DigBoston 10.11.18

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COVER: BEER

STRANGE BREW

DJ KNIFE + DOWN THE ROAD

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RAMPANT TRANSGENDER DISCRIMINATION

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BOWERY BOSTON WWW.BOWERYBOSTON.COM VOL 20 + ISSUE41

OCT 11, 2018 - OCT 18, 2018 BUSINESS PUBLISHER John Loftus ASSOCIATE PUBLISHERS Chris Faraone Jason Pramas SALES ASSOCIATES Christopher Bent Victoria Botana 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 Johnson-Smith, C. Shardae Jobson, Heather Kapplow, Derek Kouyoumjian, Dan McCarthy, Rev. Irene Monroe, Peter Roberge, Maya Shaffer, Citizen Strain, M.J. Tidwell, Miriam Wasser, Dave Wedge, Baynard Woods INTERNS Casey Campbell, Morgan Hume, Daniel Kaufman, Jillian Kravatz, Jacob Schick

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 DJ KNIFE AND DOWN THE ROAD BREWMASTER DONOVAN BAILEY BY ANGEL OCASIO. READ ABOUT KNIFE AND BAILEY’S COLLABORATION ON ‘STRANGE BREW 6’ IN THE FEATURE SECTION THIS WEEK AND CHECK OUT THEIR PARTY SATURDAY OCTOBER 13. ©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.

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STREET ANARCHY

I write this week to let you know that I am fast developing an unhealthy obsession with enforcing traffic laws in my neighborhood. While I’m fortunate to have a place that I almost can afford, that place is nonetheless located on the corner of a one-way street that people drive the wrong way down all day. Over the past few years since I moved in, I have been gradually frustrated up to the point that I can’t work on my couch for any serious length of time; if I absolutely must write from home, I have to draw the blinds to avoid being driven crazy by the assholes who think it’s okay to flout the law and put people I love in danger.

Let me explain why this is so maddening. From the beginning, I found it odd that one-way signs were brazenly ignored. Was I missing something?

Every last one of my neighbors seemed to be in some kind of a secret club, which proved confusing.

Should I be driving both ways? Like everyone else?

Or is the sign that clearly states the opposite the final word?

Being a reporter, I naturally reached out to the appropriate authorities on traffic in my area, only to be almost laughed at. If it’s marked as a one-way, of course it is a fucking one-way. Anybody who says otherwise must be some kind of sick entitled asshole.

Fine, I’m paraphrasing. Nevertheless, it was the naked truth, and the information didn’t sit well with abutters I relayed it to. That may be the rule, they told me, but it doesn’t apply to people who actually live on the street! But of course. Why didn’t I think of that?

So there I am again, putting yet another call into a traffic department that already thinks I’m stupid.

“Hello.”

“How can I help you, sir?”

“Uh, yeah, I called last week about the one-way street I live on.”

“Yeah, I remember.”

“Well, I was wondering, and I know this may sound dumb, but I was wondering if the one-way rule applies to people who live on the street.”

“Yes, of course it does.”

“That’s what I thought. Thank you very much.”

Basically, it’s anarchy. With drivers from the couple dozen houses on my block evading laws they don’t even acknowledge in the first place. I don’t know what to do about it; I know that it is fruitless and illegal to start slashing tires, but I’m also certain that benevolent appeals for people to be more considerate will be mocked or ignored. I told my local representative, who himself thought it was a two-way for residents, and while I’m no fan of police, at one point I tried snitching to a cop who happened to be parked around the corner one day.

She didn’t chuckle in my face, but I’m pretty sure that she was laughing on the inside.

I don’t know how I plan on handling the situation moving forward. Right now, I just feel powerless.

When law and order and the people who are paid to represent and protect us prove to be useless, it’s hard to know where you can turn for help.

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

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NEWS+OPINION DISCRIMINATION WITH A SMILE NEWS TO US

From public accommodations to housing dissuasion, transgender rights are threatened in Mass

BY JENNY ROLLINS

in the morning, yelling at him to move his car. When Krupa tried to report this, he said, the silence from the housing management continued.

“I would call the office and they wouldn’t answer, so I would have to go down there in person,” Krupa recalls.

“The woman at the desk in front began recognizing me and sighing whenever I walked in. I went in two or three times every week.”

Unlike many other states, in Massachusetts it is illegal for property management companies to discriminate based on gender identity. Transgender and gender nonconforming people fall under protected class status, meaning they are protected from discrimination by law.

However, a recent study done by the Suffolk University Housing Clinic shows that the illegality of discrimination does always not prevent it from happening and thriving, even in the Commonwealth.

Housing discrimination can take many forms, like ignoring complaints about resident-on-resident harassment specifically relating to gender identity or simply not getting an apartment because of gender identity or not being offered certain amenities or discounts because of gender identity.

This kind of housing discrimination against transgender and gender nonconforming people goes widely unreported, partially because people don’t realize they are being discriminated against, explains Jamie Langowski, a clinical fellow at Suffolk University Law School and co-manager of Suffolk’s Housing Discrimination Testing Program.

Langowski says that many transgender renters only find out about the discriminatory behavior after they’ve already committed and moved into an apartment. It’s usually a subtler kind of discrimination—discrimination with a smile, she calls it—and it doesn’t just apply to renters.

interview. When the person on the other line heard her deep voice paired with her feminine name, they told her they would give her a call back. They never called.

Housing discrimination against transgender and gender nonconforming people in Boston is not always obvious, Langowski explains.

“Many people don’t realize they are being discriminated against until they have moved into an apartment,” she says.

Jones’ experience was part of a study released in 2017, in which the Suffolk housing clinic found that transgender and gender nonconforming people were discriminated against 61 percent of the time, though most of it was labelled as “discrimination with a smile.” Only one out of the 33 people left the interview thinking that they were discriminated against, Langowski explains.

“If you talked to our testers, they would say that it was just like every other housing interview,” she adds.

The HDTP was created in 2012 as a partnership with the HUD after Mass passed a law making it illegal to discriminate against protected classes of people when it came to housing, including gender identity. Langowski and her team had been struggling to quantify the level of housing discrimination based on gender identity ever since.

“We knew that discrimination is happening, but there wasn’t empirical evidence. Filing a case can be intimidating, so a lot of stuff goes unreported,” Langowski says. “But there were a lot of self-reporting surveys that showed discrimination.”

Organizations like the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition (MTPC), an advocacy group run by and for transgender and gender nonconforming people, receive several calls a month about possible discrimination.

The HDTP decided to do its own testing to try to further examine the discrimination. Its study involved a series of tests; the housing clinic matched 33 transgender or gender nonconforming people with cisgender people similar in every other way so as to eliminate other potential discrimination factors.

The study is the most comprehensive of its kind in Boston so far, according to Langowski. Each test was done in person, with the transgender or nonconforming person mentioning their gender identity during the interview with the landlord/management of randomized studio and onebedroom apartments.

The study, which is going to be published in Volume 29.2 of the Yale Journal of Law and Feminism later this year, got a lot of press attention. It hasn’t caused a shift in the amount of discrimination, but that’s not really the point, Langowski explains. She and her team give presentations to housing organizations to teach them about the laws in place that make discrimination based on gender identity illegal; mostly, they simply want people to know what this kind of discrimination looks like.

“Housing discrimination in general gets reported less often. People don’t know a lot of times,” Langowski says.

“Housing is one thing that people absolutely need.

“Where you live matters.”

…

…

IF YOU LIVED HERE YOU’D BE DISCRIMINATED AGAINST BY NOW

One morning in May 2015, Michael Krupa and his two children woke up at 1 am to the sound of glass shattering.

According to the police report Krupa filed, he then hurried down the stairs of his apartment building on Channing Street in Dorchester to see his neighbor, Ramon Lewis, holding a bat, smashing in Krupa’s car windows.

Krupa’s account states that Lewis had approached him earlier to move Krupa’s car from their shared parking space, even though Lewis did not have a car. Krupa promised to move his car in the morning, but Lewis wanted it to happen now. Krupa refused. Lewis retaliated.

“He was yelling things like ‘faggot’ and ‘dyke,’ so I knew this wasn’t about the parking space. It was because I was transgender,” Krupa recalls in an interview.

Krupa says he called the police and when the authorities arrived, an officer asked Krupa what he thought Lewis’s motive was. Krupa told the officer that he believed the harassment was because he had recently come out as transgender and begun transitioning; he also included this in his police report.

“When I told him that I was transgender, he laughed at me,” Krupa says about the officer.

Lewis was placed under arrest and Krupa reported the incident to the housing management. In response, Krupa says the landlord told him that he needed to make an effort to live peaceably with his fellow residents.

“They kept telling me that I needed to get along with him better,” Krupa says.

“This man threatened my life, and I had to walk past his apartment every day.

His wife took his children out to the bus stop for school the same time I took mine. I couldn’t get away from him.”

Over the next few months, Krupa experienced what he described as “almost daily incidents of harassment.” One time, he said, Lewis told Krupa that he wasn’t a real man.

Other times Lewis pounded on Krupa’s door at early hours

“Filing a case can be intimidating, so a lot of stuff goes unreported.”

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Mary Jones [Ed. note: Name has been changed to protect the identity of the participant involved in the study, as she may be involved in further research], a transgender woman, called a number for a listing for a one-bedroom apartment to set up an appointment for a housing application

The issues with housing for transgender or gender nonconforming people also extends to the homeless population of Massachusetts.

Back in 2013, the GLBTQ Legal Advocates and Defenders filed a formal complaint seeking monetary damages on

behalf of a transgender woman who was allegedly forced into a storage closet with no bed rather than being allowed to sleep in the women’s dormitory.

The woman, who goes by Jane Doe in the official report, said the room was “unkempt and dirty,” and without air conditioning.

At the time, gender identity was not protected in public accommodations, including shelters. However, the transgender public accommodations bill (sometimes referred to as the “bathroom bill”) was signed into law by Gov. Charlie Baker on July 8, 2016, and went into effect on Oct 1, 2016.

The law makes it illegal to discriminate in the usage of public accommodations based on gender identity. Immediately after the law was put into effect, an activist committee called Keep MA Safe filed a ballot question, with 34,231 certified signatures, to attempt to repeal it.

Massachusetts voters will decide whether or not to repeal this bill on Nov 6.

Keep MA Safe states that it believes everyone should be able to walk through a park or ride public transportation (other examples of “public accommodations” that are protected under this law), but leaders of the group have expressed concern that the law is too broad and should exclude protection for sexual predators and sex offenders.

Because organizations often rely on self-identification to verify someone’s status as a transgender person, members of Keep MA Safe are concerned that predators will take advantage of the law to victimize people, according Yvette Ollada, campaign spokesperson for Keep MA Safe.

“We aren’t concerned that transgender people are dangerous. We are concerned about people that have a criminal history and are perpetrators of crimes,” Ollada says.

Instead, the group is advocating for “private public spaces,” like single-room restrooms and dressing rooms. They want to go back to the drawing board in order to create safe spaces for everyone, transgender people included, explains Ollada.

Ollada noted that people in homeless shelters in particular are at risk because people are more vulnerable when they are sleeping in public spaces.

Mason Dunn, the executive director of the MTPC, believes that this could mean a change in access to shelters for transgender and gender nonconforming peoples. The MTPC is fighting to uphold the protections this law grants.

“Our job is to provide leadership and strategy in ending gender identity discrimination,” Dunn says. …

Michael Krupa fixed his car windows, only to have Lewis allegedly smash them a few months later.

Eventually, Krupa got a restraining order against Lewis, but he didn’t take his housing management company to court. According to documents, the court ordered Lewis to stay away from Krupa and his children.

Krupa asked Greater Boston Management for a new apartment. He was using vouchers because of PTSD caused by childhood trauma, so the company was responsible for finding him a new place to live. He says it refused at first, saying he had no case.

After a year, Greater Boston Management, which did not respond to multiple requests for comment, finally assigned Krupa a new apartment in East Boston. When he moved, he dropped the harassment case and the criminal charges against Lewis.

Krupa likes his new neighborhood and feels like it’s a safe place for him and his sons, one of whom is currently transitioning as well.

“My neighbors saw my scars from my surgeries pretty early on, and they have treated me really well,” Krupa says.

These sorts of discrimination stories in the transgender and gender nonconforming community are fairly common, explained Mason Dunn. Dunn and the MTPC receive several calls a month about both outright and subtle housing discrimination. He believes that people are at least more aware of what’s going on since the Suffolk University Law School study was released. He is also trying to make people aware of the potential repeal of public accommodations protections in November.

Ollada stated that Keep MA Safe hopes that November will bring a repeal so that the bill can go back to the drawing board and create protections against potential sexual predators in public spaces—to keep everyone safe.

In August 2018, Dunn and Ev Evnen of MaeBright Group, an LGBTQ policy, training, and consulting firm, led a hike across Mass to campaign against the possible repeal and advocate for transgender rights to public spaces, including parks and homeless shelters, among other places. It’s one of many efforts challenging what they see as a discriminatory referendum.

“Transgender people are often at the intersection of oppression,” Dunn says. “But we have full confidence that in November, the majority of Massachusetts voters will stand up for transgender rights as human rights.”

This article was produced in collaboration with the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. If you want to see more reporting like this, you can contribute at givetobinj.org.

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APPARENT HORIZON

FROM INJURY TO ACTION: A LABOR DAY REMEMBRANCE (PART III)

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

In parts one (DigBoston, Vol. 20, Iss. 36, p. 6) and two (DigBoston, Vol. 20, Iss. 40, p. 6), I discussed how working a temp factory job at Belden Electronics on assignment for Manpower for several weeks in early 1989 in Vermont led to my sustaining a sudden and permanent spinal injury while walking to my car just after my last shift. And how I drove myself one-handed through a snowstorm on country roads in the middle of the night to an emergency room—only to receive substandard care as a poor person.

Leading me to make the mistake of letting cheaper chiropractors hurt me more over the next six years. In this final installment, I review my turn to labor activism on behalf of myself… and workers in bad jobs everywhere.

I recovered from my spinal injury within a few months.

To the point where I wasn’t hurting all of the time.

Just some of the time. Yet, as with other life-changing experiences before and since, I wasn’t the same afterward. Physically or psychologically. I was left with the sense that anything could happen to me at any time.

Something I had known intellectually before getting hurt, but literally knew in my bones going forward.

Regardless, once it was clear I wasn’t going to be entirely disabled, I resolved to move ahead with my life.

Which took some time. But by the summer of 1990, I had returned to Boston from Vermont, I was dating the woman who later became my wife, and I had founded New Liberation News Service (NLNS)—the international wire I would run for the next couple of years.

Journalism had gone from being an occasional thing for me to a regular thing. Unfortunately, NLNS was a small nonprofit serving the left-wing campus press, the remnant of the ’60s underground press, and some larger community media outlets. Most of which were too broke to pay much for the news packets my service was producing for them. Thus, I wasn’t able to make ends meet doing it for very long. And by 1991, I was temping again on the side.

No more manual labor for me, though. That was over, given my damaged vertebrae. This time any temp assignments I took had to make use of my writing, editing, and research skills—which I had developed over the previous few years, despite not having a college degree… and not getting one until 2006.

After a number of short assignments, I found a longterm editing gig via a jobs bulletin board at MIT that anyone in the know could just walk up to and use. Faxon Research Services, a nowdefunct database company, contracted me through a temp agency. It was March 1992.

Over the months, I did well enough at the assignment that I was granted my own office and more responsibilities.

I also helped the other NLNS staffer of the time to get a similar gig at Faxon. He, too, started getting more responsibility at the office. Soon, I was being groomed for a full-time job by one vice president. He was being groomed by another vice president. The two vice presidents were at odds with each other. My vice president lost the inter-departmental war. And my temp contract was ended in December 1992. Just like that.

Because that’s how temp jobs, and indeed most forms of contingent employment function. Employers want the freedom to use workers’ labor when they need

I’ve written this series for one reason: to encourage readers in bad jobs in the (now rather old) “new economy” to push back.

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it and to get rid of them the moment they don’t. While paying the lowest wages possible. Saving labor costs and increasing profits in the process.

Faxon assumed that, like every other temp, I was just going to take the injustice of losing my shot at a longterm full-time job lying down.

But not that time. And I would never accept injustice at any gig ever again. I had learned one key lesson from getting badly injured from the Manpower temp job at Belden Electronics three years previous: If I was treated unfairly in the workplace, I was going to fight. And keep fighting until I won some kind of redress.

So, I did something that temps aren’t supposed to do: I applied for unemployment. Because temp agencies and the employers that contract them use such arrangements in part to play the same “neither company is your employer” game that Manpower and Belden played when I got a spinal injury on Belden property.

However, I realized that I had been at this temp gig full-time for nine months and figured I had a chance of convincing the Mass unemployment department of the period that I was a Faxon employee in fact even if I was officially a temp at an agency that played so small a role in the gig in question that I can’t even remember its name.

My initial unemployment filing was rejected.

And I appealed it. And testified to an unemployment department official. And won my unemployment. A small victory, true. But an important one for me, and possibly for other temps in similar situations in the years after me. Faxon didn’t fight the ruling. I got my money.

Fortunately, I didn’t need the unemployment payments for long. Back in February 1992, writing as I did not just for NLNS, but also for other publications, I had a chance to join a labor union in my trade. Not the traditional union I had dreamt of helping organize at Belden Electronics prior to—and certainly after—my injury. It was called the National Writers Union/United Auto Workers Local 1981. A small but innovative formation experimenting with organizing any of several types of contingent writers—with a constituency of freelance journalists, book authors, and technical writers.

I immediately got active in the Boston “unit” of the local. Was elected as a delegate to the national convention in the summer of 1992.

Was the youngest candidate for a open vice president’s seat. Lost, but not too badly. And won enough notoriety in the Boston branch that they hired me as their half-time director in December.

My fight for justice for myself and millions of other people in temp, part-time, day labor, contract, independent contractor, migrant, and many other kinds of bad unstable contingent jobs besides took off from there. In 1993, I joined the New Directions Movement democracy caucus within the rapidly shrinking but still super-bureaucratic and timid United Auto Workers union, and learned a great deal about how all those purposely precarious employment arrangements were being used by employers to crush labor.

In 1994, I started the small national publication As We Are: The Magazine for Working Young People. In 1995, I wrote an article in its third number about the attempt by the radical union Industrial Workers of the World to start a Temp Workers Union, and began actively looking for a way to start a general labor organization for contingent workers. In 1996—just after I published the fourth As We Are, folded the magazine for lack of funds, and took a long-term temp assignment with 3M’s

advertising division as a front desk person—I helped launch the Organizing Committee for a Massachusetts Employees Association (OCMEA) with Citizens for Participation in Political Action. A group that straddled the line between the left wing of the Democratic Party and socialists just to their left in the Commonwealth. In January 1997, I quit the 3M assignment a few days before being serendipitously hired by Tim Costello of Northeast Action as the half-time assistant organizer of his Project on Contingent Work there. We rolled the OCMEA effort into our new project and also helped start a nationwide network of similar contingent worker organizing projects called the National Alliance for Fair Employment later that year.

In June 1998, I left the National Writers Union gig— having helped build the Boston branch’s membership from just over 200 members to over 700 members in my six-year tenure—and took one final long-term half-time temp editor assignment through Editorial Services of New England at Lycos, a competitor of Yahoo and other early commercial search engines on the World Wide Web. I organized a shadow union of over 25 fellow temp editors— which won pay parity for men and women on the assignment—before leaving to help Costello break away from Northeast Action and begin raising money to form our own independent contingent workers’ organization in September 1998.

Finally, in January 1999, we had the funding to found the Campaign on Contingent Work (CCW), the extremely innovative labor organizing network that did much to help workers in bad jobs in Massachusetts over the six years of its existence.

That year we also expanded the national contingent organizing group into Canada to form the North American Alliance for Fair Employment (NAFFE)—which was also based in Boston. Ultimately, Costello was the coordinator of that group and I was coordinator of CCW. And in 2003, during conversations with the CEO of Manpower about a temp industry code of conduct that NAFFE had drafted, Costello started telling him the story of my injury on a Manpower assignment. The CEO cut him off a few sentences in and said, “Forklift?” And Costello said, “Yes.” And the CEO apparently said that years after my injury, so many workers had been hurt driving forklifts in Manpower temp jobs that there had been some kind of settlement with them and the company had instituted reforms. I never bothered to verify the tale. But I don’t doubt its veracity.

Because employers can only push workers so far before we start to push back. And I’ve written this series for one reason: to encourage readers in bad jobs in the (now rather old) “new economy” to push back. To fight where you stand.

To stop accepting unstable gigs with no benefits for low pay. To start demanding a better deal. Together with your fellow workers. And to keep demanding it. Until we live in a world where no one will ever have to work a bad job.

Or get permanently injured the way I did.

Apparent Horizon—winner of the Association of Alternative Newsmedia’s 2018 Best Political Column award—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. Licensed for use by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism and media outlets in its network.

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MASS IMPACT NEWS

The post-Kavanaugh stench in Bay State elections

BY PATRICK COCHRAN

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JAY GONZALEZ SPEAKS TO PROTESTERS OUTSIDE OF JEFF FLAKE EVENT IN BOSTON LAST WEEK The confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court of the United States is likely to take on a prominent role in at least two major statewide Mass elections next month.

Rep. Geoff Diehl, who handily won the Republican primary in September to take on Sen. Elizabeth Warren for her US Senate seat, has expressed support for Kavanaugh and dismissed allegations of sexual assault against the judge from victims dating back decades.

“I don’t think there’s any testimony or evidence at this point that indicate that anything inappropriate happened,” Diehl said of the attempted rape claim by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. He continued, “Unless we hear otherwise, he’s completed the process that would satisfy me.”

Diehl’s stance on the Supreme Court appointment could have been expected.

His staunchly conservative campaign has mirrored policies of the Trump administration, and his nomination reflects the shift from so-called traditional “moderate” Mass Republicans like Mitt Romney and Charlie Baker to the hard-right ideology that has come to dominate the modern GOP. Equally unsurprising, Warren has vehemently opposed the confirmation, calling the process a “sham.”

“Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the highest court in our country is the result of a decades-long assault on our judiciary launched by billionaires and giant corporations who want to control every branch of government,” Warren said in a speech on the Senate floor. “For years, those wealthy and well-connected people have invested massive sums of money into shaping our courts to fit their liking.”

While the SCOTUS debate is most relevant in Senate elections, Mass Democrats are also attempting to tie it to the race for governor.

For his part, Baker recently came out in opposition to Kavanaugh’s confirmation, citing his stances on abortion and gun control. “I don’t think anything happened during the confirmation process to change my mind,” Baker told reporters last Friday. “So for that reason … I don’t believe he should be on the Supreme Court.”

Nevertheless, Baker’s endorsement of Diehl in the Senate race stands to contradict that opposition.

“If Charlie Baker had his way, Geoff Diehl, Trump’s campaign co-chair here in Massachusetts, would go to Washington to represent us in the US Senate,” Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Jay Gonzalez said in a statement. “Diehl has made clear that he will support Trump’s agenda and Trump’s nominees.”

The governorship does have some bearing on the Senate and, therefore, the Supreme Court. If the Democrats unseat Trump in 2020, it is likely that one of the two sitting senators—Warren and Ed Markey—would be appointed to a position in the administration. In such a scenario, the governor would select a replacement until a special election were to be held. (In 2013, following John Kerry’s appointment as secretary of state, Mo Cowan held the Commonwealth’s junior seat for over six months before Markey won a special election.)

Both Diehl and Gonzalez trail the incumbents they’re chasing by significant margins. Democrats are hoping an anti-Trump wave can help sweep the latter into the corner office, while it appears the GOP’s leading priority is damaging the presidential prospects of Warren.

All of which has played out on the ground already. In Maine, protests erupted after their Republican senator, Susan Collins, announced her decision to support Kavanaugh.

In Boston, hundreds marched through the streets. Among their chants, “You are not above the law, down with Kavanaugh.”

Monday, October 22 – Friday, November 2 Registered Boston voters can vote at any early voting location in the City, including City Hall.

Pick a time and place that is best for you.

WEEK 1:

WEEK 2:

MON. OCT. 22, 9A.M. – 5P.M.

MON. OCT. 29, 9A.M. – 5P.M.

TUES. OCT. 23, 12 – 8P.M.

TUES. OCT. 30, 12 – 8P.M.

Boston City Hall (Downtown 9a.m. - 8p.m.)

Holy Name Parish Hall (Roxbury)

Boston City Hall (Downtown 9a.m. - 8p.m.)

Boston City Hall (Downtown)

Dot House Health (Dorchester)

Boston City Hall (Downtown)

Harvard-Kent School (Charlestown)

Tobin Community Center (Mission Hill)

Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology (South End)

WED. OCT. 24, 9A.M. – 5P.M.

Wang YMCA of Chinatown (Chinatown)

Boston City Hall (Downtown)

WED. OCT. 31, 9A.M. – 5P.M.

THUR. OCT. 25, 12 – 8P.M. Boston City Hall (Downtown 9a.m. - 8p.m.)

Boston City Hall (Downtown)

THUR. NOV. 1, 12 – 8P.M.

All Saints’ Church (Dorchester)

Boston City Hall (Downtown 9a.m. - 8p.m.)

Honan-Allston Library (Allston)

The Salvation Army Ray & Joan Kroc Community Ctr. (Dorchester)

Margarita Muniz Academy (Formerly Louis Agassiz Elementary School) (Jamaica Plain)

ABCD Thelma D. Burns Building (Roxbury) The Blue Hills Collaborative (Hyde Park)

FRI. OCT. 26, 9A.M. – 5P.M.

FRI. NOV. 2, 9A.M. – 5P.M.

Boston City Hall (Downtown)

Boston City Hall (Downtown)

WEEKEND VOTING: SAT. & SUN. OCT. 27 & 28, 10A.M. - 6P.M. Paris St. Community Center (East Boston) James F. Condon Elementary School (South Boston) Saint John Paul II Catholic Academy Neponset Campus (formerly known as St. Ann’s School) (Dorchester)

Mildred Ave. Community Center. (Mattapan) Roche Community Center (West Roxbury) Bruce C. Bolling Municipal Building (Roxbury) Copley Square Library (Back Bay) Jackson Mann School (Allston)

Perkins Community Center /Joseph Lee School (Dorchester) In order to vote early or on Election Day, you must register to vote by October 17.

If you miss the early voting period, you can still vote on Election Day, Tuesday, November 6.

Learn more at boston.gov/early-voting #VoteEarlyBoston • Call 311 • election@boston.gov NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

9

PRESSURE FROM BELOW GUEST REPORT

More questions and urgency as National Grid lockout enters fourth month

BY JOE RAMSEY + BARBARA MADELONI

DEADLY EXPLOSIONS The issue of safety violations gained new urgency on Sept 13, when more than 80 gas explosions rocked the city of Lawrence and towns of North Andover and Andover. The explosions killed one person, injured at least 20 others, and left thousands homeless or without heat headed into the cold months.

The explosions occurred on pipelines and connections overseen by Columbia Gas. Still, for communities in Massachusetts, the potential danger posed by scab labor and the lack of oversight became much more real. That has put new pressure on the governor to intervene and end the lockout.

Hundreds of locked-out National Grid workers volunteered to help with the Merrimack Valley repairs, but the company refused to end the lockout so they could provide their expertise.

Nonetheless, dozens of the workers went up to Lawrence and did what they could to help, passing out water bottles to responders and cleaning up debris even in the pouring rain.

PHOTO VIA USW GAS

By trying to get rid of the pension for new workers, corrosion technician Andy Colleran believes, “National Grid is trying to break the union from within.” Colleran is one of 1,200 members of Steelworkers Locals 12003 and 12012 in Massachusetts who have been locked out since late June, after the unions refused a two-tier contract.

National Grid is a British-based utility company that provides gas and electric service in Massachusetts, New York, and Rhode Island. The locked-out union members work on gas lines maintained by the company.

Under the company’s proposal, new hires would no longer get a defined-benefit pension and would have their sick and vacation time reduced. For retirees, co-pays and deductibles would go up.

“The package for the current people in the local was reasonable,” said Local 12003 President Joe Kirylo.

But “the people in this local chose to defend the next generation. This is the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

Ninety-five percent of members voted down the company’s final offer. Since the June 25 lockout, the locals have been at the picket lines, holding solidarity rallies and following scab workers to track safety violations.

THINKING AHEAD “I am 62. I believe in this union—always have, always will,” said Colleran. He and his co-workers are taking a stand for future hires they haven’t even met yet.

“People did it for us,” said Jim, a veteran employee we met on the picket line who didn’t give his last name.

“Why shouldn’t we do it for others?

“People in this country are being taught to think that they don’t deserve pensions, that they don’t deserve good health care coverage,” he said. “But it doesn’t have to be this way.”

Some other National Grid locals have accepted the two-tier offers. But John Buonopane, president of Local 12012, believes that’s a mistake.

“New employees are pissed off at not having a pension,” he said—and that changes how they see the union overall. “When they realize that their fellow workers and union didn’t fight for their rights, are they going to have that solidarity?”

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As more and more new workers come along, Buonopane pointed out, eventually the older workers will be the minority—and the company can come after them too.

National Grid profits have been hitting record heights—$3.66 billion for fiscal year 2018, up 24 percent from a year ago. “Their top executives just took home $35 million in bonuses,” said Jerry Murphy, who has put in 35 years at the company. “We just want to be treated fair.”

HEALTH INSURANCE CUT OFF On July 1, six days after the lockout started, National Grid cut off locked-out workers from health insurance, immediately putting workers and their families at risk, especially those with chronic conditions.

For 15 years Eric Doren has worked in National Grid’s Street department, responsible for installing, maintaining, and repairing gas lines in the system.

Locked out, he is now paying $2,600 per month to keep his family’s health insurance through COBRA. He has bone-marrow problems that require hospital visits, a wife suffering from stage 1 muscular sclerosis, and twin daughters. “It’s frustrating to be a father and not be able to support your family,” Doren said. “I’m a family man. But the company cuts the support from under you. They don’t care.”

Doren isn’t even receiving unemployment, since the lockout began while he was out on temporary sick leave for an injured ankle. Massachusetts provides unemployment insurance to locked-out workers for up to 30 weeks, though it only pays about half of what workers were making. Workers have already used up 16 weeks.

We met Doren and others on the picket line, steps away from the Swampscott waterfront and just down the street from the million-dollar estate of Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker. Their demand for Baker, emblazoned on giant banners: “Do your job.”

Locked-out workers want Baker to order the Department of Public Utilities to address the hundreds of pages of safety concerns the union has delivered and to increase the number of state safety inspectors.

RAISING THE ALARM The USW locals have been raising the alarm about safety issues for years, including ongoing concerns about the number of inspectors on worksites. Since the lockout, they’ve raised issues including failure to respond to a gas leak, leaving a manhole open overnight, and using a chainsaw where there was gas in the air. Five weeks before the explosions, they sent documents outlining these concerns to Baker and the DPU. Three days before the explosions, they met with Baker and gave him 40 more pages of documents.

They heard nothing back until the night of the explosions, says Kirlyo. That night, at 7:18 pm—three hours after the explosions—the local finally received an email from the DPU asking for a meeting.

On Oct 2, the DPU released a list of 29 alleged safety violations by National Grid since July 1 and gave National Grid 30 days to respond or face compliance violations and further investigations.

“It’s amazing that something hasn’t happened yet,” Doren told us, referring to dangers created by the replacement workers’ lack of experience. “The company is playing a dangerous game for the sake of increasing profit margins.”

As this article was going to press, news broke of National Grid being forced to shut off gas service to hundreds of homes in Woburn as a result of an over-pressurized line there. The Mass Department of Public Utilities has “issued a moratorium on all National Grid work, with the exception of emergency and compliance work,” according to Boston 25 News.

Barbara Madeloni is the education coordinator for Labor Notes and former president of the Mass Teachers Association. Joe Ramsey is a faculty member at the University of Massachusetts Boston and a member of the Faculty Staff Union (Mass Teachers Association). For updates on the strike, follow USW Boston Gas Local 12003 on Facebook. This article was also published in Labor Notes.

GUEST OPINION

OFFENSE TAKEN Workers and students demand Harvard rehire Mayli Shing

BY GEOFF CARENS

PHOTO BY GENEVIEVE LECHAT On Oct 5, just before new Harvard President Lawrence Bacow was inaugurated, scores of union activists, students, and concerned community members demonstrated to demand that the university rehire Mayli Shing. Shing, a member of the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers, was fired in February after complaining of sexual harassment and racial discrimination by her supervisor.

Harvard’s excuse for terminating Shing was that she was allegedly in her office 30 minutes before her shift began. It’s obviously not even an offense—Shing had previously been celebrated on at least two performance evaluations for her early arrivals. The supervisor wrote, “Mayli is always in work before her regular hours. She is extremely reliable.”

However, after she reported that her boss acted inappropriately towards her and discriminated against her for racist reasons, the supervisor was permitted to retaliate against Shing and to drive her out of her job in revenge for her truthful complaints.

Incredibly, merely arriving at work slightly early became the basis for retaliatory discipline against Shing, a worker with more than 10 years of experience in her position.

Following Shing’s complaints that her supervisor was harassing and stalking her, he began issuing discipline against her on flimsy pretexts. Then, in May of 2017, Shing’s 35-hour work week was slashed to 17.5 hours, in which time she was expected to perform almost all the same job duties as before. Just one week after the cut in hours, the boss issued a formal disciplinary warning against Shing for not completing particular tasks by arbitrary deadlines, in the context of her trying to do her work twice as fast as previously.

More retaliatory written warnings followed; on two occasions, Shing’s alleged arrival at work 15 minutes before her shift was the basis for formal discipline. When Mayli asked why she alone was not permitted in the office just before her shift began, she says the supervisor mocked her for being Chinese, stating, “You can’t just hang around playing pingpong, Mayli.” When she complained about the racist slur, a senior manager accused her of lying. Less than a month later, Shing was terminated.

The Oct 5 protest marked the fourth time Shing’s supporters have picketed and demanded justice. The case is headed for the highest stage of her union’s grievance procedure, which could result in her getting a new job, with a new supervisor and full back pay. In the meantime, Harvard has continued to show extreme vindictiveness. The university even prevented the first-generation immigrant single mother of two from receiving unemployment benefits from her termination in February through July.

After the state Department of Unemployment Assistance finally awarded Shing benefits, Harvard appealed and is currently trying to claw back the money that Shing urgently needs to pay her bills. The university has also refused to consider any resolution that would allow Shing to return to employment at Harvard.

In the face of this response, at least 10 campus groups sent affiliates to the protest, including the Harvard No Layoffs Campaign, the Harvard TPS Coalition, the Time’s Up Committee of the Harvard Graduate Students Union, the Student Labor Action Movement, and Our Harvard Can Do Better, an organization dedicated to dismantling rape culture on Harvard’s campus. Priya Kukreja, a member of Harvard College’s Reproductive Justice Advocacy Group, summed up the feelings of attendees.

“Time is up on retaliating against survivors who come forward,” Kukreja said. “We are here to support Mayli. We are here to refuse allowing another moment of injustice to be swept under the rug of institutional abuse and unchecked power.”

VERY FUNNY SHOWS.

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Geoff Carens is a union rep for the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers.

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DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

11

STRANGE BREW BOSTON BETTER BEER BUREAU

A sober DJ Knife brews IPA as well as his freshest mix yet

BY CHRIS FARAONE @FARA1 put it out on CD. That was basically it.

Can you explain to our 18-to-25-year-old readers what the mix CD scene was like at the time?

DJK: This was the beginning of Soundcloud and DJs reaching a larger audience in general. I didn’t see it as a series until people liked it and I saw that. Then I did part two about a year later and people really enjoyed that one. This is my signature mixtape brand.

PHOTO BY ANGEL OCASIO As one of the most sought-after party rockers in the region, DJ Knife has no choice but to spend most of his week around club hoppers who get hammered as part of our nightlife routines. That hasn’t changed since he stopped boozing himself two years back; still, until now, Knife wasn’t sure how he would carry forth with his best-known series of mixtapes that fall under the umbrella title Strange Brew, a name that he concocted in his drinking days.

For his Strange Brew 6 outing, Knife decided to go back to beer—not personally, but commercially to push the brand. For the aspect of his plan that involved hops and alcohol, he turned to the Everett-based Down The Road Beer Co., which produced 500 exclusive cans for the effort.

With the release party this Saturday, we asked Knife, as well as Down the Road’s head brewer Donovan Bailey and creative manager Brendan Van Voris, about what they put into the mix.

Take us back to the first Strange Brew. What were you doing? Where were you living? What were you drinking?

DJK: The first Strange Brew was roughly eight years ago. I was living in Jamaica Plain, and I was probably drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon.

Where were you DJing mostly at that time?

DJK: Pretty much split between the Milky Way and Good Life. I just wanted to do a mix with as many different genres as possible. I had been pigeonholed as a hip-hop DJ and I wanted to get out of that. I was listening to a lot of different kinds of music, and I made that first one to prove that I could do more.

Why was this the project you chose to set that new precedent?

DJK: I felt like it was a good title to represent a bunch of different things that kind of don’t belong together.

How did you launch the series at first?

DJK: There was nothing big. I kept it really small and

Music-wise, what was the maturation through the different installments?

DJK: They’re all pretty similar—they have very upbeat music up until the middle, then there is a breaking point, it’s slow, then it picks back up again. As for genres—it’s literally as many genres as I can pack in there.

It’s one hour and the goal is to take as many genres as possible and mix them perfectly. … It’s punk rock, trap, footwork, indie dance, house, classic rock, afrobeat.

How much does it resemble an actual set that you would spin at a club?

DJK: Zero. But I do record it live at Good Life, and I do it over and over again.

What’s the planning like?

DJK: It’s awful, it’s painstaking. It’s like playing a video game over and over again until you beat it and get it perfect. That’s the only way I can describe it. I’ll probably practice that full hour 30 times. I’m not doing this stuff with [the music production software] Ableton, I’m doing it live. If there’s a mistake, I start over at the beginning. That’s why it takes so long to do these mixes. I start picking songs out like seven months before the mix.

What makes something a Strange Brew track?

DJK: I’ll say this—I don’t put a lot of hip-hop on them because at this point, hip-hop has such a short half-life.

The songs are only popular for two weeks.

Doesn’t that make it harder since hip-hop is easier to mix than a lot of other genres?

DJK: Yes, but I’m looking for something I can put out physically. The songs have to be timeless.

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How did it taste?

DJK: I thought it was okay. Other people tasted it, and they didn’t die. But this time, even though I stopped drinking, I wanted to take it to another level and get a local brewery behind the concept. And since I can’t sample the beer to make beer anymore, I looked around and that’s where Down The Road came in. I brought this to them in February and now it’s coming together.

You’re not drinking anymore, so what input did you have on the actual beer?

DJK: I wanted it to be an IPA because of Good Life.

When people want a random beer there, IPAs sell the best.

What does it take to make a short-run beer like this actually happen?

BVV: This was a no-brainer—bringing in someone who wanted to make beer and do a release party with us. … It’s something that you would expect to be a stick in the bike spokes, but it’s really not. It runs smoothly. … This was a modification of a recipe we had—we just tweaked it for his usage. It turned out pretty damn good.

DB: It’s kind of a take on our Seventh Star IPA. The Pukwudgie is our session IPA, which leans toward the New England stuff. Seventh Star is a good balance between a fruity juicy thing and something more bitter like a West Coast IPA would be. Sometimes [doing small batches] can be a hassle—sometimes you dump a lot of beer. You have a base, then we play around with the hops and the amount of hops.

How do you describe the result in this case?

DB: A little bit of pine, a little bit juicy, some melon, a little bit of berry. Not too much tropical fruit but a little bit of citrus.

Who did the artwork?

DJK: [Jason Burke]—he’s actually a famous craft beer artist. He does artwork for beers all over the country. Ink and Lead Designs—he’s all over the place. He was doing artwork for Fresh Produce and I found him that way.

Do you have a favorite Strange Brew mix after all these years?

DJK: Number two and number five, and now number six. And I’m not just saying that.

When did the actual brew come into the equation?

DJK: Two years ago I did Strange Brew 5 and decided to brew my own beer.

When did you stop drinking?

DJK: Two years ago.

And yet here you are with another Strange Brew compilation.

DJK: Yes. This is the big thing where Down The Road came in. Two years ago, right before I got sober, I did Strange Brew 5, and I was still drinking heavily. I brewed

>> STRANGE BREW 6 RELEASE PARTY STARTS AT DOWN THE ROAD BREWERY IN EVERETT THEN CONTINUES AT THE GOOD LIFE IN BOSTON. SAT 10.13. FOR MORE INFO CHECK OUT GOODLIFEBAR.COM AND DOWNTHEROADBREWERY.COM. 12

my own beer at my apartment, and in order to do that you have to sample it along the way. I had barrels all over the place.

PHOTO BY ANGEL OCASIO

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DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

13

THE HUB’S WAR ON SATAN DIRTY OLD BOSTON

When Boston’s war against the Antichrist was raging

BY PETER ROBERGE

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The Satanic Temple, a self-described group of “politically aware, Civic-minded Satanists” based out of Salem, recently made waves in Arkansas, where they rallied in response to the construction of a Ten Commandments monument in Little Rock. Attendees showed up to the rally with horns, pentagrams, and other satanic imagery to confront the biblegripping, God-fearing Christians who were unhappy with their presence.

While the Salem Satanists ruffled feathers down South—one state senator claimed the group was using “fake arguments and misinformation to take advantage of the good people of Arkansas”—around here they are largely accepted. It hasn’t always been that way, though. Salem’s notoriously intolerant history is well known, as are the travails of people in that city who had rather interesting convictions back in the day. Boston was the same, with a religious climate similar to that in Little Rock in 2018, right down to an irrational fear of Satan’s spawn.

In an issue of the Daily Globe at the dawn on the 20th century, ministers announced a “War on Satan” in light of what they perceived to be a time of great regional religious awakening. Representatives from several Christian denominations planned meetings to address their plans to move the city toward a holier lifestyle. Members of the general public were forbidden to attend and the press was told to stay away, though the invite list did include businessmen who were active in church circles. Some things never change.

The combination of religious fervor and the funding fostered by those businessmen led to a campaign led by ministers and moneyed interests to increase the number of hawkers on streets paid to hand out pamphlets. The resulting tracts featured “flaming statistics” that showed an apparent decrease in new converts, and encouraged those who were not active in the church to feel “a profound sorrow.” A classic shaming effort, it warned Satan’s disciples to vacate the city at once.

In time, despite the initial shade thrown at the press, the desperate men of God released a statement pressuring reporters to aid in the campaign as part of their own religious duty. The effort largely fell flat, though in time there would be yet another local theater in the war on Christ’s perceived opponents.

Roughly three years later, the so-called Holy Ghost and Us Society declared its own battle against satanic forces. Stationed on Mass Ave, a Maine native and reverend named Frank Sandford cultivated roughly half a million bucks (more than 10 million in today’s dollars) through his followers. As one columnist for Fibre and Fabric, a textile trade rag at the time, reported in 1900: A gentleman who styles himself Rev. F. W. Sandford has come to this city, and opened up to “save souls.” I don’t know that there have been any souls lost here, therefore I do not know really the modus operandi. It seems to me that he is after a good living without … working.

Sandford discouraged life insurance, calling it a “sinful device of Satan,” and demanded that disciples turn over their policies to him, for they must sacrifice their all to God. Books other than the Bible were forbidden to be read by his followers, while he shared a similar disdain for the press, calling them “Satan’s slaves.”

Such sacrifices, however, weren’t required of Mr. Sandford. Through his own devilish work he procured a yacht and a sophisticated carriage, all while he established chapters all over New England.

More than 100 years later, it’s almost unbelievable that satanic worshippers of any degree—however in line with regional politics they are—are allowed their basic freedoms. Perhaps it’s because they’re not stealing life insurance policies.

Looking through old newspapers, it’s clear that there have always been unscrupulous cult leaders in Mass. For the most part, they’ve worked for Christian churches.

This throwback is a collaboration between Dirty Old Boston, the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism, and DigBoston. For more throwbacks, visit facebook.com/ dirtyoldboston and binjonline.org.

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DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

15

VICTORIA SHEN MUSIC

Bringing experimental electronics to Boston City Hall

BY NINA CORCORAN @NINA_CORCORAN

PHOTO BY SUSANNA BOLLE Boston City Hall isn’t just for shuffling important papers or starting meetings with the mayor. The iconic brutalist building, defiantly repping the coldness of 1968 to make sure you never forget it, is occasionally home to a series of stimulating, though infrequent, electronic events— and the next in its series is possibly its best yet.

This upcoming Friday will see Non-Event, the Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture, and the Harvard Graduate School of Design present Concrete Sounds: Multichannel Experimental Electronics in Boston City Hall. Los Angelesbased artist Richard Chartier will headline the event with his well-known minimalist sound art, focusing on the inter-relationships between the spatial nature of sound, silence, focus, and the very act of listening. Somervillebased multimedia artist and musician Victoria Shen will perform before him, focusing on the spatiality and physicality of sound and its relationship to the human body. The event is free, all ages, and begins promptly at 8 pm.

Even if Victoria Shen’s name doesn’t ring a bell, there’s a chance you’ve seen her before under the moniker Evicshen. The 29-year-old artist has been performing in the Boston area for close to four years, though she’s lived here for over 11 years. Shen moved to Boston from San Francisco to study visual arts at School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. She supported herself throughout her time there by various projects, including a performance art project where she built pop-up nail salons and recreated modernist paintings on volunteers’ nails. She continued cobbling together money along the way before landing a full-time job at Harvard, where she still works during the day. Music was in her life throughout all of this, but it wasn’t until after college

that her attention shifted to the performance aspect of it and the desire to explore the analog world kicked in.

“Some people say analog instruments are a fetish, like some type of elitist music space,” says Shen. “But I think it’s very beautiful and elegant in its simplicity. It forces some amount of constraint on you that I think digital doesn’t have, at least when it comes to the kind of music I was making before using virtual sound samples and overlaying as many effects as possible. It was helpful to pair down my sound pallette.”

Over the past four years, Shen primarily performed in the local experimental EDM scene. At basement shows and small DIY gatherings, her peers pushed themselves to see how far they could go creatively, and their influence began seeping into the way she viewed live performance.

Eventually, Shen’s short stint working at a synthesizer company producing experimental electronics paid off, as the owner introduced her to the world of Non-Event, the Boston-based concert series and booking entity. It was only a matter of time before they invited her to perform at a few smaller events, including one at the magical Waterworks Museum in Brookline. This Friday’s show at Boston City Hall will be her biggest to date.

“A lot of my work tries to respond to the space I’m performing in, in an attempt to have every performance be site-specific and new. At City Hall, I want to utilize the resonant qualities of the concrete interior and the space in general,” says Shen. “This performance will be more different than normal because of the installation I’m creating as well. Usually I just bring my synthesizers, contact mics, and other electronics. I’ll try to figure out how to build a relationship with the space by bringing in what I have on hand because I don’t usually know what

the site will look like. This time, I’ve visited the space three times since learning I would perform here, so I’ve been putting together a far more ambitious installation than I normally would.”

Those seeking a more vivid description of Shen’s installation will, unfortunately, have to wait until the event. She plans on keeping everything a secret until it’s happening in the moment. But it helps to know that she usually plays with the same theme: using resonant bodies to play with feedback, explore how sound will travel through space, and then translate the way sound uses that space as a source input for her synthesizers.

So what exactly does it mean to explore the relationship between sound and the body? For one thing, it helps to play music really loudly, because at the very least you begin to understand the physical force and power of the otherwise invisible source.

“When I say that I deal with the relationship between sound and human body, I think of the way I interact with my body through sound,” she explains. “It’s a gestural reaction to sounds. It’s like dancing, but not necessarily with the lexicon of typical dance. With certain types of music, there’s body language that people will respond to that genre of music with. A lot of the sound stuff that I do is primal, meaning I enter this primal present state when I play music. It’s unclear if it’s my gestures creating this sound or if it’s a response, converging onto a type of singularity. I put my own personal body as an instrument as a receptacle for the sound.”

If that doesn’t stick, just think about how microphones operate instead. Abandon the idea of them as a way to transmit messages, and instead think of microphones as a way to translate emotion or the space you’re currently occupying. The human bodies in a room will change the timbre of the feedback. If nothing else, it’s about playing around with things until you begin to understand the immediate section of the world around you—something that, in itself, is impossible to understand because everything is constantly in motion, constantly developing, constantly aging as you begin to grasp onto an earlier understanding of it. It’s a heady subject matter, but one that’s just as moving and insightful as you allow it to be. Music is art, yes, but it goes deeper than just being an art form. It’s about pushing the traditional ways in which it’s made and how it makes you feel, and Victoria Shen will do exactly that this Friday.

“There’s something painful [about experimental music], but it’s almost like modern art,” she says, laughing. “The ability to appreciate or follow a musical thread down in that way, to not have it be spoon-fed to you, is great. You tough it out to find an angle where you can really enjoy these sounds, whether it’s the pure sensation of listening, learning to be present, or feeling the textures of the song. You get to do all of that, but without all the baggage of language or history or intertextuality of past conventions of music that you need to understand it. You just experience it.”

>> RICHARD CHARTIER, VICTORIA SHEN. FRI 10.12. BOSTON CITY HALL, MEZZANINE LEVEL, 1 CITY HALL PLZ., BOSTON. 7:30PM/ALL AGES/FREE. NONEVENT.ORG

MUSIC EVENTS THU 10.11

THE RETURN OF PHILLY’S DIY SWEETHEARTS SWEARIN’ + EMPATH + LEOPARD PRINT TASER [Great Scott, 1222 Comm. Ave., Allston.

8:30pm/18+/$13. greatscottboston.com]

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SUN 10.14

FIRST FLOWERING VOICE WORTH TENDING TO MOLLY BURCH + OLDEN YOLK

[Lilypad Inman, 1353 Cambridge St., Cambridge.

9pm/all ages/$12. lilypadinman.com]

DIGBOSTON.COM

MON 10.15

MATH ROCK ANIMALS TOUR TTNG + PRINCE DADDY & THE HYENA + THE KRAKEN QUARTET

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

7pm/all ages/$18. crossroadspresents.com]

MON 10.15

WINE AND DINE WITH HIP AND HOP MARK MERREN + MEGAZOYD + ANSON RAP$

[City Winery, 80 Beverly St., Boston. 7pm/21+/$12. citywinery.com]

TUE 10.16

COOING OVER BRAZILIAN POP KALI UCHIS

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

7pm/all ages/$29.50. houseofblues.com]

WED 10.17

I SAW WATER: SELF-TITLED ANNIVERSARY TOUR TIGERS JAW + THE SIDEKICKS + CHERRY [The Sinclair, 52 Church St., Cambridge. 7pm/all ages/$18. sinclaircambridge.com]

WHEEL OF TUNES

DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE Japanese typhoons and invites from the Cure

CALL FOR COMMUNITY CURATORS

BY NINA CORCORAN @NINA_CORCORAN For a minute there back in 2014, it seemed like Death Cab for Cutie would never be the same. Guitarist and songwriter Chris Walla announced he would part ways with the band after spending 17 years as an integral part of the iconic indie rock staples. They released their final album with him, Kintsugi, in 2015 and hit the road touring behind it.

Now, the band’s current lineup—singer-guitarist Ben Gibbard, bassist Nick Harmer, drummer Jason McGerr, guitarist-keyboardist Dave Depper, and guitarist-keyboardist Zac Rae—has proven that not only is the band an equally creative entity now, but that they’re just as eager to continue making music that taps into an emotional corner of your heart that’s otherwise neglected. On this year’s Thank You for Today, Death Cab for Cutie try their hand at a more reflective and subtle style, testing out electropop and smoothing out synths until they opt for an emotion-driven sound that leans off Gibbard’s words for once.

“In some ways, this will sound cheesy, but I’m really thankful that this album exists,” says Harmer. “After conceiving the last record, Chris leaving the band, there was a question mark over what would be next. Would we be able to do this? Finding Zac and Dave during that tour cycle, building that relationship out into them joining the band permanently, and then going into the studio to make an album with them. There were a lot of nerves about if it would work. We were optimistic it would be great, but we were still entering a new thing. The fact that we got to work and things came together as well as they did is something I’m honestly proud of. This was the exact album we had to make as a band following everything that happened.”

To better understand Death Cab for Cutie now that they’re two decades deep into their career, we interviewed Nick Harmer for a round of Wheel of Tunes, a series where we ask musicians questions inspired by their song titles. With Thank You for Today as the prompt, his answers are happy and open-minded—attributes that will appear in Death Cab for Cutie’s songs when the band headlines the Wang Theatre both Sunday and Monday nights.

The Somerville Museum is pleased to announce the second bi-annual competition for Community Curators, two of whom will be selected to install their proposed exhibits in the Museum’s gallery spaces at 1 Westwood Road, Somerville, MA. Those selected will also receive seed grants of $2,500 for exhibition costs.

The Museum welcomes proposals and encourages applicants to visit both the Museum and its website at www.somervillemuseum.org to learn more about the Museum’s wide-ranging exhibition history.

1. “I Dreamt We Spoke Again” Who is the one person you haven’t spoken to in years but would love to have a conversation with again?

Wow, that’s a great question. This is fantastic. Well, you know I haven’t spoken to this person in a while. When I was in high school, I was in a band for a moment.

We didn’t record or release anything. We were just a high school band practicing in garages, playing around town, making a big racket after school, and we were terrible.

We were terrible as high school bands are. I haven’t spoken to the singer or the drummer of that band in a long time. Probably not since I’ve been in the studio with Ben [Gibbard]. I went off to college after we graduated and I haven’t talked to them since then. So it would be fun to talk to them about music and see what their musical journeys have been like. I don’t know if they’re even aware I stuck with it. So that would be a fun conversation to have, one about the early days of figuring out music.

2. “Summer Years” Looking back on this summer, what’s your favorite memory or experience you had?

Oh wow. Another great question. This is fun. I wish more people did interviews like this. Well, I had a really fun summer, and a lot of great things went down. I’m trying to sort out all of the fun experiences. One fun thing we did was play this festival in Europe called Meltdown Festival. We got a personal invite from Robert Smith from the Cure to play this festival. And you know, he’s that band. The Cure is one of my all-time favorite bands forever and ever and ever. They’re one of the reasons I started playing music in the first place. So that was a really special moment.

But there’s small moments along the way, too. I have a daughter who just turned 3. We had a blast this summer. She’s turning into such a cool person. So we did a lot of adventures that figured into it as well. It’s so hard to pick one! It really is! So many good moments from this summer. Like the swimming lessons we took. We would go swimming on Saturdays, and that was always so fun. I don’t know. Just seeing this person figure out how to navigate water. It sounds silly, but it was pretty special.

All the family stuff aside, getting the invitation to fly over to play Meltdown and the peripheral fun stuff connected with that was pretty special for us and one of those “pinch yourself” moments where you can’t believe life has developed like this.

Read the rest of the article at Digboston.com

PHOTO BY ELIOT LEE HAZEL

>>DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE, CHARLY BLISS. SUN 10.14 AND MON 10.15. THE WANG THEATRE, 270 TREMONT ST., BOSTON. 7PM/ALL AGES/$32.50. BOCHCENTER.ORG

Information Session

Thursday, September 27, 2018 at 6 pm Somerville Museum 1 Westwood Road, Somerville, MA RSVP to alison@somervillemuseum.org

Deadline

INFORMATION SESSION

Friday, November 2, 2018 (by 11 pm EST)

Friday, October 12, 2018 at 6pm

Somerville Museumforms can be found at Application 1 Westood Road www.somervillemuseum.org/curator-application.pdf Somerville, MA RSVP: somemuseum@gmail.com

Upcoming Exhibits Triple Decker Ecology: Somerville’s Urban Landscape

Curated by Pennie Taylor, with David Buckley Borden October-December 2018 Opening Reception: Thursday, October 11, 2018

Our Stories, Our Stuff, Our Somerville

Curated by Bess Paupeck February-April 2019 Opening Reception: Thursday, February 14, 2019 For more information check out our website.

Somerville Museum

SomervilleMuseum

1 Westwood Road Somerville, MA 02143 www.somervillemuseum.org

NEWS TO US

FEATURE

somervillemuseum

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

17

BOSTON ART BOOK FAIR ARTS

“The only place where you’ll find MIT and a zine maker from Allston exhibiting together”

BY CASEY CAMPBELL

The Cyclorama will be decked in more style and color than usual on Friday, as The second annual Boston Art Book Fair kicks off in the South End. Curated by Oliver Mak and Randi Hopkins, the three-day celebration will shine spotlights on culture from the Boston area and beyond, plus pack plenty of panels and signings with book makers galore.

The unique art book conference is organized by Oliver Mak, a co-founder of the streetwear company Bodega who DJs under the moniker DJ Gucci Vuitton, and Randi Hopkins, an independent art curator in Boston since the late ’90s. Hopkins co-founded the Allston Skirt Gallery, penned weekly columns in the Boston Phoenix, and works as an organizer at the Institute of Contemporary Art. We asked how they networked overlapping worlds and creative accomplices to bring their sophomore endeavor together.

What can we expect this year? What’s especially exciting to you?

OM: Boston Art Book Fair is a full weekend celebrating art in analog form with over 100 exhibitors from all over the place that range from activist fanzines to dissertations on obscure Swiss design.

There’s a huge art install from PneuHaus courtesy of our friends Brek One and Redbull. We moved [the fair] to the gigantic Cyclorama space and are expecting to see over 7,000 people. We added a beer garden and have two full days of DJs and programming. I’m most excited about graphic design, so exhibitors like Draw Down, DAP/Artbook, and PROPS are where I’ll be going to get inspired. We curated everything as a survey of what elements for culture keep print alive.

RH: I’m excited about the expanded number of exhibitors we’re assembling in the Cyclorama this year, and the amazing variety of styles and the sheer creative energy they bring to our art book fair audience. A few that I’m especially looking forward to include Brooklyn-based art and fashion collective A.R.T.S.Y. Magazine, who are going to be doing interactive screen printing at their table, and artful indie food magazine pioneer Put A Egg On It, debuting a delicious new issue in Boston.

Why’s the Boston Art Book Fair important for the Boston area specifically?

OM: Art book fairs dissolve the walls that separate institutions and young independents, highbrow and lowbrow, internationally known and made at your home. It is the only place where you’ll find MIT and a zine maker from Allston exhibiting together.

To remove the constraints of hierarchy and present great art projects together creates opportunities and relationships that benefit everyone. There’s a sense of discovery that everyone has as they engage with all these different exhibitors that cannot be replicated on a screen. We’re also bringing a large number of artists from all over the world to exhibit just for this fair.

RH: The Boston Art Book Fair opens up a fantastic, democratic, image- and idea-filled space for people who love to look, to make stuff, to read stuff, to listen to music, and share stories and browse and touch.

We’re bringing ideas from every realm of creativity

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into one big free space. We hope it draws new cultureappreciators to the myriad kinds of things going on in the worlds of art and books in an accessible and handson way, excites art insiders with new finds and new friends, and provides a platform for makers from all over the world to bring their newest projects to Boston.

Do you have a favorite Boston-area publication?

OM: I’ve always collected the zines of Matt and Nick Zaremba. We’ve done a lot of art shows, starting with renegade loft parties in early 2000s through group shows at our own gallery (Fourth Wall Project ’08-’12). The crew behind Boston Art Review is amazing too. They stepped up coverage of the arts community with an exquisite print edition and video projects.

I’m excited to see what they have for Issue 2, which is dropping soon.

RH: I’m a big fan of publications like Hassle and TIS books, whose artist/founders have strong ties to our great area art schools. I am also excited to see young Boston artists involved with book and zine making, including Emily Sheffer at Dust Collective and Olivia Park.

Are there any Boston artists you’re personally looking for?

OM: I love the biographical comic work of Dave Ortega. Photographer Adam Jason Cohen is in Chicago now, but he was a Boston artist whose work is in Vogue and in campaigns we work on through Bodega. From LA, I’m really excited to have Vacancy Projects in this year. I love what they showed at Beyond the Streets.

Syllables, and a music and reading event by Publication Studio Hudson on the schedule in our Program Salon during the fair.

What’s the organization process for something like this?

OM: It’s a gigantic undertaking to organize this free, all-ages event. It would not be possible without the enthusiastic work from the entire staff of the Boston Center for the Arts and the good faith of our artists and sponsors. We started the show last year, and it was spread out through the Mills Gallery and a couple other spaces. We decided to unify everything by moving it to the Cyclorama and that almost doubled the amount of exhibitors, so we added a beer garden.

RH: This is a great collaboration between the generous spirit, deep roots in the art and music community, and peerless style of Oliver and Bodega and the depth of experience BCA brings to forefronting and supporting new art, in whatever forms it takes. As Oliver says, we started this together last year and have really learned by doing. One of the biggest things we learned last year was that there was a terrific appetite for this kind of experience here; we hope that bringing everyone together under our historic Cyclorama dome this year will add to the unique nature of the Boston Art Book Fair.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, CHECK OUT BOSTONARTBOOKFAIR.COM.

RH: Not to mention Hannah Burr and Sue Murad, Caleb Cole and Greer Muldowney, Karl Stevens, Chantal Zakari and Mike Mandel—and I know I’m going to meet artists who are new to me, to add to my list of favorites.

Will you [Mak] be spinning at the event as well?

OM: Yes! We worked really hard to get a diverse cross section of music for this event.

The opening party has Yvng Pavl and Lunamariposa. We have DJs throughout, including Johnny Stevens, Slick Vick, Nightime Sunshine, and a couple more. I’m trying to stay away from DJing this one since there are so many voices and styles I want to give a platform to.

RH: This is really unique aspect of the Boston Art Book Fair—we have the best music!

The DJs are incredible and nonstop, and we’ll also have a spoken word performance by Abdul Fattah Ismail/Extended

PHOTO BY MATTHEW SCOTT GUALCO

SKETCHTASY EXCERPT

Reprinted with permission from the new book by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore (Arsenal Pulp Press 2018) Polly and I are in the spaceship on the highway, I never realized the buildings up ahead blink so much like stars and when I close my eyes we’re flying through a tunnel of light in the sky until Polly’s saying Alexa, look, isn’t that the exit?

Oh, maybe I shouldn’t close my eyes while I’m driving. But we make it just in time, and then we’re gliding through the streets and there’s our Star.

Inside it’s yes, oh yes, the light flickering my eyes into my head and Polly—do we need anything? Polly gets a Blow Pop, it’s already in her mouth so no need to pay, and I get tabouli and hummus and pita bread for later.

We throw our food in the car and step into the Prudential Center to levitate up the escalators, yes we’ve got the disposable camera and Polly jumps on a cart that says WATCH OUT. But Polly, what are you watching out for?

Polly’s modeling her first club outfit, pink T-shirt with a purple heart drawn over one nipple and a red star on the other, smiley-face boxers pulled above the waist of her baggy striped jeans and just the right shade of lipstick to look totally wrong—she pushes her

sunglasses down to show off the rest of her makeup, yellow highlighter pressed into her eyelids and then permanent black marker as eyeliner, stunning.

Wait, there’s a sign that says MASS HYSTERIA, just behind Polly’s head—get a picture of me with MASS HYSTERIA. Your hair. How did you do it?

I left the dye in.

You’re like a present—purple wrapping paper and a big magenta bow. Did the flash go off?

Oh, what about over there by the candy—so many colors. Should we take one together?

Your dress, it’s so soft. What’s it made out of?

Candy, let’s get candy.

So then we’re back at Star Market and I could stare at the colors all night long. Polly, what should we get, lemon drops and Sour Patch Kids and Life Savers and what else? Oh—orange juice, let’s get orange juice— vitamin C. For later. To bring back the colors. Let’s get the big one. With the pulp. Do you like the pulp? What time is it?

Almost four thirty. I don’t like the pulp.

We better get to the Loft. I’ll get the one without the pulp.

Are you sure?

We go outside to the car and—wait, look at the John Hancock Tower from this angle, all that shimmering glass pushing into the sky and I wish we could go to the top—Polly, the lights, look at all the lights. Should we give her a name?

Jeannine.

Of course. Jeannine Hancockatiel, revealing her true nature, yes nature or nurture, I mean nature and nurture. Are you sure you want to go to the Loft instead of hanging out with Jeannine?

Polly holds my hand and this time I’m looking at her eyes through the sunglasses, blue lenses, your eyes are so blue.

Your hands are so cold.

We glide in the spaceship down a deserted Boylston but it’s so late the door guy at the Loft doesn’t want to let us in—everyone’s expecting us, I say.

Tonight’s our night: he actually listens. And oh, that feeling of walking up the stairs in anticipation, just the bass until you open the door at the top and oh, wow, I forgot it would be this crowded, but there’s Billy’s head peeking up in the corner.

She’s working her new NEWS TO US

platforms that don’t taper out at the bottom so she’s having a hard time balancing, sucking on a lollipop while attempting to throw some kicks—she holds out her arms: Fierce, she says, your hair looks fierce. Fierce!

Joey’s actually on the dance floor so I know she’s really coked out and these beats yes these beats and that boy over there his eyes into my eyes I twirl around into jump rope, feet bouncing up and up and down, down, our feet together and turn, flip the floor, his eyes, give me more. And there’s Billy through the lasers yelling fierce and Joey bouncing, I turn again pull breath up to arms swaying now I’m so close to this boy, his breath or mine, back around and when he moves his hips I rotate the bounce to move my moves into the space between his breath and the beat and maybe he can join us afterwards, maybe we can drive over the Mass. Ave. Bridge for the sunrise, holding hands in the back seat oh the light yes these lights. There’s purple in this red, turn, there’s red in this purple, turn, and Billy’s really kicking now Joey’s on the sidelines and Polly stumbles over, where did she go, and I do my almost-falling move towards the queen next to me, who throws up her arms like help so I dive down to the ground and flip around, but then Polly’s waving me over. So I twirl off the dance floor still dancing, even though Polly’s standing still, eyes almost closed, leaning against the wall for support, she must have found K in the bathroom and she’s saying something to me, what did you say?

I love you. Alexa, I love you.

And I know it’s her first time on ecstasy so I close my eyes to feel it, but also I know it’s love so I open my eyes to look more closely, Polly’s curly hair fluorescent in this light, her skin purple like a pretty alien and she holds out her hand so I kiss it while I keep dancing a little with hips into feet and Joey looks over with big eyes and says Traci Lords was here.

Traci Lords? The porn star?

Traci Lords is fierce.

And how did Billy get over here, now she’s taller than all of us, yelling something, what is it?

Joey put Traci Lords in a K hole. It was fierce. Fierce!

And then the air-raid sirens like a drum roll getting louder and louder until the whole room is shaking and listen, “10,000 screaming, 10,000 screaming”— Joey says that’s Traci Lords, but is she really saying 10,000 screaming faggots? Whatever it is we’re all on the dance floor now—Billy’s working her patent leather tank top with Lycra bike shorts and the lasers are blasting past our heads and Juniper and Sage are hugging the speakers in shiny silver outfits with silver body paint and glow-in-the-dark lipstick and their newest Day-Glo wedding cake platform sneakers and then all of us, all of us together, the whole room shaking but wait, oh no, the music’s slowing down.

The Boston book launch for Sketchtasy will be at Harvard Book Store on Wednesday, October 17 at 7 pm Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore is the award-winning author of a memoir and three novels, and the editor of five nonfiction anthologies. Her memoir, The End of San Francisco, won a Lambda Literary Award, and her previous title, Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots?: Flaming Challenges to Masculinity, Objectification, and the Desire to Conform, was an American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book. You can see more of her work at mattildabernsteinsycamore.com.

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

19

FRANKLY SPEAKING FILM

Private Life has a clinical edge

BY JAKE MULLIGAN @_JAKEMULLIGAN

PRODUCTION STILL FROM PRIVATE LIFE, COURTESY NETFLIX

The first passage of Tamara Jenkins’ Private Life [2018] introduces us to Rachel (Kathryn Hahn) and Richard (Paul Giamatti), a middle-aged married couple trying desperately to conceive a child, and it also introduces us to Dr. Dordick (Denis O’Hare), who’s seen explaining some of the reasons they haven’t been successful yet. With an inadvisably flippant bedside manner, the doctor tells the married couple that Richard is producing “semen but no sperm,” a condition that he then illustrates by way of a complicated analogy involving soda machines at multiplexes. It’s cringey for the characters, but the exchange is an important one, as it suggests the movie’s own bedside manner: Private Life maintains a rigorous frankness about the human body (rare), which is a subject that it hardly ever considers in terms of sex (even rarer). That particular dichotomy is even announced by the very first shot of the movie—a title card fades in on Rachel’s body in a state of undress, with Richard standing right next to her, sliding her clothes lower, until suddenly he injects her with a syringe full of fertility meds.

During this same opening passage, we’re introduced to another family unit: There’s Richard’s brother Charlie (John Carroll Lynch), who often loans money to Rachel and Richard for their medical procedures, his wife Cynthia (Molly Shannon), who despises those loans and doesn’t seem too high on Richard and Rachel either, and finally Cynthia’s daughter Sadie (Kayli Carter), to whom Charlie is not related by blood. That last part is hugely relevant, because the convergence of two badluck streaks—a failed IVF procedure for Richard and Rachel, a bad semester for Sadie—leads Sadie into the home of Richard and Rachel, and that leads Richard and Rachel into asking Sadie a very personal favor—whether she’d be willing to donate her eggs for the sake of their pregnancy efforts (the older couple are told the odds of successful fertilization through IVF will go way up should if they elect to utilize a donor egg). That only inflames

the dissension between the two married couples, and in most narrative American films, that dissension is where most of the focus would be placed. But Jenkins, who wrote, produced, and directed this film, spends just a few scant minutes on that pseudo-melodramatic family standoff. Instead her movie devotes most of its expansive two-hour-plus running time toward documenting all the minuatue and bureaucracy that come with the process of creating a pregnancy in a medical setting—the doctors, the drugs, the behavioral rules that come with them, the waiting rooms, the arguments, the anxieties, and of course the generally clinical state of mind, which for Rachel and Richard seems to have totally sapped away whatever sense of eroticism they might have once associated with the concept of intimacy.

The power of Jenkins’ film (and I think it has a great deal) comes in just how well it situates all those details about all that process into the comparably specific lives of each individual character. Credit for that of course extends to the cast, pretty much totally excellent, with Hahn maybe even a revelation. But credit also to the set and production design, which expertly draw a highly specific portrait, that of a post-Recession New York intellectual class who probably can’t even define their own economic standing. Rachel and Richard, both well-respected artists, live in a beautiful rent-controlled apartment on East 6th that’s filled ceiling to floor with books, artwork, and trendy furniture. Most of the detail about the medical processes comes out not in the hospital but in conversations occurring here and in the other living spaces occupied throughout the film (see the title), in dialogue between the various characters (who discuss their next appointments, their last appointments, and what they can’t inject or intake during the next 24 hours, among other subjects). This verbal tendency also feels connected to matters of class: One suspects there’s so much discussion of jargon and technical

detail specifically because these characters are clever enough to know it’ll allow them to avoid talking about more emotional subjects (at a particularly low moment, Richard confides as much to Rachel: “I know, intellectually, that I’m supposed to do something for you right now, comfort you or something, [and] I’m sorry that I can’t.”) But while the downsides of this lifestyle may be clear, it’s nonetheless dreamy to Sadie, who is herself a student of the intellectual classes—she just left Bard on the way to her “aunt and uncle’s” place. She covets their clout and their bougie maturity as much as they covet her eggs. And so while the affection between the two parties—Rachel and Richard, and Sadie—is undoubtedly genuine… the potential for legitimate exploitation lingers anyway. And that potential throws the mindsets and motivations of each character into provocative question, a haze that Jenkins’ screenplay wisely declined to air out.

One thing the screenplay does to lesser effect is constantly foreground the inherent absurdity of the whole family’s collective situation. It’s referenced in the dialogue, but it’s also emphasized in the staging, which occasionally pushes scenes toward Apatowian ends. One sequence, for instance, turns Richard masturbating into something of an early cinema vaudeville routine—a long-take master shot watching one thing after the other go wrong until he’s stumbling around the room with tissue paper hanging off his back and his dick in his hands. I’m all for a good joke about jerking off, but this one pretty much stands in defiance against what most of the rest of the film is working toward, for Private Life is usually less interested in the comedy of absurd scenarios than it is in studying how and why people talk their way through them. And in that endless cycle of selfserving conversations the film really gets at something about how goals and tasks and quests, righteous though they may be, often just come to serve as a way for us to narrativize our lives, to redraw our primal disquiet into a more vanquishable shape, which of course does nothing to actually dispel it. One thing about the film that seems hugely significant is that neither Richard nor Rachel ever say anything that really expresses why they want a family so badly—it’s just something they’re working toward, another process to go through, perhaps even just because it’s so much easier to look forward than inward. The last passage of the film is not a funny one but mysterious and tragic and utterly affirming instead, all together at once, and it answers this impasse with a notion straight from the romantic spirit that this film deliberately kept suppressed under jargon for most of its runtime: It’s okay to look forward rather than inward, so long as there’s someone there beside you looking in the same direction.

>> PRIVATE LIFE. RATED R. AVAILABLE TO STREAM ON NETFLIX. ALSO CURRENTLY PLAYING THEATRICALLY AT THE LANDMARK EMBASSY CINEMA. DOWNTHEROADBREWERY.COM. 20

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Th Hom e

s ne 1 n2

g h i t y M B y t o s h s g i r h o t w T o n d M ow o w t e

DEC 28

DEC 29

DEC 30

HOUSE OF BLUES BOSTON TICKETS ARE ON SALE NOW LIVENATION.COM • HOUSEOFBLUES.COM/BOSTON • 800-745-3000 NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

21

ADULT QUICKIES SAVAGE LOVE

BY DAN SAVAGE @FAKEDANSAVAGE | MAIL@SAVAGELOVE.NET

COMEDY EVENTS THU 10.11 - SAT 10.13

I was involved with a straight man who enjoys cross-dressing and taking explicit photos. The problem is that the props he uses belong to his three children, all under age 12. For example, he dressed up as a slutty schoolgirl and wore his daughter’s backpack. He dressed up as a slutty cowgirl and posed with his son’s stuffed horse. He even had the horse eating his “carrot.” I told him he should not use his children’s things as props. He believes that his children will never see the photos, so no harm will come of it. I’m horrified at the thought of these kids (perhaps as adults) stumbling over these pictures. He posts them on Instagram and Facebook, so they aren’t private and he can’t control where they go. It’s one of the reasons I ended the relationship. Is there anything I can say to him?

Canceled Definitely Promising Relationship Over Photo Sessions You told him what he’s doing is wrong, you explained the enormous risk he’s running, and you dumped him, CDPROPS. You could take one last run at it and try to explain that his children finding these photos isn’t one of those “low-risk, high-consequence events,” i.e., something that’s unlikely to happen but would be utterly disastrous if it did. (Think of the super volcano that is Yellowstone National Park erupting or a deranged, racist billionaire somehow managing to win a US presidential election.) Nope, if he’s posting these photos online, at least one of his children will stumble over them—or one of their friends will. (“Hey, isn’t this your dad? And your backpack?”) Your ex needs to knock this shit off, and will most likely need the help of a mental-health pro in order to do so.

My parents were married for almost 40 years—and on paper, things seemed fine.

They rarely fought and were an example of a strong, monogamous marriage until the day my mother died. Recently, I found writings by my dad revealing he had several casual encounters with men over the course of their marriage. Do I tell him I know? We are close, but sex isn’t something we usually discuss. What should I do with this information, if anything?

A Deeply Upsetting Lie That Scalds When you say their relationship seemed fine “on paper,” ADULTS, what you mean is their relationship was decent and loving. Well, now you know it wasn’t perfect—but no relationship is. Your mother is dead (I’m sorry for your loss), and either she made peace with this fact about her husband long ago or she never knew about it. Either way, no good will come from confronting your father about the handful of dicks he sucked decades ago.

I’m a 47-year-old virgin straight man. What advice can you give me on losing my virginity?

Wanting And Hoping There are lots of 40-year-old-and-up women out there who are virgins—they write in, too—so putting “middle-aged virgin seeks same” in your personal ad wouldn’t be a bad idea. Find someone in your same situation, WAH, and treat her with kindness, gentleness, and patience—the same as you would like to be treated.

I’m married and poly, with one partner in addition to my husband. My partner has a friend-with-benefits arrangement with a woman he’s been with since before we met. The FWB is not poly, but she’s always known my partner is. She has always insisted they’re not a couple, but he knows she would be hurt if she found out he was with someone else, so he has avoided telling her he’s now also with me. I don’t like being someone’s secret. My husband knows I’m with someone else and is fine with it. If my partner’s FWB felt the same, I wouldn’t see a problem. But this feels oddly like I’m helping my partner cheat on his FWB, even though they’re “not a couple” (her words). So it’s not cheating… is it?

Pretty Obviously Lost, Yeah It’s not cheating—it’s plausible deniability. Your partner’s FWB would rather not know he’s seeing anyone else, so she doesn’t ask him about his other partners and he doesn’t tell. Accommodating his FWB’s desire not to know about other partners—doing the DADT open thing—does mean keeping you a secret, POLY, at least from her. If you’re not comfortable with that, you’ll have to end things with your partner.

On the Lovecast, adult babies explained, finally: savagelovecast. com

JOSH WOLF @ LAUGH BOSTON

Josh Wolf is a comedian, actor and NY Times Bestselling author best known for his work as a round table guest and writer on E!’s “Chelsea Lately” and “After Lately.” He has become one of the most sought after personalities in comedy, headlining stand up comedy tours across the nation. Wolf grew up in Amherst, Massachusetts and began performing stand up at 15 years old.

425 SUMMER ST., BOSTON | VARIOUS | $25-$29 THU 10.11

HEADLINERS IN THE SQUARE @ JOHN HARVARD’S BREWERY & ALE HOUSE

Featuring: Kyle McNally, Tyrone Jones, & more.

33 DUNSTER ST., CAMBRIDGE | 9PM | FREE FRI 10.12 - SAT 10.13

MIKE MCCARTHY @ NICK’S COMEDY STOP

Mike McCarthy has been seen on The Showtime network and Comedy Central. Mike is known throughout the industry as the Comedy Barbarian, his high-energy style of humor will leave the audience bouncing off the walls and gasping for breath. He hits the stage like a titan and does not relent until the entire audience is under his spell laughing at things they never thought they would. Some comics make you laugh; Mike McCarthy will make you laugh till you cry. Don’t miss this high energy, balls to the walls comedy experience..... JUST REMEMBER TO FASTEN YOUR SEATBELTS!!!!!!

100 WARRENTON ST., BOSTON | 8PM | $20 FRI 10.12 - SAT 10.13

HIDEOUT COMEDY @ THE HIDEOUT IN FANEUIL HALL Hosted by Dylan Krasinski and Sam Ike

340 FANEUIL HALL MARKETPLACE BOSTON | 8 & 10PM | $10 FRI 10.12

BILL’S BAR COMEDY @ BILL’S BAR BOSTON Hosted by Zach Russell and Robert Pooley

5 LANSDOWNE ST., BOSTON | 7:30PM | $10 SAT 10.13

MAZ JOBRANI @ THE WILBUR

MAZ JOBRANI is a founding member of The Axis of Evil Comedy Tour which first aired on Comedy Central. He has had three Showtime specials, BROWN AND FRIENDLY, I COME IN PEACE and most recently, I’M NOT A TERRORIST, BUT I’VE PLAYED ONE ON TV. He performs stand-up live around the world, including the Middle East where he performed in front of the King of Jordan. Maz has also performed stand up on THE TONIGHT SHOW and THE LATE LATE SHOW WITH CRAIG FERGUSON. Most recently, Maz starred as the title character in the award-winning indie comedy, JIMMY VESTVOOD: AMERIKAN HERO, a film which he co-wrote and produced. In the Summer of 2015 he played the role of Jafar from Aladdin in the Disney movie, THE DESCENDANTS.

246 TREMONT ST, BOSTON | 7PM | $39-$75 SUN 10.14

LIQUID COURAGE COMEDY @ SLUMBREW

Featuring: Ethan Diamond, Brett Johnson, Ellen Sugarman, Jeff Medoff, David McLaughlin, Tom Kelley, Dario Joseph, Mike Settlow, & Jonathan Tillson.

Hosted by Chris Post

15 WARD ST., SOMERVILLE | 8PM | $5 MON 10.15

MONDAY NIGHT COMEDY IN THE SUPPER CLUB @ CAPO Hosted by Will Noonan

443 WEST BROADWAY BOSTON | 8PM | FREE WED 10.17

8 O’CLOCK AT 730 @ 730 TAVERN, KITCHEN, & PATIO Featuring: Rob Crean, Liam McGurk, & more.

730 MASS AVE., CAMBRIDGE | 8PM | FREE WED 10.17

THE COMEDY PIZZA PARTY @ PENGUIN PIZZA Hosted by A.J. Glagolev

735 HUNTINGTON AVE, MISSION HILL | 9PM | FREE

savagelovecast.com

22

10.11.18 - 10.18.18

|

DIGBOSTON.COM

Lineup & shows to change without notice. For more info on everything Boston Comedy visit BostonComedyShows.com Bios & writeups pulled from various sources, including from the clubs & comics…

WHAT'S FOR BREAKFAST

BY PATT KELLEY PATTKELLEY.COM

LIVE MUSIC • PRIVATE EVENTS 10/13

The Pack A.D, Tom Baker and the Snakes and The Gala Canadian garage rock

10/19

Cat Family presents The Prom Do Over You Always Wanted

w/Future Teens playing Kidz Bop THE WAY WE WEREN’T

BY PAT FALCO ILLFALCO.COM

10/21

Grayskull Booking presents KEN Mode with Birds in a Row. Heavy Metal

10/22

Toddlerbilly Takeover Free kids’ dance party with Matt “guitar” Heaton

10/24

OUR VALUED CUSTOMERS

BY TIM CHAMBERLAIN OURVC.NET

Dr. Gasp with The Silks and more

Happy Halloween season!

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

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

23

experience local art !

Sat & Sun, October 13 & 14, 2018

STUDIOS

GALLERIES

noon–6 pm each day

Showcasing local artists

119 Braintree Street

Out of the Blue Too Gallery

Featuring 40+ local artists: Painting, Drawing, Printmaking, Photography, Jewelry, Mixed-media, Clothing, Light Sculpture, Graphic design, Candles, Fiber art, Ceramics, crafts AND MORE!

Plus, live musical performances

Designers Circus, 1 Braintree Street Connecting women designer craftspeople to women from around the world

14 Harvard Avenue

POP-UP PERFORMANCES Saturday, October 13 only

The Grove

Extension Gallery 156 Harvard Avenue

Public park across from 219 Western Ave. Lower Allston

» OCT. 13 Gallery opening party

Ross Miller’s Studio

(Above Orchard Skateshop)

Casa Caña

107 Franklin St. Lower Allston

1234 Soldiers Field Road, Lower Allston GO TO ALLSTONOPENSTUDIOS.COM FOR MORE INFO

GO TO ALLSTONOPENSTUDIOS.COM FOR BANDS AND TIMES

OTHER HAPPENINGS Future Forecast: A Stingray Body Art Slow Fashion Exchange SHOWCASING LOCAL ARTISTS ZONE 3 » 267 Western Avenue, Lower Allston

» 384 Cambridge Street Allston

» OCT. 13, 5 PM–9 PM

Spike’s Junkyard

(suggested donation, pay what you can)

Boston Martial Arts Center

MARTIAL ARTS DEMONSTRATIONS

161 Harvard Avenue, Allston

TBA

» OCT. 14, WORKSHOPS ALL DAY » 108 Brighton Avenue (cost per workshop can be found on their website)

Visit Allstonopenstudios.com