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VOL 18 + ISSUE 29

JULY 21, 2016 - JULY 28, 2016 EDITORIAL PUBLISHER + EDITOR Jeff lawrence NEWS + FEATURES EDITOR Chris Faraone ASSOCIATE MUSIC EDITOR Nina Corcoran ASSOCIATE FILM EDITOR Jake Mulligan ASSOCIATE ARTS EDITOR Christopher Ehlers COPY EDITOR Mitchell Dewar CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Emily Hopkins, Jason Pramas CONTRIBUTORS Nate Boroyan, Renan Fontes, Bill Hayduke, Emily Hopkins, Micaela Kimball, Jason Pramas, Dave Wedge INTERNS Becca DeGregorio, Anna Marketti

DESIGN CREATIVE DIRECTOR Tak Toyoshima INTERN Alina MacLean COMICS Tim Chamberlain Pat Falco Patt Kelley

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BUSINESS ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Marc Shepard

DEAR READER We’re often accused of being a lefty progressive rag that borders on anarchy when it comes to our political leanings. We’ve championed radical drug policy reform for Massachusetts since day one, questioned our local officials and their backroom deals when no one else would, been on the front lines of the Occupy movement as it was breaking live, and knee deep now in covering how Black Lives Matter is changing our local discussion...so maybe the shoe fits.

The truth however is more complicated. We’re instigators more than idealogues. We want to go where others won’t because it’s the right thing to do, but not because it serves our agenda, rather because it serves an agenda: one that seeks to bring stories to the surface that would otherwise not see the light of day.

It’s not just political either. Our news coverage is front of book for a reason but the music, film and arts coverage also lives up to that ethos.

It’s a package deal and how we cover arts and entertainment is no different than how we cover the news and think about our features. It’s an intentional effort to push buttons, rethink what we know and and stir the proverbial pot, no matter the topic.

Your welcome.

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ADVISOR Joseph B. Darby III DigBoston, 242 East Berkeley St. 5th Floor Boston, MA 02118 Fax 617.849.5990 Phone 617.426.8942 digboston.com

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©2016 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.

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There are two sides to every story. Read about the dueling police narrative on page 4.

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NEWS US BLACK AND BLUE

The dueling ways of viewing cop behavior in Boston

BY CHRIS FARAONE @FARA1 Last week more than a thousand people rallied in the shadow of Boston Police Department headquarters.

Under a banner reading, “MASS ACTION AGAINST POLICE BRUTALITY,” also the name of the group which organized the event, protesters harangued authorities for policies and attitudes that hurt communities of color. Demonstrators of various backgrounds chanted, “JAIL THOSE KILLER COPS,” and mourned the one-year anniversary of the loss of Black Lives Matter activist Sandra Bland, who was found hanging in a Texas jail cell after being brutalized by her arresting officer during a traffic stop. Afterward, they took to the streets. Peacefully.

The “Unity March Against Police Terror,” as the rally was officially billed, also drew impassioned speakers, among them the mother of Burrell Ramsey-White, a 26-year-old from Dorchester who was killed by a cop after a traffic stop in 2012 (the family still contests the circumstances as confirmed by the police and the Suffolk County District Attorney, who both claim findings show that Ramsey-White brandished a gun). Listening to her and others who have dealt directly with police violence in Boston, it struck me that there are two wildly diverging narratives around the issue—on one side, the claim is that the Hub stands far apart from all the controversy around unjust police practices around the country; on the other side, represented at the massive rally last week, people have attempted to spread news about problems in Mass for years, but are generally told that their concerns are fraught.

There are no absolutes in this discussion. Certainly not every local law enforcement officer believes that Boston cops are safe above the fray, while not all people of color and their allies feel that certain groups are targeted.

Though my sympathies are clearly with the Black Lives Matter movement, I am both white and not a cop, and don’t purport to speak for any of the aforementioned groups (full disclosure: I am a victim of police brutality, though at the hands of New York City officers). With that said, as an observer and chronicler of these dueling Boston narratives for more than a decade, I feel compelled 4

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to identify them in detail. Because while I hear lots of talk about getting people together, on the same page, and other niceties, in reality I see the distance between sectarian scopes widening.

In the blue view, for example, Boston is the bright exemption when it comes to rampant bad behavior on the force, and police here typically respect the civil rights of residents. In a contrary view, and according to a 2014 report by the ACLU of Massachusetts as well as a 2015 study by researchers at Columbia University, Rutgers University, and the University of Massachusetts, “the Boston Police Department has engaged in racially discriminatory stop-and-frisk practices that have disproportionately targeted Black and Latino communities.” (Another font of information on the topic is Roxbury activist Jamarhl Crawford, who hosted a forum last year titled, Black & Blue: The Relationship Between the BPD & Communities of Color.)

There is also polling that reflects these rival black and blue scenarios, and that reveals some of the granular philosophical rifts afoot. While 73 percent of respondents in a poll done by the MassINC Polling Group (and commissioned by The Boston Foundation) view police favorably, broken down by race, only 65 percent of black residents have that opinion compared to 82 percent of whites. Similar trends emerge when people are asked about whether police treat “minorities” (their word) fairly, and when faced with the question of whether race relations have improved over the past decade. As for the blue view, it’s safe to say that it’s reflected in the 38 percent of residents who don’t believe that racism remains a serious problem in Boston.

Ask those who see these issues through the window of the black community, and they will tell you that it’s bad when cops use lethal force. Impugn anyone who has a blue hue, however, and you’ll learn that killings have historically begotten ceremonies and awards to honor the shooters. Like when, despite mounting tension in Missouri following the death of Michael Brown at the hands of Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, then-

Mass Governor Deval Patrick and the State Police pinned a medal on three Lynn officers who shot and killed Denis Reynoso, a veteran of the Iraq War who was reportedly suffering from PTSD. There are also contradictory economic arguments.

From the black viewpoint, it appears that too much city money is spent on policing, while not nearly enough resources are set aside for schools and to help resolve root strains like poverty that lead to crime. As proof, one might note that nearly 250 Boston cops made more than $200,000 last year, while nearly two-dozen officers made almost three times more in overtime alone than more than half of Boston families reported in overall income.

Blue is always out for green though, with the latest pay hike going to detectives, who earlier this year were awarded a retroactive 29 percent raise covering all the way back to 2010.

According to blue, or at least to BPD Commissioner William Evans on the WGBH show Boston Public Radio last week, “there’s no one easier to work with” than his department. Through a black lens, his claim fails to withstand scrutiny. As was recently reported by Britni de la Cretaz in DigBoston: “As the city prepares to roll [its body camera] pilot program out, [BPD brass has] deliberately avoided the community members who want to help them get it right.” Namely, the Boston Police Camera Action Team. According to activists, writes de la Cretaz, “This means that the body camera pilot program has been created without the input or approval from the voices in the community who know the most about the issue.”

It’s all about perspective. On the blue side they have helicopters—of the law enforcement type, as well as those belonging to the privileged news outlets which reprint law enforcement press releases. They have a unique view of events that are transpiring, like last week’s protest, though such an angle appears to be insufficient in terms of detail or nuance. From the other side, however, which is closer to the ground, it’s clear that such assemblies are not just faceless mobs, but rather rich collections of concerned individuals with legitimate messages. One that caught my eye near BPD headquarters: “AM I THE NEXT HASHTAG?” As you can probably tell, there is no problem at all with police violence in Boston. So long as you are wearing blue blockers. Otherwise, when peering through a different lens, the story is more black and white, and it’s a lot less flattering.

PHOTO BY CHRIS FARAONE

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After more than a year of investigating the destruction of evidence in criminal cases in Berkshire County, we have definitively proven that Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey and Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin will not enforce our state’s public records law. So anyone in government can simply ignore public records requests and bury records they don’t want to be seen.

In April, we broke the news that the Pittsfield police had suffered a hard drive crash and lost an undetermined number of booking videos. Since then, the police and Berkshire District Attorney David Capeless have tried to minimize the crash’s importance while claiming they did nothing inappropriate. But the entire time, Capeless’s office has been trying to keep information about the loss from the public, and has violated the law in several ways in the process.

We found out about the hard drive crash after the Pittsfield police took our money for a booking video of Phyllis Stankiewicz, a wrongfully arrested 88-yearold woman. But after taking our money, the department didn’t provide the video.

They dodged our calls for a while until we publicly shamed them, and they finally sent a terse email saying the video was not available due to a hard drive failure.

After we learned of the hard drive crash, we sent the DA’s office a records request for notifications made to defense attorneys. Capeless’s office responded that there were none. But after we published a story about the lost evidence, Capeless told other journalists about an OUI case that had been affected by the lost evidence, and said his office notified defense attorneys whenever it became aware of a missing video (though his office made no proactive attempt to discover which cases had missing evidence).

In the affected OUI case, a judge ruled that the loss of evidence was not malicious but that the loss could be mentioned by the defense at trial to attempt to create reasonable doubt. In that ruling, we found out the Pittsfield police had sent the hard drive out for recovery after telling us, and the defense attorney whose case was affected, that the videos were lost. We asked for the Stankiewicz video again to see if it had been recovered, and this time it was provided to us.

We also asked the DA’s office again for records that would either verify or prove false Capeless’s claims about how his office handled the loss of evidence.

After delaying their response to our latest request until we filed an appeal, Capeless’s office ultimately told us they would not even provide a fee estimate unless we first agreed to pay an unspecified amount of money “expecting to exceed $500.00.”

It is the lawful duty of all government agencies to provide a response, including a detailed fee estimate, to any request within 10 days of receipt. We reached out to Capeless about this, but he took no corrective action. We appealed again, and the state supervisor of records ordered Capeless to provide a response without delay. But he did not—that order is now over a month old, and we still have no response. His office did, however, send us a letter claiming that it hasn’t been able to write a response yet because it must locate and hand-search “several thousand case files” and “possibly additional files.” If true, it’s amazing that the DA’s office gets anything done since it must have such a disorganized records system that it makes finding casefiles nearly impossible. Or they are lying. Again.

In any case, the order was not followed. So we reached out to the Attorney General’s Office for enforcement, but AG Maura Healey accepts the lawbreaking without batting an eye. The process of trying to get records about this loss of evidence has failed for a year already—if we can’t get this order enforced, then what purpose does the law even serve?

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APPARENT HORIZON

PUBLIC GOOD

We need government support for journalism

Journalism is in a tough spot. There are tens of thousands of trained journalists in the United States, but a dearth of funding and the rolling collapse of major news outlets prevents many of us from making a living plying our trade. Even as journalism schools continue pumping out thousands of new journalists every year. According to the annual newsroom census by the American Society of News Editors, we’ve dropped from a high of 56,900 jobs in journalism in 1990 to a low of 32,900 jobs in 2015. The overall population served rose from 249 million to 321 million over the same period. Meaning that more and more Americans live in “news deserts”—ignored and abandoned by the dwindling number of professional news operations.

As the situation has worsened, these developments have led to a wave of new journalism outfits that are attempting to fill the growing holes in local, state and national news coverage. Many are nonprofit, and most are having a hard time making ends meet ... let alone flourishing.

Much of my career as a journalist has been spent running such projects.

Last year, I co-founded the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism (BINJ) with Chris Faraone and John Loftus—merging my nonprofit Open Media Boston into the new regional investigative reporting incubator. It’s doing quite well so far, producing 20 features and over 100 columns and running several significant community events.

But compared to the surviving major news outlets—or even significant alternative news publications like the late lamented Boston Phoenix—we’re operating on a shoestring budget. We raised and spent $70,000 in our first year, and just brought in another $25,000 as we enter our second year—making us incredibly efficient by the standards of the industry. Legions of news startups have tried to make a go of it—mainly online—on even smaller budgets in recent years. Very few started with stable funding. And even fewer have survived to grow into larger organizations that come anywhere near replacing lost news organizations in their communities. Of those success stories, most have managed to find some kind of major donor to bankroll their operation. Often a wealthy person or small group of them.

And that’s a problem. Going hat-inhand to get a rich person to dump money on your news outlet—be it the Boston Globe, the Intercept or the Texas Tribune— means that one more vital institution in our democratic society, the free press, increasingly exists at the sufferance of private wealth. The caprices of rich folks can then more closely dictate what kind of news coverage the various American publics will see. Or not see (as we were just reminded when PayPal billionaire Peter Thiel took down Gawker). With no meaningful public oversight.

Is there a better alternative to today’s busted model of mendicant journalism?

I think so. The one least discussed in this country in this era, but perhaps the most important. Real public funding. Not the anemic version conservatives have stuck us with thanks to ceaseless attacks against PBS and NPR since their formation in 1969 and 1970 respectively. This is the road mostly not travelled in the US. We need a big public fund like the National Endowment for the Arts or National Endowment for the Humanities—a National Endowment for Journalism, as has been periodically proposed—that would dole out grants to organizations like BINJ to produce a broad array of news in the public interest. And allow us to get big enough to build the large grassroots member base that would make us truly independent. Given the long experience that many democratic nations (including our own) have with such arrangements, there’s every reason to believe that major public support would spark a flowering of journalism akin to the one that resulted from the postal subsidies granted to newspapers at the dawn of the republic. Not create the kind of a censorious Soviet-style news regime invoked by the hard right every time the issue of public funding for news production is brought up.

That’s just one possible public approach. There are many others worth considering. Where will the money come from for such innovations? A rich society like ours can figure it out. Eliminate funding for nuclear weapons. Tax the rich and corporations. And we’ll have a whole new journalism ballgame.

“Is there a better alternative to today’s busted model of mendicant journalism?

I think so. The one least discussed in this country in this era, but perhaps the most important. Real public funding. ”

Read the full version of this column at digboston.com.

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COPYRIGHT 2016 JASON PRAMAS. LICENSED FOR USE BY THE BOSTON INSTITUTE FOR NONPROFIT JOURNALISM AND MEDIA OUTLETS IN ITS NETWORK.

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

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just coming into its own in this city. Karmaloop [which co-sponsored the party at first] was just coming up.

UndergroundHipHop.com had just moved to downtown.

[Me and DJ Tommee were] doing Marinate at The Milky Way since 2000. We wanted to expand and do a new party, and kept Marinate and Fresh Produce both going [simultaneously] for a couple of years.

PETER FIUMARA: From the jump, the difference was that we were going to have guests. And with UndergroundHipHop, and people always coming through the city doing promos, we figured maybe we could get people to come DJ for us.

TREES [PROMOTER, UGHH.COM]: The night was basically conceived between myself, Jeremy, Knife, Tommee, and Wil from Karmaloop. We wanted a night that was free, to be a place where b-boys could take over the dance floor, where we could partner with streetwear companies, beer companies. We had the UGHH.com store, but we wanted a monthly party.

SPECIAL FEATURE

JEREMY SULLIVAN [TALENT BOOKER, UGHH.COM]: The biggest piece that UGHH brought was having the connection to all these DJs. Just being able to connect with them. We didn’t want them to play Top 40.

‘I gave it all up for the Good Life.’ An aural history.

HILARY CLARE [REGULAR]: I remember when I was working at UndergroundHipHop, and Knife and Tommee were talking about doing another Marinate. They’d been looking at a lot of different places, and they thought Peter really got it. He was trying to change the way nights were run in Boston.

BY CHRIS FARAONE @FARA1 Not unlike our city’s subway but with better drinks and Technics decks, the Good Life in Downtown Crossing is an iconic equalizer, the rare place in our segregated Hub where several walks of life cross paths and even exchange spit and digits. If that’s not a sweet enough pedigree, the bar has almost single-handedly kept hip-hop hope alive in Boston proper for a decade, as racist policies and club owners have otherwise pushed boom bap DJs into Cambridge and beyond.

In large part due to an anything goes dress code and a famously drama-free environment, the Good Life has become a Shangri-la for countless cadres. And of all the many noted parties that have animated the bar’s dance floor through the years, the monthly hiphop homecoming Fresh Produce, which celebrates its 10th birthday next Saturday, July 30, stands out as a star-studded flagship. With an exalted guest roster that has featured everyone from Spinderella and Kool Herc, to DJ Premier and Pete Rock, to Mayer Hawthorne, the memories are extra thick, if not loud and cloudy.

We reached out to a dozen key players and regulars— everyone from bartenders and DJs to Good Life owner Peter Fiumara—in an attempt to cement the story behind Fresh Produce for the hip-hop history books.

THE VANGUARD

DJ ON&ON [GUEST DJ, HOST OF HIP-HOP TRIVIA AT GOOD LIFE]: I remember [DJ Knife and DJ Tommee’s original party at the Milky Way in Jamaica Plain] Marinate through another guy—Natoo—who had a party at the Chopping Block in Mission Hill. I just moved back to Boston from NY and I was trying to infiltrate the Boston scene and this is the Dipset era and I’m wearing bandanas …

I show up to this crazy night in all my Dipset gear and it’s this dive bar, and this is where Alaskan Fishermen, and guys like Statik Selektah and Termanology would come in on the low and sip Heinekens. And Natoo books me for a 30-minute set. And it’s all vinyl. So I go in, and it’s just hip-hop …

There I met Knife ... and through Knife I met Tommee, and through Tommee I met Ripshop, and T-Ruckus, and Bomshot. And again, very important, vinyl was alive. DJing was alive … That’s what was happening at the time—the Chopping Block!

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PETER FIUMARA [OWNER, GOOD LIFE]: I was never much of a good DJ but I’ve always had a crazy draw toward music.

I grew up in Newton but had family in the North End so I was always back and forth into the city, and I got into music fast …

I was drawn to New York, which was like the center of the music universe. I had a ridiculous music collection because my dad died when I was 16 and I inherited it. I started DJing with one [Technics] turntable and one stiffarm turntable …

I went to New York in ‘99-2000 and worked doing music curation. Pre-iPods, making 17-track CDs, and we would duplicate it for different bars. My name was DJ Pietro, which was kind of a joke. I eventually became Rusty Nail up here …

I remember sneaking out of the house to go to The Channel to see Boogie Down Productions. That place and that part of town [Fort Point] gave me a New York kind of vibe …

I’ve always known I wanted to own a bar or a nightclub. My dad was in the restaurant business. After seeing the movie ‘Less Than Zero,’ there’s a scene where he is trying to open a club. That was super intriguing to me.

I remember talking to my dad about it, and he was like, ‘There are other things I can do.’ I was probably 14 or 15.

THE GENESIS

PETER FIUMARA: When I opened this up it wasn’t just with myself, but with my sister and my brother. It was 2004, I was back and forth, and this opportunity came across. This was called The Good Life for 10 years. It was like Lucky’s in Fort Point—live jazz, they opened it right around when ‘Swingers’ came out. The place was jammin’, it was great. I used to come in all the time …

I thought about calling it The Afterlife, but then I just decided to keep the name. It wasn’t the name I would have chose, but it kind of stuck. So we re-branded it. I saw that every bar in the city didn’t allow sneakers, that every bar in the city didn’t allow Timberlands, and I was like, ‘What the fuck?’ This was crazy. In New York you can go out wearing what you want. I wasn’t going to make someone wear loafers if they only wear sneakers.

DJ KNIFE [CO-FOUNDER, FRESH PRODUCE]: [The founders of Fresh Produce] were a group that was very much

DJ FRANK WHITE [GUEST DJ]: I remember seeing Trees and Knife at the Middle East, and I was with Mister Jason and Nabo [Rawk] and they were talking about this new scene.

And I was like, ‘Oh shit, a place where you can hear great music and people are breakdancing and shit.’

DJ KNIFE: [Kingston Street in Downtown Crossing] has always been kind of under the radar. There’s not a ton of clubs. Knock on wood, we have always tried to provide an atmosphere where it is not pretentious and you listen to good music and we treat people with respect. That was the basis. I had always noticed that weekly parties failed in Boston. It had a lot to do with neighborhood. So we started having our first success when we would have a whole month to promote one night.

THE INCEPTION

PETER FIUMARA: At the time I was worried budget-wise.

How are we going to do this? How are we going to make money? We wanted some of the best [DJs] in the world, but at the same time we weren’t ready to spend a couple of grand.

DJ KNIFE: We started small because we didn’t know what to expect. The first guest was Dooley-O, who was a smaller name. But there was a ton of hype because it was a new place and a new party. I remember ordering 5,000 fliers and we got rid of every one of them. The whole crew.

HILARY CLARE: The first one was my birthday celebration.

I remember the outfit I was wearing—this black tight camisole with a blue skirt.

DJ KNIFE: Every Fresh Produce we would give out bags with all this swag and gifts and T-shirts … At the beginning we made a lot of these connections through UnderGroundHipHop, and then word got around from that. Now when we reach out to people they know that the Good Life is a place where a lot of their peers have played.

DJ ON&ON: As a pro-black, pro-Boston, pro-Northeast hiphop guy, I would love every opportunity to throw hate at these guys, but the place was packed and it was hip-hop, just straight hip-hop. We mixed it up.

FRESH PRODUCE continued on pg. 12

PHOTO BY STEVE OSEMWENKHAE

FRESH PRODUCE TURNS 10

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FRESH PRODUCE continued from pg. 10

THE CULTURE

ERICA MCNULTY [GOOD LIFE EMPLOYEE, 2008-PRESENT]: I got here in August 2008. I’m from Lowell. I came here back when the turntables were on the piano downstairs, and I was in here one day and Dave asked me if I needed a job. Before I worked here I had an office job for eight years.

I gave it all up for the Good Life …

LAUREN RUBIN [GOOD LIFE EMPLOYEE, 2009-PRESENT]: I didn’t know what kind of place [Good Life] was, didn’t care. I had just moved to Boston [in 2009], so I needed a job and I took it. My first impression was there was a guy in the middle of the afternoon who walked in, sucked down a martini, and left. And they were like, ‘Yeah, that happens all the time.’ It was like his coffee break …

ERICA MCNULTY: I was nervous when I started. It was so busy at night, slammed. To be on the bar here was scary back then. One time I remember being short-staffed, and it must have been a Fresh Produce because people were hanging over the bar asking for drinks and Peter was bartending with me. That was the same night that the dishwasher caught on fire.

DANA SCOTT [REGULAR, HIP-HOP JOURNALIST]: The [Good Life] is the connection. That’s our Latin Quarter. It’s like The Max on ‘Saved by the Bell.’ There have been other places, like The Channel, but it’s the only place now on the Boston side of the Charles that has those kinds of artists …

Every scene needs a center, and the Good life always fostered that with the kind of DJs it has. It’s a place for DJs to feel at home. For a long time, the club scene was eradicated under the Menino administration, and for a lot of things it’s all we have left and can rely on.

7L [GUEST DJ]: [2006] was the beginning of the bottle service places, like commercial hip-hop places. But I was still doing Middlesex and Enormous Room. The Cambridge spots I got to play all the fun stuff, then Boston was catering to a specific audience …

When Good Life popped around with Fresh Produce it was one of the first nights you could play whatever you wanted. And the crowd got it!

LAUREN RUBIN: We have the business crowd and the nightlife crowd. Before this place I’d never seen hipsters and the whole mix of everybody. I can have two extremely different parties going on at the same time and it seems to work. Everyone eventually kind of blends when the State Street people have had a lot to drink. If there’s good music, sometimes the after work crowd will stay for the nightlife as we’re clearing out the furniture and the lights are getting darker.

ERICA MCNULTY: Some of us are friends with the people who DJ here. It makes it fun when you have [Beyonder] and DJ Frank White behind your bar.

JEREMY SULLIVAN: I have to single out Peter for having the vision to create an eccentric-friendly space to bring everyone together. Besides the fact that he is a true fan of music and can recognize the importance of the guest DJs we’ve brought through, Peter seems to have a personal

relationship with everyone and always keeps himself at the center of the antics. During one Fresh Produce, Peter had us battling in an impromptu basketball game in the side alley using a milk crate on the brick wall.

THE ICONS

DJ KNIFE: 2013 was the crazy year—Qbert, Afrikka Bambaataa.

DJ FRANK WHITE: It’s a small intimate venue. To see Qbert or Pete Rock that close watching them with 150 people in the room is great. There’s no other venue like that.

JEREMY SULLIVAN: My favorite part about Fresh Produce over the years has been the house party atmosphere where artists, fans, and staff could stand shoulder-toshoulder. When people feel comfortable enough to let down their guard that’s when the fun happens. The guest DJs picked up on this vibe which many times led to late night antics like the time DJ Platurn laid down in the back of my pick-up truck to keep the party going at the next place, laughing his ass off the whole ride.

DANA SCOTT: Prince Paul was always great. Even though it’s a small gig, Diamond D was great, Jazzy Jay was good, and Babu from the Beat Junkies was awesome. Peanut Butter Wolf came a couple of times. DJ Premier!

ERICA MCNULTY: Spinderella was here a couple of weeks ago, and it was my birthday so I wanted to be downstairs.

The night we had Qbert here was a complete snowstorm.

I wasn’t working but I got to come in, and it was wild.

There were like 11 people here. It was basically like being at a private party with Qbert. If it’s someone that I love I usually try to get in there. Everybody was super excited when we had DJ Jazzy Jeff here. We had a lunch, and our lunchtime regulars all ended up downstairs and got pictures. Where else can you work like that? One time I was bartending and Smif-N-Wessun were standing on the bar performing.

DJ ON&ON: Knife has had some horrible interactions with hip-hop legends, still he keeps on going. That’s where Fresh Produce is so special—there’s no deviance.

Unsurpassed. The closest pedigree to people who present Northeast hip-hop, there’s been no more greater purveyors—you go from Tony Touch to Lovebug Starski. Be sure to ask Knife about Lovebug Starski.

DJ KNIFE: No comment.

DANA SCOTT: Lovebug Starski tried to fight me at Grandmaster Caz’s 50th birthday party in Manhattan when I came up to him and asked him about the time he came to the Good Life.

DJ FRANK WHITE: That list [of past performers] will blow away any other list in this city.

DJ KNIFE: Four Color Zack was one of the most amazing DJ performances I’ve ever seen. I had heard he was good, but he did some of the coolest technical stuff I’ve ever seen.

Shortkut from the Beat Junkies was the most fluid DJ I have ever seen.

>> THE 10TH ANNIVERSARY OF FRESH PRODUCE ON SATURDAY, JULY 30 WITH STRETCH ARMSTRONG AND BOBBITO. 12

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7L: Four Color Zack was amazing. He has a lot of his videos from his routines at battles, but I never really saw a full club set from him from start to finish. He weaved from doing complicated routines to playing shit that people were bugging out to seamlessly.

TREES: I really enjoyed when we started bringing some MCs into the mix to perform. We brought in Camp Lo, Smif-N-Wessun. Just seeing those guys come in and perform was like a dream come true. When we started charging a small cover we started getting some people who had been on the wish list for years …

My favorite job was giving these guys a ride to and from the airport. I would pick these guys up in my Jeep and we would just rap about hip-hop. As a fan it was cool to really immerse myself in the culture that I have loved for my whole life.

PETER FIUMARA: I got to pick up Pete Rock at the airport. He’s the nicest dude. I borrowed my mom’s car at the time, and we were driving up Comm Ave. and his manager put in this tape that he was putting out overseas. I’ll never forget it.

THE LEGACY

HILARY CLARE: The music is different. It’s always going to be some kind of hip-hop mixed with other things, but I don’t know how many other nights are just hip-hop that went for this long. People aren’t there to posture, they’re there to have a good time.

7L: Fresh Produce has always been a good mix—early on it’s a bit of the older crowd and you play some of the classics, but by midnight there’s a healthy mix of old and young and you’re not losing the people. Especially with the guests they always get—they’re steeped in legends, but ones who are still relevant.

DJ ON&ON: I’ve realized that all the people who are doing stuff today—the great graffiti writers, the computer designers—this is where they were at one point. It meant something. It was a litmus test. DJ Tommee is factually the most slept-on DJ I have ever encountered, and again, I take no pleasure in throwing kudos at a white man.

This guy is one of the most prolific DJs. Knife was a great anchor to him.

DANA SCOTT: The Good Life helped revive the Boston hiphop scene when it was dead. Leedz has helped too, but he’s mostly had to do it in Cambridge. [Knife] has done a great job booking the right people over the years.

TREES: It’s a night we hope people can come down and hear music that they can’t hear anywhere else. We want it to be a collection of all different genres of hip-hop, we want to cover the whole spectrum—from old school to underground to trap. We’ve had hundreds of DJs through there, and each one has brought their unique style PETER FIUMARA: There’s this ebb and flow of regular customers who keep coming back, and we’re fortunate to still be on their radar. From day one we’ve had that …

I wanted everyone to feel like they knew each other.

I always wanted it to feel like a house party in a public place.

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OLDE MAGOUNʼS SALOON PRESENTS:

EATS

JOHN BREWER’S TAVERN

MEAT Different meatloaf every Monday with two sides.

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

BY MARC HURWITZ @HIDDENBOSTON

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Restaurant chains tend to get a bad rap and in many cases, it’s justified—they can tend to feel sterile and soulless, and the food, while sometimes decent, it can be rather boring and basic. But there are some good aspects to chains as well, such as the feeling of familiarity that some diners prefer, and chains indeed try to cater to those business travelers, tourists, truckers, etc. who simply want nothing more than a basic, inexpensive, no-surprises meal while they’re on the road. So where do people go if they want the feel of a chain with the added benefit of an independent restaurant where the food is one step better and the place has more of a local vibe to it? Well, if you look around you can find a few such spots in the Greater Boston area, and one that certainly stands out is a neighborhood dining and drinking place in Malden called John Brewer’s Tavern.

Located on the edge of a small shopping center on Highland Avenue just north of the Medford line, John Brewer’s Tavern has an instantly familiar look to it, with its building having the appearance of perhaps the long-gone Ground Round restaurants that used to dot the Metro Boston landscape. But if you look more closely, it isn’t nearly as generic as a typical family-friendly chain and it also has lots of room to move around, including a large and comfortable bar area in the front, a quiet, dimly-lit, and rather serene dining room out back, and a relatively large patio that extends along the left side of the building. Unlike some chains where workers often seem to be going through the motions, John Brewer’s Tavern tends to be an exceedingly friendly place, with everyone from hosts to bartenders to servers to managers greeting customers and making sure the place runs efficiently, which it definitely does.

The name John Brewer’s Tavern might throw some people, as it could imply that this is a brewpub where beers are made on the premises. It is not, but like its sister restaurant with the same name in Waltham (as well as the more beercentric Brewer’s Coalition in Newtonville, which is also connected), the place is pretty impressive when it comes to craft brew options, with such names as (depending on the seasons and specials) Ballast Point, Aeronaut, Maine, Kona, Night Shift, Two Roads, Slumbrew, Lord Hobo, Idle Hands, Jack’s Abby, Founders, and more, with flights available for those who have trouble choosing or simply want to sample some different beers. The food at John Brewer’s doesn’t stray far from classic American fare and pub grub, but it is pretty impressive and very reasonably priced, with highlights being a meaty chili served with two types of cheeses and tortilla chips, aromatic truffle fries sprinkled with parmesan cheese and rosemary , an old-fashioned turkey dinner with all the fixings, a creamy macaroni and cheese with diced chicken tenders and bread crumbs, a tavern burger that is only $5.00 (including fries) on weekdays at lunch and on Wednesday nights, a turkey burger smothered with zesty cranberry mayo, and tender and nicely-marinated steak tips which compete nicely with some of the legendary steak tip places just north of Boston. A children’s menu is also available, as is a gluten-free menu.

Chains such as TGI Friday’s, Applebee’s, Chili’s, and the 99 certainly serve a purpose and no matter how much restaurant critics and food nerds/gourmands don’t want to hear it, they remain popular with much of the population and aren’t really going anywhere anytime soon. But why go to a chain when you can support an independent restaurant that does everything a chain does and more?

That alone is one reason to hit a place like John Brewer’s Tavern, and as an added benefit, you can get some truly great beers to go with your chain/not chain dining experience. >> JOHN BREWER’S TAVERN. 7 HIGHLAND AVE, MALDEN. JOHNBREWERSTAVERN.COM/MALDEN.HTML

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MUSIC

TOP 10

Meet the Pitchfork Festival acts we can’t stop talking about

BY NINA CORCORAN @NINA_CORCORAN Sometimes you have to see it to believe it. Other times you just have to listen to us. This is one of those times.

We travelled to Chicago, IL to attend Pitchfork Music Festival. This year’s edition saw plenty of talented acts flood Union Park with jazz, soul, and aggressive indie rock, but this handful stood out above the rest. So read up, take notes, and hit up your corner record store to buy a couple records. After all, summer is winding down. You’ll want to blast these at full volume to make the most of what’s left.

WHITNEY

If you’re still got a pack of cigarettes left and half a crate of Gansettes from last week’s party, put on Whitney and kick up your feet. the chicago act find middle ground between slacker grooves and melancholic charm, stirring up harmonies and horn parts that will make you swoon.

As if you needed another reason to fall in love with those summer sunsets from the Allston footbridge.

project for Haley Fohr now morphs into a combination of alt-country, drone, and felt sounds. Fohr hypnotizes you onstage and off, leaving the listener unaware of what they just heard, yet totally infatuated with it simultaneously. It’s the type of innovative wonder that’s hard to create from scratch.

GIRL BAND

Up-and-coming crooner Moses Sumney is equal parts rhythmic force and late-night soul. He hushed an otherwise buzzing festival crowd to hear his ridiculously high falsettos and whispered notes. It should come as no surprise that when he joined Sufjan Stevens onstage later that night, he absolutely killed it, including their dance-happy Prince cover.

No, they’re not girls. No, they’re not mocking the gender, either. Ireland four-piece Girl Band is dripping with insanity and eeriness, making their name seem more like an afterthought than a joke. All four men build songs of pent-up anxiety and off-kilter guitar, scratching and screaming in ways that never quite find the resolution you’re looking for, instead riding jittery, bottle-dragged basslines that sound like a mental breakdown is sooner than you think.

BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE

KEVIN MORBY

MOSES SUMNEY

They may not be new, but they’re certainly the best.

Canadian supergroup Broken Social Scene’s set at Pitchfork was their first US show in nearly six years.

Yet they sounded like they’ve been rehearsing on the regular. Sometimes all you need to listen to are the classics that drifted out of your mind, be it “Time=Cause” or “Fire Eye’d Boy.”

CIRCUIT DES YEUX

The more Circuit Des Yeux plays, the more she becomes a darker enigma. What began as an experimental

You don’t have to listen to Bob Dylan if you’re looking for poetic folk rock come to life. The ex-Woods bassist began his solo career in 2013 and barely three years later has found footing so sturdy it’s hard to imagine him ever doing anything else. It’s alt-country with a tinge of rock, whipping up vibes fitting for the end of summer, especially if you’re hitching a ride somewhere south for a getaway weekend in August.

THE HOTELIER

local albums of 2016 already, and live they put those songs into forceful, emotive motion. If you need something to sing along to, this is your go-to pick, especially if they come back to Boston before the year’s end.

JLIN

Fancy footwork is back. Indiana producer and electronic act Jlin has been creating music since 2008. She welds bangs and whistles together in ways that encourage listeners to create their own dance moves, inspiring freeform moves and language to spill out of you naturally.

That’s not easy to do, especially in the electronic field, where everyone’s trying to get you to dance to their beat, not your own while their song plays around you.

BLOOD ORANGE

British singer-songwriter Dev Hynes is more than aware.

He’s seeing thru what’s happening in today’s climate and pushing politics, feminism, and romance in directions the world needs, not only to inspire but to motivate, to educate, and to invite. His new songs off this year’s surprise LP, Freetown Sound, send chills down your spine live. Prep for his next show here by grabbing a copy of it ASAP.

SAVAGES

Don’t say you’re surprised to see women rock as hard as Savages do. When we spoke earlier this year, Savages explained their just as happy as they are angry with the way the world works. In fact, they’ve begun to fall in love with it, if only out of necessity. They tore the stage apart at Pitchfork, throwing themselves across the landscape to deliver something so intense, it touches the innermost instincts from the purity of it all.

Don’t call it emo music if it’s got a grip on reality.

Worcester act The Hotelier released one of our favorite

MUSIC EVENTS THU 7.21

RETURN OF THE RIOT GRRRL THE JULIE RUIN + SETH BOGART SHOW

[The Sinclair, 52 Church St., Cambridge. 8pm/18+/$20.

Sinclaircambridge.com]

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THU 7.21

LOCAL MOPES AND ROCK TROPES WE CAN ALL BE SORRY + SPOOK THE HERD + DUST FROM 1000 YRS + KISS CONCERT [Great Scott, 1222 Comm.

Ave., Allston. 9pm/18+/$8. greatscottboston.com]

DIGBOSTON.COM

FRI 7.22

HEART-RACING HOUSE MUSIC JLIN + DJ HARAM + MSG + PALACE + DJ EARTHACLIT

[Middle East Upstairs, 472 Mass. Ave., Cambridge. 8pm/18+/$15.

Mideastoffers.com]

SUN 7.24

COSTUMES, SIGNS, AND PSCHEDELIA: OH MY! SUPER FURRY ANIMALS + CHRIS FORSYTH AND THE SOLAR MOTEL BAND [The Sinclair, 52 Church St., Cambridge. 8pm/18+/$23. sinclaircambridge.com]

WED 7.27

CHI-TOWN RAP VIC MENSA + JOEY PURP [Brighton Music Hall, 158 Brighton Ave., Allston.

7pm/all ages/$25. crossroadspresents.com]

WED 7.27

POST-BEATLES PSYCH POP UNKNOWN MORTAL ORCHESTRA + KLAUS JOHANN GROBE

[The Sinclair, 52 Church St., Cambridge. 8pm/18+/$20. sinclaircambridge.com]

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DEPT. OF COMMERCE

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17

FILM

GHOSTBUSTERS

Director Paul Feig provides a valuable cinematic service

BY JAKE MULLIGAN @_JAKEMULLIGAN

You don’t need statistics to see that the American film industry is a sexist one. All you really need are eyes. If you go to the multiplex often enough, then you already know that female filmmakers are rare, and that movies about the inner lives of women are even rarer. Paul Feig doesn’t go that far. He makes broad comedies featuring broader set pieces. But he also casts women in his lead roles— and that puts his broadness right back into a niche. Our movies rarely do more than stare at women. But Feig actually listens. His latest films are Bridesmaids, The Heat, Spy, and now Ghostbusters. All four feature women in the top roles, plural. All four take the complications of female friendship as their central subject, displaying it as a force that can trump sexism, or outrank sex itself. And all four take a justified pleasure in the emasculation of their male characters, who are uniformly incompetent. The groom in Bridesmaids barely gets a line of dialogue. The male villain in Spy gets shot in the chest and kicked out of a helicopter.

The Heat opens with Sandra Bullock outclassing twenty male cops, then moves toward a climax where the villain gets shot in his dick. Hollywood comedies have stereotyped and marginalized the lives of women since the horny-teen-movies of the 1980s, and Feig’s recent films are like pop-payback. No other Hollywood director has made women the subject of their films so consistently. And whether it’s for better or worse—that’s up for debate—no other Hollywood director has made “female empowerment” such an integral part of their “brand.” Feig’s making slay queen cinema.

His Ghostbusters remake, co-written by Katie Dippold, completes his ascendance to Hollywood’s highest level.

Bridesmaids was the sleeper hit, The Heat and Spy were high-concept efforts, and now he’s got the keys to the Ghostbusters car—first you get the fame, then you get the money, then you get the franchise. This one has been rebooted in his own image, from the performers to the placement of the killshots. He’s still casting women in the lead roles: this latest iteration replaces the original

foursome with Dr. Erin Gilbert (Kristen Wiig,) Abby Yates (Melissa McCarthy,) Jillian Holtzmann (Kate McKinnon,) and Patty Tolan (Leslie Jones.) He’s still dramatizing the importance of female friendship: Erin drifted away from her former-partner-in-paranormal-studies Abby, but they team up again after their “early works” resurface, and their mended friendship serves as the movie’s emotional center. And even though the targets are different, the emasculation is aimed at the same place: when these four bust a ghost, they do it with a low blow. *** The 53-year-old Feig bounced around the industry for more than two decades before Bridesmaids. He played small parts in television shows and movies (you might remember him as a camp counselor in Heavyweights,) created a much-loved television show (Freaks and Geeks,) helmed episodes of others (30 Rock, Arrested Development,) directed two films that failed to receive much attention (I Am David and Unaccompanied Minors,) and published a number of books (including one called Superstud: Or How I Became A 24-Year-Old Virgin.) During this time he often worked with Judd Apatow (The 40-YearOld Virgin, and now I’m wondering if that movie was about Feig,) who would go on to produce Bridesmaids in 2011. That was where Feig established the visual rhythms he’s relied on ever since. They’re what you might call Apatow-adjacent.

Using a working method that’s been in place since the Apatow-produced Anchorman, actors are called on to improvise their way through most dialogue scenes, providing different punchlines on a per-take basis. An editor is then called on to mix-and-match the best gags together into something that we might call a movie (Brent White, who edited Anchorman, has been working with Feig since The Heat.) This means that most of the actors are seen in flattened-out one-shots, for the sake of continuity. It also means that the dialogue can’t ebb and flow, because everyone’s firing a steady stream of

their most random material instead. Feig and Apatow make the type of movies that get released in “unrated editions” later, which is to say that you can take their scenes and pack them full of alternate and additional footage, and you still won’t lose anything, because there wasn’t any rhythm to begin with. There’s a moment in this Ghostbusters where Chris Hemsworth’s receptionist character—he’s the male equivalent of the female sex-goddess-robot from Weird Science—confuses his eyes with his ears. That’s a good joke. But a good movie would’ve seen him holding a phone up to his eyeball three scenes later. *** With anyone else, you’d be so tired of the sitcom-esque go-nowhere-ness that you’d walk out before the end credits (which are loaded with excess improv material that didn’t fit into the main feature, because where else would it go?) But with Feig’s casts, you’re happy to keep listening. Large portions of his Ghostbusters movie are just that. Wiig, McCarthy, McKinnon, and Jones banter back-and-forth in their Chinatown home base, playing off each other’s varyingly manic energy. Not everything works, but everything tries to. It reminds you of what Feig did with Rose Byrne, who featured in Bridesmaids (as a nuclear bestie) and Spy (as a nuclear terrorist.) She was able to stretch her comic persona into downright weird territories—sociopathic ones, mostly—using crossed smiles and ecstatic frowns. If her “type” had been “the nice one,” she imploded it. And it was because Feig’s unadorned framing gave her the time and attention needed to illustrate all that madness in every part of her body. She gave looks in Spy (sighs, mostly) that are funnier than any of Ghostbuster’s costly visual-effects gags (slime, mostly.) It’s the great irony of Feig’s whole career. His completely banal aesthetic—which lacks in dynamism and depth, and does nothing but place the actors within the center of comically simple compositions—is giving female performers one of the best platforms available to them in today’s commercial cinema. The late Andrew Sarris said it best, although he was writing about the Marx brothers at the time. “They were a welcome relief not only from the badness of their own movies, but from the badness of most of the movies around them.”

Now Feig has brought a cast of underserved women into a whole new realm of badness: the superhero movie.

We might call the original Ghostbusters an “action comedy,” but this latest reboot can’t be mistaken for anything else. It’s Iron Women. It has super-suits, superjargon, an overly sincere reverence for prior entries in the franchise, an endless parade of tribute-paying cameo scenes, a post-credits sequel tease, and a final villain (the ghost from the Ghostbusters logo) who was almost certainly selected for the sake of branding opportunities (the first thing you see in this movie is the logo of a production company meant to create sequels to Feig’s reboot—“Ghost Corps.”) This all means less room for stretching out. Feig’s cast gets to banter at home, but they’ve also got to share screen space with computergenerated Slimers, and hit their marks within a Marvelesque destroy-the-city finale. This is a bad movie. Bad enough to make you think that Feig is a disposable director. But then you think about something else—this is the first big-budget superhero movie, after more than 15 years of them, to feature women in the lead roles. His badness is beside the point. These movies are a welcome relief anyway.

>> GHOSTBUSTERS. RATED PG-13. NOW PLAYING EVERYWHERE.

FILM EVENTS FRI 7.22

FRI 7.22

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

3:30, 5:30, 7:30pm, and 9:30pm/NR/$9-11.

Screens through 7.28, see brattlefilm.org for other showtimes.]

[Harvard Film Archive. 24 Quincy St., Harvard Sq., Cambridge. 7pm/NR/$7-9.

35mm. Also screens on 7.29. hcl.harvard.edu/hfa]

AREA PREMIERE OF ANNA ROSE HOLMER’S THE FITS

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FRI 7.22

COOLIDGE AFTER MIDNIGHT PRESENTS REPULSION

[Coolidge Corner Theatre.

290 Harvard St., Brookline.

Midnight/NR/$11.25. 35mm. coolidge.org]

SAT 7.23

“STARRING JACKIE CHAN” CONTINUES AT THE BRATTLE YUEN WOO-PING’S DRUNKEN MASTER

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

11:30pm/PG-13/$9-11. Also screens on 7.24 at 12:30pm.]

SAT 7.23

JANE FONDA IN ROGER VADIM’S BARBARELLA

[Somerville Theatre. 55 Davis Square, Somerville.

Midnight/PG/$10. 35mm.

Somervilletheatre.com.]

THU 7.28

“PLAY IT COOL” DOUBLE FEATURE BULLITT and THE GETAWAY

[Somerville Theatre.

55 Davis Square, Somerville. 7:30 and 9:45, respectively/PG/$10. 35mm.

Somervilletheatre.com.]

“GONDRY HAS MADE HIS MOST SATISFYING MOVIE SINCE HIS 2004 MASTERPIECE ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND.”

OFFICIAL SELECTION

-The Guardian

A film by

Michel Gondry

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ARTS

WE PARTY ON

Natsu Onoda Power’s The T Party at Company One Theatre

BY CHRISTOPHER EHLERS @_CHRISEHLERS

ONCE Lounge & Ballroom 156 Highland Ave. ONCEsomerville.com

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7.21.16 - 7.28.16

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www.enlocale.com 617-285-0167 NOW BOOKING PARTY & WEDDING CATERING

From the second you enter the lobby of the Boston Center for the Arts, it’s clear that what awaits is not just another night at the theater. You see, there’s a prom going on inside the Roberts Studio Theatre – a 90s prom, to be exact –and simply put, you’d be a fool to miss it.

The drama spills over into the hallway just outside the theater where the principal hurries guests inside, an anxious teen dashes exasperatedly through the crowd, and inside the bathroom, one student has reduced another to tears.

Inside, the audience is free to mingle and dance. It is there, at the 90s prom that opens Natsu Onoda Power’s The T Party, a kaleidoscopic look at gender identity, that our expectations are left at the door and our guards are lowered. As the doors close, it becomes clear that whatever is about to be experienced will be done so together.

“One of the things I love about this show is that it’s a party, so you come in and we’re celebrating,” said Mal Malme, a T Party actor and cofounder of Queer Soup Theater. “That in and of itself tends to unite people, and it’s with that spirit that this show starts. That’s the spirit that we hope is imbued throughout the entire production.”

The T Party unfolds in a series of vignettes that run the gamut from playful and cartoonish to provocative and devastating. Power, a Georgetown University professor, developed the play with students from her 2008 Gender and Performance Studies Seminar. (The play premiered in 2013 at Forum Theatre in Silver Spring, Md.) Power says that her interest in topics of gender and identity had long existed academically, but that the play was born out of personal experience, the details of which Power says she will only share with her cast.

“I wrote the play as a thank you gift to people who helped me through that time,” she said. “The nice irony is that although I wrote it as a thank you gift, the community keeps on giving me gifts.”

Since 2007 when Power began writing The T Party, the cultural climate around matters of gender – particularly the transgender community – has shifted dramatically. “The audience comes in with a very different set of knowledge, expectations, and assumptions,” Power said. “It’s one of the fastest transforming topics of conversation of the last ten years. At the time, people didn’t quite understand it.”

Although Power chose to keep the play set in 2007 and has made few structural changes, she has incorporated some snippets that have come directly from the cast members’ personal stories. For Malme, this has made things even more vibrant. “We just have a great group of people,” said Mal. “We really are having a great time with each other and I think that really, genuinely just makes the show pop.”

A few weeks before performances began, Power cut a line from the play’s final scene that she had recently added to the script especially for this production. The line read: “The playwright thinks this is the last time she will direct this play.”

“There’s an active discussion about who gets to write about trans experiences, who gets to act in it, who gets to represent the community,” she said. And although Power refuses to characterize The T Party as a play only about the trans experience, she began to feel that maybe she should step back and allow for others’ work to be produced. According to Power, there has been some backlash against cisgender playwrights like herself that have written plays with trans characters.

But her position on the matter changed following the June 12 massacre at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub, and she removed the line from the play. “In that context, the line sounded defeatist,” said Power. “We party on. ‘Ain’t no party like a t party because a t party don’t stop.’ We party on.”

And what a party it is. >> THE T PARTY. RUNS THROUGH 8.13 AT COMPANY ONE THEATRE AT THE BCA. 527 TREMONT ST., BOSTON. COMPANYONE.ORG

PHOTO BY PAUL FOX

7/20 School of Rock AllStars 7/21 Max Gomez 7/25 The Very & Jimmy Ryan

NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

21

SAVAGE LOVE

SECRET KINK

WHAT'S FOR BREAKFAST

BY PATT KELLEY WHATS4BREAKFAST.COM

BY DAN SAVAGE @FAKEDANSAVAGE | MAIL@SAVAGELOVE.NET I’m a gay guy in an open relationship and I’m on Recon, a gay hookup/dating site for guys into leather/fetish/BDSM. My partner, who isn’t kinky, knows I have a profile there and it’s not a problem. Today I got a message from a new guy, and when we exchanged face pics, I saw that he looks exactly like “Peter,” my boyfriend’s best friend’s fiancé! I asked him if that was him, and he stopped responding. What should I do?

My BF doesn’t want to know much about my extracurricular activities, but this could make our next double date extremely awkward. We see this other couple a fair amount, and even though I think this guy is good-looking, I would never sleep with him because of the social situation.

On the other hand, if I’m wrong and they’re not the same person, bringing it up with them could make things awkward, especially since I’m pretty secretive about my kinks and have zero desire to discuss them with my BF’s friends.

Requires Educated Consultation On Next Step P.S. Additional information that might be relevant: Our engaged friends aren’t having sex, we’ve been told, and they’re making no moves toward actually planning a wedding.

Going silent after you asked, “Is that you, Peter?!?” is a pretty good indication that it was indeed Peter you were talking to. But while you know Peter was on Recon, RECONS, you don’t know exactly what he was doing there.

Maybe he goes online to fantasize, swap pics, and jack off. Maybe Peter is on Recon with his fiancé’s blessing, just as you’re on Recon with your partner’s blessing (but, like you, he’s not comfortable discussing his kinks with friends).

Maybe their relationship/engagement is on the verge of collapse and your partner’s best friend’s fiancé is trying to line up a new relationship before pulling the plug on the one he’s in now.

Since you don’t know what’s going on in their relationship, RECONS, keep your mouth shut and refrain from making assumptions or judgments.

And the next time you have to interact with Peter and his fiancé socially, slap a smile on your face and talk about the weather, the election, the estrogen-enhanced, better-than-the-original Ghostbusters reboot, the new season of Difficult People, Zika, the Olympics—basically anything other than Recon, kinks, and wedding plans.

On the Lovecast, Dan chats with Wonkette’s Rebecca Schoenkopf about Bernie and Hillary and love and hate: savagelovecast.com.

THE STRANGERER

BY PAT FALCO ILLFALCO.COM

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FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

23

BOWERY BOSTON

For show announcements, giveaways, contests, and more, follow us on:

WWW.BOWERYBOSTON.COM • • • • LIVE MUSIC IN AND AROUND BOSTON • • • •

ROYALE 279 Tremont St. Boston, MA • royaleboston.com/concerts THE

Zakk Wylde

FA L L OF

BOOK OF SHADOWS II

TROY

W/ TYLER BRYANT & THE SHAKEDOWN, JARED JAMES NICHOLS

W/ DOROTHY

SUNDAY, JULY 31

TUESDAY, AUGUST 2

WED. AUGUST 3

W / ‘ 68, IL L US T RAT IONS

2ND SHOW ADDED DUE TO DEMAND!

SATURDAY, AUGUST 6

TUESDAY, AUGUST 9

BAND OF SKULLS W/ MOTHERS

TUES. SEPTEMBER 6 ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10AM!

W/ TAMARYN

WED. SEPTEMBER 7

WED. SEPTEMBER 14

THURS. SEPTEMBER 15

FRI. SEPTEMBER 16

SAT. SEPTEMBER 17

MON. SEPTEMBER 19

ON SALE NOW!

ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10AM!

MONDAY, OCTOBER 3

TUES. NOVEMBER 29

Peter Bjorn and John

Breakin’ Point Album Tour

W/ SYD ARTHUR

WED. SEPTEMBER 21

SUN. SEPTEMBER 25

TUES. SEPTEMBER 27

WED. SEPTEMBER 28

THU RSDAY. MAY 2 6 TH 2 016

52 Church St.- Razzmatazz, Barcelona Thu. 19-May Fri. 20-May - Chango, Madrid Sat. 21-May - Territorios Sevilla Festival, Sevilla Cambridge, MA

MAYAN THEATER FRIDAY,

FRIDAY, JULY 29

W/ CHRIS FORSYTH AND THE SOLAR MOTEL BAND

L O S A N G E L E S , C A

JULY 22

www.buzzcocks.com

sinclaircambridge.com

SUNDAY, JULY 24 ON SALE NOW!

KANDACE SPRINGS

W/ BEARSTRONAUT

W/ THE SO SO GLOS

MONDAY, AUGUST 1

SATURDAY, JULY 30

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 3

THURSDAY, AUGUST 4

ENVY ON THE COAST SECOND SHOW ADDED DUE TO DEMAND! 8/20 SOLD OUT

W/ THE NEPHROK! ALLSTARS

FRIDAY, AUGUST 12 ON SALE NOW!

SATURDAY, AUGUST 13

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 31

ON SALE FRIDAY AT NOON!

ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10AM!

W/ THE HOTELIER, CRYING

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 1 ON SALE FRIDAY AT NOON!

1222 Comm. Ave. Allston, MA

W/ AMASA HINES

greatscottboston.com

FRIDAY, JULY 29

MONDAY, OCTOBER 24

W/ SPIRIT GHOST

ALBUM RELEASE TOUR

FRI. & SAT. JULY 22 & 23 (EARLY SHOWS)

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 3 ON SALE FRIDAY AT NOON!

The Record Company

WEDS. & THURS. OCTOBER 19 & 20

THE GAS PRESENTS

‘s S GA E TH

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 24

W/ THE WIND AND THE WAVE, SUZANNE SANTO

SATURDAY, AUGUST 27

FRIDAYS AT 7PM!

SUNDAY, AUGUST 21

W/ CJ RAMONE, THE WARNING SHOTS, STOP CALLING ME FRANK

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 13

W/ FREE THROW, HIGH WAISTED

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 1

W/ SAND RECKONER

W/ WINSTONS, NARROW WAVES

FRIDAY, JULY 22 (LATE SHOW)

SUNDAY, JULY 24

TUESDAY, JULY 26

nomads/panzerbastard

HOLY WHITE HOUNDS

TWO COW GARAGE

W/ ZIP-TIE HANDCUFFS, THE SUN PARADE

W/ THE DAZIES, MATT CHARETTE & THE TRUER SOUND

SATURDAY, JULY 30

SUNDAY, JULY 31

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 3

ON SALE FRIDAY AT NOON!

ON SALE NOW!

ON SALE NOW!

MOON HOOCH

ADIA VICTORIA

FLOCK OF DIMES

ON SALE NOW!

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 6

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 19

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 30

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 1

≠ 7/21 WE CAN ALL BE SORRY ≠ 7/23 DON’T ASK DON’T TELL ≠ 7/28 LAKOU MIZIK ≠ 8/1 FORN ≠ 8/7 THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN (SOLD OUT) ≠ 8/9 TTNG (SOLD OUT) ≠ 8/10 KYLE CRAFT ≠ 8/11 KINDLING / CALIFORNIA X ≠ 8/12 SAINTSENECA

Tickets for Royale, The Sinclair, and Great Scott can be purchased online at Ticketmaster.com or by phone at (800) 745-3000.

No fee tickets available at The Sinclair box office Wednesdays - Saturdays 12:00 - 7:00PM

FOR MORE INFORMATION AND A COMPLETE LIST OF SHOWS, VISIT BOWERYBOSTON.COM