DigBoston 11.16.17

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Dear Reader,

As you may have noticed, we are extremely critical of cops, and of authorities in general, plus politicians who enable and facilitate unchecked state power, in our processing of news each week. This is for countless reasons, but mainly because we believe that the role of alternative and independent media is to report on things that aren’t being covered nearly enough. And in case you didn’t notice, despite the growing sympathy for victims of police brutality amidst NFL National Anthem controversy and other watershed movements and trends, most journalists have hardly peeled the onion back on the conditions that make life on the dark side of the thin blue line unbearable for those in minority and poor communities.

This week’s issue of DigBoston packs two features that dive beyond where most journalists will tread on the topic of police militarization. In the first installment of a statewide series on SWAT raids and questionable use of force, Seth Kershner brings us to some of the small towns that are directly affected.

Also, ace record-digger Maya Shaffer of Critical Mass explains how in one Merrimack Valley city, playing music too loud can lead to a 20-ton militarized truck being parked by your apartment.

Of course it’s not all doom on the policing front. Since I criticize where I see fit, it’s only fair to also applaud those who eschew the mold, like the courageous Mass state troopers who turned in a superior for apparently pushing them to alter the arrest report of a judge’s daughter. There is nothing easy about exposing such truths, especially from the inside, and that’s what makes the overwhelming majority of law enforcement officials spectacular cowards. No matter how many bullets they shoot or dangerous arrests they may make, those who cover up atrocities and fortify a system that coddles the family and friends of the powerful are pathetic and weak next to the few who facilitate transparency.

Not everyone’s a hero, though. Even in a moment like this, in which Mass State Police Col. Richard McKeon announced his retirement amid the aforementioned revelations, we saw Gov. Charlie Baker, as well as far too many morons in the media, give some of the culprits a free pass. In Baker’s case, he essentially defended the retiring colonel (who may collect a significant six-figure pension), and “recognizes the motivation to protect those with substance use disorders from potentially embarrassing information contained in their public records.” Which is funny, because even as the governor of a state with unconscionable drug lab scandals—whose victims have yet to be substantially acknowledged—he’s never made this kind of seemingly selective stink about the stench attached to drug offenders before.

As one of the brave troopers who came clean has said, “If this was some random person and not a judge’s kid, none of this would be happening.” You bet your ass, and until such bold behavior from the inside becomes more of the norm among officers, we will continue being the kind of watchdogs that Mass needs. Unapologetically.

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FROM DECAY GROUND TO PLAYGROUND (AND BACK AGAIN) Somerville residents reclaim empty lot, then forced out in latest rift of 10-year saga

BY OLIVIA FALCIGNO In a letter to Moore (that Cohen also sent to DigBoston in response to our request for comment), he wrote: This property has been family-owned since 1948, and since that time the Property has been fully occupied. It was not until Star Market abruptly departed in 2008 that we had an opportunity to make improvements to the property and bring in a new tenant. Unfortunately, the City [of Somerville] had different ideas and wanted the site developed into a large dense mixed use building …

The City created an overlay zoning district to both promote its own vision for development while blocking us from renting to viable tenants that we felt would have been perfect for the Winter Hill neighborhood … In those discussions with the City, the area you are currently using as a playground, was being proposed by the City to be the entrance and egress for an underground parking lot …

PHOTO BY OLIVIA FALCIGNO On a recent weekend afternoon in Winter Hill, a group of neighbors, forced by a court order, dismantled a community-built park they had raised in an empty lot.

For a decade, 30 Sewall St in Somerville has been a “vacant eyesore” to surrounding residents. The property once served as an employee parking lot for Star Market, but according to neighbors, the space transformed into an area for people to defecate, urinate, litter, and consume drugs and alcohol after the grocery store shuttered in 2007.

In a rapidly changing city where there’s seemingly a battle involving developers, residents, and bureaucrats waging on every block, the Sewall Street struggle stands out as a particular point of contention. In 2010, after they were blocked from an attempt to lease the property to Ocean State Job Lot, the owners of the parcel filed a complaint against Somerville in Middlesex Land Court.

Following a ruling that the city’s planning board was indeed able to dictate what kind of building should go there—basically, community leaders want something higher-end and mixed use, rather than a discount store— officials said they hoped that both sides would bury the hatchet. But then there were appeals, and subsequent decisions, and no movement at all. So, since the lot’s still empty, and because it has been frequented by vagrants, residents took another route.

According to Winter Hill resident Ian Adelman, in September Somerville Mayor Joe Curtatone, along with candidates for that area’s alderman position, joined residents at the lot to speak about various possibilities. Adelman said the idea of taking the parcel by eminent domain in order to make it a park was considered, but the mayor encouraged the community to pursue a project and solution on its own.

In October, the Winter Hill Neighborhood Association, a group of Somerville residents whose mission is to improve the quality of life on Winter Hill, convened in the lot once again, this time to further discuss plans.

Additional meetings with the city followed, but in time

When you remain quiet, you are left to whatever decisions are made above you or without you.

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association members decided to take matters into their own hands. As Curtatone wrote on Facebook in early September, “Somerville needs community activism around spaces like this to hit SomerVision’s goal of 125 acres of open space.”

Calls for donations yielded, among other things, a swing set, a basketball hoop, a sandbox, and plants.

Random contributions helped the neighbors redesign the space, and they recently began hosting events there—a walk-in movie night, a family halloween party.

A community garden was in the works, and according to Stephen Moore, a direct abutter, remnants of litter became less and less prominent.

Moore said, “Within weeks, we didn’t see the little brown bags being left on the stairs and less and less the bottles filled with urine… The group that used to gather right over there and defecate and urinate on the transformer in my garage stopped hanging out. They would move over to the fence and then they were gone all together.”

Event planning and donations of park items continued. But on Oct 27, residents witnessed their first signs of opposition when fences went up with signs marking the property as private. On Nov 2, the owner of the lot served a cease and desist order on Moore. In a subsequent exchange with the Winter Hill Neighborhood Association and Stephen Moore, the owning family wrote, “We do not have a problem with the motivation behind your efforts to use the property, but surely you must understand that the owner of the property should have been consulted and a part of any discussion on how the property will be used and by whom.”

According to email exchanges, which were shared on a Sewall Commons Facebook page, the owners were concerned with liability issues and wanted the property returned to its original form. The residents empathized, but still stand behind their morphing the negative space into a positive one for the overall safety of the community.

Erika Tarlin, a longtime resident of Somerville, expressed her aggravation on the day association members were clearing the makeshift park. “It is still cracked concrete and a chain linked fence but kids don’t see that,” Tarlin said. “They just see a chance to play, and what’s wrong with that? Mr. Cohen thinks there is lots wrong with it.”

In his turn, Chad Cohen, the vice president of the owning realty group, blamed the city for the impasse.

Despite our success in the years of litigation that followed our efforts to get a tenant in the building, the City has vowed to fight on, and in doing so has essentially blocked us from putting in grocery stores, national retail tenants, or any other businesses that we felt would add vibrancy to the neighborhood.

In response to that characterization, a Somerville spokesperson wrote in an email to DigBoston, “The City has not ‘blocked’ development on this site, rather it wants nothing more than to see Mr. Cohen come forth with a proposal that will serve the needs of the community.

However, for the seven years since his original proposal to slap a big box store into this neighborhood in the form of an Ocean State Job Lot was rejected by Somerville’s independent Planning Board, he has chosen to fight this in court rather than find a solution that would serve both the neighborhood and him well.”

As for the community park effort, the city spokesperson added, “We don’t just support the effort, we applaud them for being creative and taking action to improve their neighborhood. As part of the Somerville by Design neighborhood planning process, the community and this neighborhood have invested a substantial amount of time and effort.”

After a series of exchanges with the landlord, community members agreed to the terms of the cease and desist order, but are not finished scrapping.

“When you don’t [stay engaged],” Moore said, “developers can feel compelled to have an apathetic neighborhood to contribute to, or to contribute their interests to. When you remain quiet, you are left to whatever decisions are made above you or without you.”

As an administrator on the Sewall Commons Facebook page wrote soon after the destruction of the park, “We managed to accomplish in 8 weeks what has not [occurred] in the 10 years previously: get the ownership’s attention and begin a dialogue to forging a new and productive relationship that focuses on a new revitalization plan in partnership with the community and the city.”

“The fight is not over,” said Jesse Clingan, now the alderman-elect for the area. “We will see something up on Winter Hill. We are not going to give up.”

Residents who would like to get involved in Sewall Commons fight can contact the Winter Hill Neighborhood Association at winterhillneighbors@gmail.com

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CONSPIRACY BLEARY DEMOCRACY IN CRISIS

The government’s case sets low bar for charges on eve of J20 trial

BY BAYNARD WOODS @BAYNARDWOODS A year ago, after the election of Donald Trump, Dylan Petrohilos hung an Antifa flag out in front of his house.

“I had [the flag] flying outside my home because Trump was elected and there was a belief he was a fascist, and so we had this idea that we needed to bring back the moniker of anti-fascism,” Petrohilos told me at a bar where he was discussing the Washington DC riot act case with other defendants arrested in connection with the protests of Trump’s inauguration.

When Petrohilos’ home was raided by DC police in April, the flag was the first thing they took. They also took seven small black flags, copies of The Nation and In These Times magazines, and a banner, made during the financial crisis, that read “Kiss Capitalism Goodbye.”

These items are evidence in the J20 case, the first mass trial of which begins this week. Most of the defendants were arrested on Inauguration Day, after a protest (which the government has deemed a riot) resulted in several broken windows. Police officers threw more than 70 “nonlethal” grenades, sprayed dozens of canisters of pepper spray, and cordoned off around 200 people in a “kettle” flanked by riot police and walls on all sides.

And though the Department of Justice claims that Petrohilos conspired to plan the riot, he was not arrested that day. He says he was not even there.

But the fact that the government claims that he spoke about J20 on a podcast and was recorded by undercover police and the far-right sting video site Project Veritas at protest-planning meetings has put Petrohilos at the center of what could be the most important political conspiracy trial of a generation—one that could change the way we think about our data and other records of our actions.

Almost any statement made

by Petrohilos about the day’s protest evidence was at play in what was to be the final hearing before this week’s trials. The Nov 9 hearing was intended to establish the fact of the conspiracy, a move that would make co-conspirators’ statements admissible in court, despite hearsay rules.

Prosecutor Jennifer Kerkhoff cited statements made on the It’s Going Down podcast as evidence of conspiracy.

At one point, the judge, Lynn Leibovitz, surmised that appearing on a podcast required planning, so if Petrohilos was going on the podcast to talk about the protests, perhaps the existence of the podcast could be evidence of conspiring.

“Saying that coming on a podcast recorded for public consumption to talk about a public demonstration is evidence of conspiracy, is like saying that someone writing a column in High Times is proof that they are in a drug cartel,” Paul Hernandez, a member of the It’s Going Down editorial collective wrote me. “The State is trying to make the case that anyone that attends a demonstration or protest is thus involved in a conspiracy.”

All the prosecution needed to establish was a conspiracy to commit any crime, including “conspiracy to

Police officers threw more than 70 “nonlethal” grenades, sprayed dozens of canisters of pepper spray, and cordoned off around 200 people in a “kettle” flanked by riot police and walls on all sides.

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disrupt public congress.” This could refer to any protest at any time.

“This is a fundamental attack on the right to organize,” Petrohilos said.

Petrohilos is not among those to stand trial this week.

The prosecution classed all of the defendants into four categories based on their alleged involvement in planning or participating in the riot. He is in category two, which Kerkhoff has referred to in court as the “planners.”

“Dylan Petrohilos said, ‘Come with me if you want to talk about black bloc. I am black bloc,’” Kerkhoff said in court, citing the planning meeting that was infiltrated.

“Black bloc” is the essence of a large part of the J20 charges. It is a political strategy in which wearing identical clothing and face masks allows a group to move collectively through the city in protest, mimicking the black flag of anarchism and making it harder for police to identify individuals, which is why the government is using clothing as evidence of conspiracy.

Isaac Dalto, Petrohilos’ friend who is also included in Category 2 as a planner, says the government is using affiliation with the Industrial Workers of the World union, for whom he organizes, as evidence of conspiracy.

“Because they went to legitimate, aboveground union meetings about forming a union in their workplace, their Google calendars say IWW, and that’s being used against them to prove membership in this criminal conspiracy that we’re alleged to be part of,” says Dalto.

“Conspiring to commit lawful acts is not a crime. It’s

not a conspiracy. It’s called organizing,” he said. “That’s the real danger of this case to democracy and dissent in this country—that any form of organizing or civil resistance stands to become a crime.”

The threshold for conspiracy is so low that two journalists, Aaron Cantú and Alexei Wood, are still facing charges for following a group that they were covering.

Wood is part of the group who demanded a speedy trial and so goes to court this week.

With long hair, black clothes, and a leather widebrimmed hat, Wood may have looked a bit like an outlaw at the hearing, but he was arrested and charged with conspiring because he was livestreaming the political actions.

“The chilling effect is obvious,” he said. “It took me months to go document another protest. Even the most like, Grannies Against Trump thing, I didn’t want to go to. I was traumatized. Absolutely traumatized.”

Finally, he says, on May Day, he was fed up.

“I was like, ‘Fuck it, this is what I do. This is my beat.

This is what I’ve done for years,’” Wood said. “I didn’t do anything wrong. I live-streamed myself from beginning to end, and the entire world can decide whether I incited a riot … it’s out there for the whole world to decide, and I’m glad it is.”

Baynard Woods is a reporter at the Real News Network and the founder of Democracy in Crisis. Email baynard@ democracyincrisis.com; Twitter @baynardwoods

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TALKING JOINTS MEMO

ACE OF BAKES

The math and motivation behind our favorite cannabis cooking calculators

BY CITIZEN STRAIN

Though cannabis science is reaching levels that never seemed possible, one thing remains a constant and unquestionable fact: very few people agree on how pot should be cooked, decarboxylated, etc. In the coming weeks and months we will be interviewing everyone from scientists to civilians to chefs on this topic, starting this week with Tony Jr, the founder of the extremely resourceful cannabis destination site THCoverdose. Among other handy helpers, it’s where you can find our favorite cannabis cooking calculator. We asked Tony about his inspiration for the culinary crutch.

You reached out because you saw an article we had about baking cannabis. How did you become an expert in this field?

I wouldn’t call myself an expert on cooking with cannabis. I mainly focus my efforts on growing and writing about cannabis culture. But I am a huge enthusiast, and I’ve learned a lot through getting my hands dirty. Truly, what you can gain through trial and error is priceless.

What are some of the first things that you remember baking?

The first time I ever cooked with cannabis was just over eight years ago. Of course, like most people, the first thing I ever cooked was pot brownies. But, having had a taste of eating cannabis, I wanted more and started making blueberry muffins and, my personal favorite, fettuccine alfredo.

When did you start seriously researching things like how to best cook cannabis, decarboxylation, the science behind it all?

Being taught to cook by an old timer, decarboxylation was never brought up. And, since my recipes all involved me using cannabutter, I didn’t think I was doing anything wrong. So, it wasn’t for a few years that I started to learn the differences between THCA and THC, or how much stronger your edibles will be if you decarb your marijuana first.

It’s all thanks to the legal cannabis boom that we’ve all been able to access a lot more information.

What are some things that people most commonly do wrong when they are cooking cannabis?

I think one of the most common mistakes I see people making is grinding up their buds too finely. From my experience a rough grind, like you would for a joint, is perfect.

If you shred your cannabis, the food takes on a stronger chlorophyll taste from my experience.

Tell us a little bit about your site, thcoverdose.com.

I started the site because I love writing about cannabis. The science behind growing cannabis is infinitely fascinating to me, and THCoverdose has become a great way for me to not only study the latest ideas but become a better grower myself.

How did you develop the cooking calculator?

I know nailing down edible dosage is a real pain point for those just starting to cook with cannabis. It’s just a simple math equation that anyone who paid attention in algebra can do. You multiply the amount of cannabis you’re using by 1,000 to get the weight in milligrams, multiply that number by the THC percentage of your strain, and then, finally, divide that number by the number of servings your recipe will make. But who wants to do all of that math every time they cook?

What was the closest thing to a cooking calculator that you were able to find before you developed your own?

There are other cooking calculators out there, sure. Some are phone apps, and some are spreadsheets that you can plug your numbers into. I wanted a cooking calculator that was integrated into THCoverdose so our readers didn’t have to sign up for anything to download it.

Any other parting tips to take into account when calculating?

You also have to think about potentially losing cannabinoids during decarboxylation which could make your edibles weaker than expected. And remember, unless you send your edibles to get lab tested, you’re not going to know the exact amount of THC in each one. Instead, use the calculator as a guide to get you close to the potency level you want your edibles to be.

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TARGETED DEPORTATION? NEWS

Human rights activist seized by ICE during routine immigration check-in

BY SARAH BETANCOURT @SWEETADELINEVT “Free Siham” signs and “I am Siham” chants filled the night air outside of the JFK Federal Building Immigration Court in Boston, where community members spoke about human rights activist Siham Byah, who was recently detained by US Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE) during a regular check-in on Nov 7.

Byah, 40, is a single mother and outspoken political activist from Morocco living in Nahant. She has been involved in large protest movements like Occupy Boston in recent years. On Thursday, more than 100 community members accused ICE of detaining Byah because of her political speech and called on elected leaders to use their influence for her release. They spoke of her hunger strike, which began the same day she was detained.

One woman read a statement sent from Siham’s brother, Nizar Byah, which noted, “Siham loves this country.

It is why we have both immigrated here. She has always practiced the First Amendment by voicing her opinion of her political views and practiced the right for assembly by attending peaceful rallies.”

Byah received a call from an ICE officer on Oct 20, asking her to come in for an appointment. DigBoston was provided a recording of the call and confirmed that the meeting was for a regular immigration check-in in which her current address, fingerprints, and work information would be taken.

Byah showed up to the Burlington ICE office on Nov 7 with her partner and her attorney, Matt Cameron. As she was detained, Cameron was told that the decision was not made locally. He said in an interview, “I was told that the decision to detain Siham without warning or opportunity to leave voluntarily came directly from DC, and was not up

to the New England Field Office.”

When asked about Byah’s arrest, ICE spokesperson Shawn Neudauer told DigBoston that she was arrested on an outstanding final order of deportation issued by an immigration judge in 2012. “Ms. Byah has a criminal record that includes convictions for misdemeanor offenses,” he said. But Cameron told DigBoston that this statement is “a lie.” According to Byah’s Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI) file, she has a single conviction related to motor vehicle usage.

Byah was taken into custody by authorities with the intention of deporting her back to Morocco. Byah’s 8-yearold son, Naseem, was in a Nahant elementary school in his third-grade class when she was detained. He is currently in the custody of the Department of Children and Families.

Byah has applied for multiple stays of removal from the US since her appeal to the Board of Immigration was denied in 2013, along with a motion to reopen her case. The norm became checking in once a year for multiple stays of removal.

At the time of this writing, Byah was being held at the Bristol County House of Correction, and she began a hunger strike soon after being detained. According to her partner, who did not wish to be named, she was temporarily placed in solitary confinement for refusing to eat and had to eat crackers in order to make a phone call to her attorney. He claimed that she has recently undergone weight loss surgery and was denied the right to see a doctor for dietary and medical problems while in solitary confinement. Her partner, who spoke with her on the phone, said, “Byah was given omeprazole, vomited blood [on Thursday].” ICE has not responded to this claim.

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Cameron filed for an emergency hearing to stop the deportation, but is still awaiting a court date.

Byah, a real estate agent, lived in Nahant with her son and moved to the US from Morocco in 1999. She pursued a bachelor’s degree in psychology and sociology at Bunker Hill Community College, and as a local advocate has spoken out against US government support of dictatorships in Morocco.

As Byah recounted in a 2012 YouTube video, the Moroccan Secret Service court marshaled her for treason in 2011-2012 and reportedly threatened her for advocating for social and economic justice. Her status as a single outspoken mother has gained disapproval in Morocco, and as a result she is currently applying for political asylum within the US. Byah said in the video, “I was threatened with rape, and that they would rape my two-year-old. This is how low [the Moroccan government is] willing to stoop.”

“She is a fierce activist for human rights in Morocco and has received threats from radical Islamists there,” Byah’s partner told DigBoston. “If she goes back, they will torture her.”

Beyond her advocacy against human rights abuses in Morocco, Byah spoke out in favor of welcoming Syrian refugees and against Israeli violence in Gaza.

Cameron said that Congressman Seth Moulton and the offices of two state senators have been reaching out to DCF to get Naseem placed with a family friend. “They’re hoping it gets expedited,” he told DigBoston.

According to the Boston Herald, ICE said arrangements can be made for Byah’s son to accompany his mother to Morocco, a country he has never been to and where his family is in danger, if she is deported.

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GENERAL ELECTRIC FAIL APPARENT HORIZON

Conglomerate’s woes throw Boston HQ deal contradictions into bold relief

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS What a surprise. General Electric is tanking, and the scheme to bring the multinational’s headquarters to Boston is looking worse by the day. And whom shall the public blame if that once-secret deal cut by Gov. Charlie Baker and Mayor Marty Walsh in January 2016 goes south?

Potentially tossing away millions in tax breaks and direct aid to a company that has already done massive damage to the Bay State over the past few decades? Readers of the dozen columns I’ve written criticizing the boondoggle will already know the answer to that question. But for those of you who have made the mistake of believing all the massive amounts of PR bullshit that the Boston Globe and other area press have been tossing around about the affair since that time, here’s a bit of a recap.

Where to begin? So, the governments of Boston and Massachusetts agreed to shovel tens of millions of dollars at GE in “exchange” for “800 jobs” in a new corporate headquarters campus in the Fort Point district of the Hub. Now there’s a problem. GE’s been losing money all year.

According to the New York Times, its stock price had already dropped by 35 percent since January. Then, according to CNBC, the company’s share value dropped another 13 percent this week as of this writing after new CEO John Flannery announced a restructuring initiative—including the one thing investors hate most of all: dividend cuts. Only the second for GE since the Great Depression. So the knives are coming out around the beleaguered behemoth, and it remains to be seen whether some internal reorganization (doubtless costing legions of employees their jobs) and some belt-tightening by its execs will be enough to stop investors from moving to carve the conglomerate up like a Thanksgiving turkey. But let’s not assume the worst just yet.

Funny thing about that belt-tightening, though.

According to the Boston Herald, cuts are now in store for GE’s still-small local workforce, and construction of the new Fort Point headquarters building was already pushed back two years from 2019 to 2021 in August. The plan is to make do with the two old Necco buildings already being refurbished on the site at first. The PILOT (payment in lieu of taxes) agreement signed by the Boston Planning and Development Agency (formerly the Boston Redevelopment Authority) and the city of Boston guarantees up to $25 million in tax breaks to GE if it provides the muchballyhooed 800 full-time jobs. But by what date?

The discussion around GE moving its HQ to Boston has focused on the corporation creating those jobs by 2024. Herein, then, lies the rub about the PILOT deal: The agreement is framed around GE hiring “approximately 800 employees at the Headquarters Building and the Necco Buildings within eight years of the Occupancy Date.” But that occupancy date is explicitly defined as “the date upon which the Company initially occupies the Headquarters Building.” Which has now been pushed back from 2019 to 2021, according to the Boston Business Journal. So 2024 cannot be the year that GE will need to have 800 employees on its new campus. 2027 would have been the earliest it had to meet that target. And now that’s been pushed back to 2029, given the delay with the headquarters building.

Yet it turns out that the PILOT agreement doesn’t actually require 800 jobs to be created. Remember, it starts by stating GE will employ “approximately” 800 people on the Fort Point campus. But further down in the document, in a table explaining the specific tax break the city will actually give the company during each year of the deal, it allows for the creation of as few as 400 jobs in a chart with five tax break tiers between “Job Figure is between 400 and 499” and “Job Figure meets or exceeds 800.” Keeping in mind that the agreement also specifies a “stabilization” 10

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period of seven years between 2018 and 2024, during which GE gets $5.5 million in tax breaks no matter what and isn’t required to provide any jobs at all for first six years. GE is then only required to provide between 400 and 800 jobs from 2024 until the agreement ends in 2037.

What’s super puzzling is that agreement first requires the company to start providing annual job figures “from and after” the aforementioned occupancy date. But the agreement already established that it only really has to start meeting any job targets as far out as eight years from the date it occupies its headquarters building. Making the job target requirement trigger as late as 2029, according to current plans. Despite the tax break table in the PILOT agreement using job targets to calculate tax breaks beginning in 2025 based on the 2024 job count.

The state, for its part, committed a total of about $120 million to the project. Late last year, GE spent $25.6 million to buy 2.5 acres on the Fort Point Channel that includes the land the existing buildings sit on and the land the new headquarters building will (perhaps) one day occupy from Procter & Gamble. MassDevelopment, part of the Commonwealth’s economic development apparatus, took out a $90 million loan from Citizens Bank—an interesting maneuver worth looking into— using $57.4 million to purchase the two old Necco buildings on the site from P&G, and the rest to refurbish the buildings. The remainder of the state’s “investment” is slated to go to fixing up the area around the site.

So, GE is getting basically free rent on the Necco buildings plus free upgrades on abutting public land courtesy of the state. And a big chunk of the taxes it would normally pay over the next 20 years is coming free from the city. Without any real requirement that it actually provide any jobs in Boston for many years, and then only (maybe) 400 jobs by 2029—assuming the headquarters building is built in 2021.

The Boston Business Journal was correct to point out that GE will get $2.1 million in tax breaks on the Fort Point Complex by 2021—the year that the company now claims it’ll be completing its new 12-story headquarters building on the site. But what if it doesn’t build the new structure at all? It’s not clear. Because the PILOT agreement is pegged to job creation starting as far out as eight years after the headquarters building is built, and then allows for the company providing as few as 400 jobs between 2024

JOB FIGURE TABLE FROM GE BOSTON PILOT AGREEMENT

and 2037 rather than the 800 everyone’s been assuming.

While not actually demanding any job creation until as late as 2029, making it unclear how the tax break will be calculated between 2025 and 2029 should GE drag its feet for the full eight years. The conditions for the company defaulting on the agreement are also pegged to job creation. Not to the construction of the headquarters building. Oh, and by the way, the PILOT deal only covers the headquarters building and the land the company purchased under and just around it (which the agreement calls the “Headquarters Project”). Not the Necco buildings, now owned by the state. Also, there’s no word about what happens if the company has less than 400 workers in Boston at any point from 2024 to 2037. Do these curious contradictions amount to loopholes for GE to bag the whole deal? It certainly looks that way.

The minimum GE will get in tax breaks from the city of Boston over 20 years is $5.5 million by 2024 plus whatever breaks it qualifies for between 2025 and 2037. However, the amount the company actually puts out in annual PILOT payments after 2024 is calculated by a complicated formula based on the taxes that would have been assessed without the PILOT agreement. And the assessed value of the relevant property could change from current projections.

So it’s hard to know what the total value of the PILOT deal will ultimately be to GE, other than that it will be a bunch of money… however many jobs it actually creates.

But why exactly are Boston and Massachusetts giving a huge company that’s still profitable any money at all?

And what happens if GE bails on the scheme by hook (simply running and fighting its PILOT default in court with its vast legal department) or by crook (not building the headquarters building at Fort Point and possibly getting away with delaying the job creation target trigger until the deal ends in 2037)? And what happens if worse comes to worst for GE, and the company actually does collapse?

These remain my central questions. And I continue to encourage all of you to ask those and related questions to every Boston and Massachusetts politician you can find.

And ask the Globe while you’re at it. They’ve got a loooot of ’splaining to do about their cheap boosterism… which they’ve become awfully quiet about of late. Preferring, it seems, to focus on the next giant company that’s demanding public bribes to come to town, Amazon.

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SMALL TOWN SWAT TEAM SPECIAL FEATURE

An investigation into the “militarization of Mayberry” in Mass

BY SETH KERSHNER For a police department of only 40 officers, the April 23, 2015, raid by Ludlow Special Response Team had to be an all-hands-on-deck affair.

At shortly past five o’clock in the morning, a team of 12 Ludlow officers—amounting to more than a quarter of the town’s entire police force—arrived at the house of a suspected drug dealer.

In the inky darkness of early morning, the SRT disembarked from their vehicles and split into groups. Two K-9 officers working with the team that morning were among those who took perimeter positions, while those on the entry team “stacked” behind the front door with ballistic shields and weapons drawn.

When the SRT knocked and announced they were there to execute a search warrant, Ludlow police records show that officers soon noticed a “male party” inside the house who appeared to be running away from the door. Right on cue, the “breachers” on the SRT team put their training to work, hammering away at front and rear doors of the home until officers could burst through to apprehend the subject.

His crime? Growing marijuana plants in a closet.

Among the damning evidence turned up in the ensuing search of the residence by Ludlow detectives were five issues of High Times magazine.

No weapons were recovered, suggesting that the warrant was low-risk and making it doubtful that a military-style operation was even needed.

Northeast of Springfield, across the Chicopee River, Ludlow is a leafy suburb known for its small-town feel and annual Portuguese festival. While it may have its share of drug problems, there is hardly any violent crime.

But when neighboring Springfield experienced a spike in robberies in the early 2000s, Ludlow Police decided this mill town of 21,000 souls needed another layer of protection. So, it established a Special Response Team, or SRT. Although it doesn’t have an armored vehicle like many SWAT teams, Ludlow SRT has most of the other gear associated with tactical operations. In 2015, a $50,000 grant from the Department of Justice was used to outfit the team with ballistic shields, helmets, and body armor.

Like most SWAT teams in the country, Ludlow’s is part time, with officers splitting their duties between SRT and patrol. Since SRT is rarely used—in over a decade it has been activated an average of just once or twice per year— tactical officers gain most of their experience through training. As recommended by the standards of the National Tactical Officer Association (NTOA), each Ludlow SRT team member spends roughly 5 percent of their on-duty time, or 16 hours per month, training for tactical operations.

Such professional development can be costly—monthly training for 10 SRT officers on an average patrolman’s salary comes to nearly $2,000 per month out of the city budget. Still, current SRT commander Lt. Michael Brennan believes even officers in such a small, relatively safe community like Ludlow need to be prepared for any eventuality. “You’ll be confronted with things and you better be ready,” he told this reporter. “As a professional, that’s how you should approach it.”

An analysis of hundreds of pages of police records and incident reports, obtained through public records requests, shows that small town police departments like Ludlow are amassing enormous arsenals (often with the help of federal grant programs), use SWAT in ways that go beyond their original mission, and are sometimes unable to properly select and train officers. Some experts feel that this phenomenon highlights a much larger problem: too many SWAT teams in the state, eating up too many municipal budgets, without enough to do.

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A GROWING TREND Ludlow represents what some observers see as a disturbing trend in policing—the “militarization of Mayberry,” as Dr. Peter Kraska puts it. Dr. Kraska, a professor of criminal justice at Eastern Kentucky University and an authority on the police use of SWAT teams, has surveyed police departments across the country and estimates that the number of such tactical units in agencies serving populations under 50,000 grew from 20 percent in the 1980s to 80 percent in the mid-2000s.

Ludlow may be the smallest town in the state with its own SWAT team, but it’s hardly alone in the rankings. A number of other small cities and towns have tactical units at the ready. And that sucking sound you hear? It’s the flow of local and federal dollars going to shore up these teams.

• If things get out of hand in “America’s Premier Cultural Resort,” authorities are able to call on Berkshire County Special Response Team, composed of officers from Pittsfield, Lee, North Adams, and surrounding towns. Thanks to homeland security grants, since 2012 the team has nabbed night vision goggles, SWAT headsets and helmets, tactical body armor, and the ever-popular BearCat armored vehicle. The total cost to the US taxpayer for all this equipment: $468,364.82.

• The police department in Westfield (pop. 41,552) goes a step further to cultivate a military mindset in its SWAT officers. In April 2015, at a time when postFerguson America was engaging in a debate over the militarization of police, the city shelled out $4,400 to send its Special Response Team to a conference 200 miles away to attend the “Bulletproof Mind” seminar by controversial “killology” police trainer, Lt. Col. David Grossman.

• Based in Greenfield, the newest SWAT team in Massachusetts serves the state’s most rural county. In June 2016, Franklin County Regional Special Response Team was deemed ready to deploy after taking in more than $115,000 in homeland security grants for officers’ training and tactical gear. Since then, it has been used just once—to serve a firearm-related search warrant.

Recent moves by the Trump administration may make it even easier for such agencies to stock up on tactical gear.

In May 2015, then-President Obama signed an executive order leading to a ban on transferring certain types of surplus equipment to local police through a Department of Defense program known as 1033. But the changes were mostly cosmetic, cutting off access to equipment that few local police had requested to begin with: .50 caliber guns and weaponized aircraft, for example. Still, in response to pressure from the Fraternal Order of Police—the nation’s largest law enforcement labor organization—in September President Trump announced that he would rescind Obama’s order.

MISSION CREEP SWAT originated in the latter part of the 1960s in response to high-profile incidents like the Watts riots and the clock tower shooter at the University of Texas, Austin.

The idea was that a specially trained unit needed to be in place to address situations—like hostages, snipers, or armed barricaded suspects—that exceeded the capabilities of patrol officers.

One of the first such units in Massachusetts came together in 1971, when a select group of state troopers

formed the Special Tactical Operations (STOP) Team.

According to a brief official history, included in a standard operating procedures manual provided by the state police, the STOP Team was formed as a way of heading off “armed confrontations against the establishment” that were part of that era’s “turbulent society.” While such “confrontations” slowed to a trickle as time went on, SWAT teams continued to grow across the state like mushrooms after a downpour. With the increase in SWAT teams comes concern about “mission creep” and suggestions that their paramilitary approach to policing is being overused in non-crisis situations.

According to a review of news reports and police websites, there now appear to be at least 23 police SWAT teams operating in Massachusetts. For a small state, redundancy and overlapping services are a given. There are now seven tactical police units serving the sparsely populated western part of the state—four independent SWAT teams and two regional units, as well as the state police tactical team. Most deploy only three or four times a year, tops. (The state police team, which typically deploys between 180 and 200 times per year across the Commonwealth, is an outlier). Even greater redundancy exists in the Boston area.

More recently, SWAT teams are justified by the threat of terrorist attacks. In a 2011 request for funding to purchase the BearCat, a SWAT officer with the Berkshire County SRT wrote that the unit was being used exclusively for “dangerous and life-threatening” situations and claimed that the rural Berkshires presented a “unique target environment for any terrorist group planning a potential attack.” A redacted half-page portion of the application lists locations that might be particularly enticing to groups like ISIS. The following year, homeland security funding to the tune of $295,000 came in, and the team bought its BearCat. Even the most ardent critics of police militarization acknowledge that there is a genuine need for tactically trained officers to respond to certain situations—active shooter scenarios, for example. Problem is, the types of incidents SWAT teams are supposedly meant to address hardly ever occur in small towns in the state. According to Tom Nolan, a former SWAT officer and 27-year veteran of the Boston Police Department who now teaches criminology at Merrimack College in North Andover: “If you don’t have situations where the public would endorse use of the SWAT team, the tendency can be for SWAT teams to be deployed for reasons we could see as less than legitimate.”

Records from departments in rural Western Massachusetts show numerous examples of tactical officers deploying on questionable grounds to conduct ordinary police work.

• In November 2012, shortly after Berkshire County

SRT’s BearCat was first acquired, Pittsfield Police Chief Michael Wynn told a reporter for the Springfield Republican that the vehicle “can be used in a variety of police situations that carry a high degree of danger, such as armed standoffs, drug raids or even to rescue police and civilians pinned down by gunman.” In a region short on danger, however, sometimes you have to create your own. In one of the first deployments of the BearCat, Berkshire County SRT officers simulated a hostage scenario for the benefit of some North Adams elementary school students. In a particularly dramatic part of the performance, an officer emerged from the BearCat’s turret to point an AR-15 at a teacher who was playing the role of “perp.”

• In 2015, the Ludlow Special Response Team deployed in response to an individual expressing “suicidal ideation.” In the SWAT world, individuals who are threatening to harm only themselves are often placed in the same category as “barricaded suspect” situations and thus require a SWAT deployment. In this case, family members declined to let the police unit into the home, and the man eventually accepted an ambulance ride to a local hospital.

In an email, Pittsfield Police Chief and Berkshire County SRT Commander Michael Wynn wrote that while mission creep was a “valid concern,” operations like the State Forest picnic fit within the unit’s broader mission to serve “as an on-call resource for Departments to access additional personnel quickly.”

AN INVESTIGATION LIKE NO OTHER The classic example of SWAT’s mission creep are “dynamic entries” to serve warrants for nonviolent drug crimes. As legal observers have long pointed out, this sort of SWAT deployment is problematic for a number of reasons.

Raids to execute a search warrant for sale or possession of drugs are conducted on the basis of suspicion a crime has been committed. As the American Civil Liberties Union commented in its 2014 report on SWAT tactics, with such raids there is “no criminal case, no formal suspects, and often little if any proof that a crime has been committed; it is simply an investigation.”

But they are an investigation like no other: Officers knock down doors, scream and point weapons at people, and generally create “shock and awe” conditions—as one headline in the Berkshire Eagle described a Berkshire County SRT operation.

Usually SWAT teams are used only to serve “high risk” warrants, as when they seek to search for drugs in a residence where guns are known to be present or if police want to recover an illegal firearm that had been recently used in a violent crime.

Of course, so much depends on whether police have done their homework beforehand. Occasionally, SWAT teams raid homes on the flimsiest of evidence.

Typical of the genre is the March 3, 2011, raid by Berkshire County Special Response Team. On that day, they descended on Bruce Johnson’s mobile home in Ashley Falls, a village of Sheffield (pop. 3,257) located about one mile from the Connecticut border. According to an after-action review of the incident obtained using a public records request, the SRT sought to execute a “no-knock” search warrant for what police believed was a case of illegal possession of firearms. On the scene: nearly twenty BCSRT officers, including at least four snipers, as well as the team’s trusty BearCat armored vehicle.

After awakening at six in the morning to the sounds of

police urging him to surrender via megaphone, Johnson exited his house to find a small army arrayed on his lawn: “Behind every tree I saw a cop,” he recalled in a 2014 interview for the weekly Berkshire Record, “and they all had their guns pointed at me.”

Upon his arrest, police began to search for the firearms—a part of the operation that local news outlets later reported left the home “in shambles.” Police recovered five pistols from a safe in Johnson’s house. Afterwards, back at the Sheffield Police station, SWAT officers took a moment to pose for a photo that was later posted on the website PoliceOne.com. (A caption tells readers that the image was taken “after we executed a search warrant on an individual illegally stockpiling firearms.”)

But none of it was true. Johnson had a landscaping business in Connecticut, a state where he also registered his motor vehicle and—crucially—his guns. A judge later determined that the search warrant had been improper because there was simply no evidence that the guns were “related to criminal activity.” Two years after the raid, following a court battle that cost Johnson $45,000, prosecutors dropped all charges against him.

The aforementioned ACLU report, based on nearly 4,000 public records obtained from police departments across the country, found that around 80 percent of all SWAT deployments were for the purpose of executing such search warrants—usually for drugs.

Records obtained and reviewed in the course of this investigation also found warrant service to be a commonplace reason for deploying small town SWAT teams in Massachusetts. In 2015, eight of nine call-outs by Berkshire County SRT were to execute “no-knock” search warrants. The same year, Westfield’s team was less busy, deploying on only two occasions—both to serve drugrelated search warrants.

“The bread and butter of policing in the United States and Massachusetts is the war on drugs,” according to Kade Crockford, who directs the Technology for Liberty Program at the ACLU of Massachusetts. “If the SWAT team is the hammer, the drug war is the nail.”

The use of SWAT in such scenarios has drawn criticism not only from the ACLU, but from within the ranks of tactical officers themselves. In a 2015 editorial for the NTOA’s quarterly journal, Tactical Edge, Phil Hansen, director emeritus of that organization, warned that “indiscriminate use of SWAT uniforms, weapons and equipment in a onesize-fits-all manner during low-risk warrant service or civil disorder missions can only lead to problems and criticism.”

LIABILITY, RESPONSIBILITY SWAT teams in small cities and towns that are not training to NTOA standards run the risk of “operational failures,” which may then lead to increased liability and exposure, according to attorney Eric Daigle. A former

Connecticut state trooper who now runs a law practice specializing in defending police from civil liberties claims, Daigle said, “If you have a team, you need to be running with the standards required by NTOA. If not, you’re going to impose some significant damages on your agency and your officers.”

Stephen M. Clark—chief of police in Newington, Connecticut, and a 24-year veteran of SWAT operations— concurs. For a 2015 research paper, Clark surveyed SWAT officers in the Nutmeg State to get a sense of how frequently their teams deployed and how much training they received. He found a tremendous amount of overlap—there are over two dozen SWAT teams in what is geographically the nation’s third-smallest state—along with a number of small agencies that were not properly training their officers. Clark concluded that when police departments lack the resources to meet “minimum standards for selection, training, and team composition,” then they should consider “either disbanding the team or merging with a regional tactical team.”

Cost savings, as well as gaining an increased edge in the competition for federal grants to law enforcement, may be an inducement for some Commonwealth departments to combine their resources. In much of the state, SWAT teams manned by the numerous “law enforcement councils” are examples of regional, multijurisdictional teams. Given redundancy, tight municipal budgets, and largely inactive units with little to do in low-crime small towns and cities, retired Boston cop Tom Nolan thinks it may be time for some to be disbanded or merged with other teams: “I think it’s fair to question why we have so many SWAT teams in Massachusetts.”

Greater regionalization would reduce redundancy of services across small towns and cities, and decrease liability for departments with SWAT teams that are currently not able to train to NTOA standards. It would also deepen the available pool of applicants for positions on the SWAT team.

In an email, Newington’s Chief Clark explained: “A reduction in the number of teams will result in more competition for positions on regional teams. More competition leads to teams having more qualified candidates to choose from.”

Predicted cost savings, as well as gaining an increased edge in the competition for federal grants to law enforcement, has led Ludlow’s Lt. Mike Brennan to consider a future partnership with the SRT team in neighboring Chicopee. In an interview, Lt. Brennan said that he has long wanted to form a regional team out of the two existing units: “Long term, that’s where we want to go, and it has to do with a lot of things: resources, funding, better equipment.” Merger plans are currently only at the discussion stage and may take years to implement. “In the meantime,” Lt. Brennan says, “We have a responsibility to plan for the inevitable.”

But some critics are not convinced that such mergers will be enough. One of them is Kade Crockford of the ACLU of Massachusetts. Small-town SWAT teams will inevitably lead to law enforcement overreach because, Crockford said, “If law enforcement has a tool it tends to want to use it.” But the bigger issue, they said in an interview, is police militarization, “the degree to which law enforcement thinks it’s appropriate to use these kinds of battlefield tactics in domestic policing.”

As the ACLU continues monitoring the use of police SWAT teams in the state and across the country, Crockford also hopes that someone in the state legislature takes up the issue of SWAT deployments. A short-lived Maryland state law that mandated that police report basic information about how their departments use SWAT teams impresses the civil liberties advocate the most.

“It’s probably more important for law enforcement to be transparent,” Crockford added, “than for any other kind of government agency because we give law enforcement the power to deprive us of our own liberty and to use violence.”

This article was produced in collaboration with the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism and is the first installment in a series about SWAT deployment and police militarization in Massachusetts.

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A noise complaint in Haverhill can lead to an armored truck on your doorstep

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Police in Haverhill have set a new high-water mark for disturbing use of surplus military vehicles.

On their application for an armored vehicle referred to as an MRAP (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected), the cops said their armored truck would be used for responding to natural disasters and high-risk situations.

In practice, the department is using the $658,000, 39,850-pound vehicle to intimidate residents in an effort to reduce nuisances.

By policy, HPD allows the public to request that the truck be deployed outside of specific homes and in other places throughout the municipality.

In June, NECN reported that the Haverhill police had parked an MRAP on a residential street. The military vehicle was left for days just feet away from a resident’s doorstep. The reason given for the deployment was that there had been too many loud parties resulting in complaints from neighbors. NECN’s takeaway: “The Haverhill Police Department acquired the surplus military vehicle last year and turned it into their nuisance abatement vehicle that’s proven effective.”

CBS covered the story as well, and also failed to question if it was appropriate to use military equipment to intimidate residents.

Neither dug into the records to see if the vehicle was obtained for this use. I did…

Paperwork provided by the Haverhill police shows that in December 2013 they cited the size of Haverhill to justify their need for the MRAP. An HPD official explained, “We are a member of the Northeastern Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council (NEMLEC) which requires our department to provide up to 10 percent of the department’s officers, towards a Regional Response Team (RRT), which is available to provide SWAT, active shooter, critical incident and hostage rescue responses.”

Haverhill police did not mention that NEMLEC is a notoriously nontransparent and privately owned corporation run by police chiefs with a history of misusing federal funds. Or that this justification meant the MRAP was to be used in extreme situations— primarily as a SWAT vehicle.

Meanwhile, a public memo written by the chief of police in May 2015 omits the connection to NEMLEC. It states that the department has a usage policy in place for the MRAP and claims usage will be limited to natural disasters and times when police officers may encounter gunfire. However, that policy runs contrary to their actions. Instead of having the armored truck wait at the station ready to be deployed in an emergency, they have used the MRAP as a nuisance deterrent. It is fitted with surveillance equipment, named the “Armadillo” (possibly after the vehicle in the 1998 film Armageddon), and designated to be parked outside of trouble locations to intimidate people. The policy in place gives citizens the ability to call and request that police park the MRAP in front of a home in order to nudge noise polluters, speed demons, and loiterers into submission. According to records, the MRAP was used for multiple-day deployments five times this year between March 27 and Aug 14.

According to department guidelines, any of the following reasons can be given when requesting that the Haverhill police park a military truck in public for intimidation purposes (note that a deployment can simply spur from a high quantity of complaints, regardless of their merit):

• Drug trafficking complaints • Chronic police crime reports • General quality of life complaints regarding gang activity • Loitering • Loud music • Excessive neighborhood calls for service • Traffic violations • Code enforcement problems The federal 1033 program through which police departments of all sizes arm their teams to the teeth has been widely criticized for lack of accounting and oversight. After police showed up in MRAPs and military garb in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, the program was restricted by the Obama administration. Currently, the Trump administration has removed restrictions once again, opening the door for military equipment to flood into the hands of law enforcement. One of the few restrictions that remains, however, requires law enforcement to register and explain why they are obtaining the surplus gear. In some case, like with MRAPs, they must return them after they are done using them.

This is a new expansion in the militarized policing of America. Now, even when a crime hasn’t been committed (quantity of complaints), or when a low-level code (loitering or noise complaints) is violated, the police are claiming they can and will park a giant military vehicle in front of your house—not as punishment for something you did, but rather to preemptively scare you out of committing future acts.

All of which begs the question: If the MRAP is parked, unmanned, far away from the police station on an intimidation deployment, will it be available for use in a natural disaster or SWAT situation? If not, then HPD’s justification for having the 20-ton truck is impossible, and they should return the vehicle..

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KINDLING MUSIC

Easthampton shoegaze group turns album into full-blown fire

BY NINA CORCORAN @NINA_CORCORAN

PHOTO BY ROBERT SCHEUERMAN

In the late 1980s, shoegaze was born, and a whole lot of nerdy music fans had a new genre to obsess over. Most commonly captured by artists like My Bloody Valentine or the Jesus and Mary Chain, a fair share of its influence stemmed from artists like the Cure, and Siouxsie and the Banshees, and nowadays it can be seen making a return through the likes of reunion tours from artists like Slowdive and Lush. For bands born in the 2010s eager to chase the genre, there’s not a lot of wiggle room for originality, but sometimes, if an artist tries hard enough, they can create a voice of their own in the decade-old, reverb-laden room.

Zoom out of Boston for a second to refocus on Easthampton, the hometown of five-piece shoegaze act Kindling. After forming in the winter of 2014, it began churning out original music that sunk its teeth into the early days of the genre. Now, the band finds itself staring at a standout album, Hush, with its name on the cover. Singers and guitarists Gretchen Williams and Stephen Pierce, drummer Andy Skelly, guitarist Jeff Stevens, and bassist Aaron Snow may have outdone themselves by getting comfortable with themselves and their surroundings.

“I previously lived in Boston and didn’t know much about what was going on outside of the city until I left it,” says Williams. “Easthampton is a small but ideal setting for

us, with its focus on arts and dramatic natural beauty— Mount Tom rises strikingly over the town. There is space here to spread out or to connect, our practice space is in one of the city’s old mill buildings slowly being repurposed after sitting abandoned for so many years, and just down the hall is Sonelab, the studio where we recorded Hush with Justin Pizzoferrato.”

Now settled into their western Massachusetts community, Kindling have hit their stride. From the opening chords of “For Olive” that slam into focus on through to the slow note slides on “Better World,” Hush is a shoegaze album of textured guitars, understated vocal harmonies, and full-throttle rhythms that don’t take themselves too seriously. Even the guitar solos they slice into a few of the tracks manage to avoid being braggadocious. Perhaps that’s because of the emotional foundation the members find themselves standing on here: The record spawned out of a grieving process after they lost someone close to them.

“At times, it was hard to articulate this experience [of loss], instrumentally and lyrically, in a way that felt adequate, and sometimes it was difficult to focus on our wounds as a means of creating something more from it.

Certain lyrics were so evocative that they were hard to

record and sometimes even to sing live,” says Williams. “Beyond the acute loss, in this album we’re asking, ‘What comes next? Is there something after this?’ I think those are questions that everyone struggles with at one point or another, and this album gave us a means to reflect on the ambiguous space between pain and moving on—whatever that may look like or mean.”

“It seemed important to me that the record start with the word ‘fearlessness’ ahead of a song about loss,” adds Pierce.

“Beyond that, the opposing bookend of the last line of ‘Wet Leaves’ felt like an appropriate way to wrap the record up: ‘You can’t escape the night / but you can embrace the dark / Welcome the void.’”

On paper, it seems obvious that pushing themselves to face dark shadows would catapult a band farther into their career, forcing them to grow in an uncomfortable situation. But for Kindling, the polished confidence on Hush exists thanks to the work that took place before it. In 2017, Kindling put out two other releases: the six-song EP No Generation and a split with Kestrels.

Though technically the songs on those releases were recorded over a year ago, revisiting them and organizing them into a new shape to be released—like the Kestrels split, which was recorded at the Converse studio in Boston and marked their first recording with Snow and Stevens in the band.

Prepping two releases was the spark held to the edge of their twigs. Soon after, they entered the studio to record Hush and everything came into full light. The depth of sound and instrumental range Kindling touches on proved they became a malleable band both in output and sound— including in a live setting. Though Boston breeds punk and indie rock bands on the regular, Kindling feel at home in the mix because of how flexible their sound is, particularly in a live setting. “I look at bands like those on Disposable America and see a common thread, though the sound might diverge pretty dramatically,” Pierce says, referring to the record label’s folk-leaning roster. “Or, like, looking at the handful of more ‘hardcore’ shows we’ve ended up on, it always felt like it made sense in some way.”

It’s easy to make bland shoegaze and hide in a blurry wall of sound. From the get-go, Kindling have been learning how to create a fire you can’t look away from, and Hush— both in sound and onstage—makes sure no smoke gets in the way.

>> KINDLING, HALFSOUR, MANEKA. SUN 11.19. DILBOY POST, 371 SUMMER ST., SOMERVILLE. 7PM/ALL AGES/$10. BROWNPAPERTICKETS.COM

MUSIC EVENTS THU 11.16

SAT 11.18

SAT 11.18

MON 11.20

[Paradise Rock Club, 967 Comm. Ave., Allston.

7pm/18+/$29.50. crossroadspresents.com]

[Lilypad Inman, 1353 Cambridge St., Cambridge.

10pm/all ages/$10. lilypadinman.com]

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

[Royale, 279 Tremont St., Boston. 7:30pm/18+/$30. royaleboston.com]

THREE-NIGHT THROWBACK LETTERS TO CLEO + BLAKE BABIES

16

11.16.17 - 11.23.17 |

LOCALS LAVENDER EP RELEASE SHOW LITTLEFOOT + NOVA ONE + IAN DOERR

DIGBOSTON.COM

BOSTON’S LOUDEST ROCK BANDS KAL MARKS + FUCKO + RICK RUDE + BIG MESS

JAZZ SAXOPHONE AND PERFECT TONE KAMASI WASHINGTON + CC & THE CATASTROPHE

MON 11.20

WED 11.22

[The Sinclair, 52 Church St., Cambridge.

7pm/all ages/$13. sinclaircambridge.com]

[Royale, 279 Tremont St., Boston. 7pm/18+/$27.50. royaleboston.com]

HIGH-SPEED GARAGE POP GOOFIN’ THE FRIGHTS + VUNDABAR + HOCKEY DAD

SEE YOU WHEN WE’RE BOTH NOT SO EMOTIONAL AMERICAN FOOTBALL + PURE BATHING CULTURE

MUSIC

CRATE DIGGING AND RECORD SPINNING Step into this brand-new record store in Brookline

BY NINA CORCORAN @NINA_CORCORAN In the late ’90s, Jonathan Sandler was a Nuggets employee, shelving wax in the Kenmore Square. By night, he sang in a metal band heavily influenced by Black Sabbath, the Cro-Mags, and Soundgarden. Little did he know he would be working in real estate years later. And who knew nearly 20 years into that career, he would decide to open a record store of his own?

That’s exactly what Sandler decided to do with Village Vinyl & Hi-Fi. In the four weeks since it opened on Oct 14, the record store has been drawing customers in on the regular to the curious downstairs location at 58A Harvard St. From noon to 7 pm every day, the store is open. Rows of records pepper freshly painted walls. Lining the edges of the store are cassettes and 7”s, a few posters scanning the decades, and a stack of band T-shirts that run the gamut entirely. Most of the records fall under indie, punk, metal, soul, rap, and “good” classic rock labels. With about six employees to help him behind the counter and repairing some gear, Sandler has built a buzz-worthy store that’s perfect for crate diggers and curious music listeners alike.

There are nearly 10,000 records in the store, at least 2,500 of which are his own now up for sale. “Basically my entire personal collection is here, except for my CDs so I have something to listen to,” says Sandler with a laugh. That’s promising for DigBoston readers, because Sandler’s musical tastes growing up took root in thrash metal, rap, and extreme outliers like Celtic Frost. Soon he started attending shows to see Slapshot, Wrecking Crew, and Circle Jerks. By the time he started working at record stores, soul and jazz took a hold of his attention. It’s a wide range of genres that manages to stay in tune with what people in the city, young and old, want to blast out of their speakers when they get home.

“This store is very much a reflection of my tastes,” says Sandler. “We don’t have Bob Dylan records all over the walls, even though they make a lot of money, because I’m not a huge Dylan fan. I like him, but I’d rather put up Otis Redding records or Funkadelic records.”

Most importantly, there’s an impressive hi-fi selection. Village Vinyl & HiFi puts equal emphasis on both halves of its title. “We sell this—stereos, speakers, you name it—for far cheaper than most stores. We take it in, we don’t pay much for it, and we don’t sell it for much either. This is what got the store started, not the records,” says Sandler, motioning to the gear. “It’s a labor of love.”

He’s not exaggerating. The equipment speaks for itself. High-grade wooden stereos from the ’70s, unscratched blackface consoles from the ’80s, and a sea of speakers fill the back room. Right now, the items range from classics like Technic SL-1200s, some with dust covers for the home user and others with nearly mint silver carrying cases for DJs, up to a few silverface vintage Marantz with wooden cases, their heavily weighted dials cleaned up and muck-free. Best of all, the store does repairs with quick turnarounds for competitive prices.

Despite that, Sandler is still on great terms with the other owners throughout the Greater Boston area. “There’s a real fraternity with the other record store owners,” he says. “The Deep Thoughts owners have been in here twice. I’m good friends with Reed from In Your Ear, for whom I actually supply and have been supplying stereo equipment that he sells on consignment for me for about a year. Blue Bag Records came through yesterday, and he was the nicest guy. They’re all awesome. They aren’t just owners; they’re music fans. That’s why you do this: because you love it, you want to share music with people, and you don’t want to rip them off in the process.”

Because he’s lived in Brookline since 1989 and now he quite literally lives around the corner from his store, Sandler knows how important it is to support the community you’re a part of. “It hurt to get rid of Devo Freedom of Choice, and watching someone buy the DMC record I listened to all the time as a kid definitely hurt,” he says, “but it’s amazing to know you’re sharing that music with people.” That joy seeps into everything he does at the store. There’s a hometown touch throughout all of Village Vinyl & Hi-Fi. He asks the name of every customer who walks into the store and remembers to thank them when they leave. He cleans all the records a customer brings to the cash register. He’s there every day, despite working a real estate job. Sandler cares about his customers, and as a community-oriented city, it’s a characteristic that will keep people getting into the groove of his store for all the months to come.

CENTRAL SQUARE CAMBRIDGE

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THU 11/16 - 7PM SINKANE, BASSEL & THE SUPERNATURALS FRI 11/17 - 8PM RYZE MUSIC SHOWCASE SAT 11/18 - 1PM KOO KOO KANGA ROO, MC LARS SAT 11/18 - 6:30PM VALLEYHEART, THE WESTERN DEN SUN 11/18 - 10:30PM SAUCE BOSTON FT. LOUDPVCK WED 11/20 - 7PM NE OBLIVISCARIS, ALLEGAEON, PATHOGENIC /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

DOWNSTAIRS

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THU 11/16 - 7PM IVY LAB FRI 11/17 - 7PM HOT SNAKES SAT 11/18 - 7PM HOT DUB TIME MACHINE: “BEST. PARTY. EVER.” SUN 11/19 - 7PM BALLYHOO! /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

UPSTAIRS

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THU 11/09 - 8PM THE WRECKS FRI 11/10 - 8PM ABJEEZ SAT 11/11 - 7PM THE LIGHTHOUSE & THE WHALER SAT 11/11 - 11PM SOULELUJAH! W/ J-ZONE & MISTER JASON W/CLAUDE MONEY SUN 11/12 - 8PM RUEN BROTHERS MON 11/13 - 7PM WIFISFUNERAL

NEWS TO US

FEATURE

Feat. former members of The Decemberists, Guided By Voices & Drive By Truckers 11/17

Ron Gallo, Naked Giants, Gym Shorts 11/18

Kaiju Big Battel With Psychic Dog 11/19

CIVIC, Only Human, Nina Violet Guitar Pop 11/22

Sheppard, Romes Indie pop

156 Highland Ave • Somerville, MA

BUY TICKETS @ TICKETWEB.COM SOCIAL MEDIA:

11/16

Eyelids, Jay Gonzalez & the Guilty Pleasures, Corin Ashley

Garage, psych, art punk.

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@MIDEASTCLUB @ZUZUBAR @SONIAMIDEAST

LIVE MUSIC • LOCAVORE MENU PRIVATE EVENTS

617-285-0167 oncesomerville.com   @oncesomerville /ONCEsomerville

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

17

LIGHT TOUCH

FILM

On four new films by Nathaniel Dorsky, which premiered at the Harvard Film Archive

BY JAKE MULLIGAN @_JAKEMULLIGAN

Throughout the past two months, the Harvard Film Archive has paid homage to Stan Brakhage (1933-2003), with the occasion being the republication of his seminal text, Metaphors on Vision, by Anthology Film Archives and Light Industry (it had been out of print for many decades; the new edition is currently available). The next Brakhage film to play at the HFA will be The Art of Vision [1965], on Dec 9, with an introduction from Saul Levine. But the first of these programs happened about one month ago, when an evening of Brakhage shorts was presented by Jerome Hiler and Nathaniel Dorsky—two artists who themselves have been the subjects of recent miniretrospectives at the HFA. Four of Hiler’s films were shown before their visit; two films

by Dorsky for which the archive holds 16mm prints, Hours for Jerome [1982] and Love’s Refrain [2001], were played as well. Those screenings provided a lead-in to another event dedicated to Dorsky’s filmmaking, one that was among the most vital evenings of cinema I’ve recently experienced. On Oct 15, Dorsky premiered four new films at the HFA: Elohim [2017], Abaton [2017], Coda [2017], and Ode [2017].

Reports and reviews indicate that the formal guidelines exhibited by Hours for Jerome and Love’s Refrain (the first movies I’ve seen by the filmmaker) have stayed in place throughout the past few decades of Dorsky’s cinema. He films, edits, finishes, and projects his movies on 16mm film—they’re not available digitally, nor for home viewing in any format. His films are also silent, and so their only soundtrack is the airy whirl of whatever projector’s being utilized. As a result, your experience of his films is dictated entirely by the manner in which you process the montage of his photography—a montage which, in the case of Hours and Refrain, is quite expansive. In those films, experience is distilled into a procession of images, which document relatively diverse locations and behaviors and which utilize numerous photographic techniques in doing so: The films establish editing rhythms that move freely between subjects ranging from street scenes to close-ups of individual people to landscape photography; and they

FILM EVENTS FRI 11.17

CREATURE DOUBLE FEATURE AT THE COOLIDGE AFTER MIDNIGHT SWAMP THING [1982] AND THE RETURN OF SWAMP THING [1989]

[Coolidge Corner Theatre, 290 Harvard St., Brookline.

11:30pm/PG/$12.25. coolidge.org]

18

11.16.17 - 11.23.17 |

SAT 11.18

SATURDAY MATINEE AT THE HFA’ GOOD-BYE, MY LADY [1956]

[Harvard Film Archive, 24 Quincy St., Harvard Sq., Cambridge. 3pm/NR/$5.

16mm. hcl.harvard.edu/ hfa]

DIGBOSTON.COM

make inventive use of technical elements like camera focus, “step-printing” effects, and the physical properties of film emulsion, which give his images a particularly inimitable texture (this is to name but three examples for each point—the photographic subjects and formal techniques of each film obviously go far beyond what’s cited here).

Despite following these stated guidelines, Dorsky’s four newest films do mark a significant development in his work: All were filmed at the San Francisco Botanical Garden in Golden Gate Park (formerly known as the Arboretum), and their photography is limited entirely to the plants and horticulture on display in that environment. The way Dorsky’s new films see the horticulture, and the way it’s arranged within his frames, can often bring to mind the complex arrangements of tapestries or stained glass artworks (the latter being a preferred subject of Hiler’s). But Dorsky’s compositions are just the starting point for the life of each shot. Once we’ve entered those compositions, the elements of the 16mm format begin altering the image: In a “typical” shot from one of these four films, we first perceive an arrangement of horticulture; then we begin to discern the light within the image fading or brightening (as though a cloud were passing by overhead—but this effect, of course, is being created deliberately); and then after that, we might notice the focus of the image shifting toward a new depth, or the frames jittering in a barely perceptible way, or the wind being registered in an eerily dreamy fashion (Dorsky’s films are projected at a slower frame rate than is standard, which surely contributes to that specific effect).

“My films over the last two decades have been working with the continuity of the various; they bring various things together into a continuity,” Dorsky explained, regarding this aforementioned development, while introducing the four new films at the Archive. “There’s a certain [kind of] problem-solving when you’re working on that kind of film. And I noticed that in the last few that I’ve made, there are longer sequences of a single subject

SAT 11.18

COOLIDGE AFTER MIDNIGHT PRESENTS CREEPSHOW [1982] [Coolidge Corner Theatre, 290 Harvard St., Brookline.

11:59pm/R/$12.25. 35mm. coolidge.org]

MON 11.20

THE DOCYARD PRESENTS’ ACTS AND INTERMISSIONS: EMMA GOLDMAN IN AMERICA [2017]

[Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle St., Harv Sq., Camb. 7pm/ NR/$12. Dir. Abigail Child attends. thedocyard.com]

within the polyvalent or varied montage … they would be suspended between the chains of the various. And when I began to make Elohim, I felt that I’d worked with that set of problems enough. I didn’t want to deal with that set of problems. I wanted to make a film about one subject. I had done that earlier in my life, so in a way doing something new was going back to my early 20s and to how I was approaching cinema at that point, which was sometimes as an investigation of a single subject. In this case the single subject is light, and within the context of the Arboretum.”

In a video profile released by Kodak earlier this year, Dorsky described his digs, a rent-controlled apartment in San Francisco that “allows me to lead a monastic life”— and immediately following that comment, he turns his attention to the garden: “I live about a 10-minute walk from the Arboretum in the Golden Gate Park, which is a vast library of potential images.” (“I find light itself erotic,” Dorsky continued. “The beauty of light, the tension of light, especially in Northern California. Light is the main attribute of this area of the country. The light is so beautiful that you actually want to make love with it in some way.”) His four new films are a study of how those “potential images”—the plant life, if I’m not presuming incorrectly—develop over the course of the seasons. Elohim began shooting in February, and Ode was completed in the summer, with the other two done in the interim; since then, at least two more films have been finished or produced, meaning this particular cycle will eventually include at least six films. In the four shown at the Archive, there is a clear progression amongst the color palettes: beige and green in Elohim, giving way to pinks and reds in Abaton (“At this point, just like in life, there is the glory of youth, reproduction and passion, and tinges of mortality,” Dorsky said at the archive; “[plants] get brown at the edges, things like that”), before general discoloration and disintegration are seen throughout Coda and Ode. The arrangements and compositions allow these colors and images to morph and transform even within a static frame—throughout the films, there are figures or plants which become discernible only after a shift in focus or brightness occurs. So distanced from the sharp edges of contemporary photography, the ambiguous softness of these films produce an effect which does truly seem inextricable from the format in which they’re produced— and from the manner in which they’re projected.

“These films are like a devotional song. A song of existence,” Dorsky said at the HFA. “They’re not ‘about,’ at all. They have to do with light affecting your heart. There’s no concept going on. It’s light in your heart. And I’m trying to touch your hearts with the light. So I hope you enjoy this.

I know the projection here is marvelous.”

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON THE FILMS OF NATHANIEL DORSKY, VISIT NATHANIELDORSKY.NET THE HARVARD FILM ARCHIVE WILL SCREEN A NEW PRINT OF STAN BRAKHAGE’S THE ART OF VISION ON 12.9, WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY SAUL LEVINE.

MON 11.20

WED 11.22

[Harvard Film Archive, 24 Quincy St., Harv Sq., Camb.

7pm/NR/$7-9. 35mm. More info hcl.harvard.edu/hfa]

[Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle St., Harvard Sq., Cambridge. 7pm/PG/$9-11.

35mm. Playing as a double feature with Big. Also on 11.23. see brattlefilm.org]

‘THE LEGENDS OF WILLIAM WELLMAN’ CONTINUES WITH A DOUBLE FEATURE WILD BOYS OF THE ROAD [1933] AND THE STAR WITNESS [1931]

‘‘HANKSGIVING’ BEGINS AT THE BRATTLE WITH SPLASH [1984]

HEADLINING THIS WEEK!

Martha Fields Ikigai Workshop Nov 8, 2017 5:30-7:30 PM

Dana Gould

Comedy Central, HBO, Showtime Thursday-Saturday

COMING SOON Achieve life and work success by discovering your ikigai

Josh Gondelman

(the reason for being in Japanese) in this three-part series led

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, Billy on the Street Nov 24+25

by author and educator Martha Fields.

Free with RSVP: northeastern.edu/crossing

1175 Tremont Street, Roxbury • 617-373-2555

Break the chains presents...

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Sarah Tiana

Comedy Central, The Joe Rogan Experience Nov 30-Dec 2

sat, dec 16

11/2/17 1:22 PM

Bassem Youssef

Dubbed “The Jon Stewart of Egypt” Special Engagement: Sun, Dec 3

Michelle Wolf

The Daily Show with Trevor Noah Dec 8+9

Chris Distefano

THE SHONDES EVAN GREER DJ + dancing

Girl Code, Comedy Central’s The Half Hour Dec 15+16

617.72.LAUGH | laughboston.com 425 Summer Street at the Westin Hotel in Boston’s Seaport District

Milky way JP 284 amory st 9:30pm. 21+ NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

19

REVISITING ROCK AGAINST RACISM THROWBACK

Mass Hip-Hop Archive breaks critical positive gem out the vault

BY PACEY FOSTER + REEBEE GAROFALO

Times like these are ripe for pulling every tool there is out of the old idea shed in the search for harmony. Enter Pacey Foster, an associate professor of management at UMass Boston, where he spearheaded and organizes the Massachusetts Hip-Hop Archive, a digital collection of remarkable foundational materials from the Hub’s boom bap heyday. Along with newly digitized material from the Rock Against Racism archive (also housed at UMass Boston), it reveals how past generations fought for justice and peace against seemingly impossible odds.

At an event for the archive held at the BPL Central Library last year, Foster joined a fleet of Boston rap alumni in a series of discussions about this region’s elaborate musical history. Among the topics that came up which are worthy of much deeper dives and documentation, the seminal Rock Against Racism (RAR) program stood out. Specifically, Foster describes a hiphop initiative within the bigger RAR effort as a “vehicle for the larger mission of helping to discuss and heal racial conflicts.”

Next Saturday at Freedom House in Dorchester, the Massachusetts Hip Hop Archive and Rock Against Racism members and performers Naheem Garcia, Reebee Garofalo, Vivian Smith Barnes and Fran Smith will host another discussion, this time following an anticipated digitized screening of Breakin’ Rappin’ Poppin’ and Graffin’: A Rockumentary, a 1985 doc produced by RAR. The production features interviews with and performances by break-dancers, rappers, and graffiti artists, and ends with an epic battle between the Floorlords, the Unikue Dominoes, and Spin City Rockers.

As a warm-up for the modern premiere, we asked Foster and Garofalo to provide some background on the Mass chapter of RAR. Using a recent interview he did with Reebee Garofalo, an author and UMass Boston professor who helped organize the group back in the day, as well as a paper that Garofalo presented at a music studies conference in Canada in 1985, the local rap historian laid out some background behind the vaulted classic he’s about to unveil. -Chris Faraone

Rock Against Racism began in 1979 as a multiracial group of educators, rock writers, and radio and television personalities who responded to a request, made by a group of Cambridge Rindge and Latin School students, for a program on popular music and race relations. This responding crew developed a multimedia presentation called “Rock and Rap” that was first delivered to an assembly of some 700 students at the school on Dec 12, 1979.

“It begins … when there’s a lot of racialized violence in the city,” Garofalo recently said. “A bunch of us were invited in to do, you know, “can music bring us together?” rap … The thing was to get well-known DJs in the room so the kids would listen … We then turned that into a horse and pony show that we took around to a number of schools and community meetings … a panel of well-known people talking about “don’t be a racist,” and using music to illustrate it.

The public schools liked this enough that I got them to give us a grant.”

Though such a workshop may seem basic now, in its day the work RAR did was groundbreaking.

It came after a notoriously turbulent period of intense racialized violence in Boston including fights around busing, the shooting of a black football player by white youth at a game, open recruitment by the KKK at high schools, and a spate of murders of young black women over a period of less than two years.

Although Rock Against Racism was named after, and

loosely modeled on, the movement of the same name that started in England several years earlier, from its earliest incarnations, the Massachusetts chapter took on its own unique character and trajectory. In particular, it included much less of an emphasis on punk and new wave music, and included hip-hop as well as reggae, Latin, and rock music from the beginning.

From 1979 to 1982, RAR functioned as a volunteer organization presenting music at local events. The theme of multicultural unity was prominent, and the organization tried to present diverse styles of music on the same stage.

This in itself was an anti-racist statement in a city like Boston, which had such a divisive racial history, and where multicultural and multi-genre musical performances were practically nonexistent.

In the early 1980s, RAR aligned more closely with local progressive organizations and members of the black community. Using those connections, they established a relationship with Boston Public Schools to field participants, and with resources from UMass, were able to find permanent space and a professional video studio that allowed them to broadcast youth-oriented anti racist programming to approximately 240,000 households.

RAR started making shows and films in ’82. In his 1985 paper detailing the experience, Garofalo described their first production, But Can You Dance To It, as “essentially American Bandstand with racial consciousness. Black, white and Latino deejays played records from their respective playlists as a multi-racial group of young people danced to each selection. Each deejay was interviewed concerning the cultural significance of the material he selected and a historical segment on the multi-cultural influences in popular music was provided by yours truly.”

Garofalo continued: “Based on the success of this project, RAR negotiated a $20,000 contract with the Boston Public Schools in 1983 to work collaboratively with [UMass Boston], the Community Access and Programming Foundation, and students from three inner city high schools to produce a series of videotapes showcasing contemporary youth culture.”

From that point on for several years, RAR operated as a nonprofit with a paid staff, and in time transformed from being an adult-led educational program to something resembling a membership organization with “young people providing a significant part of the leadership.” One of the videos they dropped was Breakin’ Rappin’ Poppin’ and Graffin’, which came after two years of work with the BPS, and documented a legendary bboy battle outside Madison Park High School in the summer of 1985.

“We had two separate incarnations,” Garofalo recalled. “We had a bunch of professionals going around to schools talking, and [later] paid staff working with kids in an after-school program. [It was] a gathering place for anybody who was into hip-hop.

And that happened every day of the week … For years. In the early ’80s.”

>> MASS RAR REUNION WITH DISCUSSION AND SCREENING. FREEDOM HOUSE, DORCHESTER. SAT 11.18, 2:30-5PM. VISIT BLOGS.EDU/ARCHIVES FOR UPDATES AND FACEBOOK FOR EVENT DETAILS. 20

11.16.17 - 11.23.17 |

DIGBOSTON.COM

TRES HILARIOUS COMEDY

WHAT'S FOR BREAKFAST

BY PATT KELLEY PATTKELLEY.COM

The childhood besties behind Boston’s latest viral web series

BY DENNIS MALER @DEADAIRDENNIS

Getting anything rolling that requires more than just yourself is difficult, especially when putting things on film. From the start it’s a laborious endeavor requiring cameras, lights, sound equipment, editing software, and a script, if you’re doing it right. Then, after all that, you still need to find someone to hold the camera (and can hopefully keep it in focus), then someone to hold the microphone, as well as people to actually act in the thing. Just finding people who are qualified, available, and willing to help bring your short films from the page to YouTube seems like an impossible task—especially if it’s comedians you’re trying to wrangle.

Now, two childhood friends are looking to change that. Robert Pooley and Luke Jarvis, the guys behind Tres Gatos TV, are assembling some of Boston’s most talented comedians to make comedy web videos on a full-time, weekly basis.

Rob and Luke started out like family sitcom characters, coming of age together on the same street in a small suburban neighborhood of Bedford, Mass. The duo eventually bonded over a shared love of movies, The Simpsons, and comedy; while other kids around them played video games or little league, they created comically amateur videos that are now lost deep inside the void of prehistoric servers.

Looking to their futures in the business, Jarvis moved to Manhattan to attend film school at NYU, then later worked in video production at a digital agency with clients like Facebook and Google. Pooley stuck around Boston, this legendary comic breeding ground, to learn the craft of stand-up. By night he told jokes; by day, he worked on local political campaigns, which proved useful in his recent run for Boston City Council.

The more time Pooley spent immersed in Boston comedy, as both a showrunner and comic, the more impressed he became with the level of local talent.

“A lot of people seem to have this idea that Los Angeles and New York City are the only constellations in the comedy universe, and that really bothers me—it’s 100 percent not true,” Pooley says about his fellow funny people. As such, he wanted to find ways to showcase the scene on a wider scale. It was a challenging feat, yet he managed to convince his old pal Jarvis to come back home for a weekend shoot. The result was their first clip, Scalpers, which cast comedians hustling tickets around Fenway. The video quickly amassed tens of thousands of views, and the quick success motivated the duo to continue—not just with characters from Scalpers, but with additional ventures like Zach & Terence Travel Show and a hilarious short on the life of basketball legend Bill Russell.

In need of the time that it takes to produce these pieces, Pooley recently quit his job to work on videos full time. He’s no stranger to working on a tight budget from his time in politics and has embraced the struggle. “Right now,” says Pooley, “our special effects budget is what Steven Spielberg was working with when he was 12 years old, but that’s OK as long as we get to make our own Hook someday.”

While some YouTubers rely solely on slick camera shots and outrageous pranks to boost view counts, Tres Gatos TV takes more of a humble, homegrown approach. They film a lot of gags on iPhones, and use friends and family members on Facebook to both spread the word about videos and to crowdsource necessities.

“We’ve used Facebook to find various free locations, a speedboat we could film on, obtain a live pig, cast a French-accented narrator, locate an original Walkman,” Pooley says. And there have been some setbacks; the pig, for one, had a total freak out upon its arrival on the set and wouldn’t go into the room where they were filming. “Many of my neighbors’ nightmares are probably still haunted by blood-curdling pig whinnies,” Pooley recalls.

Speaking of performers who have helped the Tres Gatos TV crew rack up more than 200,000 views to date—the likes of Terence Pennington, Alan Richardson, Zachary Brazao, Jiayong Li, Xazmin Garza, Bill McMorrow, Casey Crawford, and Justin Hoff— Pooley continues: “All our actors add their own development and riffs to their characters.

Their contributions are what makes each video really come alive.”

THE WAY WE WEREN’T

BY PAT FALCO ILLFALCO.COM

OUR VALUED CUSTOMERS

BY TIM CHAMBERLAIN OURVC.NET

Pooley, Jarvis, and the rest of the Tres Gatos gang release an original video every week at fb.com/tresgatostv. Or ask Pooley to show you their latest in person at one of his weekly shows at Bill’s Bar near Fenway or twice a month at Joe’s Fish in North Andover.

NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

21

SAVAGE LOVE

RETHINKING INFIDELITY

BY DAN SAVAGE @FAKEDANSAVAGE | MAIL@SAVAGELOVE.NET

I was honored to appear with Esther Perel at the Orpheum Theater in Vancouver, BC, a few weeks ago to discuss her new book, The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity. Questions were submitted on cards before the show—some for me, some for Esther, some for both of us—and we got to as many as we could during the event.

Here are some of the questions (mostly for me) that we didn’t get to.

I’ve never slept with anyone. My current boyfriend has had sex with many, many partners. He knows I’m a virgin, but I’m worried. Any tips on how I can avoid performing like the amateur gay man that I am?

Give yourself permission to be bad at it—awful at it, inept and halting and awkward. And remind yourself going in (and out and in and out) that whatever happens, this isn’t the last time you’ll ever have sex. Some people are good at sex right out of the gate, but most people need a little practice before they catch a groove.

But nothing guarantees a bad first experience (or bad millionth experience) quite as effectively as faking it.

Faking is always a bad idea—faking orgasms, faking interest, faking confidence—so don’t fake. Just be.

How would you help a woman who has never experienced an orgasm?

I would gift her a mild pot edible and a powerful vibrator.

I’m a woman in my mid-30s. Sometimes I want to bang it out in 30 seconds but my husband wants 45 minutes.

What do we do?

Your husband has a nice solo stroke session for 44 and a half minutes, and then you climb on top or slide underneath for the last 30 seconds.

Have you ever thought about moving to Vancouver?

Frequently between January 20, 2001, and January 19, 2009, and constantly since January 20, 2017.

I’m a 34-year-old woman. My 40-year-old boyfriend used to date his sister-in-law. One time he said he thought it would be funny if I asked her who was better in bed: him or his brother. Is this weird or is it just a man thing?

It could be both—a weird man thing—but seeing as your boyfriend asked only once, he’s clearly not obsessed.

The question presumably made you uncomfortable (which is why you’re asking me about it), and here’s how you shut it down if he ever asks again: “I could ask her who’s better in bed or I could go fuck your brother myself and report back.”

On the Lovecast, trans talk with Buck Angel: savagelovecast.com

COMEDY EVENTS THU 11.16

HOSTEL FEST COMEDY NIGHT @ HI-BOSTON

Featuring: Jiayong Li, Mark Gallagher, Xazmin Garza, Terence Pennington, & Alan Richardson Hosted by Michael Stewart

19 STUART ST., BOSTON | 8PM| FREE THU 11.16 - SAT11.18

DANA GOULD @ LAUGH BOSTON

Dana Gould began his professional comedy career at the age of seventeen. Between Comedy Central, HBO & Showtime, Dana has six solo stand-up comedy specials to his credit. He has appeared on THE LATE SHOW WITH DAVID LETTERMAN, JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE, CONAN, MARON & REAL TIME WITH BILL MAHER. Also featuring: Valerie Tosi & host Ken Reid.

425 SUMMER ST., BOSTON | 8PM & 10PM |$29 FRI 11.17

COMEDY NIGHT @ PAVEMENT COFFEEHOUSE (BU) Featuring: Rob Greene, Shaun Connolly, Dan Hall, Zach Russell, Erika Lindquist, & Tawanda Gona Hosted by Brett Johnson

736 COMMONWEALTH AVE., BOSTON | 6:30PM | $5 FRI 11.17

TRACY MORGAN @ THE WILBUR

Tracy Morgan is one of the most respected comedians in his field. Starring for seven seasons on NBC’s Emmy & Golden Globe Award-winning “30 Rock,” At the beginning of 2016, he headlined a nationwide stand-up tour titled Picking Up the Pieces which culminated in his newest stand up special Staying Alive which will be available on Netflix on May 16.

246 TREMONT ST., BOSTON | 7PM | $50 - $69.50 FRI 11.17

MIKE DONOVAN @ NICK’S COMEDY STOP

Mike Donovan is a writer & comedian. His act was featured in the Showtime documentary “When Standup Stood Out”.

Has been featured on the NESN Comedy All Stars TV Show, THE BEST DAMN SPORTS SHOW PERIOD with Tom Arnold on the Fox Television Network.

100 WARRENTON ST., BOSTON | 8PM | $20 SAT 11.18

THE COMEDY STUDIO

Featuring: Nick Lavallee, Jiayong Li, Brian Longwell, Vinnie Pagano!, Srilatha Rajamani, & John Sucich Hosted by Rick Jenkins

1238 MASS AVE., CAMBRIDGE | 8PM | $15 SAT 11.18

LADYLIKE: FEMALE DOMINATED COMEDY @ IMPROVBOSTON

Featuring: Hannah Widener, Sarah Blodgett, Tooky Kavanagh, Isabella O’Connell, & Kathleen DeMarle Hosted by Caitlin Arcand

40 PROSPECT ST., CAMBRIDGE | 11PM | $12 SUN 11.19

LIQUID COURAGE COMEDY @ SLUMBREW Featuring: Ian Fidance & more Hosted by Ben Quick

15 WARD ST., SOMERVILLE | 8PM | $5 MON 11.20

SUPPER CLUB COMEDY @ CAPO Hosted by Will Noonan

443 WEST BROADWAY BOSTON | 7PM | FREE WED 11.22

STARSTRUCK @ THE ROCKWELL savagelovecast.com

Featuring: Kendra Cunningham, Srilatha Rajamani, Whitney Geden, & Kenice Mobley Hosted by Nick Chambers & Bethany Van Delft

255 ELM ST., SOMERVILLE | 9PM | $10 22

11.16.17 - 11.23.17 |

DIGBOSTON.COM

MORE LISTINGS AT BOSTONCOMEDYSHOWS.COM

50% OFF ENTIRE CUSTOM PRINTING &/OR FRAMING ORDER!

Bring in your artwork by TH December 5 for pickup TH

by December 24 .

OFFER VALID 11/9/17 TO 12/5/17. ORDERS MUST BE PLACED BY 12/5/17 FOR PICKUP BY 12/24/17. DISCOUNT APPLIES TO CUSTOM PRINTING AND FRAMING ORDERS ONLY. DOES NOT APPLY TO STORE MERCHANDISE.

SHOP YOUR LOCAL BLICK STORE!

BOSTON 401 PARK DR (LANDMARK CENTER) 617-247-3322 CAMBRIDGE 619 MASSACHUSETTS AVE (CENTRAL SQ) 617-441-6360 NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

23

THIS THURSDAY! NOV. 16

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Tickets available at the Palladium Box Office (12-4:30 Tuesday-Friday), FYE Music and Video Stores, online at Ticketfly.com or by calling 877-987-6487. massconcerts.com • thepalladium.net