Dig Boston 4.22.15

DIGBOSTON.COM 4.22.15 - 4.29.15

NEWS

THE ENDURING FIGHT AGAINST

POLICE MISCONDUCT IN BOSTON

FILM

2015

FEATURE

THINK RINK MEET THE

LADIES of CONTACT SPORT WE’LL BE ROOTING FOR IN 2015

See page 7 for great deals with these restaurants!

INDEPENDENT FILM FESTIVAL BOSTON MUSIC

ANTHONY FANTANO

A CONVERSATION WITH YOUTUBE SENSATION AND SELF-PROCLAIMED “BUSIEST MUSIC NERD”

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04 22 15 – 04 29 15

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NEWS TO US FEATURE DEPT. OF COMMERCE

VOL 17 + ISSUE 16

APRIL 22, 2015 - APRIL 29, 2015

NEWS, FEATURES + MEDIA FARM EDITOR Chris Faraone ASSOCIATE MUSIC EDITOR Martín Caballero ASSOCIATE A+E EDITOR Spencer Shannon CONTRIBUTORS Boston Bastard, Nina Corcoran, Emily Hopkins, Micaela Kimball, Jake Mulligan, Cady Vishniac, Dave Wedge INTERNS Paige Chaplin

DESIGN CREATIVE DIRECTOR Tak Toyoshima DESIGNER Brittany Grabowski INTERNS Elise Cameron, Alek Glasrud, Michael Zaia COMICS Tim Chamberlain Brian Connolly Pat Falco Patt Kelley

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ON THE COVER

Boston Derby Dames grace our cover this week ready to kick some ass. Photo by league photographer Joe Medolo. Read all about the Derby Dames on page 10.

©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.

DEAR READER This past week began with the locally time-honored tradition of getting Monday off from work for the Boston Marathon. But you already knew this. And maybe you spent it, as many do, drinking through the day and well into the night. As an endurance metaphor the Marathon serves many masters equally.

For that matter journalism, in these times, could serve as another. After all, the current state of the form continues to change, with publishers and outlets constantly working to balance financial stability with remaining relevant and staying on the cutting edge in order to attract everything from web traffic to ad revenue. Having acknowledged that work, it’s the actual journalists plying their trade that tend to feel the more immediate pains that eeking out a living in the field presents (your pals at DigBoston included).

So it was timely that a story dropped this week after the 2015 Pulitzer Prize winners were announced that revealed one of the triumphant parties, a reporter from a small town newspaper in Torrance, California, had already left the profession due to not being able to live on his pathetic salary.

That fact that he’s now in PR (a common move these days for journos) underscores a salient point about media in the digital age: Namely, that those of us still fighting the good fight are typically those who have a drive and passion to tell stories worth telling (and this issue is full of them), and to keep the profession limping forward come hell or high water, all the while gasping for the air of fiscal solvency.

In spite of such woes, you can put money on the fact that as long as there is air in our collective lungs at DigBoston, we’ll keep fighting. Until our last breath.

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

EDITOR Dan McCarthy

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BY DAN MCCARTHY @ACUTALPROOF

DIGTIONARY

KOHPROSAL

noun ˈkō- ˈprōzəl 1. When the mayor’s chief of staff Dan Koh proposes to an employee of Boston 2024 on the finish line of the Boston Marathon with a GoPro on his head.

OH, CRUEL WORLD Dear Person Just Back From Vacation, I’m so happy that I know what a phenomenal time you had on Spring Break, and that you keep on posting the same exact picture over and over at different poolside bars with your dumb friends, one of whom thinks she is super cute by always making devil ears and shaping her mouth as if she can’t help but to holler. I could ignore your endless Facebook slide show, but that was actually tolerable; what killed me was your first post upon returning, in which you apologized for “taking a break from social media while in paradise.” Are you mad? I looked; you posted an average of three pics a day until the moment that you must have stepped on the plane home. I’d block you, but aggravation gets me up in the morning.

ILLUSTRATION BY ELISE CAMERON

EDITORIAL

NEWS US

COPBLOCK’D NEWS TO US

Stats suggest, activists, and outside experts agree: There will never be accountability for BPD so long as cops police themselves

BY CHRIS FARAONE @FARA1

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context that is critical to dealing with police violence and discrimination in the commonwealth. The author of the Bay State’s wrongful conviction compensation bill and other relevant measures, Wilkerson explained how big towns and small cities—in particular Brookline and Milton, on the immediate outskirts of Boston—effectively blocked legislation that could have cracked down on racial profiling.

Buttressing a central argument of Crawford and the other speakers, Wilkerson acknowledged the 1992 St. Clair Commission report, which concluded there were “substantial problems in [BPD] leadership and management.” The findings of those outside evaluators more than two decades ago sound similar to common contemporary complaints, while recommendations made for departmental changes seem to have gone largely unaddressed. For example: When it comes to investigating their own, the 1992 commission observed a “hearing process characterized by shoddy, halfhearted investigations, lengthy delays, and inadequate documentation and record-keeping,” while “the present Internal Affairs process is unfairly skewed against those bringing a complaint.”

Natasha Tidwell, another panelist at the Dudley forum, brought figures that reflect enduring and historical systemic failure. A former police officer and prosecutor who now teaches at New England Law, Tidwell is a member of the Community Ombudsman Oversight Panel (“CO-OP”), first tasked by then-Mayor Thomas Menino in 2007 to “ensure fairness and thoroughness in the Boston Police internal affairs process.” Though essentially toothless on account of its lack of subpoena power—final CO-OP decisions rest with the BPD commissioner regardless of their recommendations—volunteer ombudsmen have spent hundreds of combined hours examining cases, and their latest findings, unveiled at the Black & Blue event, paint an

ugly picture. For starters: IAD complaints from within the department more than doubled between 2009 and 2013 (from 76 to 158), while complaints from outside of the department more than tripled (from 105 to 369).

Of the 15 cases checked by the CO-OP in this latest study, reviewers determined that 41 percent had IAD findings that were “other than fair and thorough.”

Roughly 30 percent of cases reviewed by the CO-OP took more than two years for IAD to finish investigating.

In unpacking pieces of the 24-page study, Tidwell made a point of distinguishing the duties of her CO-OP—to “provide external oversight of certain Boston Police Department Internal Affairs investigations to assess whether those investigations meet the standards of fair and thorough”— from those of a more far-reaching entity like the New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board, which is a wholly independent agency with subpoena power. It’s an important distinction; considering the likelihood that IAD will not act promptly, and that even if they do investigate the findings may be far from thorough, people are considerably less likely to report inappropriate police activity in the first place.

A perpetual pain in the BPD’s collective ass, noted civil rights attorney Friedman used his turn to advocate for a better public records law—he says Mass has “one of the worst in the country”—and along with Hall and Tidwell stressed the need for multilateral community policing.

Having a friendly cop presence and hosting youth activities COPBLOCK’D continued on pg. 7

PHOTO BY CHRIS FARAONE

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There’s a common saying among law enforcement officers and administrators that goes something like this: If you’re not doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to worry about. Though variations of that expression, some less cliché and far more subtle, are often used in reference to surveillance and security, comparable notions have been leveraged to rhetorically validate stop-and-frisk policies and any number of potentially unconstitutional actions.

Meanwhile, in light of their lack of openness across the board, authorities appear unwilling to apply the argument— that law-abiding folks have nothing to fear—to themselves.

This is especially true of the notoriously non-transparent Boston Police Department. In the wake of several recent high-profile officer shootings of unarmed black men across the country, over the past six months there has been some discussion about cops wearing body cameras here and elsewhere. The reaction to such initiatives, however, has only further gone to show that when their own behavior is in question, police prefer to monitor themselves.

In the interest of exposing double standards around crime and punishment in the Hub—and in hopes of bringing more accountability to the citizen complaint and alleged misconduct review process—last week Roxbury activist and Blackstonian publisher Jamarhl Crawford hosted a forum at the Boston Public Library branch in Dudley Square titled, “Black & Blue: The Relationship Between the BPD & Communities of Color.” Among those on hand to address the nearly packed house: noted Massachusetts civil rights attorney Howard Friedman, Rashaan Hall of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, and former State Sen. Dianne Wilkerson, also an attorney and one of the few public figures offering more than lip service on the topic of police brutality.

“This is not a new situation that we’re dealing with,” said Hall. On that cue, Wilkerson excavated some historical

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DEPT. OF COMMERCE

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NEWS TO US

COPBLOCK’D continued from pg. 4 is one thing; but additionally necessary, said Tidwell, is “holding your employees accountable.” About the St. Clair report, Friedman said one promising development from the ’90s was the forming of an “early intervention system” to screen for problematic officers. All these years later, however, the BPD has not disclosed any details about such a mechanism. To Friedman, that’s as good as having no system at all. “In the law,” he said, “if it’s not written down, it doesn’t exist.”

As for progress … even some activists acknowledge positive changes in the way of recent BPD promotions, while Tidwell of the CO-OP said, “I take Mayor [Marty] Walsh at his word that things are moving forward.” Some present from the Massachusetts Association of Minority Law Enforcement Officers (MAMLEO) were less optimistic though, with a few offering some of the harshest criticisms leveled at the BPD all night. Addressing the panel from the crowd, one MAMLEO member specifically said of his department, “I need to see more African-Americans on the gang squad and on the drug squad.”

Panelists repeatedly acknowledged the need for an increase in the number of cops who look more like the people they’re policing. Overall though, they endorsed a multiprong strategy that includes strengthening diversity, but that also calls for everything from direct action to supporting legislation like Massachusetts House Bill 1575, which would ban police profiling on grounds of “actual or perceived race, color, ethnicity, national origin, immigration or citizenship status, religion, gender, gender identity, or sexual orientation.” As one man in the crowd said, police won’t change themselves; while detectives often ask folks in communities of color to testify against their neighbors, it’s rare that even benevolent officers inform on criminal and killer cops.

“Darkness is how they do this,” Friedman said. “We need activists to [hold police accountable], and we all have to be activists and help.”

BLUNT TRUTH

TAXING QUESTIONS

BY ANDY GAUS ANDYGAUS @SPRYNET.COM Legalization advocates are a rare breed: they can’t wait for the day when they will be allowed to pay more taxes. But how should marijuana be taxed? That’s a good question, or rather, a series of messy questions. (And maybe you can help answer one of them: read on.)

First question: What do you tax? The selling price or the weight of what’s sold?

A percent of the selling price is easy to implement, but the revenues from such a tax could plummet if the economies of large-scale production and more efficient distribution bring about a (much hoped-for) price collapse.

Taxing by weight would provide the state with a more secure revenue stream.

But that brings us to the next question: The weight of what? Do you tax marijuana, hash and hash oil at the same rate, or do you create different tax rates for different products? What will be the tax rate for products developed in the future?

A third choice, taxing by THC content, would permit taxing different cannabis products by a single standard, and seemingly the fairest one: how much mindaltering goodness they contain. But the amount of expensive testing involved makes that choice impractical for now.

However the tax is structured, one thing is certain: If taxes rise beyond a certain point, many buyers will stick with the black market. What is that point? You tell us. A one-question poll about how great a tax you would pay on an ounce of legal marijuana has been posted on masscann.org. All you eager taxpayers out there are invited to help answer a crucial question: How high a tax would actually be paid?

FREE RADICAL

MARATHON SECURITY CHECK

BY EMILY HOPKINS @GENDERPIZZA

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Like many marathon spectators, I walked away from Monday’s festivities with a special souvenir: a purple wristband printed with the word “inspected.” This is part of a new normal level of security, a tag to indicate that your bag has been checked at one of more than two dozen checkpoints between the Kenmore and Copley areas.

Even as the crowd inside the barriers thinned, throngs of visitors bottlenecked at entrances so that law enforcement officers could search their belongings.

The general atmosphere around the checkpoints was one of complacency—a small inconvenience in the name of safety. Kurt Schwartz, director of the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency, summed up such sentiments in comments to the media about attendees not being able to carry backpacks: “It will enhance security,” he said, offering no actual proof.

At one point, I inadvertently slipped out of the fences and found myself in line for yet another checkpoint. I was visibly annoyed, so one officer chimed in: “The rules are the rules, you can’t complain.” As I prepared for my second warrantless search of the afternoon, I could think of only one thing to say: “Actually, I can.” It’s the very least I can do.

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MEDIA FARM

BAIN IS BEAUTIFUL

Is the Globe joking with their private equity puff piece?

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There is one positive thing, besides the jokes, about Deval Patrick jumping into bed with various plutocratic monsters and demonstrably evil Massachusetts entities: Now that he’s accepted a position as the head of so-called “social impact” investing at Bain Capital, even people who are too stubborn to admit he was a failure in office have to concede that the former governor is less picky about where his money comes from than a junkie hooker working the bus depot.

Of course we already knew this about Patrick, who somehow skated into elected office on wafts of leftist rhetoric despite having worked for companies like CocaCola. As some have pointed out, he lamely refused to criticize Bain for its deplorable practices when his predecessor (and the private equity firm’s founder) Mitt Romney was running for president, and it’s no surprise why—as governor he took in excess of $11,000 in campaign donations from Bain employees.

Most reporters have been as kind to Patrick since he left office as they were during his tenure, and all have seemingly failed to point out that “social impact” investing at Bain Capital sounds more ridiculous than the militant wing of the Salvation Army. Sure, Patrick got a couple of slaps on the wrist for his hideous decision to flank the Boston 2024 Olympics for $7,500 a day, but otherwise it seems his free pass hasn’t expired. Warning: The Globe excerpt you are about to read may have the ring of a Scientology pamphlet, but it was actually published in a newspaper …

“The Globe excerpt you are about to read may have the ring of a Scientology pamphlet, but it was actually published in a newspaper ...”

There are two chestnuts that drive Bain Capital partners crazy: First, the notion that they are ruthless capitalists who enjoy firing people. Second, that they are all card-carrying Republicans.

We feel awful for having stereotyped them. Please, go on …

Current and former partners, and close observers of the firm say Bain Capital is more of a big tent than many might think.

Wowsers. What are you going to tell us now? That there are a bunch of Democrats working there too!?!

Today’s Bain Capital, with 950 employees and more than $75 billion under management, is hardly a GOP enclave. Its top ranks include at least as many highprofile Democratic donors …

Looks like we had those guys all wrong. Oh, but there is just one little thing … While we would never suggest that Globe editors twist stories due to advertiser influence, for kicks we Googled “Bain Capital” and “Hewlett Packard,” the latter of which has a prominent advertisement next to the Patrick and Bain puff piece. How funny, we thought, would it be if those two companies happened to do business with each other? So you can imagine how loudly we howled upon stumbling onto a 2012 New York Times article subtitled “Bain Capital Tied to Surveillance Push in China” …

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digboston.com/listings

digboston

The Bain-owned company, Uniview Technologies, produces what it calls “infrared antiriot” cameras and software that enable police … to share images … The company was formerly the surveillance division of H3C … the Chinese telecommunications giant whose expansion plans in the United States have faced resistance from Congress over questions about its ties to the Chinese military …

In 2010, 3Com, along with H3C, became a subsidiary of Hewlett-Packard in a $2.7 billion buyout deal.

Talk about a social impact.

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DEPT. OF COMMERCE

FEATURE

NEWS TO US

Meet the local teams we will be cheering for in 2015

THE SHOW MUST ROLL ON

While two out of the three members of DigBoston’s editorial brass are dudes, it’s not exactly Testosterone Tuesday around

here. Neither one of said dudes follows professional sports, or has ever even seen an NFL game from start to finish. With that said, Chris Faraone and Dan McCarthy aren’t against sports as a rule, but rather are just skeptical of the lame traditions and excessive commercialism in pro arenas. That doesn’t seem to be the case among female pro leagues though, not yet at least, and so we spoke with gladiators from two squads—one veteran team, the other brand new—that we’ll be rooting for this year …

2015 SCHEDULE

GOOD SPORTS FEATURE

MAY 1 The Big O (Eugene, OR) (AWAY) MAY 16 Arkham Horrors vs Cosmonaughties (CAMBRIDGE, MA) MAY 30 Boston vs Montreal (CAMBRIDGE, MA) JUNE 6 Boston vs Nashville (CAMBRIDGE, MA)

The fast past and reinvigorated future of the Boston Derby Dames

JUNE 27 Nutcrackers vs Wicked Pissahs (CAMBRIDGE, MA) JULY 18 Home Team Double Header!

(CAMBRIDGE, MA) AUGUST 1 Home Team Double Header!

(CAMBRIDGE, MA) SEPTEMBER 12 Home Team Playoffs OCTOBER 17 Home Team Championships

BY CHRIS FARAONE @FARA1

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From the outside looking in, it seemed like losing your old practice facility was a tough card to be dealt. What was it like up close?

SI: We didn’t have a whole lot of time to find a new location … We ended up having to rent a few skating rinks [in the

interim], and held practices at some different places until our search committee finally found a place for us in Lynn.

I’ve always known that you all take it seriously, and that the elite team even travels, but I didn’t realize that you were official to the point of having a “search committee,” things like that.

We have an executive board that handles finances—they handle any agreements that affect the business. They make decisions, like how much we can spend on rent. When we lost the space in Somerville, [there were] some great recommendations from the public … At the same time we’re still an amateur sport, we don’t have large funding. Our governing body isn’t making money.

With so many skaters, and different teams, and a traveling team, why is it important to have a central space?

When the Derby Dames started in 2005, we didn’t have anything like that. There were times when we went from rink to rink and were skating outdoors, so we know those challenges. Now we’re also running a business, so it’s important to have everything in one location. We want to have a positive space for women to grow, and we also have the Boston Junior Derby, which was founded by one of our skaters. Because of that, it’s really important for them to be in a safe place with their families.

The Dames have grown significantly over the past several years, even with setbacks. [Under the Derby Dames banner, there are currently “four home teams, two travel teams,” and “a recreational travel team [and] a farm system that helps up-and-coming skaters realize their potential and acclimates transfers from other leagues.”] Are you gradually becoming a professional operation?

We’re doing a lot of traveling, more than usual … We do have some sponsors for our events, but the skaters are selfsupported, and have to pay dues. It’s less of a performance at this point and more of an athleticism. It’s not a professional sport, but it’s professional.

Are you finally situated in the new space?

It’s been interesting. It’s under construction, so it feels like we’re starting something new, which is a good thing. It feels like everyone has a positive outlook. For our travel teams, which play against other leagues outside of Boston, we are travelling more than usual, going to Pittsburgh, then to Oregon. We also just came back from tournament in Toronto.

So is this one of those coming back from adversity stories?

Our team bonding feels like it’s a really positive year. I don’t know if it’s a part of losing our space, but it’s definitely there.

PHOTOS BY JOE MEDOLO

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Knowing, befriending, going to the gym with, or at least partying with a Derby Dame is an essential right of passage for Bostonians of young and adventurous ilk. Unlike Celtics players who make occasional Back Bay cameos but who are otherwise invisible, the Dames live and play among us; when members of the Hub’s beloved quad squad aren’t smashing opponents as their pugilistic alter-egos (Catherine the Irate, MC SlamHer), they’re our roommates, co-workers, and homegirls. For that reason, it was of concern to the Dig community last year when the club’s more than 90 skaters were squeezed out of their longtime practice space in Somerville. And so on the heels of the Derby Dames home opener for their 10th season at Shriners Auditorium in Wilmington last Saturday, we asked Katherine “Space Invader” Rugg to update us on the newly-relocated, “allfemale, DIY, skater-owned-and-operated flat track roller derby league,” and about the apparent booming popularity of the sport in general.

When Dani Rylan ended her college hockey career at Northeastern, she realized she couldn’t step away from the game. The 27-year-old needed another avenue through which to stay connected to the sport, and she was considering an effort to install an expansion arm in New York of the Canadian Women’s Hockey League (CWHL), which already has a Massachusetts team in the Boston Blades.

After reaching out to the hockey community, Rylan linked up with Angela Ruggiero, a member of the United States Women’s National Ice Hockey Team with four Olympic medals to her name (and yes, she was also a contestant on “The Apprentice”). Last August, however, the two began thinking bigger; namely, they wanted a league in which players are paid. “She was like, ‘What if you bring a whole league to the US,’” Rylan says of Ruggiero. “I got hooked on that idea, started running with it, and before I knew it I had other people on board and here we are.”

Right away Rylan found herself ushering in the dawn of the National Women’s Hockey League (NWHL), which is slated for its premier face-off in October, has a player draft coming this summer, and is already developing teams across the northeast like the Connecticut Whales, the New York Riveters, and the Boston Pride. By May, outfits will be hosting training camps, while Rylan will be working fundraisers and luring corporate sponsors. Come showtime, the Pride will host 18 games in the first season, with nine home games to be played at the Allied Veterans Memorial Rink in Everett, where many of the top talents train between international play and their NCAA schedules.

“Right now it’s all about creating awareness,” says Rylan, who is formally the NWHL commissioner. “Each home game will be marketed as its own event to get more butts in seats.” She adds that the league will have “community partners helping with outreach,” and that she hopes to “bring in people from all over the region.” So far, the NWHL has verbal commitments from more than 40 players, deals established with four ice rinks, several advisors including Ruggiero, and four general managers who will sit on a board of governors.

Importantly, Rylan stresses that the NWHL isn’t a glorified rec league. The opportunities they’re hoping to provide are paid gigs for dedicated athletes: each team will have a salary cap set at $270,000; average salaries will be around $15,000 (more than $800 a game); contracts will be negotiated between players and team operators. For revenue, money is already coming in from gifts and sponsorships, while ticket sales will come closer to the season. On the personnel side, there are currently 72 total roster spots available league-wide, and managers and coaches will recruit top college players, both current and former, as well as women who compete at the international level.

“I think that we’re going to have to prove ourselves,” Rylan says. “The women’s game has evolved so much over the last decade. When you look at viewership numbers from last Olympics, 4.9 million people were watching the women’s gold medal game on NBC. [Not] because it was a women’s or a men’s game, they were watching because it was an amazing hockey game. It’s the right time for women to be recognized on the national [hockey] stage.”

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON THE NATIONAL WOMEN’S HOCKEY LEAGUE, VISIT NWHL.CO

FEATURE

NEWS TO US

BY DAN MCCARTHY @ACUTALPROOF

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

The first paid women’s hockey league in America launches

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PUCK DYNASTY

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NOTARIOS, THUGS FEATURE

How bootleg attorneys prey on immigrants hoping to secure the American Dream: an undercover investigation

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Americans without close familial ties to first-generation immigrants may understand the citizenship process as a simple matter of filling out the right form, memorizing patriotic trivia from a fifth-grade civics class, and patiently waiting.

The reality is much more complex, a web of bureaucratic minutia and legal pitfalls. In navigating this labyrinth, families sometimes look to “Notarios Publicos” for help, and that’s when things can get especially ugly.

Notarios is a catchall term often used to describe individuals who offer immigrants legal assistance despite lacking the required state-mandated training. In many Latin American countries, notarios must obtain extensive certification, and have far more authority than a notary public in the United States. But for an immigrant from a

place like Mexico, a notario in East Boston isn’t likely to provide nearly the same level of service and expertise that she might expect in her hometown.

For every major immigrant population, there are unscrupulous characters who take advantage of cultural misunderstandings surrounding the process of obtaining permission to stay and work in the US. Real immigration attorneys contacted for this story estimate that between 15 and 25 percent of their clients come to them for help fixing a problem caused by a notario or comparable sort of pseudo-lawyer.

“A lot of our clients only have a grade-school education, and they get duped,” says Javier Pico of Pico Law Office in Downtown Boston. “These guys pop out of nowhere. They say they’re cheaper than attorneys. When we get it, we have to undo a lot of damage.”

Last fall, President Barack Obama issued an executive order that grants upwards of five million undocumented immigrants a three-year reprieve from deportation, covering mainly the parents of US citizens and legal residents who have lived here for at least five years and have clean records. The order also lifts the age limit on a 2012 program for immigrants who arrived when they were children.

The federal government began accepting applications for deferred status on February 18, and one result has been a predatory feeding frenzy for cash-hungry notarios.

In journalism, we sometimes have to make decisions about when it’s ethical to go undercover. The rule of thumb is that it’s OK so long as there’s no other way to get the story, NOTARIOS continued on pg. 14

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BY BILL HAYDUKE

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NOTARIOS continued from pg. 12 as was the case last year when I went to experience a night in the now-closed homeless shelter on Long Island in Boston Harbor. On that note, since I am a white United States citizen who will likely never need the services of an immigration attorney, after meeting with several legitimate lawyers, I concoct a scenario in which I have recently married an undocumented woman from Guatemala and need to get her a green card.

TO CATCH A NOTARIO

I start my mission on Centre Street in Jamaica Plain, just west of the Jackson Square MBTA station—an easy place to find businesses offering legal assistance. My first stop is Dorka Travel, a multi-service agency that specializes in immigration law and taxes. According to the plastic sandwich board out front, they also handle travel arrangements, wire transfers, and kitchen appliances.

According to Pico of the Pico Law Office downtown, it’s common for immigration assistance to be one of many tenuously related areas of expertise claimed by such “multiservice” enterprises. Dual offers of immigration and tax aid are particularly fishy, adds Carlos Estrada of Estrada Law Office on Tremont Street. “Those are two of the most complicated types of law.”

The office of Dorka Travel is a located off the side of the Fernandez Beauty & Barber Shop, in a space shared with a taxi dispatcher. The phones ring constantly; people shuffle in and out of the office; soft Latin music plays on a radio in the corner. In a place beyond the immediate ruckus I meet a young woman in a dark blue blazer, sitting behind the largest desk in the room. She’s ostensibly the immigration expert on duty, and I tell her my story …

I recently married a Guatemalan woman who entered the country illegally about a decade ago over the Mexican border. My wife is undocumented, but now that we’re married I need to know how we can get her a green card.

Relatively speaking, Dorka offers bargain basement rates, so it’s easy to see why somebody without a lot of cash to spare would use the company’s services. The translation fee is $25 per page, or you can pay $300 for assistance in the entire immigration process. In comparison, one of the downtown specialists I’ve met says that costs can run upwards of $5,000. That estimate includes $1,490 due the federal government to get the legal ball rolling, but a real immigration law expert’s fee is on its own still prohibitive for working families.

The woman at Dorka makes the process sound extremely simple. At the same time, however, she confuses the name of the form I need, as well as the amount it costs to file with the government. I ask, “Do I need a lawyer for any of this?”

She assures me an attorney is only necessary if our waiver request is denied.

There are a variety of ways that people become “undocumented.” Each scenario has its own set of forms for people seeking a green card or work visa, and it costs hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars to file the paperwork, all of which is lost when forms are improperly completed.

Sometimes, immigrants only learn of mistakes when an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer knocks on the door.

“There are some lawyers that are trying to tell people that they can apply for a work permit when they’re clearly not eligible,” says Patricia Sobalvarro of Agencia ALPHA, a nonprofit outreach organization for the immigrant community.

“When they come to us it’s because they’re trying to fix what notarios have done.”

A few doors down from Dorka Travel is Reyna Services, LLC. From outside of the small, white building an animated LED display flashes, “Immigration.” The inside could also pass for a trailer park management office, the waiting room somewhere between sparse and barren, but with random items you might find inside a Catholic grandmother’s home

“In the back of a small grocery store, past shelves stacked with dried beans and Goya products, is a door with a sign that reads ‘Immigracion.’”

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scattered about. At the main desk there is a bouquet of fake pink roses, a statuette of two children playing sits on the end table in the corner, and a painting of the virgin Mary greets me from the far wall opposite the front entrance.

A woman takes me into her office and listens to my story.

Unlike the notario at the first place though, she isn’t willing to touch it. “There is nothing I can do for you,” she says. “You need a lawyer.” She collects my contact information and promises to pass it along to an immigration attorney. I never get a call back.

THE MOST NOTARIOS

I am given a tip about one particularly nefarious con artist by one of the legit lawyers I speak with. According to my source, “She must have a mansion by now with how much she’s stolen.” After several failed attempts to visit this notorious notario at her office in Jamaica Plain, I reach her by phone.

The woman sounds friendly as she listens to the tale about my wife and asks questions. She then walks me through the forms that I would need to complete, and suggests that my wife and I can do most of the work ourselves. If we need her help, she says during the consultation, it would probably cost between $300 and $350, most of which would be for translation services. “It sounds complicated,” she says, “but it’s really not.”

In going through the notes about my trip through Jamaica Plain, what strikes me most is that on a single stretch of Centre Street, I was able to find three different sets of advice for my specific scenario. I thought, How about on the complete opposite side of town? Are there different guidelines in East Boston?

I step out of the MBTA station at Maverick Square in the middle of a Friday. In the back of a small grocery store, past shelves stacked with dried beans and Goya products, is a door with a sign that reads “Immigracion.”

Inside is a brightly lit and sparsely decorated room. Three desks are crammed in, but only one is currently in use. A man turns down the radio and beckons me to sit. He’s a stocky, middle-aged Latino guy with a round face and thinning black hair. Behind him is a white wall decorated with framed certificates for tax preparation, and a large inspirational poster of an eagle superimposed over an American flag that reads “Integrity … True greatness comes when you’re tested.”

I sit next to a retractable screen that separates his corner of the office from the two empty desks. It’s a strange feeling; take away the decorative plants and a coat of paint, and we’re essentially in a stock room. In any case, I offer the Guatemalan wife story, and the stocky man hands me a list of documents I need to gather. There’s also a schedule of fees, which includes the standard $420 needed to apply for residency, though he crosses out the $1,070 fee for a work visa after I hint that my wife is paid under the table. Looking down the list, I see there’s also a line noting $200 in costs for a medical exam, as well as $1,000 for his services.

Down the street I wander into another shop. This one has cell phones for sale along one wall, a travel agency in the opposite corner, and a VIGO desk behind that. A handwritten note in the window tells me that aside from money transfers, VIGO now provides immigration assistance.

I’m told that the person who handles immigration stuff just stepped out for coffee, and so I wait a few minutes until that person returns—the same stocky Latino guy I met earlier. After my most awkward conversation yet I slink away without any answers. Something isn’t right about these places, that much I realize, but unless I attempt to go through the federal immigration process, it seems impossible to detect which notarios are competent and which are total full-of-shit scam artists.

LOW BAR

The closest thing to a law banning improper immigration law counseling is an executive order issued by thengovernor Mitt Romney in 2003. The measure primarily deals with regulating the conduct of notaries public; buried in the legalese are rules stipulating that a notary cannot use the term “Notario” or “Notario Publico,” as in the more qualified professionals common in Latin America. Notaries also can’t provide legal counseling unless they actually practice law in the commonwealth, nor can they claim to provide help with immigration.

The Romney order is laudable for its acknowledgment of the problem, according to some experts. Nevertheless,

the worst penalty for violating the 2003 rules is loss of official notary certification. State Sen. Cynthia Creem of Newton attempted to improve the situation during the last legislative session through a law that would have attached stiff fines and the threat of jail time for those who fraudulently provide immigration law services. But while versions of the bill passed the House and the Senate and landed on the governor’s desk in January, Deval Patrick, a lame duck with only two days left in office, failed to sign the bill. Back to square one, Creem has since refiled the bill in the current session.

In lieu of swift action from lawmakers, the Massachusetts Board of Bar Overseers might penalize a lawyer for improper conduct. They have no leverage for punishing nonlawyers though, according to Liz Cannon, a Boston-based immigration attorney. She says victims, who almost always have questionable legal statuses, are reluctant to risk going to authorities to report scam artists. Cannon asks, “Why put your neck out when you know nothing will happen?”

Despite the difficulty of getting victims to come forward, immigration scam artists do occasionally get nabbed, but usually only after acting like a bandit feeding a meth habit. In November 2012, Massachusetts prosecutors went after May Woo Lei, the proprietor of Sky Energy Travel, Inc. in Chinatown. After numerous complaints of fraud from watchdogs at the Chinese Progressive Association, a Suffolk County Grand Jury indicted Woo on 27 counts of theft, alleging that she collected $53,000 in bogus immigration services and $42,000 by defrauding travel clients.

More recently, the Massachusetts attorney general’s office identified a Waltham man after he allegedly presented himself as a certified immigration specialist, and unlawfully charged hundreds and in some cases thousands of dollars for services he was unqualified to provide. As of this writing, he was slapped on the wrist and ordered to stop giving legal advice.

“Preventing, investigating, and prosecuting notarios and others who take advantage of immigrants is a priority of our office,” writes Christopher Loh, spokesperson for the attorney general, in an email. “We have brought multiple cases, both civilly and criminally, against those who committed fraud, and have done extensive outreach to immigrant communities and advocates. We ask anyone who believes they may be a victim of these crimes or consumer fraud to notify our office.”

INVISIBLE VICTIMS

It’s easy to see the attractiveness, especially for those on a tight budget, of having an expert on your side for just a couple hundred bucks. But while there is money to be saved, clients of notarios likely have to settle for incompetence or predatory practices.

“They charge a lot less than a lawyer does, but it’s a scam,” says Alexandra Peredo Carrion of the Washington, DC-based American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA). “Notarios are difficult to stop because their victims are afraid of deportation, so they avoid turning to law enforcement. Victims are also less likely to risk themselves when there is not a guarantee that the notario would face negative repercussions due to the lack of regulation.”

“It’s hard to get a grasp on it,” says Sarang Sekhavat of the Massachusetts Immigrant & Refugee Advocacy (MIRA) Coalition. “We tend to hear about it from people after they’ve been taken advantage of. If they don’t have anyone to turn to, there’s no way to find out about it. A lot of times these people pop up and disappear. It can be really hard to find someone.”

With no certifications, the notarios can easily skip town without any paper trail beyond an abandoned Facebook page or listing in the yellow pages. The lucky victims only lose money. As for people taken in by the likes of Woo in Chinatown, they lose the cash, sure, but even worse is that their paperwork isn’t likely to be filed, potentially setting them back years. I may have had a hunch about the problem, but until I jumped in, I wasn’t even close to understanding the complexity of the ordeal. While it’s hard to say out loud, I’m thankful that I’m not really in a situation in which I might have to rely on a notario. As one lawyer put it to me, one wrong answer on a form can cost you thousands of dollars and even deportation.

“It’s not just taking their money,” says Pico, “their whole lives are ruined.”

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CINC-OH!

Checking in on the cocktail scene at Southie’s new Loco Taqueria and Oyster Bar

BY DAN MCCARTHY @ACUTALPROOF

IN THE QUEER

Lesbian social community and dating app, Her, launches in Boston

BY DAN MCCARTHY @ACUTALPROOF When Robyn Exton set out to create HER, a social platform and dating app built by women for gay and bi-curious women, she realized that the majority (if not all) of the current dating sites in existence for either straight or gay people were primarily designed with men in mind.

“I thought it was ridiculous nobody had yet developed a dating app that was designed by and specifically for gay or bi-curious women,” she says. “That’s how it all kind of started.”

HER was originally launched as a pure play lesbian dating app two years ago under the neologism “Dattch.”

Exton noticed about 30 percent of users were already in a relationship, but still wanted to be kept up on what was happening in their respective scenes. So after tweaks and re-branding (Exton’s background is in brand consulting), and launches in the UK, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York City, HER officially launched in Boston this past weekend.

According to Exton the Hub was a logical choice, as Boston was one of the top cities regularly called for from the vocal LGBTQ community in town.

“Our girls don’t meet up for average of 10 days, so there’s a much longer time when they need to be chatting to each other,” she says. “When you just have a picture of a face you have nothing to talk about, so our profiles use content and local events to help girls meet each other and talk.”

Exton adds with a laugh: “It’s got all the lesbians, and everything that connects the lesbian community [online].”

Once users download the app, profiles are presented one at a time. But instead of just a profile picture and a swipe-left or swipe-right interface, the profiles incorporate Instagram and Pinterest sensibilities, with multiple photos, personal descriptions, and community social events “pinned” to a profile. Once users “like” one another, messages can be sent and dialogues can begin.

In cities where HER is live and boasting an active community of users (she remains mum on user numbers), Exton says the response has been extremely positive from the LGBTQ community.

“I love that girls come up and say, ‘I had no idea if I was gay or straight. I was just interested. And now I’ve met a girl who I’m dating, and I still don’t know if I’m gay or straight but at least there’s a community where I can do that and be me,’” she says. “Then we’ve had people getting married … showing tattoos they got, or the cat they got together.”

“It’s got all the lesbians, and everything that connects the lesbian community [online].”

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>> HER. NOW AVAILABLE FOR FREE DOWNLOAD AT WEAREHER.COM AND ON ITUNES.

>> LOCO TAQUERIA & OYSTER BAR. NOW OPEN. 412 WEST BROADWAY, BOSTON. 617-917-5626. LOCOSOUTHBOSTON.COM

LOCO TAQUERIA & OYSTER BAR PHOTOS BY MICHAEL ZAIA

APP

This issue drops amid Cinco de Mayo festivities that are bound to grip every local drinker for a day of debauchery, celebrating the day in 1862 when the Mexicans vanquished the French in the Battle of Puebla, and so it seemed right to take stock of the libations at the plucky new Southie hangout, Loco Taqueria and Oyster Bar. After opening in January, the new resident of the overhauled Pan Asia space has been a pretty big hit with the neighborhood (killer tacos and solid raw bar offerings in a centralized location tend to be). And according to Will Falaro, one of the bar managers and overall “bar dude,” as he’s called, the point of the program was to build a cocktail and spirit list that would appeal to the younger crowds dominating Southie’s resurgent nightlife scene, as evidenced by the throngs gathering at sister restaurant Lincoln Tavern across the street.

“The whole crew, we built a room that was new to the neighborhood, something fun, a very casual group of people bringing something different to the neighborhood. The [cocktail] program announces that,” says Falaro.

Naturally, Loco employs a 70+ list of blanco, reposado, and añejo tequilas for its spread of margaritas, supplementing house-made triple sec for the syrupy bottled stuff in most cases.

The exception, and the most interesting and non-traditional of the batch, is the Chica Loco, which employs Don Julio Blanco with Combier (touted as the “original” triple sec), passion fruit, and muddled strawberries and cucumber, topped off with a splash of Spanish Cava rosé sparkling wine. While the drink is normally relegated to the brunch menu, requests for micheladas, which the team can whip up at any time, have been steadily on the rise during dinner service as well.

“Everything is very approachable,” says Falaro. “You think of tacos, tequila, and oysters. To me that screams casual. Fun. That’s what we wanted to do from the cocktails to the beer to the atmosphere.”

Which isn’t to say it’s all tequila here. Loco carries a stillgrowing lineup of mezcals, and uses the smoky spirit to solid effect in several offerings: El Chulo—with Pelotón de la Muerte mezcal, El Jimador reposado tequila, orange peel, bitters, and sugar—is a sort of go-to Tijuana Old-Fashioned, and if you’ve got a thing for Moscow Mules, El Tonto (otherwise known as the Smokey Mule) is another mezcal incarnation to off-set some of the fruitier and easier-on-the-palate options. See: the Rainbow Dragon, a tequila-fueled version of a Mai Tai that’s made with orgeat syrup and topped with Plantation Rum, or the already popular Coco, a coconut margarita.

“The city has only seen the tequila boom in the last 10 years,” says Falaro. “This neighborhood is demographically [comprised of] 23- to 28-year-olds, our bread and butter. We didn’t think that [mezcal] would be something our customers would be into.” But now that the doors have been open for a few months, and the majority of tequilas and mezcal are being steadily consumed by the local contingent en masse, says Falaro: “It’s [been] a pleasant surprise.

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CYCLES 128 107 Brimbal Ave, Beverly MA www.cycles128.com (978) 927-3400

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HONEST PINT SPONSORED BY SUNSET GRILL & TAP

CONVERSATION STARTER

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PAIN

Sexism in craft beer conferences is real, let’s talk about it

BY HEATHER VANDENENGEL@HEATHERVANDY

Wednesdays April 1ST - 29th 5-11pm PLATES SZECHUAN VEGETABLE STir-FRY 9 crispy vegetables/ginger/garlic/soy/ chili peppers

EL DIABLO SHRIMP COCKTAIL 12 6 jumbo grilled & chilled shrimp with salsa verde sauce

JAMAICAN ME CRAZY GOAT STEW 15 West Indian curried goat/scotch bonnet/habanero/onion/potato/plantain

WICKED THAI WINGS 10

grilled wings Thai hot chili peppers/fried garlic/ginger/cilantro/Asian slaw

RING OF FIRE SHRIMP & GRITS 14 grilled shrimp & andouille in a cayenne sauce with cheese grits

SMOKIN’ DEATH BONES 10

smoked pork ribs slathered with house made GHOST PEPPER bbq sauce

GREAT BALLS OF FIRE 10 Moroccan lamb meatballs in harissa sauce

VOODOO JAMBALAYA 12

Creole style with tender chicken/sausage/ tabasco peppers/onion & celery/rice

“I started writing about beer when I was 21 and have since found myself in plenty of situations where I felt uncomfortable as a woman while brewers and industry professionals make lewd jokes or suggestive comments.”

LOCO BEEF BARBACOA TACO 10 habenero/jalapeno/chipotle sauce/salsa guacamole/cojita cheese

DESSERT POT AU CRÈME 8

chocolate & chipotle pudding with ginger wafers

10 ROTATING IPA’S TO COOL THE PAIN *Before placing order, please inform your food server if anyone I n your party has a food allergy. Consuming raw or undercooked meat poultry seafood shellfish eggs my increase risk of food borne illness.

@MAGOUNSSALOON OLDEMAGOUNSSALOON

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518 Medford St. Somerville magounssaloon.com | 617-776-2600

The annual Craft Brewers Conference took place last week in Portland, Oregon.

The event is organized by the Brewers Association, which defines and represents America’s craft brewers, and includes panels, discussions and BA-sponsored parties and concerts. Breweries also host their own events outside of the conference at local bars, restaurants and breweries. This year, some of those events were held at strip clubs.

This may not come as a surprise, because Portland has an odd number of strip clubs with what is probably a better beer selection than your neighborhood bar. It is also not surprising because the craft beer industry is still a male-dominated industry, and while the CBC is certainly a valuable educational and networking experience, it is also an excuse to party.

I am not anti-strip club or anti-sex workers but when I heard about breweries hosting events at strip clubs, I rolled my eyes. Then when Carla Jean Lauter, a Maine-based beer blogger who tweets as the @beerbabe, started a conversation about it and the idea of inclusion in craft beer one morning last week, it made me think about last year’s Craft Brewers Conference in Denver, when at the World Beer Cup reception a brewer I had just met made me so uncomfortable that I had to leave.

That experience wasn’t a surprise to me either. I started writing about beer when I was 21 and have since found myself in plenty of situations where I felt uncomfortable as a woman while brewers and industry professionals make lewd jokes or suggestive comments. Sometimes it’s a matter of disrespect; on the same night at CBC last year, a brewer I introduced myself to wouldn’t look me in the eye and started walking away in the middle of our conversation. Sometimes it’s about crossing lines, like when brewers I interview send winky-face texts afterwards. Sometimes it’s incredibly offensive, like when I commented on a beer blog’s Facebook post that it was not cool that he made an allusion to beating up a woman and then a slew of commenters replied with images of and jokes about women being raped and beaten.

I’ve drafted posts about these experiences before, but have always deleted them because I struggle with questions about whether there was anything I did to put myself in these situations. Did I not come off as professional enough? Did I insinuate that it would be OK to casually text me later? That is nonsense, of course, but it’s difficult to make sense of these experiences in the context of an industry that paints itself as a big, happy family united by the bonds of craftsmanship, collaboration, and community.

The reality is that dealing with casually and overtly sexist men who don’t respect women is something that all women of all industries and backgrounds deal with all the time, in both their personal and professional lives. It’s no different in craft beer.

I don’t know what the solution is other than to acknowledge it and at least talk about it. Women belong in this industry and I think we could all do a better job at making them feel like they do.

130 Brighton Avenue Allston, MA

HEATHER VANDENENGEL IS THE FORMER HONEST PINT COLUMNIST FOR DIGBOSTON. A LONGER VERSION OF HER ARTICLE ORIGINALLY APPEARED ON HER BLOG HEATHERVANDY.COM

NEWS TO US FEATURE DEPT. OF COMMERCE

every night TILL ' CLOSE 9 2 H A MP S HIR E S T, CA M B 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

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FRIDAY 4.24

FRIDAY 4.24

SATURDAY 4.25 SUNDAY 4.26

SUNDAY 4.26

MONDAY 4.27

A Dark Knight in the Asylum: A Villainous Burlesque

Expanded Animation: New Directions in Chinese Animation

15th Annual Open Studios in East Boston

The Art of Life After

Black Market

THIS OTHER CITY

The Slaughterhouse Sweethearts—a Bostonbased burlesque troupe known for its signature combination of horror, leather, and rock ’n’ roll— returns with a Batmanthemed show that combines the signature antics of familiar villains in a madhouse of variety and circus acts. Who knew Mr. Freeze and Two-Face would ever be caught together stripping onstage? Grab your tickets before they’re gone (last year’s shows sold out!) and prepare for the weirdest boner of your life.

This celebration of the new wave of digital art growing out of China brings together a mix of young visual artists, filmmakers, and experimental animators.

Headlined by awardwinning Beijing artist Lei Lei, the program will present an array of work, including stop motion, print, collage, painting, and graphic design. The works explore the recent explosion of artistic animation in China, with subjects spanning the personal to the political.

On Saturday and Sunday, artists in residence in East Boston will open their doors to the public to come and experience the projects and current bodies of work they have been cultivating. The neighborhood is hosting a diverse array of fine artists, from the vibrant, urban abstract paintings by Neil Wyatt, to the quirky, sensual sculptures of Jesse Kahn, to Bo Petran’s nihilistic creations. The weekend is a great opportunity to explore new avenues of creativity popping up in a largely unexplored neighborhood.

This collaborative, inclusive artistic showcase and community event will present original works of visual, written, and performance pieces by local artists, centered on the difficult topic of sexual assault and survival. The organizers, two women of color and sexual violence survivors, hope that the event will spark productive conversation amongst its attendees about how rape affects both individuals and whole communities.

Hosted by Boston Hassle, this one-day event will feature more than 75 vendors selling everything the resourceful urban punk could need. Think: artwork, zines, records, body care, baked goods, books, patches, pins, clothes, leather, crafts, astrology readings, and more, all of which was recycled or crafted by hand. Call it your chance to support #BosArts the DIY way. Which is the best way, of course.

Nonprofit theatre company Solas Nua presents a staged reading of This Other City by Daragh Carville, an awardwinning Northern Irish playwright and screenwriter (Middletown, Cherrybomb).

The acclaimed work, set in Belfast, explores the dark and sinister world of human trafficking, juxtaposed with the sleek, metropolitan setting of the seemingly tranquil city—where a thin veil of glamour barely hides the darkness lurking just below the surface.

OBERON. 2 Arrow St., Cambridge. $15-20. For more information, visit americanrepertorytheater.org

The Institute of Contemporary Art. 100 Northern Ave., Boston. 7pm/ all ages/$10, $5 students. icaboston.org

East Boston Artists. 80 Border St., East Boston.

12-4pm/all ages/FREE. eastbostonartists.org

Make Shift Boston. 549 Columbus Ave., Boston.

5pm/no age limit/FREE (donations accepted). missiongallery.org

Cambridge Community Center. 5 Callender St., Cambridge. 11am/all ages/$1 at door. bostonhassle.com

The Burren. 247 Elm St., Somerville. 7:30pm/ all ages/$10 suggested donation. solasnua.org/ boston

PHOTO BY DEREK KOUYOUMJIAN

DIGBOSTON.C0M

04 22 15 – 04 29 15

THE SLAUGHTERHOUSE SWEETHEARTS REALLY ARE SWEETHEARTS. THEY ALSO REALLY SLAUGHTER IN HOUSES. CHECK THEM OUT AT OBERON THIS FRIDAY.

21

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

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FEATURE

NEWS TO US

MUSIC

MUSIC

DROP ZONE

ENTER BARBAZONS

No more talking about The Fagettes

A Conversation with Anthony Fantano

BY MARTÍN CABALLERO @_EL_CABALLERO

BY MARTÍN CABALLERO @_EL_CABALLERO

Over the phone during a break from work on a Friday afternoon, Ryan Major lets out a short but telling sigh before he begins to respond to this interviewer’s question. Yes, his band The Fagettes has changed its name to The Barbazons, and yes, with any luck, the members won’t have to keep talking about it much longer.

“To me it seemed like a good idea before the record came out [to change the name], because I was really sick of having conversations about the band name before anyone has heard the music, and I was hoping to shift the convo away from that,” he says.

Major’s got a point: The group’s decision to rebrand themselves has already been eloquently explained in a statement by Melanie Bernier on the band’s website (“The more it limits us, the more it shrivels into a lump of youthful indignation to carry in my back pocket,” she writes of their previous moniker), and, more importantly, they’ve got a dynamic debut album, Avec Plaisir, dropping this week.

On the record, Major (vocals/guitar) and his bandmates Bernier (vocals/percussion/sax), Matt Garlick (guitar), Jake Gilbertson (bass), and Peaches Goodrich (drums/vocals) sound unburdened in more ways than one. Major credits the addition of Gilbertson and Garlick with helping to breathe new life into the group, allowing for a richer exploration of their creativity on Avec.

“For me, it was really inspiring to have another guitar player to play off of,” says Major, while noting how Garlick’s technical skills complemented his own writing-centric approach. “The arrangements are more nuanced than they would have been otherwise.

It got me thinking in different terms. There’s a country song [‘Two Whiskeys’] at the end that’s just two guitars, percussion, and a little bit of electric piano.

I don’t think I would have had the confidence to break the formula at that point, prior to that.”

Major also admits the new roster has helped unshackle him as a live performer, so he can engage with the crowd purely as a singer. And when that’s hitting, nobody cares what your name is.

“I’m just going to play rock and roll songs and play shows and write tunes. That’s where my interests are,” he says. “I’m just looking forward to the future where that will be hopefully what we’re known for.”

DA DUH DUH, DA DUH DUH, LET THE BOYS BE BOYS! When you are the Internet’s self-proclaimed “busiest music nerd,” time is a precious commodity. In an average week, Anthony Fantano will spend hours listening to new albums, recording video reviews, and generally running his highly popular YouTube channel The Needle Drop. Ahead of his speaking engagement at the Middle East (supplemented with performances by Boogie Boy Metal Mouth, Abadabad and IAN), he carved out a few minutes to talk about music criticism, the Boston scene, and why he may (or may not) check out your demo.

On his album vetting process ...

Obviously I can’t listen to all of it ... I see it as my job to turn people on to artists who are doing good things ... I’m trying to find artists who are essentially, in my opinion, kind of the total package, and who are doing good things all around, and present those to my viewers ... I’m trying to find someone who’s doing something stand-out, something that I enjoy, and when I present it to my audience they will be able to, without squinting too hard, see the beauty or what makes what I’m showing to them special as well.

their life to something they may not end up liking at all. I think that’s the double-edged sword of the situation. You can certainly put your music out there, but because there is so much music out there, not everybody is going to put forward that time to check out your stuff, including critics as well. It’s an impossibility to listen to it all. I think music critics and musicians kind of need to, going forward, go into their respective industries understanding that, and maybe through that there would be a little bit less animosity between the two groups.

On consuming other music criticism ...

There are some music writers who I may go to, partially because their writing is good but also because I just respect their taste, I think they are good curators and they pick out good things. I think Invisible Oranges has good taste in metal. I think Potholes in My Blog has good taste in hip-hop.

But often I’m listening to music and getting how I feel out of it straight from myself.

On Boston and the relevance of local scenes ...

I think of the handful of bands that the promoter handed me to have play before the act, one really stood out to me: Boogie Boy Metal Mouth, which was incredibly bombastic and out there and creative. I try not to center too much on what a specific scene is doing, because it’s all about the Internet for me now. Not that your local scene doesn’t matter anymore, but now that the internet is influencing people’s tastes more than ever, things aren’t working like they used to ... I think people are way less influenced by what is going on around them immediately and more by what is going on in their SoundCloud feeds or what they are being turned on to by their favorite music website or something like that.

On critic-fan-band relations ...

You may have the power to be an unknown band and put up your 40-minute album, but not everybody has the time or wants to allocate the time because you are a complete unknown and they don’t want to surrender 40 minutes of

>> THE BARBAZONS ALBUM RELEASE PARTY W/DOUG TUTTLE, BEWARE THE DANGERS OF A GHOST SCORPION. FRI 4.24. MIDDLE EAST DOWNSTAIRS, 480 MASS AVE., CAMBRIDGE. 617-864-3278.

7:30PM/18+/$10. THEBARBAZONS.COM

>> AN INTIMATE EVENING WITH ANTHONY FANTANO W/ ABADABAD, BOOGIE BOY METAL MOUTH, + IAN. WED 4.29 THE MIDDLE EAST UPSTAIRS, 472 MASS AVE., CAMBRIDGE. 617-864-3278. 8PM/18+/$10. YOUTUBE.COM/THENEEDLEDROP. VISIT DIGBOSTON.COM FOR THE FULL INTERVIEW.

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04 22 15 – 04 29 15

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MUSIC EVENTS SAT 4.25

MODERN DAY PIANO MAN BEN FOLDS + YMUSIC

[The Sinclair, 52 Church St., Cambridge. 8pm/18+/$35. sinclaircambridge.com]

ALLSTON PUDDING PRESENTS BENT SHAPES + AVA LUNA + PALEHOUND + RADICAL DADS

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

SUN 4.26

THRICE + MANCHESTER ORCHESTRA SOLO! DUSTIN KENSRUE + ANDY HULL

[The Sinclair, 52 Church St., Cambridge. 7pm/18+/$17.50. sinclaircambridge.com]

CONTEMPLATIVE SOUL NICK HAKIM

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

TUE 4.28

WED 4.29

[House of Blues, 15 Lansdowne St., Boston.

7pm/all ages/$30. houseofblues.com]

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OLD DUDE ROCK STONE TEMPLE PILOTS + DREAMERS

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NEWS TO US FEATURE

HIP HOP TRIVIA

Jeopardy style questions hosted by DJ On&On and Hilary Clare

CENTRAL SQ. CAMBRIDGE, MA mideastclub.com | zuzubar.com (617) 864-EAST | ticketweb.com

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HUMANWINE, DISASTER STRIKES SAT 4/25 HARRY AND THE POTTERS (SOLD OUT) SUN 4/26

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ANDY SUZUKI & THE METHOD FLORIO, ISSAC

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ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

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FILM

IFF-Y PROGRAMMING

A rundown of the 2015 Independent Film Festival Boston

BY JAKE MULLIGAN @_JAKEMULLIGAN

IF NO ONE KNOWS, NO ONE SHOWS. digboston

Submit your event to: digboston.com/listings

If you were to customize a calendar by marking off the events most integral to Boston film culture, there’s one week you’d highlight a shade deeper than the rest: the Independent Film Festival Boston, which kicks off its 13th iteration on April 22.

Statistics indicate that this event is our city’s biggest cinema celebration, stretching across eight days and four venues with parties, conferences, a two-day “film summit,” and special guests throughout. But, as it should be, it’s the chosen films that really mark this film festival as our city’s best.

Two years ago, director James Ponsoldt provided the opening night feature with his teen-movie melodrama The Spectacular Now. His follow-up—The End of the Tour [April 22, Somerville, 7:30pm], featuring Jason Segal as David Foster Wallace—has been afforded the same honor. The film adapts a book-length interview with the late author, and co-stars Jesse Eisenberg as Segal’s sparring partner. Tour won raves when it premiered at Sundance, but that did little to extinguish the ire of members of Wallace’s estate who have vocally objected to the feature’s release. Both Segal and Ponsoldt are scheduled to attend the screening, so any objections that arise in the Boston crowd can be answered face to face.

Special guests at the screenings and after-parties are par for the course at IFFB. Sunday’s special screening will be the world premiere of The Primary Instinct [April 26, Somerville, 7:30pm], which documents the live performances of actorslash-raconteur Stephen Tobolowsky (Groundhog Day), and it will be followed by a conversation with director David Chen and Tobolowsky himself.

And he’s not the only veteran stage-performer on-hand. IFFB favorite Bobcat Goldthwait will serve as the center of Saturday night’s festivities, hosting a screening of his new documentary Call Me Lucky [Apr. 25, Somerville, 7pm]. And like Chen, he’s bringing his subject—storied funnyman Barry Crimmins—along with him.

(Goldthwait’s Q&As have become legend at the IFFB, so stick around well after the movie ends. Trust me.)

Goldthwait’s move away from narrative films mirrors a shift within the festival itself. As strong as the fiction lineup is, the documentaries tend to dominate pre-fest chatter, with the works of masters young and old scheduled throughout. One of the last films by the late, great Albert Maysles, Iris [April 25, Somerville, 7:15pm], will make its regional premiere on Saturday night. And Harvard grad Joshua Oppenheimer, whose Act of Killing undoubtedly ranks among the most significant documentaries of the past few decades, will be showing his companion piece—The Look of Silence [April 26, Brattle, 6pm].

Call us biased, but our favorite film among the bunch we’ve screened thus far would be Results [April 23, Brattle, 7pm], the latest by Andrew Bujalski—a Bostonborn IFFB veteran. But to speak only of our favorite artists would marginalize the festival’s finest feature. The programming is dense to the extent that most years one leaves championing something one hadn’t heard of even a week prior.

The films mentioned here can sell you a ticket, but the real fun is in sticking around afterwards. It’s there you can always count on discovering something brand new. >> INDEPENDENT FILM FESTIVAL BOSTON 2015. APRIL 22-29 AT THE SOMERVILLE THEATRE, BRATTLE THEATRE, COOLIDGE CORNER THEATRE, AND UMASS BOSTON. VISIT IFFBOSTON.ORG FOR TICKETS, BADGES, AND SCHEDULE.

FILM EVENTS 4/24

ELLIOTT SMITH DOCUMENTARY HEAVEN ADORES YOU

DIGBOSTON.C0M

04 22 15 – 04 29 15

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4/25

ANOTHER WOJCIECH JERZY HAS MASTERPIECE THE DOLL

[IFFBoston screening at Brattle Theatre. 40 Brattle St., Harvard Sq., Cambridge.

7pm/NR/$11-20. iffboston.org]

[Harvard Film Archive.

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

STARS TAYLOR SCHILLING AND JASON SCHWARTZMAN THE OVERNIGHT

AMONG ALBERT MAYSLES’ FINAL FILMS IRIS

[IFFBoston screening at Somerville Theatre. 55 Davis Sq., Somerville. 7:30pm/ NR/$11-20. iffboston.org]

[IFFBoston screening at Somerville Theatre. 55 Davis Sq., Somerville. 7:15pm/ NR/$11-20. iffboston.org]

SCHWARTZMAN STARS AGAIN 7 CHINESE BROTHERS

[IFFBoston screening at Somerville Theatre. 55 Davis Sq., Somerville. 10pm/ NR/$11-20. iffboston.org]

4/27

STARRING AL PACINO MANGLEHORN

[IFFBoston screening at Somerville Theatre. 55 Davis Sq., Somerville. 7:30pm/ NR/$11-20. iffboston.org]

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ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

FEATURE

NEWS TO US

FILM

INTERVIEW: ALEX GARLAND The ‘Ex Machina’ director calls bullshit on “auteur theory”

BY JAKE MULLIGAN @_JAKEMULLIGAN

FILM SHORTS

BY JAKE MULLIGAN @_JAKEMULLIGAN WHILE WE’RE YOUNG You recall the bitterness beating below Greenberg, or the unforgiving narrative machinations that create carnage in Margot at the Wedding, and you realize nobody makes comedies as cruel as Noah Baumbach. So when his latest starts as a gentle generational farce— Jamie (Adam Driver) and Darby (Amanda Seyfried) teach Josh (Ben Stiller) and Cornelia (Naomi Watts) about fedoras and artisanal ice cream—you worry he’s gone soft. Also lamentably lost is the kinetic playfulness of his Frances Ha, replaced by photography as functional as your dad’s wardrobe. But an Allenesque morality play emerges from the laid-back longueurs, about friends manipulating each other for the sake of success—another Baumbach “comedy” about people who’d rather use each other than relate. He’s getting older, but this dog still bites.

EX MACHINA

WOW, THESE 3M COMMAND STRIPS REALLY CAN HOLD UP ANYTHING! In his 20 years spent circling the film industry, Alex Garland has filled almost as many creative roles.

He’s written novels that celebrated his arrival as a wunderkind storyteller, one of which later became a movie (The Beach), he’s adapted other novels (Never Let Me Go) and comic books (Dredd) into screenplays, and he’s written original screenplays of his own (28 Days Later). Now, with Ex Machina, he’s sitting in the director’s chair and calling the shots on his own production.

But Garland has gone to great lengths in rejecting sole authorship of his latest work. The way he tells it, most claims to artistic ownership of a film are total bullshit.

I’ve seen you speak about your dislike of the auteur theory before.

I do think some auteurs exist. But we can’t treat it like a blanket … I myself am not an auteur. And I’m not even interested in auteurship.

It’s also true of all the other films I’ve worked on. It’s not me saying “I’ve worked with a bunch of auteurs, and now I want to work cooperative.” Because it’s been co-operative throughout my working life. The auteurs are, by far, the minority.

“I do think some auteurs exist. But we can’t treat it like a blanket ... I myself am not an auteur. And I’m not even interested in auteurship.”

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When you say that, I presume you mean you prefer to defer at least partial “ownership” of the film to your actors, and to your cinematographer.

If you give a shit about things like DoPs [directors of photography,] and you see a trailer of a film shot by Anthony Dod Mantle [Dredd, Rush] you’ll quickly realize that what you’re reacting to in the trailer is not the director. It’s Anthony. And then you often see people write that “the director mounted the camera.” That’s a line that you see written in film criticism a lot! “The director mounts the camera.” Or, also, “The director extracts the performance from an actor.” And I think: I know that actor. Nobody extracted that performance from them—that’s their performance. That’s why they’re paid the big bucks. What I find baffling is that then, in a public forum, we all forget that exists.

And we go back to writing the name of the film, and including the director’s name after it in brackets, as if that’s who actually crafted it

[singlehandedly.] I find the whole thing baffling.

So where does this line of thinking come from—and how does it survive mostly unchallenged?

Well I think it comes from ’50s French film critics. And then it got picked up by the Director’s Guild of America—and then it became a great marketing technique. Because what you can do is say “A Film by…” It reminds me of the banking industry before 2007. They had all this inherited wisdom … you’d have some stockbroker in the ‘60s who said “Look, you can do things like this, and massage things like this.” By the time it got to the ‘90s, this had become not a complex house of cards ready to fall down at any moment—but rather, a solid infrastructure of wisdom about how the economy works. And that lead us down a rabbit hole. It’s a disconnect from reality, both there and in the way we talk about making films—I think they’re similar.

It could be the filmmaker, could be the photographer.

Right. And I do sound like I have a massive agenda. But I feel uncomfortable sitting here, and answering questions [as if I did everything myself], because it feels genuinely disrespectful to people who I’ve worked with, on five different films. And I’ve seen directors do that in the past. And so I sit here, saying the same shit…

Please, go on.

I’m not trying to make a blanket statement. The whole point is to say: Don’t make blanket statements! But if you’re going to default to a position, instead of defaulting to the director, default to the [concept of] collaboration. Some auteurs will get burned by that … maybe. But don’t worry about them. They’re doing fine.

Right. Which wasn’t antithetical to the original auteur theory anyway—those critics were merely trying to assign artistry to a select few filmmakers.

Yes, and not only that: They were doing it to protect the art form, and support the art form. But if we wanted to get deep into film theory, I would say that what was set up to protect [the art form] has subsequently become damaging. Specifically because of its use as a marketing tool. And you get tensions as a result of that—and the tensions are not creatively helpful. They’re just a diversion. I’ve seen it. I’d stand by that statement. Pretty fucking hard. And if you care about the medium, then I think there’s a reason to correct some of this bullshit.

>> EX MACHINA. NOW PLAYING. VISIT DIGBOSTON.COM FOR THE FULL INTERVIEW.

Frankenstein, refashioned as a technothriller. Oscar Isaac plays the mad doctor’s modern equivalent, a tech developer illegally mining search engines and cell phones for the nuts and bolts needed to create AVA, an anthropomorphic AI. Domhall Gleeson fills the role of the trusting naïf tragically in thrall to the unnatural beast’s affections—he’s a lowly coder called in to decide if AVA’s “brain” passes human muster. They match while the film plays out a slow burn: Reflective surfaces surround each shot, setting up AVA and her creator-slash-captor as both mirror images and opposing forces.

We know how this story goes—we’re headed inexorably toward a showdown between man and the monster he’s created. Modern concerns may dominate the text, but this one’s running off an antique framework.

LOST RIVER How to describe Ryan Gosling’s astoundingly incompetent directorial debut? Christina Hendricks stars as a single mom forced into degrading work so that she can save her mortgage, so it’s ostensibly a housing crisis parable.

(Gosling’s made-up setting is nakedly modeled after Detroit.) With the help of maverick cinematographer and neon enthusiast Benoit Debie (Enter the Void, Spring Breakers), Gosling expends most of his energy pilfering shots from better filmmakers: a burning house borrowed from Badlands, long tracking shots hand-stamped by Kubrick, and a purposefully garish color palette lifted from the ranks of cult Italian horror. The aesthetic slickness saps the last bits of sincerity out of this movie star’s paean to poor people.

He’s made a perfume ad for poverty.

NEWS TO US FEATURE ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

RHODE ISLAND CONVENTION CENTER, MAY 16TH & 17TH

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NEW ENGLAND’S LARGEST CANNABIS INDUSTRY CONVENTION

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THEATER

FARM TO STAGE Thursday April 23rd

NORDIC FIDDLERS BLOC

Surreal celebration of the 20th century inspired by Chagall

BY SPENCER SHANNON @SUSPENCEY

World Music

Friday April 24th 7:30PM

NICK MOSS BAND Blues / Rock

Friday April 24th 10PM

AMERICAN SYMPHONY OF SOUL + KUF KNOTZ Soul / Hip-Hop

Saturday April 25th 2 SHOWS!

PEDRITO MARTINEZ Afro-Cuban

Tuesday April 28th 8PM

THE PARTY IS OVER ONCE DUDE IN A CUBE SHOWS UP

Wednesday April 29th WERS Listener’s Appreciation Party feat

KINGSLEY FLOOD Free Event

UPCOMING Thu 4/30 - NRBQ + SARAH BORGES + MUCK & THE MIRES

Tues 5/5 - THE BASEBALL PROJECT (with

Mike Mills of REM) + THE ZAMBONI’S + AMY DOUGLAS Thu 5/14 - BAD MANNERS

17 HOLLAND ST., DAVIS SQ. SOMERVILLE (617) 776-2004 DIRECTLY ON T RED LINE AT DAVIS

Friday April 24th 10PM

AMERICAN SYMPHONY OF SOUL + KUF KNOTZ Soul / Hip-Hop

Friday May 1st 10PM We Dig Free Fridays presents

WHISKEY KILL + THE RED PENNYS Rockabilly

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04 22 15 – 04 29 15

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Friday May 22nd 10PM

THE JAUNTEE + SPROCKET Jam Band

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

Founded in 1982 in Boston by Stacy Klein, Double Edge Theatre evolved several times before settling down at the Ashfield farm that the company now calls home. It all started when Klein arrived in Boston in 1979 to begin a graduate program at Tufts and was shocked to find that there were no real opportunities for women in theater.

“So it started as a feminist training theater, I think I could say. And we basically kept going,” Klein says. “We found the Church of Saint Luke’s and Margaret in Allston, and we started creating our own work. Original performances that involved music, and physicality, and image.”

After researching and performing in Europe in the early 1990s, the company returned to the United States with a singular goal in mind: to develop a space that would cultivate community. So in 1994, the company moved to its 105-acre farm, and since then have taken root in the town of Ashfield, opening two performance spaces, a house in town for resident artists, a growing garden enterprise, and student training programs.

Despite the many changes that the company has experienced over the course of its 30+ years, the desire of those involved to create musical, physically stunning works has not changed from their days in residence at that Allston church. With a combination of rigorous physical training and a collaborative, laboratory setting, the company pushes the boundaries of creativity in order to bring surreal, larger-thanlife works to the stage. Enter The Grand Parade (of the 20th Century), a multifaceted, multimedia performance that combines acrobatics, puppetry, dance, imagery, and an original score to tell the story of America’s historic journey—inspired by the vibrant paintings of Russian-French artist Marc Chagall.

For Klein, the choice to juxtapose the work of Chagall with American history was not a far reach. His paintings beautifully combine reality and dream in a way that is both inspiring and perfectly aligned with the mission of Double Edge. Although he lived half a world away, Chagall’s life experiences mirrored the growing pains of American culture.

“He deals with the masses in turmoil. On top of that will be the lifeblood of the community. People getting married, people celebrating, animals that are larger than life. There’s not a cutoff in Chagall between all the different worlds that we exist in,” Klein states.

“I find that really interesting for our [contemporary] times, where things are so segmented and specialized. If you’re a scientist, you’re not allowed to dream. That’s kind of a generalization, but I think our society is extremely specialized in a negative way. We don’t see our whole life as a creative force anymore.”

Neither a play nor a work of performance art, The Grand Parade carves out its own space between the two. It’s a documentation of a time of great change and growth in American history; it’s a celebration of the work of an incredible artist; it’s also a showcase of the incredible scope of human ability.

“There’s always somebody flying,” Klein says. “We really like to fly!”

Touching on unforgettable events including the moon landing, the assassination of JFK, the creation of the atomic bomb, and the fall of the Berlin Wall, The Grand Parade casts a creative and compassionate eye on the circumstances that led our country to where it is today, at a breakneck speed that examines how quickly time can slip away—as well as how history has a way of repeating itself.

“The performance poses, I would say, paradoxical questions. The reality is, maybe, difficult—but why aren’t we using our potential to change that reality and create?”

Klein says.

But don’t let the deep musings scare you away. Klein promises that the performance is anything but boring, even for those who aren’t history buffs.

“It invites people in on the level of invention instead of demanding that they intellectualize things,” she insists. “It’s bringing one to think about their own memories. Where was your grandmother when JFK was shot? When the radio was invented? These are things that people did. Everybody has memory and everybody has family. That’s very important to the performance.” >> ARTSEMERSON PRESENTS: THE GRAND PARADE (OF THE 20TH CENTURY).

PARAMOUNT CENTER, 559 WASHINGTON ST., BOSTON. APRIL 30–MAY 3. $25-65.

FOR TICKETS AND INFO, VISIT ARTSEMERSON.ORG

PHOTO BY T. CHARLE SERICKSON

OPEN MIC $10 Pizza & Pint Deal!

Graffiti art given longer life in new exhibit

NEWS TO US ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

BY SPENCER SHANNON @SUSPENCEY

FEATURE

URBAN RENEWAL

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS

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YOU LEARN A LOT HANGING OUT BY THE TRAIN TRACKS. HISTORY. ART...ANATOMY. In a unique new exhibit that brings together more than 15 graffiti artists and photographers, curator Jeffrey Thomas hopes to showcase the entire spectrum of the urban art scene—one that is largely misunderstood and misrepresented.

People who write off urban art as defacement of public property aren’t wrong, Thomas concedes. “I would agree with them,” he says with a laugh. “[This show] is celebrating vandalism.” However, he isn’t out to change people’s minds, but rather, wants audiences to recognize the amount of skill and pride that goes into making the art. “[Graffiti]’s an art form,” he insists. “It’s a raw, unregulated expression of getting what you have out there. You can’t fake it. If what you’re doing sucks, what you’re doing sucks. People are going to see it—and that’s on you at the end of the day. Are you going to own up to what you did?”

Thomas explains that within the umbrella of urban art, there exists a sharp difference between “graffiti” and “street art.” There’s a Zen-like beauty to graffiti inherent in its creation—inevitably, it will be destroyed, covered up by the property owners or by someone else’s tag. Sometimes it’s gone before anyone even has the chance to see it. Street art, on the other hand, is made for the public. It’s meant to look good and clean—and as a result, lacks the history and culture of graffiti. At his exhibit, these vibrant works of art will be allowed to exist without the threat of eradication.

“You’re gonna get the whole 360 progress of how this stuff comes about.

Completed stuff, photo work of process, just giving an understanding to the people that have no idea about this stuff, who think its just some kid who goes out with a can of paint. It’s so much more than that,” Thomas says. “Taking it into the gallery scene and bringing it to a different group of people to see not only gets it more publicity, more views. It allows it to have a longer life and to be more permanent.”

In addition to showcasing a number of talents in the urban art subculture, the exhibit is teaming up with Samaritans, a suicide prevention program that has provided the greater Boston area with compassionate, life-saving services for over 40 years. For Thomas, the decision to share the spotlight with Samaritans was deeply personal.

“I lost my best friend in December to suicide,” he says. “It’s been really awful. It’s given me a whole new outlook on everything. Art has helped me cope with that, and I know that within graffiti, the small community of people that I know, there is a lot of stuff like that that does happen…It’s a rough, raw thing.

Thomas adds: “I know, not just in graffiti, but in life in general, there are people struggling from depression and suicide, and I want people to know that there is an outlet, and it doesn’t ever have to get that bad.”

Above all, he hopes that the exhibit will open visitors’ minds and eyes to a passionate, colorful form of expression that exists, however fleetingly, in our city and across the world. Yes, it’s vandalism—but that doesn’t mean it’s inherently evil.

“It doesn’t have to be this malicious thing,” Thomas says. “It’s not always about going out, finding a blank wall, and pissing someone off.” >> ARTS AT THE ARMORY PRESENTS: SEMI-PERMANENT LIFESTYLES. 191 HIGHLAND AVE., SOMERVILLE. 7PM/ALL AGES/FREE (DONATIONS ACCEPTED). ARTSATTHEARMORY.ORG

SECRET ASIAN MAN

BY TAK TOYOSHIMA @TAKTOYOSHIMA

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OUR VALUED CUSTOMERS

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SAVAGE LOVE

VIRGIN LOVE

BY DAN SAVAGE @FAKEDANSAVAGE I have an open FWB thing going with a guy. He is my primary sex partner. We recently stopped using condoms when we’re together because we both passed STI tests several months ago and neither of us has been with anyone else since. But we are both free to have sex with other people, and it’s bound to happen sooner or later. If we always use condoms with the other people, is it safe for us to continue having condom-free sex with each other?

What’s The Risk?

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Condoms—when used consistently and correctly—greatly reduce your risk of acquiring a sexually transmitted infection. They provide excellent protection against HIV infection, gonorrhea, and chlamydia (diseases spread by genital secretions); they’re slightly less effective at protecting you against herpes, HPV, and syphilis (diseases spread by skin-to-skin contact). The condom-free sex you’re currently having with your fuck buddy can be regarded as risk-free because you’ve both been tested, you’re both STI-free, and you’re both not having sex with other people. But some risk will creep into your condom-free sex after you start having sex with other people, WTR—even if you’re using condoms. Your risk of getting an STI will be much, much lower if you use condoms— consistently and correctly—with those other partners, but sex with other partners will introduce some risk.

I’m in a BDSM-centered relationship with my Master/boyfriend and wear his collar. We have a tumultuous relationship and argue often. The center of these arguments seems to be that I see myself as a strong female and in control of many aspects of my life, and he’d rather have me just go along with whatever he says. I like some BDSM play in the bedroom, but he wants me to be submissive to him 24/7. I’ve wanted breast augmentation for many years. He joined me at the first consult and was talking about the smallest implants possible. I have a small chest, and he is attracted to small chests, but I knew I wanted something more substantial—especially since I am paying for it and it’s my body.

I ended up going bigger than what he wanted without telling him, and he’s expressed anger about what I did to “his body” (he believes he owns my body) without his consent. I couldn’t be happier with my boobs. He hates them. Now I just don’t know about my boyfriend. I love him, but I feel like he can’t remove himself from decisions I make for myself.

Tits In Trouble Your Master/boyfriend wants a slave/girlfriend—he wants (and seems to think he’s in) a total power exchange relationship. But you want a guy who’s your equal out of the bedroom (and can’t dictate implant sizes to you because it’s not “his body,” it’s yours) and a fun BDSM play-partner/Master in the bedroom. You two need to have an out-of-role conversation/renegotiation about your interests in kink, and your limits and his expectations—and if you can’t get on the same page (if he can’t dial it way back), you’ll have to end things.

1/ 2

off eats » Bella Luna Restaurant & Milky Way Lounge

» Jacob Wirth Co. » Patty Chens Dumpling Room » John Harvard’s Brewery » Cuisine En Locale Food Share

1/ 2

off shops » Stingray Body Art » Kulturez » I Hate the Green Line T-Shirt

1/ 2

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