to comics.

What can readers expect from this book?

For starters, it’s big. It’s just under 500 pages long and it is a story about a young sculptor in New York City who had a taste of early success and is now contemplating his life as a loser when he gets an opportunity from a visitor to have everything he needs to succeed—at least physically—but he has only 200 days to live.

It is a traditional Faustian bargain; this time the supernatural visitor is Death, not The Devil. Then he crashes headlong into this romance at the eleventh hour and the question of how to spend one’s days becomes critical for him.

Whether you have 200 days to live or 80 years, the question of how you spend your time never stops being relevant. People in relationships that are artistically impressed always have that struggle. There have been other stories about that. There is the value of what we experience in the here and now, and the struggle of what we leave behind. David’s choice becomes increasingly difficult because the minutes become increasingly precious. Choosing to spend them in the wrong way looks increasingly perilous.

No one will ever tell you if you made the right choice or not. You may feel it down the road, whether you took the right path or not, but there is no verdict of how to best spend one’s day.

You are working with these huge archetypes. How did you go about laying out this whole story over 500 pages, incorporating superhero ideas—was that all there at the beginning?

Part of it was, the idea of Death was there. The conceit of what appears to be an angel at the beginning came to me at the actual making of it. There were the periods of really a few decades before I started, in earnest, working on the project, then there were the five years that it took me to make the thing.

With five years of working on it, it broke out into two stages, the layout stage in rough form and then my editor’s blessing and permission, and, at his urging, I actually redid it and redid it four times.

DIGBOSTON.C0M

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Do you have any other projects down the line?

I’m very excited about my next book, but my last book won’t let me go! It is hard to escape the clutches of this one. The next book is about visual communication and the principles that underlie any number of different fields. I want to see if I can distill how we communicate with pictures and how it is important to the future of communication. >> HARVARD BOOKS PRESENTS: SCOTT MCCLOUD DISCUSES THE SCULPTOR. 40 BRATTLE ST., CAMBRIDGE. FEB 5 AT 5:30PM/$5. HARVARD.CO/EVENT/SCOTT_MCCLOUD

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WHAT'S FOR BREAKFAST

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ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

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SECRET ASIAN MAN

BY TAK TOYOSHIMA @TAKTOYOSHIMA

31

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SAVAGE LOVE

PROGRAMMING NOTE

BY DAN SAVAGE @FAKEDANSAVAGE I’m a 32-year-old woman with two young kids, married five years.

My husband and I never had an overly exciting sex life, but after the last baby, sex became very, very infrequent. I’m a pretty sexual person, I masturbate regularly, and I have a good sexual imagination. I tried to spice things up by suggesting toys and a bit of light kink, but he wasn’t interested. He seems pretty asexual to me these days, and now I just fantasize about other men.

Last week, a mutual friend came over to have a drink. When we stepped outside to smoke a cig—just me and the other guy—he kissed me and said, “I’m going to ask your husband if I can fuck you.” He did, and surprisingly enough, my husband said go for it!

What a night! I got permission to fuck someone else. Now I’m not sure if I want to swing or just fuck other people. Advice please.

Horny Married Chick Solicited advice first: Swinging would theoretically involve you and your husband fucking other people, HMC, and if your husband isn’t interested in sex, if he’s low-to-no-libido or actually asexual, he won’t be any more interested in swinging than he is in having sex with you. As for fucking other people: That “go for it” may have

been a one-time thing, or it may have been a whenever-you-want thing, but you’ll have to check in with your husband to find out which. It’s possible that your husband is interested in cuckolding and knowing you’re messing around with other men will awaken his libido, and it’s possible that he’s neither interested in sex nor threatened by the prospect of his spouse getting it elsewhere. Have a conversation with your husband about what is and isn’t allowed going forward—talk about what you want, talk about what he wants, talk about safety and respect and primacy—but have that conversation when (1) you haven’t been drinking and (2) there’s not a gentleman caller with a boner waiting outside the front door.

Unsolicited advice second: Stop smoking. It’s bad for you and it’s bad for your kids—even if you’re careful not to smoke around them, HMC, carcinogens and other noxious chemicals cling to your skin, hair, and clothes after you’ve smoked. You’re exposing your kids to those harmful substances whenever you hug, hold, or breastfeed them. Keep fucking other people (with your husband’s okay), but quit fucking cigs.

What would you say to a woman who was forcing you to choose between her and the photos of your late first wife?

A Youngish Widower “Good-bye and good riddance, you cruel and psychotic piece of shit.”