DigBoston 3.29.18

DIGBOSTON.COM 03.29.18 - 04.05.18

THE PULL UP COVER: HIP-HOP

TEAM DOT + ROX + ARLINGTON

TERMS OF SERVICE

MORE ALCOHOL, PLEASE PRESSLEY MAKES PROPOSAL

NEWS

THE MARCH CONTINUES PLUS: GUN LOBBYIST HEADS MA DEPT

2

03.29.18 - 04.05.18 |

DIGBOSTON.COM

BOWERY BOSTON WWW.BOWERYBOSTON.COM VOL 20 + ISSUE13

MAR 29, 2018 - APR 05, 2018 BUSINESS PUBLISHER Marc Sneider ASSOCIATE PUBLISHERS Chris Faraone John Loftus Jason Pramas SALES MANAGER Marc Sneider FOR ADVERTISING INFORMATION sales@digboston.com BUSINESS MANAGER John Loftus

EDITORIAL EDITOR IN CHIEF Chris Faraone EXECUTIVE EDITOR Jason Pramas MANAGING EDITOR Mitchell Dewar MUSIC EDITOR Nina Corcoran FILM EDITOR Jake Mulligan THEATER EDITOR Christopher Ehlers COMEDY EDITOR Dennis Maler STAFF WRITER Haley Hamilton CONTRIBUTORS G. Valentino Ball, Sarah Betancourt, Tim Bugbee, Patrick Cochran, Mike Crawford, Britni de la Cretaz, Kori Feener, Eoin Higgins, Zack Huffman, Marc Hurwitz, Marcus JohnsonSmith, C. Shardae Jobson, Heather Kapplow, Derek Kouyoumjian, Dan McCarthy, Peter Roberge, Maya Shaffer, Citizen Strain, M.J. Tidwell, Miriam Wasser, Dave Wedge, Baynard Woods INTERNS Kuresse Bolds, Victoria Botana, Rob Katz, Murray, Brynne Quinlan

DESIGN DESIGNER Don Kuss COMICS Tim Chamberlain, Pat Falco Patt Kelley, Cagen Luse DigBoston Phone 617.426.8942 digboston.com

ON THE COVER PHOTO OF REAL P, MARQUIS NEAL, AND STEVEN FOLEY OF THE PULL UP

BY JOHN BREWER. READ THE COLLABORATIVE PROFILE WE WROTE WITH KILLERBOOMBOX.COM AND THE BOSTON INSTITUTE FOR NONPROFIT JOURNALISM IN THIS WEEK’S FEATURE SECTION. ©2018 DIGBOSTON IS PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY DIG MEDIA GROUP INC. NO PART OF THIS PUBLICATION CAN BE REPRODUCED WITHOUT WRITTEN CONSENT. DIG MEDIA GROUP INC. CANNOT BE HELD LIABLE FOR ANY TYPOGRAPHICAL ERRORS. ONE COPY OF DIGBOSTON IS AVAILABLE FREE TO MASSACHUSETTS RESIDENTS AND VISITORS EACH WEEK. ANYONE REMOVING PAPERS IN BULK WILL BE PROSECUTED ON THEFT CHARGES TO THE FULLEST EXTENT OF THE LAW.

PUBLICIST PROBLEMS PERSIST

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

ROYALE

279 Tremont St. Boston, MA royaleboston.com/concerts

Dear Reader, There has been a lot of venom shot over these past couple of weeks about that rotten menace Facebook. From nightmares on the PR front over chief Zuckerberg’s embarrassing (non)reaction to the latest Russian election tension to public outrage about the extent to which the platform reaches deep into our lives to scrape our data and humanity, it’s nice for those of us who work in news and have been beaten into social media submission to see there may be some light in this dark basement after all.

All that vitriol is fine and well-deserved. But if you think that Facebook is the leading culprit in the case of Who Killed Journalism?, then I may just know a Russian bot or two who’s in the process of selling your digits off to dogs.

So, who is to blame? As I wrote in a piece titled “A Publicist Shaming” last year, to the consternation of more than a few leeches among us, if we’re talking about money leaving journalism and enriching undeserving interlopers, we have to skewer and acknowledge those who fall under the publicist and media relations umbrella.

For those who don’t receive a hundred thousand painfully unlettered press releases every week as I do, here is how the process often goes behind the scenes, at least on the local level: 1 - A publicist approaches business owners who know very little about how the media world spins, and promises said client to get them good coverage in the brightest outlets; 2 Business owners then hand over several thousand bucks a month, much of which formerly went to the publications and stations that the publicist said they can woo; 3 - Depending on the connections and skill of the publicist, they will succeed to some arbitrary degree in their mission to get the business some ink, whether in their own words via outlets that do zero diligence and reprint press releases, or through any number of other compromised avenues, from brute force on whatever platform’s hopping to the dreaded sponsored post or advertorial.

I’m sure that I don’t need to say this, but if you’re a business owner and you’re reading this, please know without any doubt that any publicist who claims to have an in with me or anybody on my team is full of shit. Do some of us have friends who work in media relations? Sure. But nine times out of 10, unless they have something that we would cover anyway, they leave my ass alone because they know that I will bark at them. (On a side note, props to those who have been less than greedy, and who direct their clients to place ads with us in addition to using their services. We’re a small paper, ads are reasonably priced, and everyone can win here.)

Listen, I’m not being unreasonable. The fact is there are very few independent outlets left kicking ass out here, and we are pretty damn unique in both the readers we attract and in the nature of our coverage, from investigations to the arts. Things are stable at the Dig for the first time in years, in part thanks to ads stemming from cannabis legalization.

We also started a nonprofit, the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism, to help with heavy lifting, and that’s been instrumental in our march through trying times, but it’s nevertheless going to take more than donations from the public to keep engines like ours burning. Until we start getting more inquiries from businesses that want to advertise than we get emails from the publicists they hire to scam journalists with cheap shit like free beer and gift bags that don’t pay the bills, this problem will persist. As will my ranting.

I promise.

CHRIS FARAONE, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Need more Dig? Sign up for the Daily Dig @ tiny.cc/DailyDig

W/ GRACE WEBER

W/ DAN MANGAN

TUE. APRIL 3

WED. APRIL 4

FRI. APRIL 13

W/ DIARRHEA PLANET

W/ THE COATHANGERS

TUE. APRIL 17

SUN. APRIL 22

TUE. APRIL 24

THU. APRIL 26

MON. APRIL 30

MON. APRIL 16

& THE GOD BOMBS

W/ MAKENESS

w/ Miya Folick

WED. APRIL 25

W/ SAINTSENECA

THU. MAY 3

SAT. MAY 12

52 Church St., Cambridge, MA sinclaircambridge.com BOWERY BOSTON & BOSTON HASSLE PRESENT

with

LIGHTNING BOLT

The Travelin’ McCourys & Jeff Austin

W/ DESTROYER 666, TOMB

W/ GLOCKABELLE

THIS FRI! MAR. 30

THIS SUN! APRIL 1

MON. APRIL 2

THU. APRIL 5

ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10AM!

ON SALE FRI 4/6 AT NOON!

ON SALE NOW!

SAT. APRIL 7

WED. MAY 9

TUE. MAY 29

WED. JUNE 13

ON SALE NOW!

ON SALE NOW! BOWERY BOSTON & ALLSTON PUDDING PRESENT

ON SALE FRIDAY AT NOON!

ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10AM!

SAT. JULY 21

SUN. JULY 22

MON. OCTOBER 1

OUGHT W/ MAL DEVISA, KATIE VON SCHLEICHER

W / MONA KR

THU. JUNE 28

ON SALE NOW!

NINA NESBITT 1222 Comm. Ave. Allston, MA greatscottboston.com

FRIDAYS AT 7PM!

‘s S GA E TH

ON SALE NOW!

ON SALE NOW!

CAUTIOUS CLAY

COMA CINEMA

MONDAY, APRIL 30

WEDNESDAY, MAY 2

SATURDAY, MAY 5

ON SALE FRIDAY AT NOON!

ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10AM!

ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10AM!

THE SIDEKICKS

SAM EVIAN

THURSDAY, MAY 24

THURSDAY, JUNE 7

ON SALE NOW!

ON SALE NOW!

W/ IZAAK OPATZ MONDAY, MAY 7 ON SALE NOW!

W/ EMMA RUTH RUNDLE (SOLO), ALEXIS MARSHALL WEDNESDAY, JUNE 13

W/ BUCK MEEK

OF HONEYHONEY

SUNDAY, JUNE 24

THURSDAY, AUGUST 23

≠ 3/29 KYLE CRAFT ≠ 3/30 COVEY / AIRPARK ≠ 3/31 S. CAREY ≠ 4/1 THE FEVER 333 ≠ 4/2 NEGATIVE GEMINI ≠ 4/3 LAWRENCE TRAILER ≠ 4/4 CAROLINE ROSE ≠ 4/5 JARED & THE MILL ≠ 4/6 PUBLIC ACCESS T.V. ≠ 4/7 BRENT COBB & THEM ≠ 4/8 CRUMB ≠ 4/9 TRACE MOUNTAINS ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10AM!

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 4

A

ON SALE FRIDAY AT NOON!

JOHN WATERS

Christmas

THURS. DECEMBER 6 BERKLEE PERFORMANCE CENTER

Tickets for Royale, The Sinclair, and Great Scott can be purchased online at AXS.COM or by phone at 855-482-2090. No fee tickets available at The Sinclair box office Wednesdays - Saturdays 12:00 - 7:00PM FOR MORE INFORMATION AND A COMPLETE LIST OF SHOWS, VISIT BOWERYBOSTON.COM NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

3

NEWS+OPINION

THE RIGHT TO BEAR INFLUENCE NRA-affiliated lobbyist walks through Baker’s revolving door

BY WILL MEYER

In July, Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker appointed Ron Amidon, the then-president of GOAL (Gun Owners’ Action League), the Commonwealth’s NRA affiliate group, to head the state’s Department of Fish and Game. The $27 million office is responsible for maintaining wildlife and fisheries, and issuing hunting licenses. GOAL has lobbied aggressively to change the state’s fish and wildlife laws and has pushed for standard NRA-style legislation, including but not limited to attempting to repeal Massachusetts’ ban on assault weapons.

Amidon’s appointment went through with little fanfare or controversy. Of more than a half-dozen reports reviewed by the Shoestring on the subject, only one noted that GOAL is an NRA affiliate, while none acknowledged its lobbying efforts. One report from MassLive labeled Amidon a “gun rights advocate,” but mostly journalists regurgitated text from a state-issued press release, emphasizing that Amidon was a outdoorsman and a conservationist—not president of the state’s gun lobby.

Most used a quote from the press release by Democratic state Sen. Anne Gobi, who has sponsored a bill supported

by GOAL and who praised Amidon’s “reasoned and ethical approach to dealing with issues.”

The headline in Worcester’s Telegram & Gazette read: “New commissioner Ronald Amidon has a passion for wildlife management, habitat protection.” One columnist in the Berkshire Eagle gushed about his personal friendship with Amidon, noting time they spent together: “You get to know a guy that you share a lodge with in the middle of God’s Country.”

The appointment came at a time when GOAL is suing Mass Attorney General Maura Healey’s office over its attempt to ban copycat versions of assault weapons.

Last summer, Mass gubernatorial candidate and thenNewton Mayor Setti Warren charged that Gov. Baker was “rewarding” GOAL during the lawsuit, saying that “at a time when the NRA is working to make our country and the commonwealth less safe, it’s absurd that Charlie Baker would reward the leader of their Massachusetts group, which has targeted Maura Healey and her staff, with a plum job running a state agency,” Not wasting any time, Amidon’s new platform was used to boost GOAL programs. According to research

by UMass graduate student and activist David Pihl (who contributed research to this report), soon after Amidon’s appointment, GOAL-sponsored resources, including gun safety classes, were listed on the Department of Fish and Game’s website under “Gun Ownership in Massachusetts.”

After Pihl circulated a petition last month that has now received nearly 10,000 signatures, direct mentions of GOAL were removed from the department’s web page. Petitioners are still calling on Baker to withdraw Amidon’s appointment from the department.

Former State Sen. President Stan Rosenberg helped to rid the site of all GOAL mentions, charging that the use of “state resources to raise money for political purposes and to lobby on legislation are expressly forbidden.” Interestingly, Amidon belongs to the Otter River Sportsman’s Club, his local gun club in Templeton, Mass, where the website for that club actually thanks Rosenberg’s office for being “helpful in regards to many of our legislative efforts.”

4

03.29.18 - 04.05.18 |

DIGBOSTON.COM

The Shoestring contacted Rosenberg to ask about Amidon and hasn’t heard back. We also reached out to the governor and to GOAL, and heard back from neither.

As Pihl’s post-Parkland petition casts new light on Baker’s appointment of a gun lobbyist to run a state agency, it is worth revisiting Amidon’s lobbying career and how his organization worked to directly influence policy in the office he now runs.

According to state records, GOAL has spent $350,000 on lobbying expenses since 2013. It backs bills ranging in nature from “increasing penalties for discharging a firearm into a dwelling, residence, or structure where persons reside” to “an Act relative to gun safe [tax] deductions.” According to the official description of their activity, their efforts also include “working on all areas of interest to lawful gun owners including … Fish & Wildlife legislation, regulation and policy.” With Amidon at the state, current GOAL President Jim Wallace is listed as the group’s lobbyist with the SEC; earlier this month, he was on Beacon Hill advocating for the mentally ill—not to get proper health care, but to own guns.

GOAL has been a staunch supporter of defending the right to own AR-15s and has challenged the state’s assault weapons ban. Furthermore, it’s engaged its membership with a campaign on “the truth about assault weapons,” designed to temper distortions the “media, politicians, and gun control advocates” tell about them. The campaign offers broad claims about how Bill Clinton’s Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994—a federal assault weapons ban—didn’t work.

In asserting that weapons bans don’t work, GOAL cites shrinking crime rates, which have been falling sharply across the board since the early ’90s. The conclusions of said “truth” campaign include anecdotal findings that some politicians and media figures don’t understand the difference between M-16s and AR-15s. GOAL has also supported legislation to undermine sovereignty at the local level. A bill ironically titled An Act Relative to

Constitutional Rights, which was introduced in December

by Democratic state Rep. James Miceli, would remove local authority to create or enforce gun laws.

GOAL was started in the mid-’70s, when the modern Second Amendment movement was born out of, among other things, a backlash against the Black Panthers and black people exercising their right to bear arms. GOAL’s raison d’etre is to influence policy. Both GOAL’s website and blog feature multiple asks for visitors to contact their lawmakers and advocate for pro-gun policies.

According to its website, GOAL boasts 14,000 members whose dues—along with other sources, like corporate donations—make up its annual budget, which was $716,044 in 2016. In addition to routine pleas to contact representatives, members get other perks, like invites to GOAL events such as the (recently postponed) Concealed Carry Fashion Show, raffles of preban AR-15s, and other guns, some of which—like those made by Smith & Wesson and Savage Arms—are made locally. (For more on our local gun industry, see Ted McCoy’s Shoestring piece “Welcome to Guntown.”)

As students walk out nationally to protest gun violence, they have also put a target on the gun lobby and the corrosive effect it has on democratic institutions.

Their protests have further solidified the correlation between money and influence on politics and the violence that stems from it. Pihl’s moveon.org petition raises new questions about NRA lobbying efforts right here in Mass, and thousands have already signed it, saying Amidon has to go.

That’s their goal.

This article was produced in collaboration with the Shoestring and the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. To see more reporting like this please support independent journalism at givetobinj.org.

on nd Bost

Beyo

s‌.

present

Understanding Net Neutrality and the Future of Our Internet a panel discussion and Q&A Thursday, March 29 7-8:30pm

Malden Senior Center

(7 Washington St, Malden, MA)

We invite the public to attend this panel discussion to learn more about Net Neutrality, our Internet future and what efforts are taking place to fight against the war on information access

NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

5

UNWILLING CONVERTS HOUSING

Somerville’s largest condo grab in history yields relative tenant win in tense market

BY ROB KATZ @RM_KATZ

Greg Santos moved into Somerville’s Millbrook Lofts apartment complex with his girlfriend in August 2017, looking forward to using its dedicated art space.

Married couple Luciano Betoldi and Maria d’Orey, both from Portugal, immigrated to the US in January and started renting one of the lofts on Millbrook’s newly built eighth floor.

Nicole Burton, a clinical lab assistant with a son in college, signed a lease for one of the building’s citymandated affordable units nearly two years ago when the building first opened.

Last November, the owners of their building told them all—plus all the other tenants—that they were about to be evicted from their homes, as the firm Berkeley Investments attempted the largest condominium conversion in Somerville history.

As first announced, Santos, Betoldi, d’Orey, and the rest of the 100-unit building’s market-rate occupants would have to be out by the same day this November. Burton and the 14 other inclusive unit tenants had an extra year, until November 2019, to find new housing.

The complex, located in Somerville’s Inner Belt by East Cambridge, originally stood as a cold storage warehouse for about a century. Berkeley Investments acquired the property in 2014 and began thawing it out. After renovating the facility, modernizing it, and building a new eighth floor, Berkeley opened Millbrook as a 100-unit apartment building in June 2016.

These days, tenants face the Twin City Plaza across the road. Across the train track is a Prime Storage warehouse, and the office of 3D printing startup—standing icons of the building’s industrial past and its yuppified future as well.

“We were noticing a trend that as people’s leases were coming up, we were actually seeing some of our residents leaving. … to purchase a home,” Berkeley Investments Vice President Dan McGrath explained. “If you see the statistics about the for-sale housing market [in Somerville], there is not a lot of supply, particularly at price ranges that are achievable for a larger pool of people.”

McGrath continues: “We saw an opportunity where it seemed to make sense for us to consider whether there was a for-sale opportunity with this building, given the trends that were happening in the for-sale marketplace.”

McGrath characterized Millbrook as “home to people whose next step in life, certainly in a few cases, might be to purchase a home.” But according to Santos, who moved in for the art space, “[Berkeley] said, ‘Hey, we’d love to have you stay and buy these units,’ and a lot of people were very shocked. It just seemed like nobody really knew what questions to ask or what their rights were.”

Although the owners do not appear to have acted unlawfully, Santos and others charge that the sudden threat of displacement from a building that was only 18 months old is particularly harmful to low-income tenants.

“They’d be facing a really tough rental housing market on their own, or they’d have to deal with the city again,” Santos said. “It’s tough to get into a new building like this as a low-income tenant, and people were effectively being asked to leave just a few years after they moved in so they’d be reincurring all those costs again.”

“I’m not going to be able to pay market rent on my salary,” Burton said about the possibility of displacement.

“I have a child that’s now in college so my financials kind of changed, and it took a lot for me to get into that apartment because I have to do a lot of certification through the city.”

Somerville alderman JT Scott, elected in November with the support of progressive groups including Democratic Socialists of America and Our Revolution, 6

03.29.18 - 04.05.18 |

DIGBOSTON.COM

suggested to Santos that he organize the tenants and assert their rights.

“It sounded like a better idea than to move and get kind of steamrolled through this process and have to move out without contesting,” Santos said.

The task ahead of him, Santos spent nights knocking on the doors of all 100 units across eight floors, inviting his neighbors to join the fledgling Millbrook Tenants’ Association (MTA), which he organized alongside residents Michael Devlin and Reilly Bertasi. Some of the approximately 85 tenants he spoke to explained that they had only just signed their leases in October and November of 2017.

“Berkeley Investments knew they were going to move forward with this condo conversion, but they were still having folks sign leases into November, right before this happened,” Santos recalled.

Although Betoldi and d’Orey had nearly signed a lease with a new apartment, when they returned from a holiday in Lisbon, they were quickly convinced to sign on with the tenants’ association.

“Greg happened to come in and explain things to us from the point of view of what our rights are versus the point of view of [the management company] Princeton Properties or Berkeley Investments,” Betoldi said. “That’s what made us realize that we had rights.”

Burton was similarly inspired to work with the MTA to protect her right to the affordable unit she felt she had been guaranteed by the city.

“I felt because I got my unit through the city that somebody needed to step up and help, because the city does state that Berkeley does have to have a certain amount of low-income housing in the building,” Burton said. “I wanted to fight for that.”

The MTA quickly assembled, and Santos and about 25 neighbors appeared at the Dec 18 Somerville Condominium Review Board meeting. Faced with the complaints voiced by Millbrook’s outraged tenants, the board tabled the decision until the two parties could come to a substantive agreement.

“In addition to financial burdens, there’s a time cost, there’s an opportunity cost to moving,” Santos said. “Some folks in the building don’t want to move because they just moved in, and some were still unpacking boxes when they got noticed. Some folks have families and they don’t want to move their children.”

Construction, including renovations on common spaces such as the downstairs lobby and hallways, would also prove to place a burden on tenants.

When the board chose to delay the decision, Santos invited Berkeley to come to the table and negotiate a more agreeable set of terms. Following the holidays, Berkeley President Young Park and McGrath sat down with some of their tenants; a few days later, on Jan 22, Berkeley sent its first proposal.

Somerville’s condominium conversion ordinance law, which was last revised in 1985, offers a level of protection for tenants through mandatory rules that the converting owner must follow upon receiving a removal permit.

According to the Condominium Review Board’s site, all tenants must be offered the right of first refusal, and market-rate tenants are offered a year to find a new living situation and vacate after being notified of the conversion, while low-to-moderate income, elderly, and disabled tenants are given two years to move out.

Of particular interest to critics of Somerville’s ordinance is the minimum lump sum relocation

reimbursement required in Somerville, which amounts to $300 or a month’s rent, whichever is greater, for each inclusive unit. That amount is far lower than the minimum required by Boston’s ordinance, which demands $6,000 for market-rate units and $10,000 for inclusive ones.

Berkeley’s proposal upped the ante from the legal minimum: $1,000 in cash as a “goodwill concession,” a month of free rent for each unit occupied during any construction and a lump sum, covering moving expenses, that would start at $5,000 for each unit vacated in the first three months, then would decrease by $1,000 for each month the unit was still occupied. If the tenants were still in their unit after 180 days, that reimbursement would come back to $1,000, and if they stayed longer than 210 days, they would be offered nothing beyond the goodwill concession and month’s rent for construction.

The MTA, which at this point represented a supermajority of tenants, wrote up a counteroffer modeled after the Boston condo conversion ordinance. The letter, written by Santos, Devlin, and Bertasi, requested a lump reimbursement of $15,000 for direct out-of-pocket costs and $3,000 for disruptions to tenants’ lives—in total amounting to six months’ rent. Following the January Condominium Review Board meeting, at which Berkeley attempted to move forward again and the board once more sided with the tenants, the proposal was sent.

A few weeks later, on Feb 15, Mass. State Rep. Mike Connolly issued a letter to Park’s office, deriding the conversion proposal as “highly irresponsible and a matter of public significance.”

“One of the things that really shocked me was the lack of detail or lack of thinking at the time Berkeley announced that this is what they wanted to do,” Connolly explained to Dig. Among his concerns was that affordable or inclusionary units, amenities which Berkeley was initially required to include as a condition of developing Millbrook, would be discarded during the conversion.

“There was very little in the way of detail or assurance regarding those affordable units that really get presented as subsidy-free, in-perpetuity affordable units,” Connolly said. “There were really a lot of concerns about what their future would be and how that public benefit would be protected and maintained.”

“If you simply say, ‘Let’s convert those affordable rentals to affordable home ownership units,’ the fact is that the city’s affordable ownership program is defined at an actual higher income level—still of a low-to-moderate income but higher than the rental targets,” Connolly continued. “And so, just by definition, it becomes very unclear that the affordable tenants would necessarily be well-positioned to purchase their unit.”

Shortly after Connolly began correspondence with Park,

the online publication Cambridge Day and NBC 10 covered the controversy between the tenants and property owners, offering media attention to the MTA’s fight.

Then, on Feb 22, Berkeley announced that it would not appear at the Condominium Review Board to attempt any unit removals. The day after, a group of Millbrook’s tenants sat down with Somerville Mayor Joe Curtatone and his policy team to discuss the conversion. The next Monday, after Curtatone met with Park, Santos was informed that Park would “re-engage” with the MTA. “They effectively went back to the drawing board and came back to us,” Santos said, characterizing the new discussions as being “in good faith” on the part of Park and McGrath.

The heavily revised proposal sent on March 2, while insisting that the initial offer’s financial incentives would have been “unprecedented in Somerville,” matched the reimbursements of the Boston ordinance with $6,000 ($10,000 for affordable units) that would not decline over time, as well as $6,000 to address the impact of construction regardless of whether or not the tenant remained or moved out.

“We can move forward financially with the benefits that we personally will get from the offer,” Betoldi said. “I feel that they’re fair, I think they’re kind of in line with the disruption that we’ve experienced and we’re going to experience with this construction that’s coming up.”

In what Santos and Connolly considered the most salient win for the tenant’s association, Berkeley also committed to safeguarding the affordable rental units, promising either to sell them to a third-party nonprofit who could preserve them with their existing tenants, such as the Somerville Community Corporation, or to continue owning the units if no buyer were located.

“I think that’s definitely the biggest win,” Santos said. “The market rate folks are going to have a much easier time securing other apartments and, certainly, Berkeley’s increased financial package helps. But the real victory here is being able to keep those 15 inclusionary units and keep the tenants that are in them for as long as they’d like to.”

Following a meeting between inclusionary tenants and Berkeley, Burton felt confident that the owners’ promises were in good faith, but he believed that was only the result of external pressure on the firm.

“I think Berkeley did step up, but I think that’s because of the tenants’ association, because of the media coverage they got, and because we saw the mayor,” Burton said.

“It felt like they assumed responsibility for the fact that this is going to mean the displacement of a lot of people,” d’Orey said.

Both parties’ hopes now are that the contracts for market-rate and inclusionary tenants will be finalized and signed before the March Condominium Review Board meeting, which had been postponed to April 2. The MTA will be aided in the process by Ellen Shachter, a housing attorney for Greater Boston Legal Services.

Regardless of the publicized controversy, Berkeley claims that it has not been having difficulty attracting potential buyers, including current tenants.

“We have had a healthy amount of interest from existing residents in purchasing units at the building,” McGrath said. “The pool of people who would be interested in renting there is very similar to the pool of people who might be interested in buying there,” noting the building’s proximity to Kendall Square, Union Square, and Lechmere Station, as well as the upcoming Green Line Extension.

Indeed, one resident DigBoston spoke with expressed a strong interest in purchasing their unit, but spoke under condition of anonymity.

Although pricing had not been shared as of writing out of sensitivity to ongoing negotiations, McGrath told DigBoston that smaller studio apartments would start at the $400,000 range, going up to $700,000 or $800,000 for penthouses. The goal would be between $700 and $800 per square foot.

“If you were to look in the market right now, some of the luxury product in Boston is selling for over $1,000 a foot,” McGrath added. “I think that what we’re trying to do is offer units that are achievable for a lot of couples and young professionals.”

As for Santos and many of the tenants in the MTA, moving out as a collective is being considered.

“Now that we have kind of a tightly knit tenants’ association, we’re looking at potentially moving as a group to another building that might have some spots for us,” Santos said. “We’re putting feelers out and trying to figure out if there’s another building you can move to as a whole.”

Speaking the weekend before negotiations were intended to be wrapped up, McGrath seemed to believe Berkeley had initially mishandled the conversion notification.

“I think we were a little surprised that the tenants organized into a group quite the way they did, but I guess in hindsight, maybe we shouldn’t have been. Converting the building to condos is something that impacts people’s lives.”

“I think we’ve had a productive dialogue with the tenants, with the political leadership,” McGrath continued. “There were times where there was some degree of tension between the residents and Berkeley, but I think we’ve seem to overcome those at all times. All parties have been working in good faith to come to an amicable resolution.”

Considering why negotiations were so fruitful for the MTA, Connolly believed that other tenants’ associations should look to the association’s emphasis on “explicit solidarity” with the affordable tenants.

“I think the big lesson here is some gratitude and appreciation for that stance,” he said, “because as I saw this happening, one of my fears was that a divide-and-conquer strategy could take hold where certain groups of tenants might make their own deal then vacate the building and the leverage with people who were named would be diminished.”

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

Boston’s Best Irish Pub

MONDAYS

WEDNESDAYS

THURSDAYS

MAKKA MONDAY

GEEKS WHO DRINK

ELEMENTS

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

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

RE:SET

WEDNESDAYS

Weekly Dance Party, House, Disco, Techno, Local & International DJ’s 19+, 10PM - 1AM

15+ Years of Resident Drum & Bass Bringing some of the worlds biggest DnB DJ’s to Cambridge 19+, 10PM - 2AM

FRIDAYS

SATURDAYS

PRETTY YOUNG THING

BOOM BOOM ROOM

80’s Old School & Top 40 Dance hits 21+, 10PM - 2AM

80’s, 90’s, 00’s One Hit Wonders 21+, 10PM - 2AM

THE BEST ENTERTAINMENT IN CAMBRIDGE 7 DAYS A WEEK!

1/2 PRICED APPS DAILY 5 - 7PM WATCH EVERY SOCCER GAME! VOTED BOSTON’S BEST SOCCER BAR ENGLISH PREMIER LEAGUE

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

CHECK OUT ALL PHOENIX LANDING NIGHTLY EVENTS AT:

WWW.PHOENIXLANDINGBAR.COM NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

7

APPARENT HORIZON

THERE WILL BE NO OUTSIDE WORLD TO HELP US Boston’s global warming plans must prepare region for worst case scenarios

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

In a couple of recent columns—and several others over the years—I’ve looked at some of the specific threats that scientists expect Boston will be facing from global warming-induced climate change. While there’s plenty of room for debate about the anticipated severity and timetable of such threats, there is no longer any serious doubt that they are real.

Unfortunately, humans have trouble dealing with existential crises like an inexorably rising sea level and the relentless increase of the average air temperature.

We tend to try to plan for future situations based on what has happened in the past. What is, therefore, in the realm of our experience as individuals and as members of various groups. What we’re comfortable with and confident we can handle.

The many learned experts who have been working on the city of Boston’s various climate change initiatives are no less susceptible to this bias than anyone else.

Which is why the reports city government has been producing on making the city more “resilient”—to use the fashionable buzzword pushed by the Rockefeller Foundation and others of late—in the face of climate change all share a major flaw.

That is, despite understanding that global warming is by default—by its very nomenclature—a worldwide phenomenon, they treat the effects of the climate change it’s driving as essentially local.

Furthermore, they try to apply standard disaster preparedness and emergency management protocols as if global warming was simply a series of tractable crises of the type we’ve dealt with since time immemorial. Like the recent series of nor’easters (which were probably climate change-driven themselves).

So, sure, they reason. There will be power outages— some affecting critical infrastructure—so we’ll plan for that. There will be food shortages in some poor areas of the city that are already considered “food deserts” due to their lack of decent cheap supermarkets; so we’ll plan for that. There will be flooding; so we’ll plan for that.

Thus, the language that city officials (and an array of outside advisors and consultants) use in their climate change planning documents demonstrates that

...[A]t a certain point–especially if we continue along the climate change denial path that the Trump administration and the oil, gas, and coal industries are setting us on– Boston will be alone.

8

03.29.18 - 04.05.18 |

DIGBOSTON.COM

they’re either unable to see that previous human experience is insufficient to the task of grappling with global warming… or, more likely, that they’re unwilling to discuss the vast scale and centuries-long duration of the approaching crisis due to a combination of factors. Ranging from not wanting to be seen as alarmists to not wanting to anger top politicians and corporate leaders with big problems requiring expensive solutions.

For example, here’s an illustrative passage from the Climate Ready Boston Final Report, the big global warming preparedness white paper the city published in late 2016: Members of the IAG [Infrastructure Advisory Group] have identified continued functionality of the city’s transportation infrastructure as a top resiliency priority. Many members have identified road and bridge functionality as a key critical requirement so citizens can evacuate; emergency vehicles can pass; maintenance trucks can reach impacted electric, communication, and water/wastewater assets for swift repair; and hospitals and other emergency facilities can continue to receive food, water, and medical supplies. In turn, the transportation system relies on continued access to electricity and communications systems, so tunnels may remain open, and any blocked paths are cleared quickly or detours swiftly communicated.

Note that it’s assumed that citizens will be able to evacuate the city if necessary. And that various kinds of critical vehicles will have fuel. And that parts will be on hand for infrastructure repair. And that food, water, and medical supplies will be available.

Climate Ready Boston’s series of reports and a raft of related studies certainly mention a variety of problems that the city will have to overcome to ensure that fuel, food, water, medical supplies, vital machine parts, etc. will be available as locals recover from each new storm, flood, or heat wave. Like making sure that Interstate 93 is no longer the main trade route for the city and that the portions of the highway that are susceptible to flooding be reengineered.

And they definitely allow for the fact that we’ll see more and more storms, floods, and heat waves.

But none of the growing array of reports and plans that city (and also state) government are producing consider this possibility: That at a certain point— especially if we continue along the climate change denial path that the Trump administration and the oil, gas, and coal industries are setting us on—Boston will be alone.

There will be no outside world to help us. Every city, every region, every nation on the planet will be engaged in a life-or-death struggle for survival as the effects of global warming get worse. And worse. And ever worse.

Because maybe humanity does not stop burning carbon in time. Because we do not replace our old dirty energy systems with new clean ones. Because we do not halt the despoiling of land, sea, and air. Because we do not reverse the “sixth extinction” of most species of plants and animals. Because we do not, in sum, stop the destruction of the human race itself and everything that matters to us in the world.

Hopefully, things won’t be so bad by 2100—which is the outer limit of the period seriously considered in city and state plans. Let alone in 20 or 30 years. But the minimal progress on climate change goals that have been made in the quarter century since the Kyoto Protocol was signed does not inspire confidence in human civilization’s ability to reduce greenhouse gas

emissions enough to slow—let alone stop—the worstcase scenarios that keep any reasonably well-informed person up at night.

So if the city and the state that surrounds it want to talk about “resilience,” they have to be able to answer these questions… and many more like them besides:

• How will Boston (and Massachusetts) feed our already-growing population—when global supply chains are disrupted and ultimately destroyed, the oceans are dead, and much of America’s farmland has turned to dust bowls—given that we can’t even come close to feeding ourselves now? And what about all the climate migrants that will be heading north as parts of our continent become uninhabitable? How will we possibly feed them?

• How will Boston (and Massachusetts) keep our growing population plus climate migrants clothed, housed, healthy, and gainfully employed in that situation?

• How will Boston (and Massachusetts) produce enough clean (or dirty) energy to satisfy our growing power needs—including our vehicles—without outside help?

• How will Boston (and Massachusetts) produce the manufactured goods that we need—including medical supplies and the materials we’ll need to rebuild during a never-ending series of global warming-induced disasters—when we’re on our own?

• How will Boston (and Massachusetts) grow more food, support more population, and expand industry in the coming decades as we face the expected global warming driven fresh water shortages? Even as we grapple with more and more severe floods due to storms (fresh water), and storm surges (seawater).

• How will Boston (and Massachusetts) move the city, our state capital, and its critical infrastructure to higher ground—while buying time to do so with the best possible flood defenses we can build?

• How will Boston (and Massachusetts) help the entire population of the city to move to relative safety when global warming-induced climate change eventually makes our region uninhabitable, too?

Any planning process that fails to raise such questions is not worthy of the name. So both the city of Boston and Commonwealth of Massachusetts had better step up their joint game… fast. Same goes for climate action groups that work hard to keep grassroots pressure on responsible government officials (and generally irresponsible corporate leaders). Work harder, grow your ranks, pursue mitigation efforts that might forestall the worst outcomes, become an unstoppable force, make positive change at least a possibility. If not a certainty.

Because if we can’t stop (or significantly slow) global warming, and we can’t find practicable answers to the above questions soon, then Boston is far from “resilient.”

Let alone “strong.” It is completely unprepared to deal with global warming-induced climate change.

And all the reports in the world won’t save our city and our state from the grim fate that awaits us.

Apparent Horizon is syndicated by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Jason Pramas is BINJ’s network director, and executive editor and associate publisher of DigBoston. Copyright 2018 Jason Pramas.

CONFRONTING THE DEATH CULT DEMOCRACY IN CRISIS

Lessons learned at the March for Our Lives in DC

BY BRANDON SODERBERG

Anything this big can’t be that good, you’d like to think. brother Ricardo who was shot and killed, culture-jammed Last year’s Women’s March was rightfully criticized much of the boring big march bullshit with personal-isfor blinding whiteness and a recalcitrant approach to political poetry pretty much, and made clear how school intersectionality, but after a million or so people again shootings and the kinds of gun violence she and thousands appeared out in protest for last weekend’s March for Our of others in cities such as Baltimore or Chicago have Lives in Washington, DC, it’s apparent that 2017 march endured intertwine. set the Trump-era precedent for large protest, and the “You hear a ‘pop’ thinking they were fireworks, they importance of that is incalculable. weren’t—you see melanin on your brother’s skin turned Parkland’s student activists, a stunning example gray. Ricardo was his name, can y’all say it with me?” of the “don’t mourn, organize” ethos, have their shit Chavez asked. together when it comes to what to say about guns in this Later, Chavez challenged “solutions” such as more police country—while Democrats five times their age leading the in schools or more police in general. so-called #resistance just don’t and never will. The march “Zero-tolerance policies do not work,” Chavez said. called attention to school shootings and the gun lobby, “They make us feel like criminals.” and then it kept on The Guardian recently published “Our manifesto to fix pivoting to include America’s gun laws,” written by the staff of the Marjory any and all victims Stoneman Douglas High School newspaper, and among the of gun violence, demands was one to “increase funding for school security,” acknowledging bias, and here was Chavez, calling “BS” on it. privilege, and racial The lesson: Always listen to people younger than you disparity along are, even when you think they’re wrong—especially when the way. It took the you think they’re wrong.

Women’s March’s As very young people act very adult and organize, a homogeneity and whole bunch of adults in power act like children, especially tilted it toward in the White House and all around it. Trump’s revolvingintersectionality. door administration welcomes warmongering mustache At its core, it was an anti-NRA parade (wisely, because man, John Bolton. What was Bolton doing when he was the protest should offer hope always, it was cast as the March age of most of the Parkland students, you may wonder? He for Our Lives), and that’s a good thing because the NRA is a ran the Students for Barry Goldwater Campaign at the very death cult and has nothing useful or sincere to say about bougie private school he attended outside of Baltimore. gun rights. If an undercover video produced by TV news And then there is Donald Trump Jr., who, it appears, reporters exposed NRA bigwigs meeting in the molten had an affair with Aubrey O’Day of early aughts pop core of the planet, sacrificing animals, and fellating AR-15s, group Danity Kane, which—oh, who gives a shit, except would you really be surprised? that it has manifested by way of bad R&B and weird One of the million or so marchers there on Saturday foot photos because well, Trump. O’Day wrote a song in was Nora Ludden. She knows firsthand how long the 2013 titled “DJT” that sounds like Phil Collins’ “In the Air gun access and gun control debate has circled the drain. She’s a survivor of the 1992 Simon’s Rock shooting, in which 18-year-old Wayne Lo, a student at Simon’s Rock College of Bard in Massachusetts, murdered two people on campus and wounded four after purchasing a semiautomatic rifle at a sporting goods store.

“This terrible thing has been going on for a very long time; I was a teenager myself when there was a shooting at my school,” Ludden said. “The shooter was able to get a gun very easily with no waiting period or background check or anything.”

Ludden is one of many Simon’s Rock alumni who signed a petition demanding “more access to mental health services and less access to weapons” following the Newtown, Connecticut, shooting. The Newtown shooting happened exactly 20 years after the Simon’s Rock shooting— Dec 14, 2012, and Dec 14, 1992.

“Now, you see this continue for decades,” Ludden said. “To see my kids still dealing with the same thing I did is just really heartbreaking.”

You’ve surely seen the march’s speeches by now, especially from Parkland’s David Hogg and Emma Gonzalez—but don’t forget about Edna PHOTO BY BRANDON SODERBERG Chavez. The 17-year-old South Central Los Angeles activist paid tribute to her

“Zero-tolerance policies do not work,” Chavez said.

“They make us feel like criminals.”

NEWS TO US

Tonight” on Robitussin and weaves a dialogue between a bored dickhead dude and O’Day about the state of their relationship, O’Day singing, “I hate me for loving you, hate you for letting our love die.” Who knows, man. Further proof of the affair arrives via the Daily Mail, which looked hard at Instagram posts from O’Day and found one where she is playing footsie with a man and lo and behold, those sure do look like Trump Jr.’s gross, long feet, like he’s a cartoon and his feet got run over by a steamroller but also like they were set on fire?

The lesson: Donald Trump Jr., like his father, is a fucking idiot.

Before South Side Chicago rapper Vic Mensa performed at the March for Our Lives, he mentioned Sacramento’s Stephon Clark, shot 20 times by police in his own backyard on March 18, holding a cell phone that cops claim they thought was a gun (they also muted their body cameras during the deadly encounter), and Decynthia Clements, from Elgin, not far from Chicago, who was shot and killed after an extended chase with the police wherein she also lunged at cops with a steak knife and set the inside of her car on fire. An “imperfect” victim of police violence, but a victim nonetheless.

Police have killed almost 300 people this year. Clark, whose death it does not seem will go away quietly, was shot and killed on March 18—there have been nearly 30 police shootings since then.

The lesson: Cops are guns—instrumentalized, surveilling, means of destruction.

Brandon Soderberg is the former editor of the Baltimore City Paper, former news editor of the Baltimore Beat, and the author of Daddy Lessons: A Country Music Zine for the Trumpocalypse. You can order it at daddylessons. bandcamp.com. Follow him on Twitter @notrivia.

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

9

TALKING JOINTS MEMO

MASS SAYS NO TO CBD BEER And THC beer, too, but you already knew that

BY DIG STAFF @DIGBOSTON Starting this week and continuing every week for the foreseeable future, DigBoston/ Talking Joints Memo will break down and do our best to explain, often with the help of experts and attorneys, different sections of the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission’s final regulations for “Adult Use of Marijuana,” as well as related laws and issues.

Earlier this month, the Everettbased Down The Road Beer Co. “contacted the [Massachusetts Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission] ABCC seeking approval to brew a beer using CBD derived from hemp.” According to the brewery’s marketing director, Alex E. Weaver, they “consulted a number of lawyers and local marijuana organizations, and spoke with breweries from other states who have successfully brewed such a beer.”

They were seemingly on their way to sweet and hoppy hemp success, and even planned a release bash for Friday. But while the party still went on as scheduled, not everything went according to xxplan. Because while Down The Road will release its GoopMassta Session IPA, the product won’t be CBD-infused. Weaver says they were “intent on releasing the first beer brewed with CBD in Massachusetts” and are “disappointed the current laws haven’t caught up to our drive to innovate.”

Not so coincidentally, the ABCC released the following advisory (reprinted here in part) last week (bold emphasis ours). Brewers, growers, consumers, take note: On July 1, 2018, cannabis is expected to become legal for retail sale in Massachusetts.

The Commission issues this Advisory to inform the industry on the use of cannabis in alcoholic beverages in the Commonwealth.

Cannabinoid extract from the cannabis plant is considered a Schedule 1 drug by the Drug Enforcement Agency.1 Infusing or otherwise adding cannabinoid extract in alcoholic beverages is considered adulteration of alcohol under M.G.L. c. 270, § 1.2 Please be advised that even though retail sales of cannabis are expected to become lawful starting July 1, 2018, it will remain unlawful to manufacture and/ or sell alcoholic beverages containing any cannabinoid extracts, including tetrahydrocannabinol (“THC”) and cannabidiol (“CBD”), regardless of whether it is derived from the cannabis plant or industrial hemp.

Any licensee found in violation of the law by manufacturing, transporting, selling, and/or possessing on its licensed premises cannabinoid-infused alcoholic beverages faces potential suspension or revocation of its license.

While cannabinoids, including CBD and THC, can never be used in the manufacture of alcoholic beverages in Massachusetts, industrial hemp can be used in the manufacture of alcoholic beverages. Should a licensee seek to manufacture alcoholic beverages containing industrial hemp in Massachusetts, the licensee first must do two things: 1 Drug Code 7350 provides the following definition of what is classified as Schedule 1 for cannabis extract: “Marihuana Extract—Meaning an extract containing one or more cannabinoids that has been derived from any plant of the genus Cannabis, other than the separated resin (whether crude or purified) obtained from the plant.”

2 It is also likely a violation of the Food & Drug Administration’s Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES CONTROL COMMISSION ADVISORY REGARDING CANNABIS IN ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES

This product contains zero THC

(1) obtain approval of the alcoholic beverage’s formula from the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (“TTB”) in accordance with its Hemp Policy dated April 3, 2000, and (2) obtain a certificate of label approval (“COLA”) for the alcoholic beverage from the TTB. Please be aware that the TTB will only approve a formula if the finished product contains no controlled substance, meaning it cannot contain any cannabinoids, including CBD and THC.

10

03.29.18 - 04.05.18 |

DIGBOSTON.COM

Subscribe to our free newsletter at talkingjointsmemo.com for the most comprehensive rundown of cannabis news, events, and headlines in New England.

CANNABIZ CORNER TALKING JOINTS MEMO

How Robert Barish made it easier to buy bongs in the ’burbs

| RESTAURANT | INTIMATE CONCERT VENUE | | URBAN WINERY | PRIVATE EVENT SPACE |

BY ALEX BRANDON

upcoming shows

Ask Robert Barish about Wicked Chronic, which he co-owns in Natick, and he’ll jump right into explaining the dual emphasis of his shop’s name.

“For the wicked side,” he says, “we have spell candles, Reiki candles, incense, books, essential oils, and tarot cards.” While “on the chronic side,” they carry “cannabis accessories such as pipes, vaporizers, and rolling papers.” Plus hemp-derived products with CBD (Cannabidiol) such as tinctures, salves, edibles, and hemp oil.

We asked Barish what makes the store, a favorite among Metro West consumers, so darn special.

The process of reaching this point wasn’t nearly as glamourous at the end result. What was it like to be laid off, and how did that motivate you to pursue your dreams?

When I was laid off from a Fortune 50 company in 2015 I realized no matter how hard I worked or how quickly I rose through the management ranks my destiny was never in my own hands. I knew then I could never work for anyone but myself. My wife and I had talked for many years about opening a small shop. This was the perfect opportunity for us to explore owning our own business.

You knew you wanted to start a business long before you settled on this industry specifically. How did you know that you were pursuing the right idea, and what was it like behind the scenes as you drafted the plan for Wicked Chronic?

Our original business was going to be a vape shop selling e-liquid and vaporizers to tobacco users wishing to quit smoking; however, neither my wife nor I were passionate about the vape industry. After attending the Northeastern Institute of Cannabis in our hometown of Natick, we embraced the cannabis industry. We completed the courses, passed the comprehensive final exam, and received our certificates.

The education around the history, science, business, growing, and medical efficacy of cannabis was well worth it. It also made me realize that I was passionate about the business I was getting into. The best advice I was given many years ago was to make sure you are happy to be getting up each morning and going to your job. If you are not doing something you love, then you will hate your job. I love my cannabis accessories store and I love getting up every morning .

Your store first opened in Framingham on April 20 of 2016. After decades of answering to a boss, what’s it like to run your own business for the first time?

Scary and wonderful. I love having total control over every aspect of our business, from the product lines we sell to displays in our store and marketing ourselves. There is a tremendous sense of pride and joy knowing we built this shop with our own two hands and with our own money.

The scary part is financing a new business, particularly one in the cannabis industry. Even a fringe cannabis business like an accessories store has to deal with the federal prohibition of cannabis.

Small business loans are impossible to attain. The threat of a crackdown on cannabis businesses is a great concern.

Even a fringe cannabis business like an accessories store has to deal with the federal prohibition of cannabis.

Eleven months after your doors opened, a fire at your neighboring location enveloped your strip mall and your store burned to the ground. What was it like having to start over with finding a new location less than a year after you launched the business?

Exhausting. The fire was a big blow. Fortunately, no one was hurt and we were insured.

Originally, I wanted our shop located in my hometown of Natick, but at the time we were looking to open our shop there was nothing available. There was in our neighboring town of Framingham, where we set up our first location.

A big roadblock for a cannabis-related business location is there are many building owners who do not want to lease space to this type of business. When we began looking for a new location after the fire we got lucky—the right building owner in a perfect location in our home town became available and we haven’t looked back since. Being on a heavily traveled road like Route 9 with the signage we have has been fantastic. The fire put us out of business for three and a half months. I never considered not reopening, it was only a matter of finding our next location.

Between the Small Business Association, the Board of Health, and other local government groups, you found little help in making your business a reality. What advice can you provide aspiring small business owners in the cannabis industry in dealing with governmental agencies?

Educate yourself on all of the laws surrounding your type of business. You need to expect that government officials will not know anything about the cannabis laws. For example, the Board of Health (BOH) in Natick informed us we would not be able to sell pipes, vaporizers, or rolling papers unless we had a tobacco permit. The BOH considered these to be tobacco accessories. After the November 2016 vote, these products officially became “cannabis accessories.” I pushed back hard on this with the BOH. The BOH eventually consulted with the town’s lawyer, who consulted with the state’s attorney general’s office, and they eventually informed me that I was correct, a bong is a cannabis accessory. Pay close attention to what is happening in your local town government.

Attend local selectmen meetings, planning board meetings, and finance committee meetings. Many towns film these meetings and provide them online for anyone to watch at their convenience. Watch them. Watch them all. Be involved in your local town/city government.

MARCH 28

MARCH 30

The Crystal Bowersox Delta Generators W/ Ken Yates

MARCH 31

MARCH 31

LARRY CAMPBELL & TERESA WILLIAMS

in the haymarket lounge

APRIL 2

APRIL 3

Michael Dutra & The Strictly Sinatra Band

ft. Ryan Montbleau & Hayley Jane

APRIL 22 4 MARCH

yes, darling

APRIL 5

sam bush

w/ Danny Burns

James Maddock & Vance Gilbert

APRIL 8

APRIL 9

Tommy Castro & the Painkillers

in the haymarket lounge

APRIL 16

JUNE 1

Arrested Development

Kevin Nealon

Dan Navarro

(two shows)

special events

4.1 ft. the Yoko Miwa Trio Presented by Fred Taylor

4.11 passport to wine

spain

4.17 agave for all

To what do you attribute the success of Wicked Chronic?

Education and openness. My wife and I are highly educated (no pun intended) around the science and efficacy of the cannabis plant. If I can pass along a little education to each customer, then I feel like I am making my little world around me a better place. … Now that we live and work in a cannabis legal state, my customers can come into Wicked Chronic and use words like “cannabis,” “CBD,” “bong.” In the past, saying any of these words would have gotten you kicked out of the store. Today we can be open about cannabis.

huntertones

A Tequila Tasting

stump trivia every monday at 7pm

BOOK YOUR NEXT EVENT WITH US

email eventsboston@citywinery.com for more info

80 beverly st. Boston Ma 02114 (617) 933-8047 |www.citywinery.com/boston

NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

11

PHOTO BY JOHN BREWER

AROUND MY WAY: THE PULL UP #AMWKBX

A Roxbury guy, a Dorchester guy, and an Arlington guy want to change the hip-hop business in Boston

BY G. VALENTINO BALL OF KILLERBOOMBOX.COM “It was [Jay-Z’s] Hard Knock Life Tour.”

DJ Real P, a rapper, DJ, and promoter who co-founded the popular Hub party the Pull Up, recalls his deep love for the game fomenting inside of the Boston Garden nearly 20 years ago. It was his first live hip-hop experience.

He continues: “I was a kid. … I went with my older brothers. I remember being super amped because it was my first time seeing Jay-Z. The energy was OD. … I was such a hip-hop head. It was fitting for that to be my first real concert.”

His partner, producer and engineer Marquis Neal, had a special outing all his own.

“It was the Ruff Ryders tour,” he says. “I was backstage with Made Men. This was around the time they shot their “Holla Back’ video. And I also saw DMX too.”

That love of the live show and a do-for-self attitude is the driving force behind Real P, Neal, and manager Steven Foley, who operate the Boston-based promotion company New Era of New England, or N.E.O.N.E. (pronounced “anyone”). The latest quarterly expression of their mutual affection, the Pull Up, will showcase the area’s emerging and established talent. But for this unique crew, it’s not just about seeing artists perform live—it’s about the building of community that comes from regular connections, and fixing systems that for too long have denied people an equal shot.

“I think it’s really important, especially for New England-based artists,” Real P says. “[They need] to connect with their fans.”

12

03.29.18 - 04.05.18 |

DIGBOSTON.COM

ROCK CLUBS AND BACK ROOMS Live performance is the genesis of hip-hop. That backand-forth, call-and-response connection of early architects and their participating audiences have forever been the lifeblood of this culture. Hip-hop’s never been a soundtrack fit for quiet, bedroom-based, navel-gazing introspection.

It was made for parks and block parties with Eiffel Towersized stacks of speakers, and spurred by kids who got turned away from downtown clubs. When those doors were all closed, they built their own spaces.

In Boston, the music’s birthplaces were park jams inside spots like Ripley Road Park in the Four Corners section of Dorchester and Almont Park in Mattapan. For local rap groups, those spaces, along with the talent show circuit at neighborhood community centers and auditoriums like the Lee School, became the go-to spots for anyone building a name for themselves.

“It’s always been a struggle,” says Geoff “Geespin” Gamere. Now the influential music director for Power 105 in New York, Geespin spent years as a fixture in the Hub’s nightclubs and used to spin for JAM’N 94.5. In his salad days, he ran into innumerable walls trying to break into the downtown scene by playing hip-hop.

“There’s never been a go-to hip-hop spot in the city,” Geespin continues, “so it’s kind of been spread out. It’s never easy in any city to bring in a hip-hop movement.”

The relationship between nightlife and rap music has always been a perilous one. As the music matured in the mid-to-late 1980s college campuses, rock clubs like the

Rathskeller and the Channel, and dance clubs like Narcissus served as the homes for hip-hop outside of the hood. When acts like Wu-Tang Clan, KRS-One, and the Beastie Boys came to town, they hit those stages.

There are variations of this story depending on whom you ask, but generally speaking, after the Rat closed in ’97, the Boston hip-hop landscape, on the verge of increased national recognition via our region’s then-budding “underground” scene, began to migrate toward Allston and Harpers Ferry (now Brighton Music Hall), and across the river to the Middle East and sometimes the sinceclosed Western Front in Cambridge. Acts that had built followings made up of local college students found new homes and new prominence. But other groups, particularly those from neighborhoods where the original park jams took place, were stuck on the outside looking in.

Business practices also kept artists from stages. There were often stringent dress codes for Hub hip-hop parties, especially in downtown Boston, while dance nights had to advertise themselves as Top 40 to break in. Under the guise of paying dues, some artists pay money to promoters to perform; in some cases, locals buy their way on to the stage before a headliner from out of town, but then have to sell tickets in order to get their money back. As a business practice, this works to lower the promoter’s risk for sure.

But it also results in uneven and sometimes haphazard shows. Imagine being a national headliner and seeing half of your house leave after your opener’s set because some beer-pounding bros were only there for their friend. The chance to groom your next big star from the scene is lost.

This is the hand the gang behind the Pull Up was dealt.

But it’s not the one they played, and it didn’t play them either.

A NEW NORMAL Having a family member in the business did more for Neal than give him great backstage access. His uncle is Jeff Two Times of the controversial, legendary major label outfits Made Men and Almighty RSO, and so Neal got to see for himself the intensity and drama that can come from waving hip-hop flags around this town. At the same time, it wasn’t a rap concert at all, but rather a performance by one of his favorite rock groups, that opened his eyes to the possibilities of what could be done on a stage.

“I went to [see] Radiohead, and it was beautiful,” Neal says.

“Everyone was singing along. It was great. Then I said to myself, ‘I want to do this.’ I wanted to bring that energy back into the hip-hop world.

This is a vibe. This is an experience.”

In the years that followed, the Dorchester native built relationships throughout the scene, including meeting Roxbury’s Real P while interning at a local radio station.

Real P had developed his name as a DJ and an MC, while Neal, as the manager for local favorite Dutch ReBelle, had been building with an Arlington native and fellow talent manager named Steve Foley at several shows. Before long, they all threw down together on a boat cruise, which went so well that they decided to keep rocking as a unit.

Next came the idea to forge their own platform instead of waiting to get booked by others, and in 2016 they created N.E.O.N.E. On a mission to create a spot for artists who are

“We tell these kids, ‘It’s your craft. Take it seriously.’”

building grassroots buzz, fall of that year, they launched the Pull Up with a sold-out show at the Middle East Upstairs in Cambridge. The follow-up show downstairs in the larger room in the January of 2017 was a success as well, but as members of the crew told WBUR last month, attempts to host a third installment were rejected. After a year of searching, N.E.O.N.E. landed at ONCE Somerville, where the series will reboot this Friday.

Pull Up represents. The Lawrence-based artist has gone on multiple tours through Latin America and counts the experience booking the show amongst her favorites.

“The more we were involved with the team, the more excited and inspired we were to do it,” Kaovanny adds.

“I know everyone is going to bring their best show. … It’s super important for my motivation to continue leveling up.”

EACH ONE TEACH ONE

GETTING TO THE BAG

Even with hip-hop being heralded as the leading genre in America, and with Massachusetts artists like Joyner Lucas and Cousin Stizz selling out large venues nationally, the music can still be a tough sell here in Boston.

Against that backdrop, the Pull Up does its best to walk less experienced artists through everything from contract negotiations to sound check.

“Some of these artists are new [to performing live],” Foley explains. “They are new to contracts. It’s their first or second time on the stage. A lot of people get the internet buzz now and never get to get on the stage. We tell these kids, ‘It’s your craft. Take it seriously.’”

“It doesn’t feel like a local showcase,” Neal adds. “We try to position each artist on the lineup as their own thing, and try to promote them as a star. … We aren’t just trying to put people on a bill and have a show.”

That approach includes making individual flyers for each artist, interviewing their performers and distributing the videos on social media ahead of time, curating a playlist to familiarize the audience, and paying artists.

These guys are flipping the paradigm that artists should be grateful for the opportunity, and are treating people like professionals. It’s a major shift in a game where so many others are still practicing record industry rule #4080: Record company people are shady.

“Even the logistics behind the event are the smoothest I’ve ever experienced in Boston thus far,” says Kaovanny, a singer/rapper who’s ecstatic about the energy that the

In the changing music world, hitting stages on the regular is more than just an ego play. The experience is a necessary part of a city’s art scene on the consumer side, and an essential part of one’s bottom line on the artist side. Performing is one of the main ways that an artist can make a living and garner the attention to move to the next level.

“It’s the only way to tell what’s real and what’s not,” Geespin says about kicking it live. In his latest role as an agent at one of the industry’s leading shops, United Talent Agency, Geespin works with an artist roster that includes the likes of Jeezy and Mariah Carey, and says that things are “different from when we were growing up.”

“There was a proof of purchase,” Geespin continues. “I had 10 dollars in my pocket and I was going to take that to the record store. And I was going to buy that one record that I wanted that day. … I’d take that record home. I read the liner notes. That was my passion for that artist. That was my commitment. Now kids are consuming music differently. … Now they’re being exposed to millions of artists. So the live music thing is the one point where they can take their $20 and actually purchase something.

“You don’t go to concerts for the music. You go for the experience. So the live show for someone like me looking at artists is a direct passion purchase.”

For those hoping to impact beyond Boston, it’s also the only path to the much-discussed next level.

It’s the only way to pull up.

>> NEW ERA OF NEW ENGLAND PRESENTS … THE PULL UP FEAT. LATRELL JAMES, KAOVANNY, DECO FAM, LORD FELIX AND MORE. FRI 3.30. 7:30PM/18+. ONCESOMERVILLE.COM

NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

13

THE THIRSTY GAINS TERMS OF SERVICE

With latest move, Pressley may finally dent liquor license disparity

BY HALEY HAMILTON @SAUCYLIT

Good news, Boston: Last week, Boston at-large City Councilor Ayanna Pressley filed a home rule petition to create 153 new liquor licenses.

That’s a really big deal.

Whether you’re born and raised, new to town, just passing through, or a transplant who’s been in the restaurant industry here for years (hi, friends), you know the city has a tortured relationship with liquor licenses.

Since the repeal of Prohibition, the number of licenses available in Boston has been limited by the state, not growing each year with the city’s population, not increasing with local demand, and hardly budging in spite of cries and pleas from aspiring bar owners and restaurateurs.

Because of an arbitrary cap placed by the state exclusively on Boston (Somerville and Cambridge don’t have this mess to contend with, nor does any other town or city) 85 years ago, opening a restaurant in Boston city limits that serves alcohol has notoriously cost an extra $350,000, roughly the going market price of a license.

And that’s if someone is selling. News recently broke that Sonny Walker’s, a Roxbury bar in business for nearly 40 years, will serve its last drink April 1 and sold its license to the national steakhouse Del Frisco’s, which the Boston Globe reports “plans to open [its second Boston] restaurant on Boylston Street in the Back Bay.” Things got better, sort of, a little bit, in 2006, and then in a big way in 2014, when Pressley pushed a home rule petition through the state legislature that, as her city profile highlights, “[returned] control of the Licensing Board to the City for the first time in more than 100 years and [provided] 75 new licenses to the City over three years, with 80% of those licenses restricted to the neighborhoods most in need.”

Last week’s legislation builds on that momentum.

The vast majority of those 153 licenses will be restricted to seven historically underserved Boston neighborhoods: Roxbury, Mattapan, Dorchester, Hyde Park, Jamaica Plain, Mission Hill and East Boston. The petition also proposes a new classification of license called “umbrella licenses” that operate like the license at Logan Airport, where all restaurant operators in the airport fall under the single license.

“Restaurants are the glue for thriving, healthy neighborhoods,” Pressley said in a statement. “I am encouraged, but not yet satisfied by the success of the 2014 legislation that created 75 new liquor licenses for the City of Boston, which helped dozens of new restaurants open and created hundreds of new jobs. It is clear that the 14

03.29.18 - 04.05.18 |

DIGBOSTON.COM

city still sees disparities in walkable, sit down amenities, but this home rule, in partnership with Mayor Walsh and the Massachusetts Legislature, is a step towards creating an ecosystem that allows neighborhoods to grow at their own pace.”

If you still have questions about how this came to be, or about how these licenses have been parsed up to now, I suggest reading my two-part series on the matter, “The Thirsty Games.” Otherwise, here are the nitty gritty answers to the biggest questions that this legislation poses, straight from Pressley’s office: What does this legislation do?

Over the course of 3 years, this legislation creates 153 new non-transferable liquor licenses for the City of Boston. It also creates a new classification of licenses called “umbrella licenses” that will allow larger developments to apply for a license that will apply to their entire footprint.

What is the breakdown of the 153 licenses?

105 licenses will be created over 3 years for the 7 neighborhoods named in the 2014 Liquor License Reform legislation (Dorchester, East Boston, Hyde Park, Jamaica Plain, Mattapan, Mission Hill and Roxbury).

The breakdown will be 3 all alcohol and 2 beer and wine licenses per neighborhood, per year, for 3 years (15 per neighborhood).

15 licenses will be created for Main Street Districts as defined by their geographic boundaries by the Office of Business Development in the City of Boston. The breakdown will be 3 all alcohol and 2 beer and wine per year for all the Main Street Districts in Boston and they will pull from the same pool of licenses, per year (15 for all Main Streets) 30 licenses will be all-city licenses, meaning they can be issued anywhere within the geographic boundaries of the City of Boston. The breakdown will be 7 all alcohol and 3 beer and wine for the entire city per year (10 all city) NOTE: Back Bay, Beacon Hill and the North End cannot be issued more than 3 per year, per neighborhood.

3 specific licenses will be created for Lawn on D, the Boston Center for the Arts and the Bruce C. Bolling Building, respectfully.

Both have been applying for 1 day licenses to support their programming and add civic value by having licenses dedicated to their location. These will not be transferable to any other business (3 total) What are Umbrella Licenses?

Umbrella Licenses are a new classification created in the legislation. There are specific definitions for developments that qualify to apply for these licenses.

They include being a development that exceeds 700,000 square feet gross floor area and are under common ownership.

Developments that qualify will apply under the same process as other licensees, and if awarded will allow operators hoping to open inside the development to apply to the Boston Licensing Board to be allowed to serve alcohol under the umbrella license without requiring a stand-alone license.

For an example, currently Logan Airport operates under a similar structure, whereby Logan Airport has one license and businesses wishing to operate at the airport apply with the City of Boston Licensing Board to be allowed to serve alcohol, but do not use a license under the state imposed cap, or East Boston neighborhood restricted licenses.

When a business ceases to operate in the airport, any new operator must apply for the ability to serve alcohol and the new operator cannot transfer a license from the operator closing their business. There is a $150,000 fee for an umbrella license.

How is this different than 2014 legislation?

The two most striking differences are the eligibility requirements for the neighborhood restricted licenses and the creation of umbrella licenses.

Under the 2014 legislation, each neighborhood had equal access to the neighborhood restricted licenses, an operator in any of the 7 neighborhoods (Roxbury, Dorchester, Mattapan, Jamaica Plain, Hyde Park, Mission Hill and East Boston) or a city recognized Main Street District could apply and if public need was proven, could be issued license. There was no priority by neighborhood or distinction within the legislation.

In the 2018 legislation, each neighborhood will be given their own independent number of licenses that can only be issued within the boundaries of that neighborhood. This legislation would create 15 new Mattapan licenses over three years that will be available whenever a restauranteur is ready to open there, as an example.

This legislation also creates a 1-year cool off period for any liquor license operator who sells their transferable license, barring them from applying for a nontransferable restricted license for the same location.

Why these neighborhoods?

The original intent of the 2014 legislation was to reduce disparities in neighborhood sit down restaurants around the city, and while it was a good step forward, there remains more work to be done.

These neighborhoods can still benefit from additional sit down restaurants, and this legislation protects the listed neighborhoods from competing with each other for licenses.

Are these the only neighborhoods?

Not necessarily. While there are Main Street Districts and city wide licenses, we want to hear from community and their elected official delegations about opportunities to add additional neighborhoods.

What about downtown neighborhoods who do not want more?

There is a provision of the legislation that does not allow more than 3 of the all city licenses to go to the North End, Back Bay or Beacon Hill as residents have raised concerns of over saturation of licenses on those communities.

FAIRMOUNT GRILLE EATS

A charming place well off the beaten path

PRESENTS

SECRET SOCIETY

A CANNIBUS & CBD INFUSED DINNER ON 4/20 (7710PM)

BY MARC HURWITZ @HIDDENBOSTON

MIPSCARE IS PROUD TO ANNOUNCE THIS YEARS 420 (5) COURSE DINNER TO BE HELD AT A SECRET DOWNTOWN BOSTON LOCATION KEEPING IT CLASSY & FESTIVE

MENU

CHARMOULA SALAD

ENDIVE, ROASTED CAULIFLOWER, RED CHARMOULA INFUSED WITH CANNA OIL, FREEZE DRIED RASPBERRIES RICOTTA SALATA

MUSSELS

SMOKED CANNA BUTTER, TOASTED HAZELNUTS, MADD HERBS BASQUE CIDER, CHORIZO (SOME WITHOUT)

SKATE WING PICCATA

YUKON POMME PUREE, LEMON CANNA BUTTER FRIED CAPERS Everyone knows that Boston has a number of “hot” neighborhoods for dining out (for better or worse), with a few of them being the Seaport District, Fort Point, the Fenway, and Downtown Crossing, the last of which is finally starting to become a place to go to after years of stops and starts. Not all areas of the city are dining destinations, of course, and one neighborhood that doesn’t really seem to be on anyone’s radar is Hyde Park, perhaps because it’s just so far away from downtown or maybe because it’s a mostly residential neighborhood that people go home to at night rather than head out to. That being said, there are some real gems in this extreme southern section of Boston, including a rather charming and romantic restaurant and bar called the Fairmount Grille, which gets very little press but really has become a local favorite for food, drink, and atmosphere.

Hyde Park tends to be a neighborhood full of squares and little sub-neighborhoods, and the Fairmount Grille sits in a rather obscure spot between one of each—bustling Logan Square to the west and quiet and suburban-feeling Fairmount Hill to the east.

The restaurant’s close proximity to the Fairmount commuter rail station makes this a relatively easy place to get to via public transportation considering just how far it is from downtown Boston, so a fair amount of commuters frequent the place on weeknights. Although it barely even registers as a dining spot from the outside (the signage is nearly invisible), the interior is spacious and impressive, with the first floor consisting of a bar and a large dining area and the second floor—which is accessed by a winding staircase—having some additional table. More seating can be found in a little private-feeling area toward the back of the first floor, while a seasonal outdoor patio is hidden further back behind the restaurant. A huge fireplace dominates the space, and unlike many fireplaces in Boston, this is a wood-burning one—and an enormous old-fashioned clock hangs above the fireplace, which is a very nice touch, adding some additional warmth and character to the space.

The Fairmount Grille had once been home to a beloved spot called Townsend’s, and while that place was unusual in that it was basically an Irish restaurant with global influences, the Fairmount Grille is probably just a touch more familiar-feeling to most, being a casual upscale bistro of sorts with a mix of classic American, New American, and Mediterranean offerings. Highlights are many here, with the Rhode Island-style calamari, BBQ-glazed meatloaf, and chicken parmigiana with linguine being three items that stand out. The menu has much more to offer, however, making it tough to choose, with such items as pan-seared perogies, spicy Texas chili, a classic New England clam chowder, garlicky steak tips, a creamy mac and cheese with cavatappi pasta, and a pan-seared brick chicken with mashed sweet potatoes all being worthwhile options.

The Fairmount Grill offers a full bar, and while some solid craft beer options can be found here (Founders, Boulevard, 21st Amendment), this seems like more of a place for a glass of red or white or definitely a cocktail, with martinis being front and center.

Desserts include one that you must save room for—a sublime carrot cake that may be the best this side of the long-closed Scup’s in East Boston, which is certainly saying a lot.

Prices for meals are quite reasonable, with sandwiches tending to be a bit over $10 and most main dishes hovering around the $20 mark.

If you live in the heart of Boston (or Cambridge, Somerville, or Brookline, for that matter) and you don’t have a car, Hyde Park may seem more like the Maine wilderness to you than a Boston neighborhood, but it really isn’t that difficult to get to. And sure, it doesn’t have the sheer number of restaurants that other parts of the city have, but in a way, that’s what makes places like the Fairmount Grille so appealing, as the restaurant feels like a place that you, and only you, know about. Add the fact that it has easy parking and is right next to a commuter station, and food and drink prices that are a good amount below similar places closer to downtown, and you have yourself a true winner here. >> FAIRMOUNT GRILLE. 81 FAIRMOUNT AVE., HYDE PARK.

HANGER STEAK

CHIMICHURRI INFUSED CANNA OIL BLUE CHEESE, MALT VINEGAR CHIPS

ICE CREAM COOKIE SANDWICHES CANNA BUTTER SUGAR COOKIE, BUTTERFINGER COFFEE ICE CREAM SPECIAL GUESTS

CORMEGA

REGISTER AT WWW.KCPROPERDOSE.COM THE PRICE FOR THIS PRIVATE EVENT IS $250 PER PERSON. YOU PAY FOR THE FOOD, THE MARIJUANA AND CBD INFUSIONS ARE ON US THERE WILL BE NO MARIJUANA FOR SALE AT THIS EVENT

Do you want to work in advertising and marketing at your favorite alternative newspaper?

We are expanding our sales team at If you are interested in joining us, please email the following to sales@digboston.com with “SALES JOB” in the subject line: ● ●

Current Resume A few words about the kind of businesses you think you can have success selling ads to (i.e. restaurants, cannabis) NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

15

GIA GREENE MUSIC

After unexpected surgery, Allston indie rocker finally releases debut

BY NINA CORCORAN @NINA_CORCORAN Making music naturally takes time. Writing songs, finding time to record, and tweaking things during the mastering process add up, not to mention planning a proper press rollout. But sometimes, other factors enter the equation.

Life happens. The ideal release date gets pushed back.

Another year passes. In the case of Allston musician Gia Greene, the delay in releasing her debut full-length album, Unexpected Guest, continued to stretch on because of such and, for the most part, she had no choice in the matter.

Until now.

Things look sunny in 2018 for Gia Greene. At 24 years old, she’s juggling work and music without breaking a sweat, or at least it looks that way from the outside. She surrounds herself with a supportive group of friends. She’s a friendly face in the local music scene. Over the last few years, she’s found a way to stabilize her life and figured out how to put energy into the areas she wants to grow.

Greene has a newfound appreciation for the way her life looks because last year, right in January, she almost had that taken away.

In January of 2017, Greene discovered that she suffered from a retinal detachment in her left eye. She had to have emergency surgery. The process was scary and naturally raised questions from Greene. Would her eye suffer permanent damage? Would she be able to see the same way again? Would this impact her daily functioning and the times in which she needs help? It was a terrifying time that grew longer and longer. Greene had another follow-up surgery for her eye. A few months later, she had another follow-up surgery. Her time in the hospital was bookended by long stretches of recovery time, during which she was required to refrain from strenuous activity. Music had to wait, and in the grand scheme of things it seemed like a valid area of her life to sacrifice if it meant she could see clearly again. The experience took an extra toll on Greene, too, because of what it reminded her of: her preexisting health condition, a genetic disorder called Stickler syndrome, that will continue to affect her for the rest of her life.

In addition to all this, in the same first six months of the year, she moved three times due to three separate unfortunate circumstances, her beloved family home was sold, and her dog of 17 years passed away. “It was an immensely tumultuous time that really only began to feel right during the last half of the year,” says Greene. “I truly would not have gotten through it all without the help of my family and friends, who were there to support me through a literal series of unfortunate events.”

Music was the one thing that was there for her even when she closed her eyes. She made a Kickstarter to create Unexpected Guest that was fully funded come June of 2016.

She recorded the album the end half of the year and began working on its completion. When the emergency surgery happened, the album was put on hold—but it was waiting for her when she came back.

In a way, music never left her to begin with. It’s what Greene’s life has centered around ever since she was young.

She began singing publicly at age two during her summer

club’s lip sync night (“I was historically throughout the years the only child who actually preferred to sing and never lip-synced the words,” she laughs), which segued into her involvement in choirs, both in childhood and adulthood. Her involvement in Handel and Haydn choirs from ages 11 to 18 earned her a scholarship for private voice and piano lessons at New England Conservatory Preparatory School. In 2011, she received the program’s Achtmeyer Award.

While all of this was happening, Greene was simultaneously writing her own alt-rock music as an 11-year-old and formed a middle school band. She wrote material for herself and for the band, priming herself for multi-arrangement pieces down the line. Eventually, she got into Berklee College of Music as a voice principle.

“I made it a point to study jazz voice and take as many vocal jazz improvisation classes as possible,” says Greene.

“Despite my classical training, I was heavily interested in learning how to perform jazz and how to use jazz techniques and theory within my own music.” She soaked up everything the college had to offer. In 2016, she graduated with a bachelor’s in music education.

All this goes to say that Gia Greene isn’t just a musician in hobby, but in totality. Her body is brimming with music and her whole life has been a space in which she can share it. Every influence she’s absorbed over the years—Cocteau Twins, Esperanza Spaulding, Portishead, PJ Harvey, Joanna Newsom, Stevie Wonder, the list goes on so far as to include Hot Rats by Frank Zappa—has found its way to impact her music, turning her classical background into a springboard for modern twists and nontechnical flair. Her album reflects that. From its themes of self-doubt, affection, and assurance to its alternative bent within the indie rock realm, Unexpected Guest is everything Greene has been shaping it to be over the years, even if it took some extra time to finalize it.

“Despite my own personal desire to get the album out as quickly as possible, I am ultimately glad that I didn’t rush any of the process,” she says. “I think that going through the personal hellstorm that was 2017 was the universe’s way of slowing me down and getting me to do this album in a more deliberate and steady manner. I firmly believe in quality over quantity when it comes to music, and I believe [in] spending as much time as possible to produce a finished work that you yourself, as an artist, can be completely satisfied with. I always looked to Fiona Apple for this; she seldom puts out albums, but when she does, they are absolutely magnificent. I think this is a product of her making her art at her own pace, rather than at the pace of others.”

The plus side of the delay is that it gave Greene more time to feel the effects of living in Allston. The artists in Boston’s music community completely changed her approach to music, essentially giving Greene new ideas to push her music to new limits. She rattles off a long list of scene colleagues with genuine appreciation: Palehound, Puppy Problems, Dent, Dazey and the Scouts, Pile, DUMP HIM, Mini Dresses, Lady Pills, Gravel, Prior Panic, and more.

Sadie Dupuis of Speedy Ortiz was particularly influential in the writing of this album, too.

“What all of these acts have in common is that their songwriting is true: true to their lived experiences, true to themselves, and none of it is formulaic or trying to ‘be’ any specific thing at all,” she says. “Getting to see these bands, almost all of whom are good friends of mine, perform their truth out on stage has been a wildly profound experience.

It has given me the confidence to do the same, and to push my musical boundaries as much as I can.”

Gia Greene will likely join those ranks as a musician who will inspire those around her—though it’s also likely she already has. Her sheer perseverance and thoroughness have proven themselves to be pillars of her personality, even if she doesn’t address them literally. They help her love of music to shine with its own bright color. As she takes the stage this weekend for the long-awaited record release show for her album, a specific type of healing will take place for both her and those in the audience. It’s a type of spiritually uplifting aid that’s best felt in person, all the more authentic because of what she’s lived through.

“I continue to play music because it is my ritual. It is my therapy. It is my religion. It is my way of processing life as it comes in a manner that is not only incredibly cathartic, but that is a manifestation of my personal practice of witchcraft,” she says. “Writing music heals me, but it also heals others, which is quite possibly the greatest unintentional side effect of the practice. I write music to create beauty out of my pain, and others listen to music and get to interpret and personalize it in ways where they, too, can be healed.”

PHOTO COURTESY OF GIA GREENE

>>GIA GREENE, PUPPY PROBLEMS, KAL MARKS (SOLO). SAT 3.31. LILYPAD INMAN, 1353 CAMBRIDGE ST., CAMBRIDGE. 7PM/ALL AGES/$10. LILYPADINMAN.COM

MUSIC EVENTS THU 03.29

THE ALTERNATIVE SIDE OF GLOUCESTER FOSSY JAW + BAD LARRYS + MARTHA MARTHA + JUNIOR BEEF

[O’Brien’s Pub, 3 Harvard Ave., Allston. 8pm/21+/$7. obrienspubboston.com]

16

03.29.18 - 04.05.18 |

SAT 03.31

DRUM LIFE AFTER BON IVER S. CAREY + GORDI

[Great Scott, 1222 Comm.

Ave., Allston. 9pm/21+/$16. greatscottboston.com]

DIGBOSTON.COM

SUN 04.01

INDIE ROCK COLLAGE POP FROM THE WORLD WIDE WEB SUPERORGANISM + HELENA DELAND [Brighton Music Hall, 158 Brighton Ave., Allston. 7pm/18+/$12. crossroadspresents.com]

MON 04.02

POST-CLUB GRIME FOR A CHILLWAVE HIGH NEGATIVE GEMINI + GEORGE CLANTON + DUST FROM 1000 YEARS [Great Scott, 1222 Comm. Ave., Allston.

8:30pm/18+/$10. ]

TUE 04.03

WED 04.04

[Cafe 939, 939 Boylston St., Boston. 8pm/all ages/$12. berklee.edu]

[Cafe 939, 939 Boylston St., Boston. 8pm/all ages/$12. berklee.edu]

BLUES ROCK MEANDERINGS WITH A HARMONICA MOOD L.A. SALAMI + CAT CLYDE

SPARSE FOLK FOR BANJO FOLKS THE WEATHER STATION + SAM MOSS

YO LA TENGO WHEEL OF TUNES

Mellow indie rockers talk T-shirts, Charlottesville, and ukuleles

Celebrate and honor Asian Pacific Islander Desi American (APIDA) Heritage Month

BY NINA CORCORAN @NINA_CORCORAN Though they aren’t musical shapeshifters the way some bands are, Yo La Tengo have always been a tricky band to describe. The New Jersey trio of Ira Kaplan, Georgia Hubley, and James McNew formed in 1984 and have never taken a break, earning themselves the title of indie rock veterans. Their sound ebbs and flows from YO LA TENGO PHOTO BY GODLIS hushed, warm, acoustic-style whispers to reverb-shaking, tempo-chasing, understated rock. To date, they have 15 full-length studio albums. It can feel intimidating when you add it all up.

But the trio glow with an unbothered, unpresumptuous, down-to-earth vibe, in their personalities and in their music. They care about what they do and they care about the world, but they aren’t concerned with their social status in it. That’s evident on There’s a Riot Going On, their brand-new album and first in three years. The titular Sly and Family Stone reference nods to the post-trauma comedown feeling Yo La Tengo explores on the record, not the style with which they do it. As if by magic, they didn’t rehearse the songs before recording. They just let songs come together over time.

Though it’s a fun, creative, and challenging process, there was still some struggle to create the final product fans hear on the album.

“There’s a few instances on the record of songs we began writing and recording but then stopped and ripped apart,” says McNew. “We took one instrument and began a new session with that and took it in a completely different direction. While that’s not a new concept for us, as we’re constantly changing arrangements of our songs and letting one idea grow out of another, that was exciting and very fun. Through the miracle of Pro Tools and digital recording, we can do things like that as soon as ideas would occur to us. We would seize them right then to see if they worked or not. In fact, there’s an overwhelming majority of very spontaneous moments that we were able to capture while recording: ‘You Are Here,’ the last song ‘Here You Are,’ and the song Dig Boston.indd ‘Shortwave.’”

To explore the backstory to Yo La Tengo’s vibe, we interviewed James McNew for a round of Wheel of Tunes, a series where we ask musicians questions inspired by their song titles. With There’s a Riot Going On as the prompt, the questions and his answers give a charismatic insight into why their onstage presence is what it is at the Paradise this Tuesday.

May 1 • 5:30pm - 7:30pm Chinese Calligraphy with Rayna Lo RSVP: northeastern.edu/crossing May 8 • 5:30pm - 7:30pm Creative Journey to Wellness May 15 • 5:30pm - 7:30pm Blasian Narratives film screening May 22 • 5:30pm - 7:30pm Mindfulness Practice with Nhung Vo FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.

1175 Tremont Street, Roxbury info@northeasterncrossing.org • 617-373-2555

1

3/15/18 1:24 PM

LIVE MUSIC • PRIVATE EVENTS

1. “You Are Here” How did you kick off this past weekend?

Wow, gosh. Everything is so slammed right now. We leave to go on tour tomorrow, so we’re trying to cram six months’ worth of stuff into the everyday. I’m honestly having trouble remembering what I did after practice. Oh wait! I remember! I went out to the neighborhoods of Bushwick and Ridgewood. In Bushwick, I had a fantastic meal at a Mexican restaurant I love very much. Then I went to Ridgewood to see a set of improvised music made by the guitar player Thalia Zedek, who is from Boston, and Phil Milstein, who is a tape loop and sound manipulator guy also from Boston. It was amazing to see them. They used to be in a band together 30-something years ago and now they’re collaborating again.

2. “Shades of Blue” What are your favorite and least favorite shades of blue?

I’m colorblind so I don’t know the answer to this question. I’m not severe black-andwhite colorblind, but I can’t really identify different shades of the same color. So I’m going to have to say blue. I wish I could be more specific!

3. “She May, She Might” Can you name a memory involving your mother that always makes you smile?

Yeah, I just talked to my mom about a half hour ago. She lives in Charlottesville, Virginia. That’s where I grew up. The tour rolls through Charlottesville in a week and a half. I’ll be seeing my mom. We’re going to get lunch and I’ll probably do some laundry—that’s a forever type thing. My mom comes to see us play any chance she gets.

She knows to bring earplugs, and everybody knows my mom. In all honesty, I don’t know how old she is now. I think I try to avoid knowing how old anybody is. I just know when their birthdays are, never their age, which seems like the important thing to remember. I lost track of ages a long time ago and I don’t think anyone minded.

3/29

Queer Faith - A Story Telling Event: Begged, borrowed, and stolen, fabulous and fierce.

3/30

The Pull Up

Latrell James, Philly G and Baylen, Lord Felix & more 4/04

Casey Neill & the Norway Rats, Golden Oak Folk rock 4/04

Après Le Déluge: The Buddy Cole Monologues Scott Thompson as the Kids in the Hall Lounge Lizard 4/05

Das Mortal, Andre Obin Electronic techno

156 Highland Ave • Somerville, MA 617-285-0167 oncesomerville.com a @oncesomerville b/ONCEsomerville

FIND THE REST OF THE TRACKS FROM NINA'S PIECE AT DIGBOSTON.COM >> YO LA TENGO. TUE 4.3. PARADISE ROCK CLUB, 967 COMM. AVE., ALLSTON. 7PM/18+/$25. CROSSROADSPRESENTS.COM NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

17

IT WENT TO 11 FILM

An Oral History of the Boston International Festival of Women’s Cinema

BY JAKE MULLIGAN @_JAKEMULLIGAN would see some of the filmmakers making them go on to make feature-length films next, and then you’d see those feature-length films get picked up by some of those boutique distributors, and then you’d see those films reach a pretty strong art-film audience.

CW: Mary Herron made I Shot Andy Warhol [1996], Sofia Coppola made The Virgin Suicides [1999]. … There was so much exciting work being done by women. But women weren’t just making films about women. The idea wasn’t to be a festival for “women’s stories.” You know, women were making American Psych [2000] (also directed by Mary Herron). There were some really violent movies that you wouldn’t think of as representing a women’s sensibility—if you were being limited about what a women’s sensibility is. In terms of filmmaking, it was very diverse. *** ML: When people asked me why it stopped, I always reference Spinal Tap [1984]: We got it to 11 years. “It goes to 11.” I would’ve been upset if it had only got to 10.

I SHOT ANDY WARHOL (1996) The Boston International Festival of Women’s Cinema was founded in 1993 by Marianne Lampke, Connie White, and Anne Marie Stein. At the time, White and Lampke were the owners and operators of the Brattle Theatre, and Stein was the executive director of the Boston Film/Video Foundation. The festival continued until 2003, by which point all three had moved on from their aforementioned positions. Earlier this month, the Brattle Theatre celebrated the 25th anniversary of the first BIFWC by screening a selection of films that were exhibited at the festival throughout its 11-year run. All three co-founders spoke to us individually before the Brattle’s anniversary celebration, and offered their memories about the festival’s history.

Connie White: We took over the Brattle in December of ’86 and reopened it in January of ’87. So during 1986, I was working at the Boston Film/Video Foundation.

Marianne had been there for a few years, too. And when we started the Women’s Festival, we reached out to Anne Marie.

Anne Marie Stein: When I started at the Boston Film/ Video Foundation, I overlapped with Marianne and Connie for about one month. They had taken over the lease at the Brattle and given notice to BF/VF. When they started the festival, they called and asked if I wanted to partner with them—I said absolutely!

CW: At the time, the Brattle was not a nonprofit—the Brattle was a mom and pop.

Marianne Lampke: We ran it as a quote-unquote “for profit.”

CW: So we wanted to partner with a nonprofit organization in order to make the Women’s Festival more of a nonprofit entity itself.

ML: We were showing films by women anyway, throughout the year. But we started thinking: What are some things we want to do beyond just running [the Brattle] as a repertory movie theater?

CW: My recollection is that when Marianne and I started running the Brattle, we didn’t want to have an isolated festival of women’s cinema. We wanted to incorporate women-directed film into our regular programming. That was a priority. But once we got 18

03.29.18 - 04.05.18 |

DIGBOSTON.COM

involved with the business, and understood how the business worked …

ML: The big thing we wanted to do was to have a showcase for women filmmakers. When you’re showing 25 films in a one-week period, all directed by women filmmakers, often with female main characters … it puts things in a whole different context. It was a real opportunity for people to talk about and think about that [sensibility]—in ways that you wouldn’t do when you only see a single movie that happens to have a strong female sensibility once every five months.

We had been running the Brattle since 1986. And seven years into running it, we were taking note of the fact that there weren’t a lot of female business owners who were running movie theaters, or who were in the film exhibition world. And we felt a sense of responsibility towards highlighting films by women. *** CW: There was an American independent [scene] burgeoning.

ML: There was a movement within independent filmmaking in general: the emergence of queer cinema; the emergence of women filmmakers; the boutique film distributors that were starting to come into play. …

AMS: The support of the distributors was really interesting. Because there was always the question of what was premiering when and where. … Those things were always very carefully orchestrated.

ML: At the time, if you got Miramax films, you were like, oh my God, we were able to get a couple of Miramax films in this festival. In the context of women’s filmmaking, that’s a true irony.

CW: Yeah. October Films, Fine Line, Fox Searchlight, they were all big supporters of ours. … and, I mean, Miramax … Miramax had a lot of good films.

ML: We’d show packages of short films, too. I remember seeing a short film by Lisa Cholodenko. And then two or three years later, she comes out with High Art [1998], which I think is an incredible, breakthrough film. … and that’s why I bring up the short films: You

AMS: I remember the 10th anniversary. One of the big questions we always debated—it would come up once in a while, especially near the end—was is there really a need for a women’s film festival? And I think it’s interesting, right now, to be looking back at that question, while thinking about #MeToo and what’s going on in Hollywood. You think about the importance of recognizing the achievements of women in the film industry, and the many women who are working independently. It could have gone on, I think.

ML: I think it’s sometimes good to put closure on things. I feel really good about the era we did that festival in. It was the perfect era for it. That felt right, that felt good.

AMS: With time, you get a certain level of perspective, and you understand the value of something through a different lens. When you’re running things day to day, it’s a little hard to know the impact, and the effect.

ML: With everything going on today, I think the anniversary is remarkably timely. … Women’s films do have a different sensibility, which we’re starting to talk about now, more than before, with the whole #MeToo movement. I think right now everybody’s saying, you know, how can women be more empowered in Hollywood?

But it’s deeper than that—it also has to do with aesthetics. I believe female filmmaking is distinctive. And I think it [requires] moviegoers to approach films in a way that’s different from what they’re used to.

Connie White currently works as a film buyer for independent art houses and film festivals, primarily through her company Balcony Booking.

Marianne Lampke currently manages publicity for the Coolidge Corner Theatre and continues to do other work in the nonprofit sector outside the film industry as well.

Anne Marie Stein is currently the dean of professional and continuing education at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

Comments have been edited and condensed for clarity.

Check out the full version at digboston.com.

NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

19

SCOTT THOMPSON COMEDY

Kid in the Hall, out to the world

BY DENNIS MALER @DEADAIRDENNIS

of the closet and hilarious, and it amazed me—even as a straight, white, hetero male, Thompson’s brazen in-your-face comedy influenced how I would view people and the rest of the world forever after.

Naturally, in preparation for his three nights of shows at Once Lounge in Somerville, I asked Thompson about his motivations, the life events that fuel his comedy, and more.

Let’s start with the question that I’m sure everyone in every interview has asked you: How did Kids in the Hall come together?

Mark and Bruce had a group from Calgary called the Audience.

Kevin, Dave, and Luciano Casimiri were the original Kids in the Hall.

I had a group called the Love Cats, and that was the kind of stew.

We all met in during Theatre Sports, which was competitive improvisation. They formed a big group of eight people, and started performing at the Valley and other places around town. When I saw them one night, I fell in love and said to my friend, I remember very clearly saying, “I’m going to be in that group.”

PHOTO BY BRUCE SMITH

Prior to SNL’s debut in 1975, the only time you’d really see sketch comedy on television was between musical acts on some celebrity-hosted variety show. The Not Ready for Prime Time Players showed the world that a show of just sketch comedy could survive though, but throughout the ’80s and ’90s, sketch in America stayed pretty broad with shows like Hee Haw and the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.

Meanwhile, up in Canada they were secretly creating brilliant, subversive, and surreal sketch comedy. And thanks to HBO, which imported The Kids in the Hall from the northern throes starting in 1989, those who were stuck between the ending of Monty Python and the debuts of In Living Color and The State had some subversive and surrealistic comedy to chew on.

I was one of those kids. Growing up watching secondhand sketch comedy from north of the border blew my emerging little comedy mind. Things like “I crush your head,” 30 Helens Agreeing, and knowing what’ll happen when pigs fly (eventually crash into power lines and cook themselves) became part of my everyday vernacular, despite the bewildered faces of those around me.

In the middle of it all was comedian, actor, and legendary improviser Scott Thompson. He was both out

Was being an out gay man important to your comedy?

You have to remember those days were very different than today. First of all, homosexuals were literally criminals in much of the world, and they still are on most of the planet. But in the West we’ve made a lot of progress. And then on top of it, HIV was decimating our community, people were dying like flies. So for me at that time, it really wasn’t a choice. I felt that it would have been immoral to stay in the closet. I figured somebody had to do it, because I didn’t want other kids to go through what I had to have to go through.

Did other outlandish or stereotypical gay characters of the time influence the way you played your gay characters?

I always portray my characters as realistic as possible.

Well, most of them. Buddy Cole came from inside, and I think people were uncomfortable with it. Back then gay men were very much on the outside and very much a figure of fun. In comedy gay stereotypes were very much a stock part of comedy. So, one of my goals was to destroy that, make homosexuals three-dimensional, and not the punchline.

You’ve had a lot of tragedy, you survived cancer, you witnessed a school shooting when you were a kid, and you were firebombed by terrorists for a documentary you were making. Have these incidents influenced your comedy?

>> SEE SCOTT THOMPSON IN APRÈS LE DÉLUGE: THE BUDDY COLE MONOLOGUES FROM 4.5–7 AT ONCE SOMERVILLE. TICKETS ARE $20 AND CAN BE PURCHASED AT ONCESOMERVILLE.COM. 20

03.29.18 - 04.05.18 |

DIGBOSTON.COM

Absolutely. I’ve had, let’s call it a bumpy life, but I’m a survivor and right now I look back and I’m like, holy fuck, I cannot believe that I’m still here. The world has tried to kill me over and over again, and it’s just not working; obviously I have something to do. That’s how I feel that I have not accomplished what I need to do yet.

I think it’s absolutely affected me. The shooting for one thing is a huge wound in my life that I constantly return to. … I look at these young kids, and I know exactly what they’re going through. I know where they’re at. I know what they’re thinking. I know I’m proud of them, even though I have no real right to be proud of them, they’re not mine. But I think that what they’re doing is remarkable, and I think to myself a lot, “How can I help them without making it appear like I’m jumping on their bandwagon?”

I can’t put it off any longer. … You can patch it over, but it’s like patching up an old sofa: Occasionally the stuffing will continue to come out. That’s how I feel now, like the stuffing is coming out. … I’ve written monologues about that incident. I did a one-person show about it that never got seen because of 9/11. I’ve written a movie about it that I had been trying to make for many years, but I feel like I’m on the verge of something.

So, one of my goals was to destroy that, make homosexuals threedimensional, and not the punchline.

Your school shooting happened in Canada in 1975; do you think here in America people don’t factor it because it was a long time before a lot of other school shootings?

The funny thing is my shooting, my shooting, as if I own it, was very much the template for what we’ve seen in the last 40 years. Disaffected white kid, alienated from his community, starts to change over a year. Cuts hair really short. Joins a peacetime military, starts to work out with guns. Starts to say weird things to kids at parties, but no one takes it seriously. Becomes really resentful about everyone around him. Comes to school with a shaved head, had two guns, shoots it up, kills himself. Revenge on students and teachers; it’s very similar. After Columbine, which was a big one for me, that’s when I started to write my movie, but Columbine is the one that made me go, “Oh my God, how can this continue happening?” But Dylan and Eric were aware of our shooting, and we looked at the timeline—it begins with ours. I can’t believe I’m the oldest survivor of this whole epidemic.

The show you’re doing at Once Lounge, Après Le Déluge: The Buddy Cole Monologues, is it material that we saw on Kids in the Hall?

If people are thinking it’ll be Buddy Cole monologues from the television series, they’re wrong. It’s all new material. People are not going to know the show. Après Le Déluge means after the flood. The flood would have been the Kids in the Hall years, so it’s monologues written since the Kids in the Hall went off the air. It’s 10 of some of the monologues I’ve written from 1995 until now. I’ve been on a real roll the last year, so the last three monologues are very, very new, and I finish off with Buddy’s take on #MeToo.

NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

21

ROOMMATES SAVAGE LOVE

BY DAN SAVAGE @FAKEDANSAVAGE | MAIL@SAVAGELOVE.NET

My girlfriend of four months has unofficially moved in with me. We began as a long-distance thing; I live in New York City and she lived in the Deep South. What began as her visiting me for the holidays ended up with her staying with me indefinitely. She comes from a very poor family, and going back home means sleeping in her grandma’s living room.

Things are going well, but we are moving fast. I’m not sure how I feel about this. On one hand, I’m loving it and loving her.

On the other hand, I feel like she could be using me. She has found part-time work. She hasn’t pitched in for rent—I also have a roommate—but she has pitched in for groceries. Do I ask her for rent money? Do I send her back to her grandma’s place? I don’t know what to do because I feel like I am housing a refugee.

She’s Here Indefinitely Now Instead of ending things now to protect yourself from retroactively feeling shitty about this relationship if it ends at some point in the future, SHIN, you should have a convo with your girlfriend about rent, reality, and roommates. Tell her that it can’t go on like this indefinitely—living in your apartment rent-free—as it’s unfair to your roommate and that kind of support is too much to expect from someone she’s been seeing for only four months. Tell her you appreciate the ways she’s kicking in now—helping with groceries—but eventually she’ll need to start kicking in on rent too, and then set a realistic date for her to start paying rent. You should also encourage her to think about getting her own place.

Not because you want to stop seeing her—you’re loving it and loving her—but because a premature commitment (and cohabitating is a commitment) can sabotage a relationship.

You also don’t want her to feel so dependent on you that she can’t end things if she needs to. You want her to be with you because she wants to be with you, not because she’s trapped.

You ran a letter from a man whose wife wouldn’t let him spank her. I’m a woman whose husband won’t spank me. I found a man like WISHOTK, and we meet up for spanking sessions. Neither of our spouses know. It’s only spanking, no sex. How bad should I feel?

Really Erotic Dalliances But, Um, Married Very bad. In fact, REDBUM, I think you should be spanked for getting spanked behind your husband’s back—then spanked again for getting spanked for getting spanked behind your husband’s back. And then spanked some more.

On the Lovecast—the urologist is IN: savagelovecast.com.

COMEDY EVENTS THU 03.29

LAUGHTER AT THE END OF THE WORLD 10 YEAR CELEBRATION

Hosted by Phoebe Angle and Scotty Lombardo

108 CAMBRIDGE ST., CHARLESTOWN | 9PM | FREE THU 03.29 - SAT 03.31

KURT BRAUNOHLER @ LAUGH BOSTON

Kurt Braunohler is a comedian, actor and podcaster who has committed his career to inserting absurdity into strangers’ lives to make the world a better place. He has an album, a half-hour Comedy Central Special, and his first televised hour of comedy, Trust Me, came out on Comedy Central on March 3rd, 2017. Additionally, he will appear in the upcoming second season of Netflix’s Lady Dynamite in a recurring guest role as Young Joel, as well as the Judd Apatow produced film The Big Sick alongside Holly Hunter and Ray Romano, which he also wrote on.

425 SUMMER ST., BOSTON | 8 & 10PM | $20-$25 FRI 03.30 - SAT 03.31

JIM COLLITON @ NICK’S COMEDY STOP

Stand-up Comedy/ Being married and raising 3 kids Jim has turned his every man’s life style into a hilarious comedy routine. Talking about basic daily activities like yard work or dealing with peanut butter allergies, Jim’s love for performing comes across every time he takes the stage. His well-crafted jokes are weaved into his spontaneous crowd work bringing down the house at comedy clubs and cruise ships across the world.

100 WARRENTON ST., BOSTON | 8PM | $20 SAT 03.31

NYC COMEDY INVADES BOSTON @ 730 TAVERN

Featuring: Jordan Raybould, Will Poznan, Bret Raybould, & more

730 MASS AVE., CAMB | 7:30PM | ADV $10/DOOR $15 SAT 03.31

COMEDY STUDIO’S COMEDY CENTRAL AUDITION SHOW @ THE ROCKWELL

Featuring: Zachary Brazao, Nick Chambers, Drew Dunn, Xazmin Garza, Sam Ike, Tooky Kavanagh, Andrew Mayer, John Paul Rivera, Carolyn Riley, Corey Rodrigues, & Laura Severse.

Hosted by Rick Jenkins

255 ELM ST., SOMERVILLE | 9PM | $15 SUN 04.01

APRIL FOOLS COMEDY SHOW @ SLADE’S

Featuring: Smokie Suarez, Corey Manning, Xazmin Garza, & Kneel Bryant.

958 TREMONT ST., BOSTON | 8PM | COVER TBD MON 04.02

ZACH SHERWIN & MYQ KAPLAN @ THE RIOT THEATER Zach Sherwin is a comedian, rapper, writer, and actor. Zach has appeared on “America’s Got Talent” (NBC), “The Pete Holmes Show” (TBS) and “Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell” (FX, FXX). He has written for the Emmy-nominated “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” (The CW) as well as all five seasons of the Emmy-nominated YouTube series “Epic Rap Battles of History.”

Myq Kaplan has been featured on Last Comic Standing on NBC and Comedy Central. Check out his Amazon special “Small, Dork and Handsome”

146 SOUTH ST., JP | 8PM | $10 WED 04.04

8 O’CLOCK @ 730 @ 730 TAVERN, KITCHEN & PATIO

savagelovecast.com

Featuring: Ed Waugh, Aj Haypenny, Kwasi Mensah, Jack Burke, Chris Cheney, Laura Severse, & Sam Ike. Hosted by Rob Crean & Liam McGurk

730 MASS AVE., CAMBRIDGE | 8PM | FREE

Lineup & shows to change without notice. For more shows & info visit BostonComedyShows.com 22

03.29.18 - 04.05.18 |

DIGBOSTON.COM

WHAT'S FOR BREAKFAST

BY PATT KELLEY PATTKELLEY.COM

HEADLINING THIS WEEK!

Kurt Braunohler

Netflix’s Lady Dynamite, Comedy Central Friday + Saturday

COMING SOON Jon Stetson

America’s Master Mentalist Special Engagement: Sat, Mar 31

Laugh Boston + WBUR Present: The Modern Love Podcast

THE WAY WE WEREN’T

BY PAT FALCO ILLFALCO.COM

Mon, Apr 2

Jimmy O. Yang

HBO’s Silicon Valley Special Engagement: Sun, Apr 8

Ben Gleib

Idiotest, Chelsea Lately Apr 13 + 14 OUR VALUED CUSTOMERS

BY TIM CHAMBERLAIN OURVC.NET

Dylan Brody

Showtime, Dylan Brody’s Driving Hollywood Special Engagement: Tues, April 17

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

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

23

Providing the highest-quality

�� ��� ���

����������

medical marijuana products and the very best in customer care to the Greater Boston area

FLOWER INFUSED CONCENTRATES NON-MEDICATED ACCESSORIES Do Something Revolutionary

Come Join Us!

67 Broadway Somerville, MA 02145 617.213.6006

revolutionaryclinics.org Free patient education, materials, consultation and regular patient events!

Learn more:

Hours of Operation Sun: 11AM - 4PM Mon: 8AM - 8PM Tues: 8AM - 8PM Wed: 8AM - 8PM Thu: 8AM - 8PM Fri: 8AM - 8PM Sat: 8AM - 8PM

Revolutionary Clinics

FREE ON-SITE

PARKING

I-93

Sullivan Sq. (Orange Line + Buses)

/RevClinics

@RevClinics