Dig Boston Feb. 18th, 2015

DIGBOSTON.COM 2.18.15 - 2.25.15

HONEST PINT

MUSIC

STREIGHT ANGULAR

ARE CRAFT BEER BARS STILL A THING?

BABY AND BAND GO TOGETHER

FEATURE

CODE RED

DETAINED AS A BOSTON MARATHON BOMBING SUSPECT

ARTS INTERVIEW:

ROB DELANEY

DIGBOSTON.C0M

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FEBRUARY 18, 2015 - FEBRUARY 25, 2015 EDITORIAL EDITOR Dan McCarthy NEWS, FEATURES + MEDIA FARM EDITOR Chris Faraone ASSOCIATE MUSIC EDITOR Martín Caballero CONTRIBUTORS Lizzie Havoc, Boston Bastard, Nina Corcoran, Emily Hopkins, Micaela Kimball, Tony McMillen, Jake Mulligan, 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, Michael Zaia COMICS Tim Chamberlain Brian Connolly Pat Falco Patt Kelley

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BUSINESS PUBLISHER Jeff Lawrence ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Marc Shepard OFFICE MANAGER John Loftus

FEBRUARY 20

DEAR READER

ROB DELANEY

Life in Hoth-ston continues.

Sorta.

The MBTA: looking at 30 days out until returning to some semblance of “full” functionality.

As long as “full” in this case is an outdated and brittle transit system that by all accounts is far past its prime. As it stands now, riders finding themselves on the outer rings of the still-running parts of the T are having to get to shuttle areas like Quincy Center at 5:30am just to arrive at work by 9am, and even then it’s a roll of the dice.

Our streets, once a beacon of inefficient urban engineering within a city born in the 17th century, have been thrown into a state of hyperfuckedupedness, and now look like something out of The Day After Tomorrow, with two-ways reduced to barely-one-ways. So much so that the Mayor has reconfigured Southie’s street grid just to avoid all the motorist showdowns that have amazingly not ended in various forms of bloodshed among the tribal populace battling its way through the neighborhood every day.

And finally, news outlets like DigBoston make concerned efforts to put all the other legacy and much-better-funded outlets on full blast for using the easy click-bait of perpetual coverage of our perpetual shit weather, while doing the very same damn thing ourselves. It would seem when your city is reduced to a frozen tundra, all bets regarding hypocrisy in information dissemination are off.

So stay warm out there friends, and be sure to visit your local bar or restaurant often.

And remember: Whiskey helps everything.

FEBRUARY 20

FRANK CALIENDO FEBRUARY 21

ADAM DEVINE FEBRUARY 22

RALPHIE MAY FEBRUARY 27

COREY HOLCOMB FEBRUARY 28

TOM COTTER FEBRUARY 28

BY DAN MCCARTHY @ACUTALPROOF

CRAIG FERGUSON

ADVISOR Joseph B. Darby III

ON THE COVER

The Streight Angular family comes over for a play date this week on our cover. It’s yogurt and pretzel time! Photo by Dana Tarr, courtesy Streight Angular. Check out more work at danatarr.net.

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

DIGTIONARY

MARCH 1 SOLD OUT

SNOWKHAR

noun snō-kar 1. Any blizzard, or relentless series of blizzards, that paralyzes the Greater Boston region to the point where courthouses have trouble proceeding with the business of executing alleged terrorists.

DEMETRI MARTIN MARCH 3

9E=JA;9 K L=KL CAL;@=F

OH, CRUEL WORLD

MARCH 5

Dear Overgrown Child, Judging by your size and the fact that you always pay with a credit card, I assume that you are technically an adult. Which is why I can’t for the life of me understand why, upon discovering that a particular day’s fro-yo special is not a flavor you prefer, you make a face like you just ate a fart and say, “Ewww” like a two-year-old. I actually thought you were hot until I saw how you responded to us having coconut on special.

JIMMY TATRO MARCH 6

PAULY SHORE ILLUSTRATION BY ELISE CAMERON

DigBoston, 242 East Berkeley St. 5th Floor Boston, MA 02118 Fax 617.849.5990 Phone 617.426.8942 digboston.com

MARCH 13

FOR TICKETS AND INFORMATION PLEASE VISIT WWW.THEWILBUR.COM

NEWS TO US FEATURE

LONI LOVE

VOL 17 + ISSUE 7

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

BILL BLUMENREICH PRESENTS

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

Bill Blumenreich Presents

3

NEWS US

GREAT, I FINALLY FIND A METER WITH A LITTLE TIME LEFT ON IT

THAW! WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR? NEWS TO US

The jeers and fears of an entire region snowballed into one flaming tirade. Plus: Introducing #SnowBostonOlympics.

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“It’s horrible what’s happening to people in Boston.”

So sympathized my taxi driver late last week in sunny Los Angeles, where I wrapped up a nearly two-week stretch of hopping couches and motel rooms all over the West Coast, from Washington to SoCal. He wasn’t the only compassionate soul; telling people I was visiting from blanketed New England earned me the sort of hospitality typically reserved for those fleeing dictatorships.

As my California friends grew increasingly serious in asking if I ever planned on returning to Boston, I actually did some serious thinking. How about another week?

Why not a month? In the end though, curiosity won out.

Having no clue what to expect was enough of a reason to book my flight home; between the venom I felt trickling through emails from the coworkers I deserted and my duty to readers who expect reporters to share in their suffering, I was also on the verge of losing credibility.

So here I am, back on the arctic East Coast, at your service, and sporting clear reporting goggles that haven’t been blinded by flurries for two weeks. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but you’ve completely lost your minds (see: The Shining). Since I flew out on Super Bowl Sunday, most folks have altogether suspended their work and social

schedules, reduced their Facebook feeds to Vines of dogs pissing in snowbanks and memetic MBTA effigies, and taken the Hub’s childish obsession over space-saving to embarrassing levels. You’re bonkers. Bananas. Proof? Take, for example, how my parking comments made you want to stab me with an icicle.

Some have run out of hope. Watching from Cali, I thought my lowly Boston media companions were just amplifying foul behavior, always hunting for invigorated ways to cover parking pandemonium. But upon personal inspection, I’ve seen shitty stereotypes surface endlessly.

Sure, a lot of people have been volunteering plow in hand at the neighborhood nursing home; a lot of you, however, are selfish assholes, from those who don’t ordinarily use public transit yet now suddenly, loudly disapprove of the inadequate trains us maggots endure daily to the prick who hordes the Annie’s Mac & Cheese and pulpy orange juice at my local supermarket every time the weatherman gets ornery. I don’t drive or own a shovel, but otherwise I’m similarly vulgar; I’m just sharing these despondent observations from the vantage point of a person who departed paradise to parachute back into this purgatory.

Hell awaits. But before you take the plunge and leap

out your window, consider this bit of positive news on one horizon. While some may find it cheap or desperate to link potential Olympic nightmares to storm conditions (or to marry them in a hashtag like #SnowBostonOlympics), in slugging furiously through slush moguls, Greater Boston residents have nevertheless grown acquainted with our regional limitations. And since the state of congestion, seasonal or otherwise, is sure to land in conversational crosshairs over the coming months, people are likely to channel at least some of their anger toward Boston 2024.

I don’t just mean the fear of traffic either, though you shouldn’t count that out.

At this juncture, even the politically apathetic among us have to be concerned about how much any monster event—consecutive blizzards, that New Kids On The Block and Backstreet Boys collabo show at Fenway a few years ago, a Summer Games—consumes our public officials and their operating budgets. Every available municipal resource and able-bodied prisoner has been tapped to clear roads over the past week, so people should now understand how unflinchingly Boston would cover any last-minute costs for an Olympics in the final stretch. And then there is the manpower issue.

THAW! continued on pg. 6

PHOTO BY AUSTIN DICKEY

BY CHRIS FARAONE @FARA1

5

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

FEATURE

NEWS TO US

THAW! continued from pg. 4

WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 18TH

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TOM MAXWELL (OF SQUIRREL NUT ZIPPERS) & THE MINOR DRAG PLUS FUTURE RHYTHM QUARTET SWING / GYPSY JAZZ

FRIDAY FEBRUARY 20TH 7:30PM

BOSTON IRISH COMEDY TOUR JIM MCCUE, JOEY CARROLL & JACK LYNCH FRIDAY FEBRUARY 20TH 10PM

PETER PRINCE & THE TRAMA UNIT W/ SPOTTED TIGER

FEATURING MEMBERS OF DUB APOCALYPSE, MOON BOOT LOVER& RYAN MONTBLEAU SATURDAY FEBRUARY 21ST 7PM

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While it’s always fun to badger pols, the truth is that they collectively serve some critical functions. From planning trash pickups to dispatching safety services, public workers have more important things to do than juggle distractions, and sideswipes like these last few snowfalls dull their rhythm. When asked in a public forum whether politicians could handle the added load of a Summer Games, Boston 2024 cheerleader Juliette Kayyem compared multitasking between everyday duties and Olympic demands to chewing gum and walking. But now that everybody’s seen how quickly gum loses its flavor when the walking slows to a crawl, it’s hard to imagine too many people falling for such obviously fraudulent rhetoric.

Since every rant needs cherry-picked examples for validation, I found the past few days of mayoral schedules to be especially telling. Instead of bouncing ’round as usual, Marty Walsh’s snow-free activities have been limited to attending “an announcement

by JetBlue Airlines” at Logan Airport, and launching the mayor’s new mentoring program. Big props on the latter, but the cold reality remains that the bulk of Boston’s energy of late has been expended on the cleaning and rerouting of streets. I never thought I’d see a 750-word press release about the weather, but the city sent me one for Valentine’s Day, complete with quotes from nine community leaders.

Of course I’m glad I bought the ticket back from California. Los Angeles people are more or less oblivious, and that’s why they deserve the 2024 Olympics way more than us. Even without six feet of snow, politicians there have managed to irreparably roil the economy, while locals came to accept years ago that their trains are essentially useless and traffic inevitable. In California, the pain of just a few more budget bloopers would be par for the course, plus their elected clowns are asleep at the wheel anyway. Here in the commonwealth, we have a relatively good thing going. Hopefully when Massholes finally thaw, they’ll realize that we don’t need any international powwows to fuck that up.

If they forget, remind them: #SnowBostonOlympics.

BLUNT TRUTH

ADDISON DEMOURA OF STEEP HILL

BY MIKE CANN @MIKECANNBOSTON Addison DeMoura, the cofounder and chief business development officer at Steep Hill Halent, a testing lab facility in several states, is one of the most eagerly anticipated speakers at this weekend’s New England Cannabis Convention at the Castle at Park Plaza in Boston. This comes as no surprise, as Massachusetts cannabis enthusiasts and patients have had to spend a lot of time and effort on the political side of things, and can probably use some talk about strains and applications. On that note, I reached out to DeMoura to discuss his company and coming home to Boston.

Did you grow up in the Boston area?

Yes, I lived in the Boston area back in the ‘90s, in Newton. I left and did some traveling before landing for a few years in Boulder, Colorado. In 1998, I moved to California.

Currently I’m living in the valley, outside of Oakland.

Steep Hill is recognized as a leader in cannabis testing. How did you get into this business?

I’ve been in the weed business pretty much my whole life, at least since 1998 and even before that. Steep Hill was the very first cannabis analysis lab, when Bush was in office, which was admittedly a little scary to be the first during that period of time.

When you are the only business in this field, it can be a concern. Since then we’ve grown, a 2012 merger with Halent teamed us up with a Washington and Coloradolicensed regulated laboratory.

How much business is the company doing and what’s next for Steep Hill?

We’re projected to bring in $5,000,000 this year and [we’re] confident that we will hit our goal with new product line launches. Very exciting is our new genetic sequencer which will allow cultivators to determine the sex within 14 days of sprout. And then there’s our QuantaCann2, which allows collectives, manufacturers, and dispensaries to test potency, strain type, and much more, on-site [and] almost instantly, within 80 seconds. Steep Hill is also very proud to be working the government of Jamaica to establish regulatory and testing frameworks for legal cannabis [there].

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What is your reason for returning to Boston?

We’re here to lend our support, that’s why we’ll be there. And Northeastern Institute of Cannabis being a part of it, I’ve got family involved with NIC, and Mickey Martin is a friend. We want to help as much as possible in Mass. We’re not officially doing business [in Mass] because we don’t want to spend money on a sit-and-wait proposition. We’d love to open a new lab there but we recognize the regulatory hurdles that have stopped that from happening. Attending this convention, we are hoping to help move it along. We’ll be there to support the movement, but at the same time, we know it’s wait-and-see for now. It’s nice to come home. I do get back east more often than in the past to see family, but there was a stretch when that wasn’t always a real option. I worked many years to be able to come back home. And it’s nice to do it being recognized as a success back in Boston.

NEWS TO US

MEDIA FARM

FEATURE

SNOW PORN

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

You’d almost think that somebody postponed a murder trial

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

BY MEDIA FARM @MEDIAFARM

7 There’s an old media saying that we just made up last week: If you take all the forecasts from every outlet across an entire region, you still won’t be able to predict the weather any better than a Luddite living in a cave. Still, the press insists on hammering you stranded bastards with snow job after snow job. In fact there’s so much mindless shovel coverage you would almost think that they postponed the Boston Marathon bombing trial.

All things considered, though we promised to use Media Farm for the sole purpose of aggregating (and occasionally eviscerating) reporting on the capital case of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, we’re making an exception this week out of sheer desperation. Weather journalism is a rung below sportswriting on the importance spectrum, but we haven’t seen much of anything else through the drifts, so here’s what we came up with …

As it turns out, audiences savor snow tales. Forget the chicken or egg conundrum; if TV news dinks are outside freezing their hairdos and high heels off, it’s because that’s what people are demanding. How do we know? Easy, we checked the “most viewed” lists on local sites.

Let’s start with Boston.com visitors, whose tastes may be more irritating than the title of their third-most-viewed stinker at the time of this writing: “Of SNOWTRON and Snowzilla: How Boston Removed Snow From its Streets Throughout History.” It’s actually a decent piece once you get beyond the headline, as well as a creative way to tap into archives.

We perused the top picks on WBZ (“Boston to start ‘Full Force’ snow removal,” “Ambulance stuck in snow”), as well as on WCVB, which won’t be satisfied until we’re all scared into eating each other (“Blizzard: More snow than expected, high winds, lightning”). Mostly muck across the board, though onslaughts of MBTA analysis are always welcome, and David Sharfenberg’s explainer, “The T’s long, winding, infuriating road to failure,” is mandatory reading.

While waiting for the thaw, let’s just hope those DARPA weather-altering devices never come to fruition; as the Hub has seen over the past few weeks, there’s nary any need to pull the wool over the public’s eyes when you can smother them with a blizzard or three. Then again, one snowless article did creep through, a questionand-answer piece on BostonGlobe.com titled, “My 24-year-old is unemployed and at home. What should I do?” Inquiring minds may way to check a story we saw on WBZ: “$30 an hour to shovel out tracks.”

FREE RADICAL

WE’VE GOT TO GET THROUGH THIS TOGETHER

BY EMILY HOPKINS @GENDERPIZZA Winter is a test of endurance, and this winter especially is putting Boston on edge.

Even our mayor seems broken down; in a recent press conference he said, “I don’t know what to say to anybody anymore. Hopefully it will stop eventually.” As such, many of us will emerge from the cold with newfound upper-body strength and callused hands from shoveling. Some of us won’t be so lucky, and will struggle to pay rent in the coming months. Some will face even worse fates.

We all have a right to complain, but we also have a responsibility to remember that we need one another’s help to get through this winter. We need mutual aid.

We’re the city of space savers, but we’re also the city where a group like Black Lives Matter Boston can organize volunteers to shovel walkways in vulnerable communities. And since it looks like things won’t thaw over any time soon, we need even more actions like #BLMDigsOut. It’s time for those of us who can show up, to show up. Snow, rain, or sunshine. The city is overwhelmed. If we keep acting in support of one another, there’s a chance that we can dig ourselves out.

@MAGOUNSSALOON OLDEMAGOUNSSALOON

CODE RED FEATURE

My friend was detained as a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing manhunt. This is his story …

BY EVAN C. ANDERSON @TW0HEADEDB0Y

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My friend, we’ll call him Taylor, was sitting in the back seat of the taxi and was ordered out of the car. He was then seated on the curb, questioned repeatedly, flipped onto his stomach, and placed in handcuffs before being brought in for further interrogation. In minutes, he went from being an ordinary citizen to being surrounded by police, to being a suspect in what many consider to be the worst terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11.

The week leading up to the April 15, 2013, bombing of the Boston Marathon was typical for Taylor, a lifelong American citizen and Massachusetts native of Pakistani descent. Then twenty-one years old, he spent most of his time attending classes at Suffolk University, interning at a tax firm, and

hanging out with friends. He was at his internship on the day of the bombings, and learned of the attack from his boss.

The morning he was stopped in the cab, Taylor had been going to meet friends at South Station. They had tickets for the Tribeca Film Festival, and had planned to take the Megabus to New York City, leaving at 7am on Friday, April 19. It was just four days after two explosions near the finish line rattled Boston, and smack in the middle of a citywide lockdown and the dramatic pursuit of the suspected bombers.

Taylor had gone to bed early Thursday night, eager for following day. As a result, he missed the news about the shooting of MIT police officer Sean Collier and the ensuing manhunt for Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Taylor woke up early, took a shower, dressed in a grey sweatshirt and jeans, and was out the door of his Long Avenue apartment in Allston by 5:45 in the morning. In his rush to catch the bus, he hadn’t had a chance to check his email. Had he done so, he would have seen the message from his mother—“Don’t go outside”—and the following events likely wouldn’t have occurred.

TO MISS THE BUS

With the Griggs Street Green Line station just a kick away, Taylor was awaiting the arrival of his train within minutes.

When it didn’t come, he asked some people near the opposite platform if they knew when the next train might arrive.

“The T isn’t running right now,” muttered one young woman, eyes glued to her iPhone. The city was closed.

Just hours earlier, Tamerlan had been killed in a shootout with police in Watertown, and the hunt for Dzhokhar had turned into a SWAT-led house-by-house search of residences in the area.

Taylor was in the dark. Still stressing about catching his bus to New York, he began jogging down the median of Comm Ave towards Harvard Ave in an attempt to flag a taxi.

That’s when he picked up on a second clue that something was strange: Several cabs whizzed by him without stopping.

After a short wait at the intersection, a cab traveling outbound took a U-turn and scooped him up.

“What are you doing? You haven’t heard the news? I shouldn’t be driving you right now. What are you doing trying to catch a bus to New York?”

CODE RED continued on pg. 10

ILLUSTRATION BY TAK TOYOSHIMA

A police cruiser pulls up to the left side of the cab, and an officer riding shotgun yells to the driver, “We have reports of somebody in a red sweatshirt. Is there anything red?”

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ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

FEATURE

NEWS TO US

CODE RED continued from pg. 8 The driver had a flurry of questions. Taylor was confused, so the cabbie cranked the radio and started to explain what happened the night before. Between the news coverage on the radio and the play-by-play, it was a lot to digest.

Heading downtown on Comm Ave, the taxi pulled over near Babcock Street to pick up a man on his way to work. As they rode along together, the man in the front and my friend in the back, both passengers were in shock. The driver filled them in.

The car pulled up to a stoplight just before Kenmore Square. Taylor, sitting in the back seat, noticed a police cruiser pulling up on the left. A police officer in the passenger seat of the cruiser rolled down his window and asked the taxi driver if anyone had a red sweatshirt on.

Taylor wasn’t wearing a red sweatshirt. He was, however, in possession of a red backpack. “Give it here,” the cop ordered, approaching the rear left window of the cab. With nothing to hide and aiming to cooperate fully, Taylor says he immediately rolled his window down and handed his bag to the officer, who began rifling through its contents.

“I’m not one to stand up to police officers,” he later told me in an interview about the incident for this article. “I really still didn’t fully understand what was going on.”

The driver was ordered to move ahead and pull off to the side just before the intersection of Comm Ave and Charlesgate West. An officer then opened the back right door of the cab and told everyone to get out. The driver, the passenger in the front seat, and Taylor exited the car and sat on the curb—without handcuffs—while officers created a perimeter with police tape.

“Next thing you know, there really are like 15, 16, 17 cops,” Taylor recalls. They asked for identification, and Taylor provided his Suffolk University student card as well as his Commonwealth-issued ID. Taylor says he wasn’t nervous. He knew he that he was innocent and suspected it would only be a matter of time before they let him go. “As long as I’m being obedient, like, what’s going to happen?” At this point, he still assumed the reason that the cab was pulled over was that no one was supposed to be on the streets at the time.

Then came some peculiar questions: “Were you in Cambridge recently?” “Do you know anybody from Cambridge?”

“I was answering every single question very genuinely,” he says more than a year and a half later.

Within a few minutes of Taylor’s being removed from the cab and set on the curb, another officer approached. Taylor can’t recall the exact line of questioning, but explains the moment thusly: “Next thing you know, they’re just like, ‘Get him!’”

“Out of nowhere, then ... they flipped me over and ... they’re cuffing me and giving me a full search down.” The situation escalated quickly. Taylor continues: “One guy had his knee on my back ... I was face first on the pavement ... that was the most vulnerable I guess I’ve ever been in my entire life … [N]othing seemed to trigger that. That was what was always so confusing to me.”

police shooed them away. It was around then that a cop dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt arrived on the scene. He introduced himself as Detective Kelley.

Kelley started questioning the passenger in the front seat of the cab, who claimed to attend the University of Richmond. In his attempt to find out anything suspicious, the detective asked the passenger to name that college’s mascot, but Taylor, a hardcore fan of college basketball, chimed in: “Oh, the Richmond Spiders!”

“Was I talking to you?” Kelley didn’t like the interruption.

Looking back on the incident, Taylor doesn’t know why he felt that it would be okay to speak out of turn. “I just was not afraid to verbalize in front of these cops,” he says.

Once the detective finished questioning the other passenger, he turned to Taylor and proceeded to treat him to the same line of questioning. As did other officers on the scene.

About a half-hour after the cab was approached outside of Kenmore, Taylor was taken to a station in an unmarked vehicle. Taylor doesn’t know what happened with the driver or the other passenger, but photos of the scene indicate a bomb squad was called in to detonate an item found in the taxi. In custody, Taylor says he was told by one of the detectives, “We’re just getting you out of here for your protection … The world is too fucked, you guys have to stop this.”

While the officers at the scene of his arrest were, for the most part, polite and nonthreatening, Taylor says things changed dramatically once he was brought into the station. At least for a moment. Seated at a table, a new detective got aggressive.

“Sit down! Has he been searched!?!?”

The others followed suit. One detective who had been civil toward Taylor en route to the station told his colleague to calm down. He was then brought to another office where he sat alone before speaking with a female FBI agent and Detective Kelley for another 15 to 20 minutes.

Taylor once again retold his story—the bus, meeting friends, going to New York—and was asked more questions in several different ways. At one point they asked where he was when the bombings happened. He kept his cool.

“They were really trying to analyze every part of my answers to try to find any little crack,” he recalls.

Meanwhile, Taylor’s friends were curious about his whereabouts. It was more than an hour past the time when the bus—which had been canceled—was supposed to be leaving Boston. “[E]veryone’s calling you.” Taylor says Detective Kelley was holding his cell phone, asking him to list the names of contacts.

“Oh I guess you’re a TV star, one of your friends says he saw you [on the news].”

Taylor says Kelley was ultimately polite, and that after about 30 minutes his belongings were returned to him. The detective even apologized. “It was very clear to him that I wasn’t who they thought I was,” says Taylor. A handful of other officers approached him and offered similar sentiments.

“Hey, you know, I get it,” Taylor said in response. “Honestly, I do get it. It’s a very tense situation.”

Taylor says Kelley drove him downtown, where he had intended to meet up with friends hours earlier. It was approximately 9am, roughly 12 hours before Dzhokhar would be found inside a dry-docked boat in Watertown.

The ride with Kelley was a friendly one. They discussed racial profiling; Taylor remembers saying, “I could understand from a cop’s perspective how ... a person of my skin color jogging down the street sometimes is going to seem.” Kelly explained, “There are scenarios where these variables would come into play, as unfortunate as it is.”

They spoke about the manhunt, with Taylor asking, “So how long have you been onto these guys for?” He says Kelley implied that authorities had leads on the Tsarnaevs from early on, which intrigued him. “The way he was saying it was like, they always kind of had a gauge on it. Like, they were never too far behind.”

“I could understand from a cop’s perspective how . . . a person of my skin color jogging down the street sometimes is going to seem.”

THE INQUISITION

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Taylor remained in handcuffs for another 20 to 30 minutes while police ran background checks on him, the cab driver, and the other passenger. At no point was he read his Miranda rights. Through it all, Taylor says he was adamant about making sure the cops knew he wasn’t the guy they were after, and to that effect began asking questions like, “Hey, can you loosen these cuffs? I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be a burden,” and “Will I be able to catch the bus to New York after this is all over?” To which an officer replied, “Don’t worry about that right now.”

Before long Taylor began to notice members of the media, now out in force, trying to get footage of the scene while

Once he was dropped off, Taylor spent time decompressing with friends. After retelling the story of his detention six or seven times, he called his mother to tell her what had happened. Unlike Taylor, she was immediately upset about the racial profiling.

“I guess inside I just didn’t necessarily view it that way,” Taylor says. “Maybe it was. I just didn’t really think of it that way because of the context. I wasn’t very angry about it ... the only reason I would have been pissed off is if that bus had still been scheduled to leave and I missed it.”

TOTAL RECALL

Although he doesn’t know exactly what prompted police to pull over the cab and detain him, Taylor believes that somebody had seen him trying to flag a taxi and considered his behavior to be suspicious enough to warrant a call to the cops. Reflecting on this in our interview, he says, “It was impressive how they actually got me by Kenmore Square ... how they tracked down that cab is interesting.”

As one of the accused Marathon bombers stands trial coming up on the two-year anniversary of the attacks, Taylor harbors no ill will toward the officers who detained and interrogated him. The experience of standing up for himself, of holding his own under so much pressure, actually helped boost his confidence.

“I’d say more positives than negatives,” he says. “I don’t look back in anger or anything.”

While Taylor has taken ownership of his experience, his story nevertheless raises questions. Specifically, he says detectives mentioned that his taxi wasn’t the only vehicle pulled over that week. Going off that observation, I went looking for other examples similar to that which my friend had endured. In an attempt to ascertain how many others were detained and interrogated, I filed Freedom of Information Act requests with the FBI and police in Boston, Watertown, and Cambridge.

In response, Boston and Cambridge police claim to have “no responsive documents.” The FBI was no more helpful, and claimed an exemption to the disclosure of such info on the grounds that its release “could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings,” presumably due to the ongoing trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. The Watertown Police Department has yet to acknowledge my request, originally filed four months ago.

For the most part all I have on the others stopped by police is vague leads, but there is at least one other known instance of a suspect being detained and questioned, and his story doesn’t have a happy ending.

Just minutes before the two explosions that locked down Boston for several days, Abdulrahman Alharbi was trying to get a glimpse of runners crossing the finish line of the Boston Marathon. The then-21-year-old Saudi was walking away from the finish line when the first explosion went off; shrapnel from the second bomb ripped through his jeans, leaving his legs bloody and him in need of medical attention.

He was directed to an ambulance, but curiously, three police officers came along for the ride. Along the way they asked about his involvement in the bombings, and demanded access to his Facebook account.

Abdulrahman was likely the first suspected Marathon bomber. In the hospital, he was prevented from making phone calls and the police officers, agents from the FBI, and “other guys” surrounding him did not inform him of his right to legal counsel. As many as 20 law enforcement agents watched over him for days. He learned from the television in his hospital room that a Saudi national was being questioned as a suspect.

Abdulrahman is now suing Glenn Beck for defamation.

In the immediate aftermath of the bombings, among other false and damaging statements circulating in the media, the conservative firebrand repeatedly accused Abdulrahman of participating in the attacks, being a member of Al-Qaeda, and being involved in a massive coverup by the Obama administration.

Taylor’s experience was different, though a Suffolk classmate did ask him, “Yo, did you get pulled over by the cops?” In any case, his story, as well as that of Abdulrahman, cuts to the center of the eternal ethical conundrum that is racial profiling. Particularly if one considers that the young man facing the death penalty in federal court is, after all, Caucasian.

11

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

FEATURE

NEWS TO US

PRESENTS BOSTON’S FIRST CANNABIS INDUSTRY CONVENTION SATURDAY, FEB 21ST NOON-6PM AND SUNDAY, FEB. 22ND 11AM-5PM. $25 PER DAY

VENDOR AREA

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

DIGBOSTON.C0M

02 18 15 – 02 25 15

12

Kushley, LLC Pro Max Johnny Road King (potpockets) CBD Greenhouses & Consulting Griffin Greenhouse Solar City Twisted Radio UFCW Local 1459 Uplifting Health & Wellness Medical Marijuana Refferals Dabilitated Rx Green Solutions Parents for Pot Superstar Vapor pens Diamond Hill Industries (Tobacky) Wellness Connection of ME Boston Gardener

18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

Project CBD Green Life Garden Witch Doctor Green side up gallery Green side up gallery Northestern Institute of Cannabis DANK DOLL First Water Sign GNATTY NETS Grass Roots Healthy Headie Mass Cannabis Research Labs MA Patient Advocacy Extracting innovations Blazin Aze THC Staffing Canna Care Docs

35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51

CBD Please Cannaline Doggett & Simpson Advanced Growing Solutions proverde labs proverde labs The Holistic Center Medicinal Genomics Dan the Bagel Man Dan the Bagel Man Roll-uh-Bowl Piffery Buried Treasures 1000 Watts High Tech Horticulture Aurora Innovations Mass Can Consulting

Boston Cannabis Convention Programming:

Saturday, 12-6pm

Sunday, 11am-5pm

1pm : Cultivation & Testing for Patients and Caregivers in Mass.

Noon: Cooking with Cannabis

Scott Churchill: Director of Compliance and Methodology, MCR Labs. With a degree in chemistry and over fifteen years of diverse industrial and pharmaceutical experience, Scott leverages his experience in management, quality assurance, and analytical chemistry to ensure regulatory compliance requirements, operational excellence, and leading-edge technological capabilities.

Mickey Martin: Author of medical Marijuana 101 and Director of the Northeastern Institute of Cannabis. Mickey also writes the cannablog WeedActivist.com, which chronicles his experiences in dealing with major issues facing the cannabis movement.

Moderated by Mickey Martin (See Sat. Programming for Mikey’s Bio).

Featuring experienced Cannabis Chefs from across New England: Stephanie Peltier from Maine, Broderick Moose from RI, and AJ Sweets Smyth from Mass. Aaron Smith was born in Plymouth, MA and raised in Boston an Cape Cod Massachusetts, he is a 2006 graduate of the Arizona Culinary Institute.

With over 20 years of culinary experience and extensive training, he is known as a private cannabis chef. In 2013 he successfully launched cannachusetts caregivers. A local courier service for qualified MMJ patients on Cape Cod and the surrounding areas.

2pm Politics/Activism Panel

Moderated by Mike Cann: (see Sat. programming for Mike’s bio).

N.A. Poe: A veteran member of Philly decrim, and former MassCann/NORML National Activist of Year Cara Crabb-Burnham: The 2013-14 MassCann/NORML President, Cara is also the School Administrator at Northeastern Institute of Cannabis, an on-air talent at WEMF radio and former writer for Ladybud Magazine.

Nichole Snow: Nichole is the Deputy Director of the Mass Patients Advocacy Alliance. After meeting hundreds of patients across the commonwealth and advocating for their right to safe access over the last several years, Nichole was invited to take a leadership role in the alliance. Since becoming deputy director, “An Act to protect patients approved by physicians and certified by the department of public health to access medical marijuana.” was crafted, presented, and filed on Beacon Hill to provide protections against discrimination, ease restriction on pediatric access, and to change the caregiver ratio to ensure patients are receiving safe access in the State of Massachusetts.

Moderated by Chris Faraone: News Editor at Dig Boston, and long time MMj advocate, Chris is a veteran award-winning journalist & author of 4 books.

Diane Russell: Maine State Rep. (D), Portland. Named Nation Magazine’s 2011 “Most Valuable State Representative” Diane has introduced multiple bills to legalize marijuana in Maine.

Jill Hitchman-Osborn: Author of Seizing Hope, a blog, which chronicles her journey parenting a child with epilepsy and her work as a cannabis activist.

Chris Goldstein: The founder of Freedom Leaf Magazine and a member of Philly NORML, Chris has been covering cannabis news for over a decade as both a writer and radio broadcaster.

3pm Becky DeKeuster, M.Ed: KEY NOTE Speech Becky DeKeuster, M.Ed. is founder and director of community and education of the Wellness Connection of Maine, the state’s largest group of medical marijuana dispensaries. Wellness Connection operates four state-licensed dispensaries and one grow facility.

DeKeuster has over a decade of experience in the medical cannabis industry, with special emphasis on dispensary regulations, operations and patient/ community relations. As a director of Berkeley Patients Group (BPG), DeKeuster led one of the country’s largest and most established wellness centers through extreme uncertainty as the original medical marijuana movement got underway.

4pm Medical Marijuana as Medicine Panel Moderated by Mike Cann: Former President of MassCann/NORML and long time successful Boston MMJ activist, Mike is both a local radio host, and weekly “BLUNT TRUTH“ Columnist at DigBoston.

Dr. Dustin Sulak Intergr8 Dr. Nadolny from Canna Care Docs Donna Hackett: A RI Medical Marijuana Patient and Advocate, Donna has been active with Moms for Marijuana & as a speaker at the Boston Freedom Rally.

Holly Evans: As Owner of Healthy Headie Lifestyle, Holly’s mission is to provide tools, resources and information to people interested in cannabis for their health.

Holly works with top of the line manufactures, distributors, businesses and services to share resources for alternative information, awareness and knowledge.

1pm Politics/Activism Panel

2:30pm Cannabis Testing & Quality Chris Hudalla , ProVerde Labs: A PhD analytical chemist with 25 years of research experience including chromatographic method development.

Recognized worldwide as an expert in the field of Supercritical Fluid and Convergence Chromatography (SFC and CC) and an sctive leader in the development and implementation of the UltraPerformance Convergence Chromatography (UPC2) instrumentation Addison DeMoura, SteepHill Labs: A cannabis expert with over fifteen years of experience developing specialized cannabis strains and medicines. His work pioneered quality assurance principles in the cannabis industry which have been instrumental in helping organizations develop operational and administrative protocols that promote safe medicine. Previously, Addison founded Oakdale Natural Choice Collective, the first cannabis patient organization in Stanislaus County, CA, and has been honored as a celebrity judge at several High Times Cannabis Cup events.

3pm Career Opportunities in Marijuana Shaleen Title: Shaleen Title is co-founder of THC Staffing Group, a recruitment firm for the marijuana industry. She currently serves as a board member for Marijuana Majority.

New England Cannabis Convention is proud to be sponsored by: PROVERDE LABS

A leader in the industry, ProVerde a Massachusetts based laboratory offering analytical testing and consulting services in the Medical Marijuana (MMJ) segment. Available services utilize leading-edge technologies to yield the most reliable analytical results available, while maintaining an environmentally friendly, green approach. Our mission includes building lasting relationships with our customers and communities by providing services with reliability, quality, and integrity.

Learn more at: www.proverdelabs.com

WELLNESS CONNECTION OF MAINE

Maine’s largest dispensary company, with locations in Brewer, Gardiner, Portland and Thomaston. Providing safe, inviting, spacious and accessible wellness centers fusing the best features of a pharmacy, community center and wellness practice in one convenient location.

Under one roof, all your medical cannabis and full-spectrum wellness needs are answered by our member liaisons, passionate experts who care and partner with you on your journey to improved quality of life.

Learn more at: www.mainewellness.org/

www.newenglandcannabisconventions.com

NEWS TO US FEATURE DEPT. OF COMMERCE

18+ | BUY TICKETS ONLINE AT: WWW.CANNATICKET.COM OR AT THE DOOR (cash only).

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

@ THE CASTLE AT PARK PLAZA

SPONSORED BY

13

DEPT. COMMERCE COMMERCE

ON THE LEND

An on-demand tool-rental service rises in Somerville

BEER, FRIENDS, AND RIPPING OUT SPINES. PERFECT.

POP-UP

BITFEST REDUX

12 hours of beer, classic arcade games, and full-tilt nerdery comes your way...

BY DAN MCCARTHY @ACUTALPROOF

DIGBOSTON.C0M

02 18 15 – 02 25 15

14

At this point, with the endless snowstorms, MBTA headaches, and general misery and woe the last few weeks have bestowed upon life in the Hub, it’s hard to feel good about anything anymore.

Luckily, that’s about to change.

Because on February 21, Aeronaut Brewing is once again partnering with the merry minds that brought Big Fun to Somerville back in December in order to bring you Bit Fest 2: Electronic Boogaloo. And like all proper sequels, this one is cranking things up a notch.

“The first one had a really good vibe and was an accessible and fun, nerdy in the right ways,” says organizer Rob Hall.

“This one is gonna be a bigger and longer event, with excellent game dealers, game developers, apparel, and visual artists as vendors.”

Hall says the previous party, with 22 arcade vintage stand-up games, Aeronaut beer, and vintage nerdery of all manner (clothing, vinyl, video games for sale) saw four of the game machines die by the end of the night (they are restored antiques, after all). So this time, the new-and-improved 12pm-12am event will feature over 25 machines, including a classic 4-player Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade, Ms. Pac Man Cabaret (“It’s a lovable mini-cabinet,” says Hall), Mortal Kombat II, Street Fighter II arcade, Dig Dug Classic, (“One of our museum quality machines, the artwork is perfect,” he says), and even the two-player cult classic Altered Beast, among others.

Music will be present by way of Boston 8-Bit, which spins “Chip Tune” tracks comprised of music using old gaming hardware (Commodore 64, computers, Game Boys, etc), as well as artwork from Somerville’s Daily Robot. High Energy Vintage, which manned tables selling old video games, vinyl records, and clothing and oddities at the last event, will also return.

Aeronaut will be handling the beer once more (cash bar), which is mandatory when trivia and tournaments in classic console games like R.C. Pro AM, 8-player Bomberman, and Typing of the Dead set up on classic CRT TVs will be going all day and night. “Those games are just not the same on an HD TV,” says Hall, “and we’ll have Atari, Nintendo, Sega, everything.”

As for the secret laboratory in Amesbury where Hall and his team originally stored their wares, that’s no more, he says.

Instead, he and his team of gaming scamps store some at High Energy Vintage, as well as in the back of a hair salon in the South End. Where all the best arcade games are kept in secret. >> BOSTON BIT FEST 2: ELECTRONIC BOOGALOO. FREE/CASH BAR. FEB 21. NOON-12AM AT AERONAUT BREWING. 14 TYLER ST., SOMERVILLE. FACEBOOK.COM/BOSTONBITFEST

There are few problems that derail the ability to employ whatever negligible handyman skills one may or may not possess in order to complete some minor repairs around the house than that of not having a single solitary tool with which to do so.

That’s why Dina Gjertsen has decided to create the area’s first rental library for tools, based out of the “family hacker space” Parts and Crafts in Somerville.

And if you’ve ever used a regular library, the idea is essentially the same.

“Most people don’t need to own a tool; they need to use a tool,” she says. “So [this is] for the three times a year you need a drill, or a saw, or a sander, or a specialty tool.”

The new “tool library” is membership-based, and for 50 dollars a year you can borrow up to seven tools for a week, and renew them as needed. There are late fees if you keep them too long, and renters are responsible for replacements if any are lost (you know how you’re always misplacing power drills).

“I’ve been trying to get the tool library off the ground for a year, and this is a great spot to do it,” Gjertson says. “People are here and ready to work on things, and they have storage space here. We’re a little sub-part of it.”

If you have tools to donate, Gjertsen says she’ll make you a member and waive the membership fee so she can work on procuring a bigger variety of new and used tools. She’s already received a $750 grant from the New England Grassroots Environment Fund that will help procure items like a chop saw, shop vac, DeWalt drill batteries, and other items she isn’t getting from donations. But in the end, it’s about finding and providing the tools people are directly in need of.

“What people really want are automotive and bike tools so that people can borrow those and just repair their cars, bikes and motorcycles,” she says.

Caveat: Ladders are a nogo due to regulations.

“It’s the one thing I’m not allowed to loan, and I know that people really like to have them,” she says. >> SOMERVILLE TOOL LIBRARY. NOW OPEN. 577 SOMERVILLE AVE., SOMERVILLE. FOR MORE INFORMATION VISIT SOMERVILLETOOLLIBRARY.COM

BITFEST PHOTO COURTESY CDA MEDIA | SOMERVILLE TOOL LIBRARY PHOTO BY DAN MCCARTHY

BY DAN MCCARTHY @ACUTALPROOF

NEWS TO US

HONEST PINT

FEATURE

CRAFT BEER BARS

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

Do they really even exist anymore?

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

BY KAREN CINPINSKI @CATSINPJS

15

Over the last year, I’ve written a lot about recently opened area eateries and bars that boast well-curated beer programs and solid collections of local craft brews. Oddly, these are places that aren’t even stamped with the “beer bar” label. And yet their draft selections rotate by the season, and their staffs of drink-slingers pour more than just the average pint of American Pilsner.

Which makes me wonder: Are craft beer bars even a thing anymore?

When the trend of atypical saloons focusing on well-defined and expertly curated beer selections first rose, craft beer bars were easily identifiable as sudshubs with rows upon rows of taps, frequently updated, handwritten menus of liquid wonderment, and bottle lists categorized by more than just “domestic” and “import.”

Fast forward to now, and almost every bar in the Commonwealth sells craft beer, blurring the line between your standard joint and a “craft” one dedicated to imbibing local brews and genuflecting before a worthy collection of the harder-to-find stuff.

Sure, some spots are better than others, and a few outstanding suds depots—like Lower Depths, Lord Hobo, and Deep Ellum—are quite literally raising the bar for craft beer. That said, many of the new establishments that have opened in the last year (The Glenville Stops, The Tap Trailhouse, River Bar) and even those that weren’t previously craft beer hotbeds (think: that urine-scented dive on the corner), are now serving quality libations. Even the once craft-barren spots, like chain restaurants (see: TGI Fridays), and ballparks and sports arenas (Fenway, TD Garden), have stepped up their respective beer games.

What it comes down to is that in spite of what Budweiser’s advertising department would like you to think, today’s drinkers demand craft beer. Period.

“Craft beer is and has been on the rise; the preference of the general consumer is definitely shifting—especially in urban areas—and we are just trying to give the people what they want,” says Michael Boughton, corporate beverage director for Boston Nightlife Ventures (Forum, The Tap Trailhouse, Wink & Nod).

While some of these spots may not employ a beverage director or keep a certified cicerone behind the bar, and there might not be anything available on cask, it has become damn near impossible to belly up at a local bar and not find at least one IPA or stout spigot. Amazingly, most every bar has started serving craft beer.

Of course, there will always be those places we seek out for their utterly stunning selection of ales. But really, the craft beer bar, by definition, isn’t so much a novelty anymore as it is the new standard.

And at that, beer lovers all throughout the Hub, and everywhere for that matter, should rejoice.

“Craft beer is and has been on the rise; the preference of the general consumer is definitely shifting– especially in urban areas–and we are just trying to give the people what they want.”

REAL FOOD every night TILL ' CLOSE 9 2 H A MP S HIR E S T, CA MB R ID G E , M A | 6 1 7-2 5 0 - 8 4 5 4 | L O R D H O B O.C O M

ARTS ENTERTAINMENT

DIGBOSTON.C0M

02 18 15 – 02 25 15

16

WED 2.18

THURS 2.19

THURS 2.19

SUN 2.22

SUN 2.22

TUES 2.24

AniMAtic Boston

PEM/PM Evening Party: I’m a Lumberjack

Singles Ping Pong Tournament

Enchantment Under the Sea Prom Night at The Sinclair

New England Ninja Warrior

Stand Up Sit Down February Edition

animators unite

ax and chest hair not included

the paddle to win them all

marty mcfly for prom king

your childhood fantasy

grill a comedian

As an animator you may feel alone in your art. Your art school friends don’t get it, and your other friends couldn’t be bothered to try. All you’re left with is watching the 1977 Hobbit over and over again in solitude. Until now. Come and gather with your fellow animators and local industry leaders, like the creators of Youtube’s “Baman Piderman,” for a night of inspiration and education.

Golem will still be waiting for you when it’s over.

At one time, to be a lumberjack was to embrace a life of long johns, lice, and near-death situations. Now it’s just trendy. This is your prime opportunity to join all the other flannel enthusiasts with music, chainsaw art, a wood-turning demo, and lots of hard cider thanks to Salem’s Far From the Tree Cider. So take a day to live out your woodsy fantasy and give the deodorant a break.

The only way to play ping pong is to play competitively. Take this opportunity to pit yourself against real competitors and not your dear Granny, who honestly wanted to give up on your table tennis battles 10 years ago.

Prizes like a membership to Brooklyn Boulders and something secret from Blazing Paddles are up for grabs if you have the skills.

Beer and pizza, merely a bonus.

If you graduated from an American high school, there’s a great chance that your prom was less a magical night full of excitement and sexual tension, and more a giant suckfest. If you still haven’t gotten over the disappointment, The Sinclair is hosting its own Back to the Future-inspired prom party (complete with a Marty McFly impersonation contest). If Carrie’s prom is more your style ... keep waiting.

If there’s one thing New England is swarming with, it’s ninjas. They’re everywhere. And now there’s a competition to see who among them is truly the Ninja Warrior. The famed fitness competition consists of feats of strength involving a 14-foot warped wall, quad steps, and whatever a salmon ladder is.

If the ninja isn’t in you, you can still just go to watch.

Someone is bound to fall on their face.

Every comedy fan has been to a stand-up act or two.

You sit, you watch, and you laugh. But there’s also that moment when you swear you’ve made eye contact with the comedian, and you just want to whisper, “Tell me all your secrets.” Most of the time you’re stuck with disappointing silence, but for one night you can pick the brains of comedians Bethany Van Delft, Mike Mulloy, and a mystery guest.

Probably better if you don’t whisper though...

The Armory, 191 Highland Ave., Somerville. 7pm/FREE. artsatthearmory.org

Peabody Essex Museum, 161 Essex St., Salem. 6pm/21+/ FREE-$10. pem.org/pempm

Brooklyn Boulders Somerville, 12A Tyler St., Somerville. 7pm/18+/$10. brooklynboulders.com

The Sinclair, 52 Church St., Cambridge. 8pm/21+/$15. sinclaircambridge.com

TA Fitness, 54 Mathewson Dr., Weymouth. 1pm/kids’ competition 5-13, adults’ 14+/ $25. teamawesomefit.com

East Meets West Bookstore, 934 Mass Ave., Cambridge.

8pm//suggested donation $5. emwbookstore.com

PHOTO BY BRITTANY GRABOWSKI

SEE, IT’S NOT THAT BAD DURING OFF-PEAK HOURS.

17

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

FEATURE

NEWS TO US

MUSIC

MUSIC

SWEET CHILD O’ MINE

NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM

BY MARTÍN CABALLERO @_EL_CABALLERO

BY MARTÍN CABALLERO @_EL_CABALLERO

Ex-LCD Soundsystem drummer and partner curate a new sound

For Streight Angular, the baby and the band go together

Even when you’re working in one of the more progressive and widely acclaimed acts of the last decade, a little change never hurt anybody.

When LCD Soundsystem ended in 2011, that’s pretty much what drummer Pat Mahoney was thinking. In the band, he yielded to James Murphy’s creative lead, and an intensive touring schedule had put his own musical ambitions—as a singer, to boot—temporarily on hold, but for the past four years he’s been eagerly making up for lost time. Mahoney’s collaborative project with longtime friend and solo artist Dennis McNany, called Museum of Love, drops by Brighton Music Hall this Saturday in support of their self-titled debut.

“I think we were both missing things mutually that we wanted to hear,” explains Mahoney, on the phone from New York. “That was a big part of what made us excited, to make the music that we felt like we weren’t hearing.”

Finding that elusive style meant more than just naming their shared influences—with Harry Nilsson, Arthur Russell, and ’90s hiphop being just a few. Before a single note was recorded, the pair spent long conversations pulling on the threads that would eventually shape their sound.

“In a real way, it’s about how do you work songwriting into dance music and techno?” says McNany. “Can they exist together? This was a little bit more to see how machines could be a part of that. What would all the references of the ’90s dance scene sound like if that met a Nilsson song? How would you work that into a regular song structure that wasn’t just a deep house cut?”

There’s a real pleasure in hearing them try to balance those equations on Museum of Love. “The Who’s Who of Who Cares” has the punchy new-wave irreverence LCD fans should recognize, while Mahoney’s vocals on “The Large Glass” blend with a swirl of fuzzy psyched-out guitars. For the answers to McNany’s aforementioned questions, spend a few minutes luxuriating in the warm organ groove bubbling under the sparkling closer “And All the Winners.”

The result isn’t a singularly defined sound, but rather a trust that, wherever Mahoney and McNany end up going next, they’re worth following.

“We are going to keep exploring,” Mahoney promises. “We don’t necessarily know how it’s going to sound. I’m hoping that we continue to surprise ourselves and each other. That’s been the way that we work, throwing stuff at each other and try[ing] to surprise each other and make each other excited.”

SINCE WHEN DID THEY START PUTTING NUTS IN THE PRODUCE AISLE? There have been greater inconveniences rendered over the course of this winter’s interminable snowfall, but for a young girl, still mercifully ignorant of faulty Red Line switches and parking space wars, losing the swing set was a big deal.

It was still there, of course, just marooned in the four feet of snow that has blanketed the playground where Yoshi Walsh of Streight Angular takes his 22-month-old daughter Lina, the seats dangling barely above the surface of the white powder. An obstacle for sure, but not enough to dissuade a girl who wants to ride “the whee,” as she calls it. For Dad, that’s all he needs to hear before he’s off trudging through the frozen tundra with her to the swings.

“If I was a kid, I would love for my dad to do that,” says Yoshi, on the phone, back inside his apartment. “That’s how I look at parenting. I have a kid now, so I might as well give them the best fucking life ever.”

The palpable joy heard in Yoshi’s voice when he talks about Lina should sound familiar. Since 2012, Streight Angular have thrived on his infectious energy to craft quirky garage pop-rock, perhaps best exemplified on their relentlessly entertaining single “Everyone is Syncopated.”

Family life is a literal extension of his music; his wife Teresa plays drums in the band, and together, somehow, they make it work.

“We played as a band until [Teresa] was like eight months pregnant,” says Walsh. “In the womb, she was pretty much rocking out to every show. When she was six

months old, we had a gig and we couldn’t find a sitter, so we strapped her to the back of Teresa and we played the show.

At first she was crying, that’s why we had her on the side.

Then we put headphones on her and put her on Teresa and she fell asleep.”

If that’s not a fun dad, one might not exist. But the birth of his first child also stirred up deeper emotions in Walsh that he explores on the band’s new record Messenger of Love.

“I think the songwriting has changed because now it’s more about life and death,” says Walsh. “When you have a kid, you start thinking more about your life and the life of a child. I’ve gotta take care of this kid, I can’t let this kid die.

And I can’t die! We gotta watch out for each other. Having a kid is amazing. It’s the best song I’ll ever write. I’m not gonna top it. But it’s super scary.”

In other words, don’t expect another “Isn’t She Lovely.”

Songs like “Once More” and the title track face brooding existential questions about the meaning (or lack thereof) of life head-on, while “Life Sucks and Then You Die” reflects on Walsh’s own bouts with depression over the past year. Like having a child, it’s serious business, and yet wondrous at the same time.

“If she’s not asleep, she’ll be there,” Walsh promises ahead of the album release show. “She’ll always be in our hearts anyway. Now everything we do is for her. The music we play, even this interview is for her. It’s all about love now. That’s all you can pass on.”

>> STREIGHT ANGULAR “MESSENGER OF LOVE” RELEASE SHOW W/ NICKEL AND DIME BAND, HORSE JUMPER OF LOVE, + ARLEN AND BAXTER HALL. SAT 2.21. LILYPAD, 1353 CAMBRIDGE ST., CAMBRIDGE. 617.876.6838. 10PM/$10/ALL AGES. STREIGHTANGULAR.BANDCAMP.COM

MUSIC EVENTS

DIGBOSTON.C0M

02 18 15 – 02 25 15

18

FRI 2.20

XOXO GOSSIP GIRL LEIGHTON MEESTER + RUBY ROSE FOX

[Brighton Music Hall, 158 Brighton Ave., Allston.

6:30pm/all ages/$20. crossroadspresents.com]

SAT 2.21

POP PUNK FOR DAYS YOU BLEW IT! + TINY MOVING PARTS + SORORITY NOISE + ROZWELL KID

[Middle East Upstairs, 472 Mass Ave., Cambridge.

6:30pm/all ages/$12. mideastclub.com]

REAL WEIRD ARIEL PINK + JACK NAME

[Paradise Rock Club, 967 Comm Ave., Boston. 8pm/18+/$17. crossroadspresents.com]

>> MUSEUM OF LOVE. SAT 2.21 BRIGHTON MUSIC HALL, 158 BRIGHTON AVE., ALLSTON. 617.779.0140. 11PM/$10/18+.

MUSEUMOFLOVE.NET.

SUN 2.22

MON 2.23

[House of Blues, 15 Lansdowne St., Boston, 7pm/all ages/$35-55. houseofblues.com]

[Great Scott, 1222 Comm Ave., Allston. 9pm/18+/ $12. greatscottboston.com]

BADASS ROCK BABES SLEATER-KINNEY + LIZZO

SCOTTISH POST-PUNK THE TWILIGHT SAD + PORT ST. WILLOW

TUE 2.24

INDIE ROCK MIXED BAG PILE + NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS + KAL MARKS + STYLE [Great Scott, 1222 Comm Ave., Allston. 9pm/18+/ $8. greatscottboston.com]

NEWS TO US

mideastclub.com | zuzubar.com (617) 864-EAST | ticketweb.com

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

FEATURE

CENTRAL SQ. CAMBRIDGE, MA

512 Mass. Ave. Central Sq. Cambridge, MA 617-576-6260 phoenixlandingbar.com

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

Boston’s Best Irish Pub

19

-DOWNSTAIRS-

THE BEST ENTERTAINMENT IN CAMBRIDGE 7 DAYS A WEEK!

THURS 2/19 - 7PM DOORS

TUESDAYS

SUNDAYS

AND THE CELLABRATION

THIRSTY TUESDAYS

DOUBLE TAP

(OF MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE)

SAT 2/21 - 8PM DOORS (DJ PREMIER AND ROYCE DA 5’9)

THURS 2/26 - LEEDZ PRESENTS:

LIL DURK SAT 2/28

PIDGEONS PLAYING PING PONG STRANGE MACHINES, MOTHER TON WED 3/4 - EMBRACE PRESENTS:

- UPSTAIRS FRI 2/20 - 7PM

BLESSING OFFOR, MARIKO SAT 2/21 - 2 SHOWS! BOWERY BOSTON PRESENTS:

YOU BLEW IT! 1PM TIX AVAILABLE. 6PM SHOW SOLD OUT SUN 2/22

RETOX WHORES, I AM BECOME DEATH WED 2/18

Weekly Gaming Night: The same

Live Resident Band The Night Foxes, Playing everything Old, New & Everything Inbetween

guys who bring you Game Night every week at Good Life bar are now also running a special Sunday night.

21+, NO

21+, NO COVER, 10PM - 1AM

COVER, 6PM 11:30PM

MONDAYS

WEDNESDAYS

MAKKA MONDAY

GEEKS WHO DRINK ELEMENTS

14+yrs every Monday night, Bringing Roots, Reggae & Dancehall Tunes 21+, 10PM - 1AM

THURSDAYS

Free Trivia Pub Quiz from 7:30PM - 9:30PM

RE:SET WEDNESDAYS

Weekly Dance Party, House, Disco, Techno, Local & International DJ’s

15+ Years of Resident Drum & Bass Bringing some of the worlds biggest DnB DJ’s to Cambridge

19+, 10PM - 2AM

19+, 10PM - 1AM

FRIDAYS

SATURDAYS

PRETTY YOUNG THING

BOOM BOOM ROOM

21+, 10PM - 2AM

21+, 10PM - 2AM

80’s Old School & Top 40 Dance hits

80’s, 90’s, 00’s One Hit Wonders

CHECK OUT ALL PHOENIX LANDING NIGHTLY EVENTS AT:

WWW.PHOENIXLANDINGBAR.COM

1/2 PRICED APPS DAILY 5 - 7PM SHOWING THE 6 NATIONS RUGBY TOURNAMENT LIVE STARTING FEB 6

WATCH EVERY SOCCER GAME! LIVE OPENING 7:30am

ATLAS LAB, SUNDOG /mideastclub /zuzubar @mideastclub @zuzubar

ENGLISH PREMIER LEAGUE Saturdays & Sundays Every Game shown live in HD on 12 Massive TV’s. We Show All European Soccer including Champions League, Europa League, German, French, Italian & Spanish Leagues.

NFL SUNDAY SPECIAL $4 Drafts, Wing Specials, Happy Hour Priced menu!

FILM

ALT-OSCARS What else is on?

BY JAKE MULLIGAN @_JAKEMULLIGAN

Wednesday FEBRUARY 18 8:30 pm

FILM NIGHT Emerson Film Immersion Downstairs Cover: $5 18+ Thursday FEBRUARY 19 9:30 pm – 2:00 am

DRE DAY

7L, Braun Dapper, Knife, Brek.One Downstairs Music = West Coast, Rap, Funk, Breaks Cover: $5 21+ Friday FEBRUARY 20 9:30 pm – 2:00 am

PICO PICANTE

VS. UNITY

Svntv Mverte, Riobamba, Oxycontinental, Leo Alarcon, Francesco Spagna, Cruzz Music: Upstairs = Classic, Deep, & Soulful House / Downstairs = Tropical Bass, Digital Cumbia, Global Bass Cover : $5 before 11 pm, $10 after 21+ Saturday FEBRUARY 21 10 pm

SWEET SHOP

Golf Clap, Matt McNeill, CS, DJ Reel Drama Music = House, Techno Downstairs $10 21+ Monday FEBRUARY 23 7:00 pm

MMMMAVEN GRADUATES

Saturday February 21st 10PM

VINAL DUST BUNNIES,

PLUS COSMIC

SCROLL Jam Band

Friday February 27th 10PM

We Dig Free Fridays presents

GRASSROOT PLUS JO HENLEY BAND Rock

DIGBOSTON.C0M

02 18 15 – 02 25 15

20

Friday March 6th 10PM

We Dig Free Friday presents

SIRSY PLUS LIVE NUDE GIRLS Indie Rock

17 Holland St., Davis Sq. Somerville (617) 776-2004 Directly on T Red Line at Davis

We welcome 14 new DJs into the community with a special party House, Hip-Hop, Techno, R&B + More!

Free: Downstairs 18+ Tuesday FEBRUARY 24 6 pm - 10 pm

GAME NIGHT

(video games, card games, board games)

Why watch the Oscars this Sunday? For snark? To see overpaid underachievers advertise designer gowns? To watch a solitary corner of the movie industry—the corporate studios, who focus on big-budget superhero films, low-budget horror films, and wannabe-prestigious biopics—crown themselves as the end-all be-all of world cinema? Well, sure, if you’re into all that.

But every year, in each category, great works go unacknowledged, merely because they don’t fit into the cookie-cutter molds (American-made, inoffensive, uplifting) that the Academy prefers. This is the Super Bowl for movies, but it’s dedicated to the part of the industry that least deserves a Super Bowl, and you’d do better to spend your Sunday night watching one of the films that were left out. The following alt-Oscar picks deserve your attention, and are at the ready for download or streaming now: The glorified facial contortions of actors like Michael Keaton, to wit, are overshadowed by the nuanced work done by Scarlett Johansson in Under the Skin (now available on Amazon Instant). She plays an alien predator, outfitted with the body of a seductress, who in the midst of long-term work capturing horned-up guys for extraterrestrial overlords becomes plagued by existential anxiety. The role allows her to amp up her World’s Sexiest Woman persona (and in the film men are literally dying to fuck her) but it also lets her stretch and suggest that such a thing is merely a fleeting projection; the character panics when she realizes that perception is shaped solely by appearance. The dialectic plays out on her daringly blank face, which is rendered stoic and unencumbered by dialogue. In the end, she takes the year’s headiest film and gives it a sensual core.

Let’s also laugh about Morten Tyldum and Bennett Miller being nominated for Best Director (for the distressingly boring Imitation Game and the distressingly campy Foxcatcher, respectively) while Bong Joon-ho and his Snowpiercer (Netflix) efforts remain totally dismissed. In staging a post-apocalyptic class war within the confines of a moving train, Bong created a visual language for social climbing: The proletariat pound their way from the back cars to the front, left-to-right, while his camera moves horizontally alongside them. Chris Evans leads, the film attached to his hip, while one-percenters in the front aim to grind the forward progress to a standstill, and unaffiliated passengers rest framed in corners or crannies. Moral divisions and sociological barriers are coded into each visual composition. If we’ve produced an heir to the meticulous formal control of Alfred Hitchcock (who never won an Oscar), Bong is it.

But before actors and directors come screenplays, another celebrated Oscar category in which 2014’s most ambitious will go unmentioned. In Alex Ross Perry’s Listen Up Philip, (Amazon, iTunes), Jason Schwartzman plays a manic-depressive novelist who lays into his friends and family with barbs so verbose they’d leave Groucho Marx jealous and stealing quips for future use. Moreover, the elegant narration elucidates his perfectionist worldview, while scenes playing under the voiceover reveal a pathetic egotist unable to live up to his own standards. It’s an anti-coming-of-age narrative. Cues are taken from Philip Roth and John Cassavetes, and all of it is armed with a bilious bite. It’s sure to turn off any viewers in search of the “likable characters” who populate the annual Oscar winners, and for that alone we should be thankful. I’ll take this tragedy of self-loathing over a self-aggrandizing acceptance speech every single year.

FILM EVENTS WED 2.18

PARENTS JUST DON’T GET IT TAKING OFF

@FTER MIDNIGHT DEAD RINGERS

[Harvard Film Archive.

24 Quincy St., Harvard Sq., Cambridge. 7:30pm/R/$7-9. hcl.harvard.edu/hfa/]

[Coolidge Corner.

290 Harvard St., Brookline.

Fri. 2.20 + Sat. 2.21. midnight/R/$11.25. coolidge.org]

FRI 2.20

SUN. 2.22

KUBRICK’S PERIOD PIECE BARRY LYNDON

[Museum of Fine Arts.

465 Huntington Ave., Boston.

3:30pm/PG/$9-11. mfa.org]

ANTI-WAR SILENT J’ACCUSE

[Harvard Film Archive.

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

MON. 2.23

BELGIANS PLOTTING SUICIDE NE ME QUITTE PAS

[Brattle Theatre.

40 Brattle St., Harvard Sq., Cambridge. 7pm/NA/$9-11. brattlefilm.org]

TWIN PEAKS PREQUEL FIRE WALK WITH ME

[Brattle Theatre.

40 Brattle St., Harvard Sq., Cambridge. 10pm/R/$9-11. brattlefilm.org]

NEWS TO US

THEATER

FEATURE

EAT AND RUN

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

‘The Big Meal’ serves up humor and heartache

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

BY SPENCER SHANNON @SUSPENCEY

21

FAIR CHANCE ONE OF US PULLS A MUSCLE For director David Miller, Dan LeFranc’s The Big Meal is a bit of familiar territory; Miller moonlights as the owner of a bed-and-breakfast called Encore, which he operates out of the top two floors of his historic South End home. The comings and goings, meals shared, stories told—these facets of family life also serve as the foundation of LeFranc’s play, where entire lives fly by at the tables of classic American restaurants.

“You really get a sense of how fast and brief life is when you’re not really paying attention to it,” Miller says of The Big Meal’s impact. “Usually plays are just a cut of a life. This is a whole lifetime in 90 minutes.”

Not just one lifetime, but several. The Big Meal introduces audiences to an extended family’s journey over five generations. Eight actors portray 26 characters, covering about 60 total years. The actors themselves also consist of a range of ages, from a boy and girl in their teens, to adults in their twenties, forties, and sixties. The pace is quick, with audiences required to constantly play catch-up—and that’s the point. Miller relished the challenge of directing such a convoluted production, and employed unique strategies to organize the cast during rehearsals.

“It was very much like a musical score, with me setting timings,” he says. “We spent a lot of time on timing and tuning, especially in [dialogue between characters]. Many of these scenes have four, sometimes six characters talking at the same time.

It’s very true to life, but it’s very challenging for the company to get it right.”

Despite the ambitious nature of the play, Miller believes the struggle was worth it. “The cast has been wonderful. There’s been a great sense of discovery and exploration.”

Since opening night, Miller has observed that the feeling of discovery seems to be shared by the audience as well—or rather, a feeling of rediscovery, of life’s fleeting nature and the importance of family.

“I hope when audiences leave, they want to call their parents or grandparents to just say hi,” Miller says. “If they leave the theater and [feel that]…then I think we’ve achieved something.” >> ZEITGEIST STAGE COMPANY PRESENTS: THE BIG MEAL. THE BLACK BOX THEATER AT THE BCA, 539 TREMONT ST., BOSTON. THROUGH 3/7.

FOR SHOWTIMES AND TICKET PRICES, VISIT ZEITGEISTSTAGE.COM

PHOTO BY RICHARD HALL/SILVERLINE IMAGES

“Usually plays are just a cut of a life.

This is a whole lifetime in 90 minutes.”

ARTS

ROB DELANEY

Homegrown comedy king crosses the pond for TV

BY SPENCER SHANNON @SUSPENCEY

DIGBOSTON.C0M

02 18 15 – 02 25 15

22

Rob Delaney has been in England for five months, the result of a life-changing move that sent him to London to begin a new career as writer, producer, and star of Catastrophe, his irreverent sitcom co-starring fellow comedian Sharon Horgan, which premiered on England’s Channel 4 in January.

These days, Delaney’s more family-oriented than one would expect from the guy who was the recipient of the “Funniest Person on Twitter Award” in 2012. Sober since 2002 and with kid number three on the way, he extolls the virtues of life in London— the quality of the gyms, and of course, socialized medicine—and his list of perks seems more suited to a father than to an entertainer.

“The biggest culture shock is definitely the healthcare,” he says. “Over here, you come to a hospital and they’re like, ‘Come on in!’ In America they’re like, ‘Give us all of your money and stick this ticking time bomb up your ass that’ll explode unless you give us, like, $1,000 for a vaccine!’”

The real-life Rob couldn’t be more different from his onscreen character of the same name, “a sturdy love-maker” who finds himself entangled in a whirlwind relationship with an Irish woman (Sharon Horgan). The fling becomes a whole lot more serious when she gets pregnant and they decide to keep the baby, despite the fact that that they barely know each other outside of the bedroom (just one of several locations where they find themselves doing the deed … a lot). The show is a runaway hit in the UK, where it’s already been renewed for a second season. Amazon Prime has an exclusive deal to bring Catastrophe to US viewers this spring.

Delaney and Horgan met on Twitter, and he insists she’s “the funniest person in the world.” He credits their writing partnership with much of the comedy magic that happens onscreen. “[The partnership] drives us both to be better, and not to let any nonsense get in there. No chaff, or whatever,” Delaney says. “We work hard on each other, in a loving way.”

Catastrophe, in its raw and rude—but somehow still-romantic—way, marks a moment of maturation for Delaney, who finds himself settling down a bit in real life.

The sitcom’s success seems to be the logical next step for the prolific social media celebrity, comedian, author, and now transcontinental TV star. He finds that working on the show has really helped him hit his stride as an actor, but especially as a comedy writer.

“I mean, acting is fun, but anybody can act—or rather, a lot of people can act. My favorite part? I would say it’s developing an idea, then honing it, making it funnier and funnier through revision, sort of letting your imagination run free and then corralling it, shaping it into real, sustainable, performable ideas,” he says. “The best part for me is learning more about writing. The fact that people are actually watching it on television is ridiculous.”

In the midst of all of this work, Delaney will be returning to his roots with a 12date tour of the US, Meat, which kicks off in Boston.

“The word ‘meat’ just makes me laugh,” he says. Material will cover “just my life.”

He explains: “I’m more of a dad now. You know, older, and angrier, and sadder, and fatter, and hairier. I’ve gotta delve deeper into that, you know?”

He laments the fact that he’ll only be in Boston for one night, and that he won’t have time to eat at Regina’s. True to form, he speaks with a mix of self-deprecation and raunchiness that has endeared him to his fans and gives him away as a regular guy at heart, a guy who just happens to be a big—and steadily growing bigger— name in comedy.

“A woman flashed me once. It was distracting. I like to see boobs, but not when I’m onstage, because then it’s hard to focus,” he says. “Yeah, I’m super boring. I should be in jail or something. My imagination, I hope, isn’t. But in practice? I bore myself.” >> ROB DELANEY: MEAT TOUR. THE WILBUR THEATRE, 246 TREMONT ST., BOSTON. FRI. FEB 20, 10PM, $25. FOR TICKETS VISIT THEWILBUR.COM

PHOTO BY LUKE FONTANA

MY MUSTACHE IS HERE TO HELP

NEWS TO US

WHAT'S FOR BREAKFAST

BY PATT KELLEY WHATS4BREAKFAST.COM

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

FEATURE

SECRET ASIAN MAN

BY TAK TOYOSHIMA @TAKTOYOSHIMA

23

THE STRIP BAR

BY PAT FALCO ILLFALCO.COM

OUR VALUED CUSTOMERS

BY TIM CHAMBERLAIN OURVC.NET

SAVAGE LOVE

DRINK THERAPY

BY DAN SAVAGE @FAKEDANSAVAGE I’m a heterosexual, cisgender male in college. I’ve been in a monogamous relationship with a girl (18, cisgender, bisexual, also in college) for a little more than two months, and the sex is not frequent enough for me—we’ve had sex three times total. The core of the issue is that I’m a 20-year-old guy with a typically high libido, and her libido is low to nonexistent. When she’s drunk, she suddenly gets very horny and craves my dick. When she’s sober, she is very mellow. I suspect that she has some barriers up and alcohol disinhibits her. She has body issues, a history with a rapist, an emotionally abusive ex-boyfriend, and depression. With the barriers down, I suspect she has a high sex drive. The alcohol, however, is obviously not a long-term solution, especially because if it doesn’t make her horny, it can make her have a depressive episode. Do you think there is anything I can do to coax the barriers down while she’s sober? I like her a lot, so I’m not willing to dump her over this.

Libido And Alcohol Problems Is your girlfriend seeing a therapist? Because if she isn’t, LAAP, she should be—and I suspect she isn’t, because you probably would’ve mentioned it.

Horny, 20-year-old boyfriends are wonderful things—I remember what those were like—but a horny, 20-year-old boyfriend (and the sexual hopes, expectations, and pressures that come bundled with one) may not be the best thing for a young woman struggling with body issues and the double head zap of having been both raped and in an emotionally abusive relationship. I don’t think you should dump her because she’s not putting out at the clip you’d like—don’t present it that way, LAAP, because you don’t want her fucking you under duress—but you should have a conversation about what she really wants from you. If she wants a fully intimate relationship, i.e., a romantic connection that’s both emotional and sexual, her inhibitions (her traumas) are preventing her from having that, and you’re right that booze isn’t a realistic long-term fix. And as boozing is as likely to lead to a depressive episode as it is to waken her libido, it’s not a great short-term fix either. But working with a therapist is a realistic fix—a good therapist can help her find the strength inside herself that she’s currently finding in a pitcher of margaritas.

But if all she wants from you is your time, your attention, and your emotional support, LAAP, tell her she can have all of that without the pressure of being your “girlfriend.” The last thing you should want—and the last thing she needs—is for her to be getting strategically drunk so that she can fuck you just enough to keep you by her side. Reassure her that you’ll be at her side whether you’re her boyfriend or not—but say that only if you mean it—and encourage her to get the professional help that she needs.