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BOWERY BOSTON WWW.BOWERYBOSTON.COM VOL 21 + ISSUE 12

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MAR 21, 2019 - MAR 28,2019 BUSINESS PUBLISHER John Loftus

DEAR READER

ASSOCIATE PUBLISHERS Chris Faraone Jason Pramas

STANDING IN FOR CHRIS FARAONE THIS WEEK IS …

SALES EXECUTIVES Victoria Botana Derick Freire Nate Homan Nicole Howe

It’s a busy week, as we’re preparing for the fifth annual New England Cannabis Convention. Because of that, and since our team is working hard to keep beating the drum in Somerville, where we are currently in the process of reporting on several fronts, I’m handing over this Dear Reader to Suzanne Bremer of the Somerville Free Press, a startup founded last year to fill news gaps in that city. Consider it part of what Dig Executive Editor Jason Pramas is in the process of dubbing the Somerville News Garden, an ongoing project with the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism to seed, water, and harvest reporting from Teele Square to Legoland. Specifically, Bremer wrote in response to my call in this column last month for people to pay no attention to the 2020 race for the White House for at least the next couple of months. She continued:

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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, Jillian Kravatz, Olivia Mastrosimone, Juan A. Ramirez, Jacob Schick, Sydney B. Wertheim

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ROYALE

Don’t watch the circus? What kind of fun would that be?

Your call to follow and support local news is important and timely. In a recent in-depth report, the Financial Times traced the precipitous decline in the newspaper industry to venture capitalists and institutional investors buying up newspapers, reducing staff to cut costs, and selling off assets to maximize shareholder value.

Gatehouse Media owns more than 100 newspapers in Massachusetts. One of those papers is the Somerville Journal, which currently has a newsroom staffed by one person. What makes this truly frightening is that at the same time, we are awash in a tidal wave of media, 24-7 on 500 channels.

There’s an infinite stream pouring out of our phones.

We know how many scoops of ice cream the president had for dessert, and which brothel Bob Kraft prefers.

But what was decided at the last redevelopment meeting? Who is running for school committee? How do we find that out?

Over the last year, a group of us in Somerville have been trying to figure out how to start an online, hyper-local, nonprofit community news source. It’s been slow going, but recently we got a shot in the arm when you and your colleague teamed up with the Somerville Media Center to host a community news summit and provide ongoing training for journalists.

It will be difficult for homegrown newspapers, but we can do the difficult right now. The impossible may take a little while.

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NEWS US CASE OPEN FOLLOW-UP

Connecticut high court ruling opens up Mass gun seller to Newtown lawsuit

BY CHRIS FARAONE + CURTIS WALTMAN Despite being home to a number of firearm makers and gun sellers with whom weapons of war originate, Massachusetts isn’t often mentioned in the wake of massacres committed elsewhere. But news out of the Connecticut Supreme Court late last week may change that. As the Wall Street Journal reported on March 14: The gun industry suffered a potentially significant legal setback Thursday when the Connecticut Supreme Court said a leading maker of AR-15 rifles could be held legally responsible for marketing practices that allegedly made the semiautomatic gun the weapon of choice for mass shooters.

More from the Washington Post: Gun maker Remington can be sued over how it marketed the Bushmaster rifle used to kill 20 children and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, a divided Connecticut Supreme Court ruled Thursday.

Justices issued a 4-3 decision that reinstated a wrongful death lawsuit and overturned a lower court ruling that the lawsuit was prohibited by a 2005 federal law that shields gun manufacturers from liability in most cases when their products are used in crimes.

The plaintiffs include a survivor and relatives of nine people killed in the massacre. They argue the AR-15-style rifle used by shooter Adam Lanza is too dangerous for the public and Remington glorified the weapon in marketing it to young people.

Remington, which denies any wrongdoing, is based in North Carolina. While the dealer that sold Lanza’s mom the rifle that her son used to kill is in Connecticut.

The distributor of the AR-15, however, is the Westfield, Massachusetts,-based Camfour, Inc. As a defendant alongside Remington, the company is also touched by the high court’s decision. Connecticut Justice Richard N. Palmer wrote: If the defendants did indeed seek to expand the market for their assault weapons through advertising campaigns that encouraged consumers to use the weapons not for 4

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legal purposes such as self-defense, hunting, collecting, or target practice, but to launch offensive assaults against their perceived enemies, then we are aware of nothing in the text or legislative history of PLCAA to indicate that Congress intended to shield the defendants from liability for the tragedy that resulted.

MassLive, whose reporters at the Springfield Republican have covered the distributor for years, reported after the decision came down: Camfour is owned by a group of local investors led by Peter A. Picknelly, chairman and CEO of Peter Pan Bus Lines.

Picknelly declined comment Thursday as he has throughout the lawsuit.

Defendants, including Camfour, had argued that the federal Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act— known as PLCAA—protects them from liability when the guns they sell are used in crimes, according to a summary of the case included with Thursday’s decision.

DigBoston, along with our partners at the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism (BINJ), have also covered Camfour. As we reported in a feature last year about the unchecked nature of weapon procurement by state and municipal law enforcement in Mass: Firearm enthusiasts may know Camfour, Inc. as the giant behind EZGun, the supplier’s simple “online system for ordering and account management.” Residents of the Pioneer Valley, however, may primarily know the Westfieldbased company from the noted philanthropy and influence of Peter Picknelly, a major investor behind Camfour who is also the CEO of Peter Pan Bus Lines.

Two years ago, the Springfield Republican reported that Picknelly successfully lobbied against a proposed cross-Commonwealth rail study, infuriating transit equity boosters. Like Springfield-to-Boston rail advocates, anti-gun crusaders also dislike Picknelly; though not the direct seller, Camfour distributed the Bushmaster that Adam Lanza used in his massacre at Sandy Hook in 2012.

Families of the fallen and one survivor attempted to

sue Camfour and others for vending a weapon they argued has no place in a civilian setting, but a judge dismissed the case in 2016. In the time since, Bay State public agencies including the Berkshire County Sheriff’s Office and MassDOT have continued to work with the Westfield contractor.

Stakeholders from the Westfield-based Camfour have contributed thousands to Baker and Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito since 2015. Picknelly family members alone have written checks for more than $20,000 combined.

As we subsequently noted, between the day that article ran in September and last year’s governor’s race, in which Baker rocked his Democratic opponent, the Picknellys gave an additional $3,750 to the incumbent’s campaign.

Despite his pocketing such contributions, the governor has been hailed as a champion for anti-gun activists, and was recently invited to speak on a panel held by WBUR and the Boston Globe called “Tackling Gun Violence.” It could be years before the Newtown case works its way up through the Supreme Court of the United States, where it is inevitably headed. In the meantime, DigBoston and BINJ will continue to report on the firearm economy in Mass and to identify the politicians, including Baker, who speak out against harm while accepting money from gun dealers and distributors.

This is an installment of a multipart collaboration on weapons use and procurement in Massachusetts by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism, Emerson College’s Department of Journalism, MuckRock, and the Engagement Lab. Support for this story was made possible by the Online News Association’s Challenge Fund for Innovation in Journalism Education. This project is administered by the Online News Association with support from Excellence and Ethics in Journalism Foundation, the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, Knight Foundation, the Democracy Fund, Rita Allen Foundation and the Scripps Howard Foundation. To read more about the project, please visit binjonline.org.

FMR, FML HOUSING

The fair market rent for a one-bedroom in Boston just jumped $400

BY DIG STAFF @DIGBOSTON

Oh, nothing to see here. Just that a notice put out by the Housing and Urban Development Department last week put the Fair Market Rent of a onebedroom in Boston-Cambridge-Quincy at $1,801, up from $1,421 in 2017. This as the federal government jacked the cost of an efficiency apartment here from $1,253 to $1,608, while a two-bedroom spiked from $1,740 to $2,194, a threebedroom from $2,182 to $2,749, and a four-bedroom from $2,370 to $2,966.

FMRs “are used to determine payment standard amounts for the Housing Choice Voucher program, to determine initial renewal rents for some expiring project-based Section 8 contracts, to determine initial rents for housing assistance payment (HAP) contracts in the Moderate Rehabilitation Single Room Occupancy program (Mod Rehab),” and impact multiple other federal, state, and local housing programs as well, not to mention the housing market at large. According the Federal Register, the “updated FY 2019 FMRs are based on surveys conducted by the area public housing agencies (PHAs) and reflect the estimated 40th or 50th percentile rent levels trended to April 1, 2019.”

Meanwhile, in related news, the Trump administration is proposing further drastic cuts to public housing, all while the affordable housing crisis generally worsens nationwide. As Curbed reported last Thursday: During a press call about The Gap—the National Low-Income Housing Coalition’s annual report on the state of the nation’s housing—Diane Yentel, president and CEO of the NLIHC, described a situation at a breaking point.

Today, more than 8 million Americans spend more than half their income on housing, meaning that these severely rent-burdened households have little left every month to pay for food, transportation, and healthcare. No state or city in the entire country has an adequate supply of housing for extremely lowincome housing population; California alone is short one million units.

And so on. Times are tough across the board, but especially in metro Boston, which as of this latest readjustment has surpassed the New York HUD metro area in all FMR categories.

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APPARENT HORIZON

PROPOSED STATE JOURNALISM COMMISSION NEEDS BROADER MEMBERSHIP More working journalists, less elite institutes

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS Chris Faraone, John Loftus, and I spend a lot of time thinking about how to rebuild American journalism.

Pretty much from the ground up, since so many news outlets and jobs in the field have been destroyed in the last quarter century. And a growing number of American cities and towns are now turning into “news deserts”—areas no longer covered by functioning news organizations. Running DigBoston and the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism (BINJ) as we do, all of us write and speak frequently on these topics. We also do what we can to improve the situation. Mainly by building the kind of hybrid for-profit/nonprofit news operation that we think might help people get the quality information on issues of the day that they need to be engaged citizens in a democracy (or to win the opportunity to become citizens, in the case of beleaguered immigrants from “sea to shining sea”). But also by working directly with communities like Somerville to reverse their slide toward becoming news deserts.

So, we observed the recent filing of a new bill in the Mass legislature aiming to help improve journalism statewide with interest. Dubbed “An Act Establishing a Commission to Study Journalism in Underserved Communities” (S.80/H.181), it appears at first blush to set out to do what politicians everywhere like to do with difficult public policy problems that they don’t really want to deal with: “study” them. Then forget about them.

But upon closer examination, this effort looks more serious than that. Because its main sponsors— Sen. Brendan Crighton (D-Lynn), Rep. Lori Ehrlich (D-Marblehead), and Rep. Jim Hawkins (D-Attleboro)— seem to actually understand the crisis facing journalism.

Notably Ehrlich, whose quotes on the bill in the State House News Service make it clear she gets what’s at stake, “As our newsrooms are shrinking, we will have less information and accountability, and that’s not good for democracy.”

However, it’s best not to get too excited about the bill. Since it is, after all, filed in the Massachusetts General Court—where very few standalone bills actually get passed in each two-year session. Most successful legislation is tacked onto to the annual state budget

by House and Senate leadership, and passed that way.

Virtually all other bills die in committees just like the Joint Committee on Community Development and Small Businesses where S.80 has been filed. On the other hand, the proposed commission is not likely to cost the state much money if enacted. Relying as it would on 17 volunteer commissioners to do the necessary research.

So maybe it will get somewhere this session. Perhaps not all the way to passage. But far enough through the legislative process that some similar initiative emanating from somewhere in state government will be greenlighted.

That said, the bill language starts off fairly strong.

Resolving to create a commission to “conduct a comprehensive non-binding study” to “review all aspects of local journalism including, but not limited to, the adequacy of press coverage of cities and towns, ratio of residents to media outlets, the history of local news in Massachusetts, print and digital business models for media outlets, the impact of social media on local news, strategies to improve local news access, public policy solutions to improve the sustainability of local press business models and private and nonprofit solutions, and identifying career pathways and existing or potential professional development opportunities for aspiring journalists in Massachusetts.”

It goes on to say that the new body will meet a minimum of five times to do its work and present its findings and recommendations for legislation to “the governor, the speaker of the house, the president of the senate, and the clerks of the house of representatives and the senate no later than 1 year after the effective date of this resolve.” All of which is fine.

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Where S.80 falls down somewhat is in how it will appoint its 17-member commission. The first four members mentioned are all to be legislators—including the House and Senate chairs of the Community Development and Small Businesses committee, one representative chosen by the House speaker, and one representative chosen by the Senate president. No surprise there. Two members will be appointed by the governor.

The other 11 members will be chosen as follows: • Four will come from academia (“a representative of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University,” “a professor at Northeastern School of Journalism,” “a representative of the Schuster Institute of Journalism at Brandeis University,” and “the director of the Journalism Lab at the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University”).

• Four from organizations representing working journalists of color (“a member of the Boston Association of Black Journalists,” “a member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists,” “a member of the Asian American Journalists Association of New England,” and “a member of the Ida B. Wells Society”).

• One from a respected state policy publication (“an editor at Commonwealth Magazine”).

• One from an organization of newspaper publishers (“a member of the New England Newspaper and Press Association”).

• One from the main statewide organization of city and town officials (“a member of the Massachusetts Municipal Association”).

That breakdown raises some immediate red flags.

First, some of the appointments are pretty specific. Which is understandable since proposals like S.80 obviously don’t appear out of thin air, and key people consulted by sponsoring legislators will want seats on the commission.

But some are specific in an exclusionary way. For example, why a professor from the Northeastern journalism department, yet no professors from other important journalism departments like Emerson College, Boston University, and UMass Amherst? In fact, all the academic picks come from private Boston area schools. What about the rest of the state? Cities like Framingham are definitely on their way to becoming news deserts, and regional public colleges like Framingham State University have journalism minors or concentrations. Why aren’t any of them on the list?

Second, why is state government continuing to pay obeisance to Harvard University by giving its institutes no less than three seats on the commission? What, you say, there are only two? Shorenstein and Nieman? Well, actually, the Ida B. Wells Society is a new project of the Shorenstein Center. So that’s effectively a third Harvard seat. At least at this early stage of what looks to be a worthy attempt to create “a news trade organization dedicated to increasing and retaining reporters and editors of color in the field of investigative reporting.”

Though naturally, if Harvard can be restricted to one seat, the Wells Society should definitely get it over its parent center or Nieman.

Third, why is Gov. Charlie Baker to get two picks for the commission if the bill passes? Probably a sop to the Republicans, but one pick would be more than fair.

Fourth, no labor unions representing journalists are included. If the purpose of the S.80 is in large part to address the ongoing destruction of jobs in journalism, then this is a striking omission that must be remedied immediately. Especially in a period when the shrinking number of journalists that have full-time unionized jobs with benefits at outlets like the Boston Globe are fighting for their existence—while journalists with similar jobs have belatedly unionized WBUR and the Daily Hampshire Gazette. The reporters at the Gazette join reporters at the Globe and many other Mass news outlets as members

of the NewsGuild-Communication Workers of America.

So that union deserves a commission seat. WBUR reporters, for their part, joined SAG-AFTRA, another union representing news industry workers that should also get a seat.

Fifth, there are no slots being proposed for independent news organizations that are actively experimenting with ways to increase community engagement while developing stable economic models that will allow new entrants to the field to not only survive… but to thrive. Funding investigative journalism of the type that many politicians will never really like— but that is absolutely essential to the maintenance of any functioning democracy—in the process. And here I will be completely shameless in proposing a seat for BINJ, the investigative reporting incubator run by Chris Faraone, John Loftus, and me.

Especially in light of Faraone’s searing critique of academic centers of the very type being proposed for commission seats in the current S.80 language sucking up millions of dollars in public and private monies annually for over a decade to try—and thus far largely fail—to solve the myriad problems besetting American journalism. Starting with the crisis of otherwise solid news organizations collapsing every day for lack of funds… that both governments and foundations continue to lavish on academia. Only the tiniest fraction of which ever results in the production of useful and desperately needed journalism in this Commonwealth and this nation.

Adding such additional seats will not only make for a more balanced commission, it will also result in better legislative proposals being made to state government should its enabling bill be enacted. Because news industry labor unions and grassroots journalism outfits like BINJ are not going to call for more public money to be thrown at, say, Harvard institutes. Or the owners of major legacy news outlets like the Boston Globe.

We’re not going to call for developing more apps or other inappropriate applications of available technology either. We’re going to call for cash money to be spent funding journalists to do our job—covering the news.

As the proposed commission will only be meaningful if it pushes for public funds to be put into community news production. Which is exactly what is vanishing as the rapacious business practices of giant media conglomerates like GateHouse, Digital First, and Gannett result in the news deserts that are jeopardizing our democracy today.

We’re going to call for solutions like a state version of the National Endowment for Journalism proposal that I have joined others in fielding nationally. A quasipublic elected body that would disburse state funds to reputable news outlets to increase the amount of journalism produced around the Bay State.

We’re going to back ideas like the Community Information Districts that our colleague Simon Galperin, currently a fellow at the Reynolds Journalism Institute, is calling for at the local level. Those districts would allow municipalities to fund news production the way special service districts are already funded to provide cities and towns with fire protection and sanitation services—by levying small fees on area residents.

We’re going to, in summation, fight hard to keep journalism alive in Massachusetts and give communities from Pittsfield to Provincetown the information they need on issues of the day. Whether we’re granted a seat on the commission—assuming it’s called into being—or not, we’ll be showing up to testify at every hearing for bill S.80. And we’ll bring friends. Including, we hope, many of our faithful readers.

Disclosure: Chris Faraone and Jason Pramas are members of the Society of Professional Journalists.

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SOMERVILLE HIGH SCHOOL TALKING JOINTS MEMO

Licensing Commission waives application fees for cannabis dispensaries

BY CHRIS FARAONE @FARA1

The recreational cannabis licensing process is a lot like the products that stores will soon offer in Mass when they finally open. There are similarities from town to town and shop to shop, especially when viewed from afar, but look closely and you’ll find multiple different shades of a colorful and complex system.

In the years since voters came out in support of recreational weed, several city councils and boards of selectmen have been criticized by everyone from business interests to activists for their greed and opacity. Not to mention the confusing labyrinths that certain municipalities have made applicants navigate. But as the licensing approval process in some towns and cities has been compared to both ransom and extortion, this week the Somerville Licensing Commission, in what appears to be a statewide first, passed a measure to sidestep at least some of the insanity that hopeful legal weed growers and sellers face in Mass. At a meeting Monday evening, the body voted unanimously to waive its $900 application fee.

Fee or no fee, the process in Somerville is somewhat straightforward, at least on the surface. We’ll see how things play out over the next several months and then years, but the basic step-by-step is designed to look something like this:

• First and foremost, the business has to get its host agreement in order. This is the case no matter what city or town you are in; if you can’t secure this invitation from the municipality in which you hope to set up shop, you can’t proceed with the Cannabis Control Commission at the state level. The host agreement, which among other stipulations designates 3 percent of cannabiz revenue for Somerville, comes first, with everything else coming after.

• The operation overseeing all of this is Mayor Joe Curtatone’s Marijuana Advisory Committee. Comprised of stakeholders from the city’s health and human services, planning, economic development, and police departments, the MAC is, well, the mack.

• Applicants will have to stop by the Zoning Board of Appeals in order to make sure the building and neighborhood where they plan on setting up shop is zoned for cannabis, retail, etc.

• They’ll also have to visit the Somerville Licensing Commission, which a 2018 city ordinance gave significant discretion over the selection gauntlet.

At the meeting on Monday, commissioners noted the potential legal challenges that other municipalities might face for their outrageous demands. “We shouldn’t try to penalize [cannabis businesses] with excessive fees,” Licensing Commission Chairman Joe Lynch said. The suspension of the fee came on the recommendation of City Clerk John Long, who said the suggestion was “in the interest of making access as easy as possible for economic empowerment applicants.”

According to Long, no other licensing body in Mass has enacted such measures.

For the first two years of cannabis licensing in the city, only two groups of applicants will be considered: one that includes those who have been disproportionately impacted by the war on drugs, along with Somerville residents and cooperatives, and another group that includes entities with existing medical marijuana licenses. Applications are due on April 5, at which point the three existing medical dispensaries—Liberty Cannabis in Union Square, Sira Naturals in Davis Square, and Revolutionary Clinics outside of Sullivan Square—are expected to throw their hats in the ring.

Despite the installation of a proper bureaucracy and some complaints from members of the public about a lack of community input—a criticism that could and should be leveled almost anywhere, including towns with bans or moratoriums— Somerville officials have apparently made efforts to streamline processes, at least compared to other cities.

In the interest of moving things along on the recreational front, Long also recommended that the commission keep existing fees related to legal notices and abutter notifications. He also endorsed setting dispensary hours to reflect those of package stores. In the meantime, for organizational purposes, in addition to the $900 fee waiver that was approved, the clerk spurred the commission to shift the designated licensing period for dispensaries from five whole years to five years from issuance to the fifth occurring Dec 31.

Speaking of economic empowerment applicants in particular, Chairman Lynch told DigBoston, “They’re getting hit with fees from all over the place. We’re just doing what we can do. The intent of Commonwealth voters was to give certain people a leg up.

“This is a very expensive proposition for anyone to get into. I think sometimes we forget that to start any business requires an awful lot of capital. The marching orders from the City Council is to assist these folks.”

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A SIMPLE SURVEY OF THE MASSACHUSETTS CANNASCAPE TALKING JOINTS MEMO

In which we ask industry leaders and keen observers: “How is recreational cannabis going so far?”

BY CHRIS FARAONE + DIG STAFF

A lot of people ask me how I feel about the recreational cannabis industry and about weed in general. They always have, as I’ve been reporting on trees in many forms for two whole decades, in which time I have sailed a major sea change.

I’ve written endlessly about the exponential bend that Massachusetts has climbed in regard to the public perception of cannabis, and for that and other reasons I am suddenly some kind of information hub for everybody from my mother, to my doctor, to some of the same stiffs and politicians who once looked down at consumers like me through the fisheye on the bottom of their whiskey glasses.

Recently, as our team here at DigBoston has been prepping for the New England Cannabis Convention, or NECANN, starting Friday, I have explained the cannabis climate to my curious benevolent interrogators thusly: The culture’s growing fast and wide. And as the industry expands, trade shows and institutions in general will become more fragmented. So while you can still find an impressive cross-section of everyone from glassblowers to bankers at a forum like NECANN in 2019, more and more things will be divvied into specialties and silos. For better or worse.

In the meantime, since so many divergent interests will be on hand for this NECANN, I thought it would be helpful to throw questions at professionals who know a whole lot more than I do, especially in their specific corners of the Mass cannabis atlas. This is a compendium in progress; answers are still pouring in as the Dig goes to print, so stay tuned to digboston.com for additions (we will also update readers through our free cannabis newsletter, Talking Joints Memo, which you can sign up for at talkingjointsmemo.com). Without further ado, here’s what we asked people: - In one sentence, please tell us how you feel about how recreational cannabis is going in Mass so far.

Please feel free to go positive, negative, or both.

- Also give us a sentence about something you’re working on. Preferably cannabis-related, though it doesn’t need to be.

Alex Brandon Founder, Ralph’s Garden handcrafted topical CBD products SO FAR: Simply put, Brandon says, “This is really an exciting time to be a part of the cannabis industry here in Massachusetts with all that will be happening in the near future.”

UP NEXT: “I’m focused on the release of a turmericginger-juniper CBD body spray, which is easier to apply than a lotion or a salve and smells really good too.”

Jim Borghesani Chief operating officer, Tudestr SO FAR: “As communications director for the 2016 legalization campaign I witnessed the good, bad, and crazy of Massachusetts opinion on ending prohibition, and I’m pleased to see and say that the bad and crazy are slowly being dissipated amid the success and the logic of legal, tested, taxed cannabis.”

UP NEXT: “We’re working with cannabis applicants at the local and state level and I couldn’t be more impressed with the commitment and sense of purpose they’re bringing to their pursuits.”

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Mike Collette Cannapreneur and partner/co-founder/investor relations, Nature’s Remedy SO FAR: “I thought at this point the state would have moved a bit further along. However, I can understand that the [Cannabis Control Commission] has a lot on its plate with taking over medical from the DPH. I also believe they are doing the right thing with a slower

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rollout.”

UP NEXT: “My business partner and I recently launched Cannapreneur Partners, which aims to find and strategically place capital and leadership in the hands of the top cannabis entrepreneurs and startups.

Additionally, we host our Cannapreneur events every six to eight weeks to bring together the top cannabis business operators and investors to collaborate and facilitate meaningful connections.”

Grover Daniels + David Crowley Co-Founders, Two Buds, LLC SO FAR: “If you want to join the fun,” Grover and David recommend reading 935 CMR 500 and M.G.L. c. 94G— better known as the Mass recreational cannabis rules and regulations. “Read these two docs several times,” they say, and “the rest is being smart, honest, hardworking, and patient.”

UP NEXT: Two Buds, which has applied to license three cannabis businesses in Rockland, is “attracting qualified applicants with a passion for growing and making great weed products—people who think digitally and grow hydroponically.”

Michael Dube Producer, Disrupt : Boston TV SO FAR: “Recreational (and medicinal) cannabis still has major barriers preventing poor people to take part as business owners or consumers. High prices and the inability for low-income residents to legally consume because of social consumption laws is problematic, and there are currently no avenues for underprivileged people to take part aside from entry-level jobs.”

UP NEXT: “We’re busy creating NECANN TV, developing the Cannabis Supper Club for television, producing highend cannabis social and educational events, starting a national cannabis talent agency, and prepping for investment into a sports-centric products company.”

Nick Falco aka “Doc” Owner, Humble Family Farms SO FAR: “I’m scared for the rec market. To grow a plant that’s changed my life in so many positive ways is an amazing feeling. Watching it turn friends to enemies, families to foe, I realize it will only get worse with the greed.”

UP NEXT: “Our current projects are bringing sustainably grown foods to the same medical patients that need our cannabis.”

Kamani Jefferson President, Massachusetts Recreational Consumer Council SO FAR: “We’re at 12 stores total, including one in the Greater Boston area, but no economic empowerment applicants have made it through the licensing process, nor has a cooperative/microbusiness commenced their operations.”

UP NEXT: “We are planning our annual Cannabis Freedom Run and 710 events, bringing on more interns, and continually focusing on municipal government relations around equity and smaller cannabis businesses.”

Shanel Lindsay Founder and president, Ardent Cannabis SO FAR: “I’m excited that adult-use sales are finally here but concerned as always about whether equity will become a reality or the harms of the drug war will be further embedded in our communities while others become rich at our expense.”

UP NEXT: “Ardent’s new infusion kits let people make potent gourmet edibles with less than a gram of flower.”

Stephen Mandile President/Founder, Veterans Alternative Healing Inc.; Director of Community Outreach, Alternative Treatment for Veterans SO FAR: “From the consumer point of view I believe recreational cannabis is thriving here in Massachusetts, but from the perspective of trying to start a cannabis small business there are too many barriers at the municipal level and furthermore [the process] is lacking in social equity.”

UP NEXT: “Currently I am working on creating new policy for veterans access and entry to the medical cannabis program in Massachusetts. I have already gotten nine medical dispensaries to offer the Veteran Care Program in their 16 locations that give veterans that have been awarded the highest service-connected disability rating of 100 percent by the Department of Veterans Affairs, which provides them with a 40 percent off discount on purchases. The goal is to grow the VCP so that any veteran that is getting their medications like opioids and benzodiazepines as an earned benefit from the VA without having to pay a penny, and can get cannabis at medical dispensaries for minimal to no cost as well.”

Keith Saunders, Ph.D. NORML board of directors, Boston Pot Report SO FAR: “The supply is low, the prices are steep, the tax is burdensome, the rollout is sluggish, and since the folks who have been meeting the demand for decades were not invited to the dance, I still buy from them because they are the best deal in the Commonwealth. This will change as supply increases and prices drop.”

UP NEXT: Dr. Saunders is working as an educational consultant for the cannabis industry.

Sherri Tutkus Registered nurse and CEO and founder of GreenNurse Group SO FAR: “Start low and go slow is definitely a cannabis theme for the rollout of adult use cannabis in Massachusetts. At this particular time we are in our third year of recreational cannabis and there are only 12 shops open in the state. Take your time and hurry up!”

UP NEXT: “We are recruiting a team of volunteer nurse reporters who want to get involved in the community, provide community outreach, and bring information to others through our media platform and report live and/or create short-form educational content to assist people. We are also working on a home health agency model to bring cannabinoid nursing education and care to patients in their homes along with other ancillary services.”

Jeffrey M. Zucker President, Green Lion Partners (also active with Dip Devices, AICA, LeafList, Natural Order Supply, MPP) SO FAR: “While Massachusetts took quite a while to begin to establish order around the industry, we’re starting to see things come together. I have been impressed with the work of the Cannabis Control Commission to ensure that the industry is established properly and equitably. I knew Mass could set an example for the East Coast, and they’re finally starting to do so.”

UP NEXT: “We’ve been very focused on advocacy via MPP and SSDP. … We’re also in the early stages of planning for our third annual cannabis startup competition in conjunction with Boston University.”

Ed. note: NECANN was founded by former owners of DigBoston. The two are are no longer formally affiliated, though we do share content and help to promote each other.

Presented by Celebrity Series

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The time is now to support survivors of sexual assault and harassment.

Register or donate today barccwalk.org/dig $10 off with code DIG April 28, DCR’s Constitution Beach East Boston

MARCH 19-23 MARCH 19

ANNA & ELIZABETH APPALACHIAN MUSIC DUO

MARCH 20

EDMAR CASTAÑEDA TRIO HARP VIRTUOSO COMBINES TRADITIONAL COLOMBIAN MUSIC WITH LATIN JAZZ

MARCH 21

LADAMA WOMEN FROM ACROSS THE AMERICAS COME TOGETHER IN AN IRRESISTIBLE QUARTET

MARCH 22

ORACLE HYSTERICAL & MUSICIANS FROM A FAR CRY

WRITERS’ WEEK

LUSHLY TEXTURED ART ROCK WITH LITERARY INSPIRATION

Calling all Boston writing enthusiasts: activists, residents, professionals, entrepreneurs, scholars, youth, local networks, non-profits, etc!

EVOCATIVE SOUNDSCAPES AND INNOVATIVE BEATS

WRITING/RIGHTING THE WORLD APRIL 1 - 6, 2019 | Various times

Join us for a week-long celebration to connect Boston’s writing community, to celebrate the power of words, and to recognize writers’ ability to right the wrongs of the world with a stroke of a pen or the tap of a key. These interactive events will feature a panel discussion, social mixer, master class, op-ed workshop, and an all-day write-in event from a social justice lens.

Free and open to the public!

Light refreshments will be provided.

RSVP TODAY: tinyurl.com/writersweek2019

MARCH 23

TIGUE & AROOJ AFTAB WITH GYAN RILEY 160 Mass Ave (Berklee College of Music)

$35 per ticket (all ages) $10 per student ticket with I.D., (all colleges accepted, not just Berklee) Doors & Bar open at 7pm - Concert at 8pm Two 45-minute sets with a 15-minute break

SPONSORED BY

MARGARET EAGLE & ELI RAPAPORT, SUSAN & MICHAEL THONIS,AND THE BARR FOUNDATION THROUGH ITS ARTSAMPLIFIED INITIATIVE. WITH ADDITIONAL SUPPORT PROVIDED BY MICHAEL & DEBRA RAIZMAN, YUKIKO UENO & ERAN EGOZY, RANDOLPH HAWTHORNE & CARLISS BALDWIN, AND MARYLEN STERNWEILER

Northeastern Crossing | 1175 Tremont Street, Roxbury For more information: 617-373-2555 SPONSORED BY: NORTHEASTERN CROSSING, NORTHEASTERN DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH & NORTHEASTERN WRITING CENTER

STAVESESSIONS.ORG NEWS TO US

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11

JEFE REPLAY AROUND MY WAY

Orchard Park taught him how to master his Proper Finessments. Now it’s time for heads in Boston and beyond to make way for a Rox star

BY BRENDAN MCGUIRK FOR KILLERBOOMBOX | PHOTOS BY BRED HAMPTON It’s a sunny winter Saturday in Dudley Square, and Jefe Replay’s in his element. The rapper’s doing what he often does—walking around town looking fly, carrying a brown bag with a bottle of Hennessy. Since public drinking is illegal, the cognac’s glass vessel is capped, but who’s to say what Replay’s sipping from his styrofoam cup?

What hip-hop heads around here know for sure is that the second track on Replay’s recently released debut, Proper Finessments, begins with the distinctive sound of an iceddown beverage being swirled around a disposable cup.

The loophole is Jefe’s finesse; while the contents may be unconfirmed, there’s a hint on the song “Roxbury Syrup,” in which he describes his preferred beverage as Henny and iced tea.

But today? It’s anybody’s guess.

Jeff Revelo grew up less than a half mile away, in the Orchard Park section of Roxbury. Since making music and building a following for nearly the past decade, nowadays most people call him Replay. Or Jefe. Or Juan, as his branded merchandise tells fans to “Ask For Juan.” At the center of it all is Jeff pulling the

He may use many names, but he’s always himself.

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strings. He may use many names, but he’s always himself.

“It’d be dreadful trying to be something else,” the proudly self-possessed 25-year-old says.

Posted up in a crosswalk by the Dudley T station, Replay brandishes his not-terribly-mysterious cup. But while trying for a photo, he finds himself in a young woman’s way. She’s a bit bothered by it all—the blaring crossing signal isn’t helping—but Replay is experienced at disarming situations.

They agree that if she lays off, he’ll share some of what is in his cup. She agrees, he pours her a hearty swallow to fulfill his promise, and another fan is made.

“After being from a hated hood, you kind of want to be liked,” he says. “When you grow up from not being liked, you kind of want to be liked after a while.”

Replay says he was 11 years old when he realized that he hailed from what he calls a “back-against-the-wall hood.” An experience at a neighborhood hoops game at a community center awakened him to the depth of Roxbury’s internal rivalries. Suddenly, the name on the front of his basketball jersey could make him a target. It was unfair, but the threat was real.

“Our hood has murder beef with hoods,” he says. Older relatives were drafted into little-kid squabbles. By sixth grade, peers quit playing basketball.

“There’s no reason for us to be worried about the shit we was worried about,” he says.

Replay’s reaction: make more friends than rivals. Today, he’s so well-liked that people wear his shirts and sing his songs and will descend from all around to Cambridge this week for his album release show at Sonia, which he will be headlining. For that he teamed up with the promotion company N.E.O.N.E., the last subject of this Around My Way series by KillerBoomBox. JAM’N 94.5 DJ E Dubble, host of the weekly “Launchpad” showcase that takes the temperature of what is bubbling in both the city and the industry, has been in Replay’s corner since even before he took on his current role as tastemaker.

“Listening to Replay is definitely a wave,” he says. “He can adapt, and he does it effortlessly.”

E Dubble says anticipation for Replay’s debut full-length project had been building. His breakout single “Sips Tea” dropped four years ago and has since racked more than a quarter of a million SoundCloud listens, becoming a phenomenon in Greater Boston and beyond. The bubbly Obeatz-produced track displays Jefe’s knack for crafting clever, branding-friendly catchphrases like, “Ask For Juan,” “Pay Me First,” and “Ain’t Shit Free”—all of which went on to grace merch that is very much in demand. As Replay boasts, he’s “fittin’ to go triple platinum off Ain’t Shit Free tees.”

JEFE REPLAY continued on pg. 14

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JEFE REPLAY continued from pg. 12 BEANTOWN BOOGS Originally named for the distinctive rocks that once littered the area and were used to erect the very foundations of metro Boston during its initial development, Roxbury’s played a central role in Boston’s residential fabric since the 17th century. For roughly the past 80 years, it’s also been home to one of New England’s largest black communities, and as Replay tells it, in his time, his neighborhood has been defined in many ways by crime and rivalries.

“I can be on the block listening to music, keeping one headphone in, but not both,” Replay says. “You can keep both headphones in if you want [but you might] get caught snoozing,” he says.

Some of the challenges in Roxbury can be blamed on government mismanagement. A 1985 study of Orchard Park put responsibility for the economic downturn on abandoned plans for a Southwest Corridor, which decades prior had promised to connect places like Jamaica Plain and Roslindale directly to downtown. But stalling brought issues, with Roxbury caught in the middle. On-ramps were left incomplete and deserted, and the eventual abandonment drove out vital manufacturing jobs. The report also laid blame on political neglect, or what we might call institutional racism these days.

In the mid-1980s, while then-President Ronald Reagan pivoted the nation to a war on drugs and squarely away from systemic solutions to address economic disparity, blighted parts of Roxbury like Orchard Park became an obsession of white folks. Even as Bobby Brown, a favorite son of the original Orchard Park Projects that have since been demolished, dominated pop charts along with his groundbreaking group New Edition, and as hip-hop grew in popularity and profitability, isolation and challenges in some of the Hub’s black communities intensified.

Replay grew up with 10 cousins and his uncles at 27 Adams St., directly across from Orchard Park’s namesake playgrounds. He idolized his older, cooler cousins, some of whom were ensconced in street life. As he realized his call to music, which seemed like the only outlet that could possibly support the lifestyle that he desired, Replay began using the experiences around him to create and started to experiment with his own track production. His middle school rap persona was Beantown Boogs, and along with friends he turned out cuts that he now describes as “some young, shooting-at-you shit.”

“We was rapping about regular shit that happened that I wasn’t too proud of,” he says all these years later. Before middle school was over, he was ready to move on. Beefs that had lasted for years had taken a significant toll, and while he still had great pride in repping “OP,” Replay felt his time in that lyrical theater was finished.

“Why do you think I make ‘Sips Tea’?” he asks of his ode to remaining unbothered. “Because I don’t want to be tough or anything near tough—I understand what tough brings.”

Instead of stay tough, Replay has settled on a calmer mantra: “Stay ugly, get money, we chillin’,” as another one of his songs goes. The artist even got to demonstrate his cool mentality on a national stage in 2017, when he was tapped

by Nike to model the Kyrie Irving Celtics jersey for Nike’s “Want It All” campaign.

“Stay gorgeous, stay young, don’t worry about nothing that’s going on outside,” he says.

Looking back, Replay may be calm, but he’s nevertheless outraged about how young street life starts for some and how encompassing it can become. Ask and he will show you photos of his friends flashing gang signs in their middle school yearbook. Things that should have been innocent weren’t, like the time his bike went missing. “I swore somebody stole it,” he recalls. After running through the projects looking for a fight, Replay found out that the culprit was actually the Boston Housing Authority. “I almost fought my friends,” he says.

Things began to change around 2010. The response to a rowdy Wiz Khalifa show on City Hall Plaza showed him that there was an audience to be mined from the region’s teeming college crowd and gave him a new focus.

Meanwhile, his other focus, basketball, led to a fateful meeting with another budding artist, Stephen Goss, who’s better known these days as Cousin Stizz.

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Prior to a preseason game at Dorchester House, Replay and his teammates from East Boston High were enjoying a smoke when they realized they had stumbled into the opposing team’s hangout spot. Blunts were passed, rhymes were spat, and connections were made. “He was rapping for us for like two blunts,” Replay recalls. Stizz was a natural, but Replay, having started out as a producer, was the more experienced song-maker.

By 2012, the pair were working side by side. The collaboration gave Replay access to parts of Dorchester that he might have been wary of visiting alone. “I met different people,” he says, “I was able to get out of my hood. … I had the respect and [was] able to go places that people weren’t really going to go by themselves.”

Rapping then as Jeff Replay, he and Stizzy, as the “Cousin” was then known, were eventually joined by another aspiring MC, Nick Gray, and the trio formed the group Pilot Nation.

The outfit began gaining traction in different corners of the city—Dorchester, Roxbury, the college circuit. Each artist attracted different crowds to the enterprise, which meant new advantages and opportunities.

It wasn’t long before actual money was getting made, with label deals being discussed. Stizz eventually signed to RCA, but Replay’s loyalties led him along a different path.

“I didn’t want just a ‘me’ deal,” he says. After having success building a group with people who started as acquaintances, he had aims to bring other close and gifted friends into the record business. “[I was] trying to make the best for all of us,” he explains. “I pushed away my own opportunity trying to get a group opportunity.”

Even without a deal, Replay kept on moving, assembling his own team of engineers, producers, and videographers.

All on his terms. Still, he needed capital, but an attempt to borrow $1,500 from his dad to shoot a video only netted more inspiration. “He’s like, ‘You might wanna sell some merch,’” says Replay of his dad’s reaction. He took the advice, though, and invested the cash he had on hand into merchandise—pricey tees, mugs, other ephemera. The plot ultimately paid off, resulting in his father, Jeff Sr., giving his son a new, bossed-up rap nomenclature.

“When he seen me do that, he was proud of me,” Replay says. “He was like, ‘You make your own lane. You Jefe.’”

OLD-SCHOOL FLY Dutch ReBelle was already an accomplished veteran of Boston’s rap scene when she first met Replay in a chance encounter. By the time that she recruited him to feature on her 2015 Kiss, Kiss EP, the two had truly connected creatively, and their collaboration, “Air It Out,” became a clear standout.

Replay’s hook, freestyled as ReBelle recalls, shouts out not

only his hood and yours and the hustlers, but perhaps most crucially, gives props to stoners at the cookout with two plates. “Replay is all swag,” ReBelle recalls. “Just super swag, he just has a real fly vibe to him. Real old-school fly.”

Like others who know Replay well, ReBelle also says “he doesn’t really take himself too seriously … when it comes to just creating and capturing a vibe. … Dude came out the gate talking like, $100 for a shirt. How you gonna tell Replay, who has three outfit changes in a day, that you ain’t gonna buy this fucking shirt?”

“I feel like wherever I touch down people can meet me and we can create those type of connections, and it’s just different,” Replay says. “People reach out to me to have fun. I have fun. And when it’s time to rap, I rap.”

Having grown up in the area, ReBelle knows how exclusive and closed off the Greater Boston music scene can be and was happy to make an authentic friend in the industry. “He’s been through a lot of the music bullshit that only artists who are doing this on a regular basis go through,” she says. Some of that bullshit happened as the two were heading to the 2015 Boston Music Awards. ReBelle was on the bill and planned on bringing Replay on stage, but on their way to the show they were stopped by police, and he was arrested due to an outstanding warrant.

“We were all dressed to the nines going to this award show,” ReBelle recalls, “and the police took him right out of my car.”

After a short time of working the BMA crowd while being concerned about her friend, Replay walked in the door. “I ran over to him and it was a whole hoodrat beautiful moment, because I’m like, ‘You’re not in jail?’ He, being Replay, convinced the statie to drive him back to the show.”

CAPE CRUSADER Crediting it to his days observing the hustle, Replay has always been a systemic strategist. He pays attention to how acts of all sizes move and is far more interested in their tactics than in trends. With his lessons on hood likeability under his belt, Replay came to an important realization about the music industry.

“This is a people business,” he says. “We could be out back smoking and you just need a light and then we just converse and you don’t even know I make music, and that’s kind of where I make my bread and butter.”

As music empowered Replay to tour and meet more people, he realized that in order to achieve the success he hoped for, he needed a coalition. “I needed everyone in Boston, not just Roxbury,” he says. “I’m going to fuck with whoever’s nice.” ReBelle says, “He’s really in tune with the vibes of people around him.”

Whether as Jeff, Jefe, Juan, or Replay, the man’s career is a trail of encounters that begat friendships. One connection that he needed came when Replay’s world was getting hot, with people getting killed around him. One friend he had made along the way came through and put Jeff up in Cape Cod for a summer, hooking him up with a place to live, a job working construction, and a chance to avoid troubles.

“I needed to get out of the city because I knew the summer was going to be crazy,” he says. “Let me just remove myself. … I’m out there getting legal money … chillin’, summer vibes. I was showering outside because it was beautiful.”

Replay says it didn’t seem like a big deal being a token black guy in Harwich, Dennis, and Orleans, though the experience did give him a new perspective on the hip-hop marketplace.

“This is why we hang around white people,” Replay says.

“We be like, Damn dog, trade with us. And everybody that’s like curious of the culture—trade with us. We would trade in an instant. … We love the knowledge that the hood brought us, and the hood is lit,” he continues, “but people coming from places like Orchard Park would rather [not] have to worry. That’s what that summer on Cape Cod was about.”

When it comes to developing a cohesive and vibrant hip-hop audience in Boston and New England, E Dubble of JAM’N says the biggest hurdle is the all-too-common instinct of artists and fans to stay in their own familiar circles. As a DJ for a station that serves hip-hop fans across the region, he finds the distinctions that some draw over territory—who’s from Boston, who’s not, who’s from which block, and so forth—to be largely counterproductive. “How is it that we

are smaller [than places like Atlanta or New York],” E Dubble asks, “yet more segregated?”

In a state where people can be stingy with attention, E Dubble finds it truly exceptional that Replay has captured such a serious audience. And he says his sound and style are now forging something of a moment around town, complete with imitators. “[It]’s almost like kind of how Travis Scott has his influence on what’s going on right now with the darker beats and all that type of stuff,” E-Dubble says. “I would say that’s what Replay has done for the scene that we have up here. … I feel like a lot of these kids either live the lifestyle similar to Replay or want to live the lifestyle. He has influence on people who actually are buying into him. … It goes hand in hand with the lifestyle. Everything that he’s selling is true to who he is.”

“A lot of people [are] living vicariously through me,” Replay adds. Some of his fans, he says, “see no way” to escape their circumstances. He knows the feeling.

“I just like being an open book to where people can pull up on me and just know that you’ve been through the same shit that I’ve been through,” he says. “I ain’t nothing different from anybody else.”

Around My Way is a collaboration between KillerBoomBox, the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism, and DigBoston. Stay tuned for upcoming installments plus bonus audio and video components. To see more long-form music and arts journalism, you can support us at givetobinj.org.

Saturday • April 6 12:00 PM - 3:00 PM

Grove Hall Branch of the Boston Public Library 41 Geneva Ave • Dorchester 02121

Comics In Color is a safe space where you can come and nerd out about illustrated stories by and about people of color.

THIS MONTH! Join us to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the for the Grove Hall Branch Library!

Discussion: What had been the impact of Black Panther?

• All-levels comics making activity • Samples of Black Comics • SNACKS!

Art by JAMSketch

A DIFFERENT ROAD At one point not too long ago, parts of the fast-money life caught up with Jefe. Legal troubles held back his creative output for years, leaving rapt fans wanting.

“I don’t make excuses,” he says. “I paid for it. I paid financially. I paid with my time. I paid with my focus. That’s why my album wasn’t out.” Nevertheless, some hardships bore creative fruit, like when an outstanding warrant left him unable to fly to the career-making South by Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas. Replay drove instead, and wrote about it later on.

“That’s what the first song on the album is about.”

Replay says that track, “A Different Road,” fully encapsulates what it took to put legal issues and old habits aside, and to focus on being the artist that he knew he was prepared to be. As a whole, Proper Finessments became a chronicle of the saga he was living.

“That shit was a fucking journey,” he says. “That was a journey for my creative freedom, for everything.”

ReBelle, who had become a close enough friend that she attended his court dates, puts it in perspective: “Replay was really fighting for his life at one point. Fighting for his freedom. … I listen to the project and it just makes me emotional and shit, because for me it’s like I know what he’s talking about.”

E Dubble adds, “He was in a mental space where music wasn’t his priority because of other things he had going on in his life.”

The past few years of Replay’s growth is reflected throughout his debut, which finds him sharing recent parts of the story at the front of the tracklist and packing his familiar fan faves at the end. “Some of these songs are older, some are brand new, and the flow of it is what people like,” Replay says, adding that people who know him best have said that “it sounds like the progression of how you came to make this project.”

After the dust settled, it was time to refocus on art. But Replay still had his concerns, notably that he had to live up to expectations built over the years. “I was very anxious,” he says about dropping Proper Finessments, which finally came out in February, the release date reflecting his Roxbury zip code, 02119. “I’m grateful that it definitely worked.”

Now that he is in the clear legally, Replay is able to focus creatively and continue the heavier output of years past. He’s also been able to separate himself from the street.

“Every time young motherfuckers run up on me thinking I’m a certain way,” he says, “I let ’em know I’ve been let that go. I’m focused on this, because that shit is only a destructive mindset.”

E Dubble says that despite Replay’s surge in popularity, the artist has remained accessible and relatively carefree: “I’ll be on Newbury Street just sitting by the park or in traffic, and he will just roll past me on the skateboard. It never fails. He be having a bottle of Henny on him and everything. Dude is wild.”

“Boston has to see something different,” Replay says. “If you don’t know who you are before you step outside, you are bound to be influenced by the littlest shit.”

“We all have our favorites. I just want to be one of them.”

VOL 14

All are welcome but this is an event focused on comics by and about people of color.

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ENTER DAD MAN FIRST LOOK

Intergenerational noise, house, and ambiance for hooking up with dudes on dance floors

BY CHRIS FARAONE @FARA1 Music-wise, what are you first and foremost? I guess I should know this, but did you start off playing guitar?

No, I’m fucking terrible at guitar. I don’t know chords or any of that stuff. In the Farleys, we were kind of inspired by Sonic Youth and Swirlies and breaking the standard before we started playing. I went into everything like the Kool-Aid Man. What’s your starting point for New Dad music?

Nine times out of 10 I’m starting out with an ambiance thing. Static, or noise, or some kind of wall of sound or something. I’ll play with that for days before a drum even shows up. … It’s very much the way that I used to write rock music. I’m really kind of working with noise and trying to pull something pretty out of it. It’s kind of cool because there’s not a lot of producers that I’m seeing who are combining noise and ambiance kind of stuff with something that’s very much concerned with hooking up with dudes on dance floors.

What’s the New Dad live set like?

I roll in with a mixer, a sampler … I’ve been writing specifically for dates, so I’m not playing the same sets.

I’m anticipating and setting myself up. I’ve been playing these little gay dance clubs. It’s not like an on-stage type of thing. The way I envision it, I’m writing the DJ set that I want to hear.

PHOTO BY MIHAIL MANCAS

There’s no way that I can ethically publish this interview without disclosing my friendship with Michael Brodeur, the former Dig music editor who currently performs as New Dad. At the same time, listing all the ways that we go back—Brodeur is a major inspiration and even once helped get me a career-defining gig at the now defunct Boston Phoenix—will inevitably be seen as a namedroppish divulgence. As anybody who participated in or even observed the cultural prodding the Dig took much pride in pushing through the wild aughts is well aware, he’s a standout talent across mediums, the creative answer to that gorgeous mutant bastard you envied in fifth grade for their renaissance ability to dominate athletically as well as academically.

With such accolades and adoration sprawled on front street, I might as well also admit that I considered writing a traditional profile of New Dad for this week’s issue. But then I transcribed our interview and remembered that Brodeur, who has continued to write for the Boston Globe since moving to Texas several years ago, is more than qualified to speak on his own terms. I chatted with him days after he rocked a party at South by Southwest as New Dad on a bill with a Texas drag queen named Louisianna Purchase.

I know there’s a lot of it, but break down some of your personal Boston music history.

When I first showed up in Boston I was in a band called the Wicked Farleys, a loud-ass band in the Boston tradition of chimp rock. Chimp rock is a term I think Swirlies came up with. At that point there was a lot of self-serious shoegaze and noise music, and chimp rock was sort of like a Boston take on it—it didn’t take itself seriously, it was loud as fuck, you wouldn’t be able to hear the next day. But it was also pretty friendly. It wasn’t death metal. More like life metal. Mid-to-late ’90s. I was happy to be mixed up in that.

What was your next big leap?

When I was in the Farleys it was about being in a band that was so loud I could drown out the fact that I was gay.

It was just this way that I could insulate myself from the inevitability that I would one day have to come out and participate in gay culture. Because there was nothing less gay than being in the Boston noise rock scene at that point. Not to cheapen the experience, but it definitely served a function.

When I was in Certainly, Sir it was like a housemeets-Pet Shop Boys type of thing. That served its own function—it was me busting out and saying, You know what, I love George Michael, I love Sade, so fuck y’all, we’re going to start doing some George Michael-Sade sounding shit. It was a way of getting in touch with that gay side and acknowledging that I like pop music.

From 2000 on, me and Nick Hubben, who at the time was in a band called the Ivory Coast, started an electronic duo thing, which ended up being a template that a lot of people were doing at the beginning of the aughts. I think the ease of recording technology that was becoming available was helping people move into electronic music.

When you were living upstairs from me in Jamaica Plain around 2010, the first thing you did was set up your equipment.

After that is when I started DJing and we did [the dance party] Group Hug. At the time I was just sort of horrified.

Wherever I went out in Boston I was just hearing shitty gay dance music. I remember the breaking point was I was at a bear night, and I was there with my buddy drinking and I hear “Enter Sandman” come on. But right as it was about to launch in, I realized it wasn’t “Enter Sandman,” it was a fucking trance remix of “Enter Sandman.” It was like someone shat on my face. It was then that we went to the Enormous Room and asked if we could have it for one night a month. That kind of opened up the next 10 years of me DJing.

When did you become New Dad? New Dad comes from a chat I was having with a friend when I turned 40, and he was like, You’re a new dad.

Because one thing that happens is on the apps, there are guys who, if they’re a daddy chaser, they’ll just sort for 40plus, and their first message to you will be like, Hey dad!

So when I turned 40, like overnight, that was the nature of the messages I was getting. Who knew all I had to do was get old?

The New Dad name is kind of a reference to this point in my life. I don’t think you can be in your 40s and be making dance music for people in their 20s without a voice in your head being like, What are you doing? Or, Why are you here? You start to scrutinize what this is all about.

It’s easy to doubt yourself and call it a midlife crisis, but really the kind of interactions I’ve had, especially with younger gay folks, is something that when I was that age, I didn’t really have. If you were part of Generation X, you wanted to learn about yourself as a gay person, but all of those people [you would have learned from] were dead.

AIDS wiped out an entire generation. My generation is the generation that didn’t have someone to help figure it out.

I’m getting more actively interested in showing process over necessarily having results. So I’ll show songs in progress, write about booking the tour. I’m not a fan of how opaque electronic music tends to be—lots of nameless producers, software tricks, secrecy masked as sorcery, and I think the end result is that it makes electronic music feel off-putting or out of reach or maybe even elitist. The price of so much of the gear doesn’t help this.

Part of the Dad thing for me in a lot of ways is realizing that I have a responsibility to hand things down and lead younger LGBTQ folks who feel lost or don’t have the access or confidence just to emerge fully formed. I also think that social media cultivates a very bad and dangerous emphasis on results over process—there doesn’t seem to be any room for more mistakes or “becoming” something, you need to arrive and survive as a brand.

This is a mentality that I think I can help work against by being very honest about music, my motives, my mistakes, and my audience.

>> NEW DAD IN BOSTON. SUN 3.24 AT JACQUES CABARET, 79 BROADWAY, BOSTON. AND W/ LE FEELING (PVD) ANIMAL HOSPITAL AND OTHERS FOR A MASS TRANS POLITICAL COALITION FUNDRAISER ON FRI 3.29 AT PLAYLAND AT THE DORCHESTER ART PROJECT, 1486 DORCHESTER AVE. CHECK OUT NEW DAD AT SOUNDCLOUD/NEWDADNEWDAD AND INSTAGRAM.COM/NEWDADNEWDAD. 16

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17

RETURN TICKET FILM

On two films by Sarah Jacobson at BUFF

BY JAKE MULLIGAN @_JAKEMULLIGAN

STILL IMAGE FROM MARY JANE’S NOT A VIRGIN ANYMORE, COURTESY AMERICAN GENRE FILM ARCHIVE At most of the major international film festivals there are programs of older works exhibited alongside the new releases and premieres that ostensibly drew the crowds in the first place. With no small amount of pleasure, I’ve noticed (anecdotally if not statistically) that local festivals have begun to follow suit with greater regularity: Last summer’s Boston French Film Festival included Jean-Luc Godard’s early-period film Les Carabiniers (1963); last fall’s Boston Women’s Film Festival included a showing of Karyn Kusama’s Jennifer’s Body (2009) co-presented by our friends at Strictly Brohibited; this coming weekend sees Tunç Okan’s The Bus (1976) play as part of the Boston Turkish Film Festival at the MFA (more details below); and finally this year’s iteration of the Wicked Queer film festival (3.28-4.7, various locations) will include four different “WQ Throwback” repertory screenings, featuring Marlon Riggs’ Tongues Untied (1989) (4.2, 7 pm, Brattle), Christopher Munch’s The Hours and Times (1991) (4.3, 6:30 pm, MFA), Jamie Babbit’s But I’m a Cheerleader (2000) (4.4, 8 pm, Brattle), and Frank Ripploh’s Taxi Zum Klo (1981) (4.5, 9:30 pm, Brattle).

But when it comes to this side of festival programming, no other local has been as dedicated as the Boston Underground Film Festival, which for the last 10 years has almost always reserved at least one spot in its relatively limited lineup for a repertory selection. The 21st annual BUFF is likely happening as you read this (3.203.24 at the Brattle and HFA), and once again a rep pick has emerged as an early highlight of the entire program: The festival will screen the two works by the American independent filmmaker Sarah Jacobson (1971-2004), her 27-minute short I Was a Teenage Serial Killer (1993) as well as her feature-length teen comedy Mary Jane’s Not a Virgin Anymore (1998), both just restored by the American Genre Film Archive, and playing together on March 23 at noon at the HFA. Shot in black and white on 16mm, rife with rough dubbing and rougher visual effects, characterized by ostensibly transgressive material including depictions of gore and blasphemy, backed with a near-constant barrage of punk music on the soundtrack, and initially distributed on tape via sales made in person by the filmmaker herself, I Was a Teenage Serial Killer is in many ways a typical film of the underground cinema as it existed in the VHS era.

Jacobson’s picture stays with Mary (Kristin Calabrese) as she offs four different offenders of her existence— first a man who berates her for her looks, then one who secretly removes his condom while they’re having sex, then one who catcalls her on the street, and finally one who betrayed her deepest trust. The emphasis here is not on the “action” of the violence (which is suggested more than seen, within the bounds of the underground tradition), but more on the ostensible fantasies they 18

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fulfill for character and viewer alike: When Mary sends the catcaller under a moving truck, it’s not the traffic accident that the filmmaking depicts most clearly, but instead Mary’s response after the fact—a shot from the perspective of the guy’s corpse shows us Calabrese spitting in his face, then leaving the scene while delivering a one-liner, at which point we cut to another onlooker, a woman, who excitedly approves of the whole situation, “Cool!”

For this writer Serial Killer’s most notable points are its occasional moments of truly reckless camera movement, which suggest something of the DIY ethos that characterized the film’s production and distribution; these moments are unfortunately rather sparse in number. But within the context of the larger program the film offers significant insights toward central artistic motivations that Jacobson carried throughout her much too short career—primarily, to provide a woman’s perspective on the pre-established dominant iconography of the American cinema, and perhaps to offer a bit of wish fulfillment for an underserved audience in the process.

The closing monologue delivered by Calabrese in Serial Killer, spoken to a man who hits on her immediately after she opens up to him about abuses she once suffered, relates directly to that mission, and indeed sounds quite like certain things Jacobson would say herself during interviews: “No one wants to listen to my story, and then I get this anger that I’m not allowed to express because it’s not right for a woman to have any rage. You can have your fucking James Dean image and be a hero to society, and I have just as much pain, if not more, and no one can even look me in the eye and say ‘I’m sorry’!” -Mary (Calabrese), in I Was a Teenage Serial Killer “It’s like, look, you’ve got your little thing over here, you’ve got your B-movie aesthetic, and I’ve got my interpretation of it that girls can enjoy, too, so you don’t always have to watch the bimbo get raped or slashed or stalked or whatever.” -Sarah Jacobson, in an interview with the Austin Chronicle, published March 20, 1998 I Was a Teenage Serial Killer vaguely gestures toward certain tendencies of the crime films of the ’80s and ’90s, but with Mary Jane, Jacobson more thoroughly offers an “interpretation” of a subgenre. In this case her interpretation regards the Hughesian teen movie, something that she made explicit in another 1998 interview, with the Onion/AV Club, where she confided, “I secretly love Molly Ringwald movies, but I also kind of hate them, too. I kind of wanted to make one where Molly gets to have sex.” That is pretty much exactly where Mary Jane starts, as a fantasy sequence that seems to lampoon ’70s pornography jaggedly cuts into images of Mary Jane (Lisa Gerstein) having noticeably unpleasant sex in a cemetery (the film is set in Minneapolis, where Jacobson grew up, although it was actually shot in San Francisco). Jacobson’s script then features Mary in dialogue sequences where her friends and co-workers describe their own first times, followed by conversations where she gets characterspecific explainers on subjects including masturbation

and communicating during sex, eventually resulting in later scenes where Mary Jane puts her knowledge into practice, such as in a pleasantly chatty sex scene with local hunk Tom (Chris Enright). That particular sequence is replete with examples of what is now more broadly known as ‘affirmative consent,’ which is one of many small behavioral details within Mary Jane that suggest it was on some level ahead of its time, or more specifically, that suggest it would have been well suited for release in 2019, and into a media climate that places an undeniable primacy on artworks that depict positive or ethical behavior, as opposed to being released into the world of 1998, when it indeed failed to obtain even home video distribution.

Mary Jane maintains a relatively traditional sense of composition across its 97 minutes, in terms of both form and narrative. But the execution of these compositions turns them inside out—in the manner of an empty pocket: A threadbare aesthetic is embraced throughout Jacobson’s feature, with relatively typical imagery like “teens sitting on the counter and talking at work” made distinct and particular by the textural qualities of the filmmaker’s bargain-basement sense of craftsmanship, like the way she frames close-ups against blank or black walls to save on unnecessary settings, or the way her film’s extremely limited lighting seems to illuminate only about two-thirds of most long shots, allowing the loose ends and incomplete corners of the locations to fade into agreeable darkness, while also leaving diagonal streaks of indiscernible space above and below the more standard centers of her setups. The artificiality is heightened, then, never hidden, a choice reflected by the script itself, which eventually leans into the sort of melodramatic twists favored by the teen-oriented films of the ’80s and television of the ’90s—as if to reclaim the commercial coming-of-age narrative with all its agreed-upon parts intact, just rewritten in a different idiom. Had the film been officially released when it was made, it likely would’ve been positioned as one of many ’90s movies that tried to recode the teen-comedy subgenre for the then-thriving US independent-cinema scene, alongside films like Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. (1992), Clerks. (1995), Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995), Girls Town (1996), and Whatever (1998). By exhibiting it in the present day, the AGFA and BUFF not only place Mary Jane in conversation with the cinema of the current moment, but they also work toward correcting an oversight of the past—by placing Jacobson’s film into a long-overdue conversation with the films that should’ve been its peers.

THE BOSTON UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL 2019 RUNS 3.20-24 WITH SCREENINGS AT THE BRATTLE THEATRE AND HARVARD FILM ARCHIVE. THE FULL SCHEDULE, AS WELL AS TICKETS FOR INDIVIDUAL SCREENINGS, CAN BE FOUND AT BOSTONUNDERGROUND.ORG. MARY JANE’S NOT A VIRGIN ANYMORE AND I WAS A TEENAGE SERIAL KILLER PLAY AT THE HFA AS PART OF BUFF ON SAT 3.23 AT NOON. $9. BOTH FILMS ALSO CURRENTLY AVAILABLE TO STREAM ON FANDOR.COM, WHICH DOES REQUIRE A SUBSCRIPTION. THE 18TH ANNUAL BOSTON TURKISH FILM FESTIVAL TAKES PLACE AT THE MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS 3.214.7. THE BUS SCREENS ON FRI 3.22 AT 5PM. THE FULL SCHEDULE AND OTHER INFORMATION CAN BE FOUND AT BOSTONTURKISHFILMFESTIVAL.ORG. THE 2019 ITERATION OF WICKED QUEER, THE BOSTON LGBT FILM FESTIVAL RUNS 3.28-4.7. THE FULL SCHEDULE AND OTHER INFORMATION CAN BE FOUND AT WICKEDQUEER. ORG.

THEATER REVIEWS PERFORMING ARTS

BY CHRISTOPHER EHLERS @_CHRISEHLERS AND JILLIAN KRAVATZ @JILLIAN_KRAVATZ

GRIEF’S AVALANCHE: NOT MEDEA AT FLAT EARTH THEATRE

“Not too little, not too much. There safety lies.”

Euripides wrote that for Medea, but the same idea can easily be applied to the theater, where audiences frequently favor feel-good safety over deeper, darker provocations. For thousands of years, one of the hardest pills for audiences to swallow has been that of Medea, the scorned demigod who murdered her children to enact revenge on her two-timing husband.

Oddly, Allison Gregory’s disarmingly original Not Medea, which is currently running at Flat Earth Theatre at Watertown’s Mosesian Center for the Arts through March 30, feels both too little and too much, a frustrating thing considering the play’s potential and the gifts of its cast.

Juliet Bowler plays Woman, an overworked nurse with a bit of personal baggage who arrives late to the theater to take in a play after her shift. The play, it turns out, is Medea, and she’s not at all happy about that, chastising us, her fellow audience members, for coming together to judge her. Her summation of Medea? “He behaves badly, she behaves worse, and everyone just stands around watching. Kind of like this.”

There are similarities between Woman and Medea— hence her strong reaction—and as she tells us her story, she slips in and out of the ancient Greek world of Medea, complete with Chorus (Cassandra Meyer) and Jason (Gene Dante). It makes sense that the lines blur between Woman and Medea, but what isn’t helpful in Elizabeth Yvette Ramirez’s production is that it isn’t always clear what world we’re in or what’s going on.

Juliet Bowler is frequently remarkable, attacking the comic aspects of the role with a Melissa McCarthy-like deadpan that is riotous. But she also deftly brings to life a broken woman whose mistakes are eating her alive, and Not Medea is most successful when Bowler is all-in on either of those.

Elizabeth Krah’s too on-thenose Greek costume designs took me out of the play a bit, but Kyle Lampe’s sound design is again remarkable (his design for The Nether was similarly thrilling), giving Not Medea much of its mood.

Clumsiness of Ramirez’s production aside, the play itself is a promising but perhaps too convoluted examination of motherhood, womanhood, and our predilection for judgment.

And if we are to look at the misgivings of a modern woman through this ancient Greek woman who, early feminist qualities be damned, did some terrible things, then what are we really being asked to look at?

I can’t figure out the answer to that question. Neither, it seems, can Ramirez.

NOT MEDEA. THROUGH 3.30 AT FLAT EARTH THEATRE AT THE MOSESIAN CENTER FOR THE ARTS, 321 ARSENAL ST., WATERTOWN. FLATEARTHTHEATRE.COM

THE CHOICE MAY HAVE BEEN MISTAKEN: ONEGIN AT GREATER BOSTON STAGE COMPANY

That Eugene Onegin (both the Pushkin poem and the Tchaikovsky opera) would be considered a tale ripe for musical theaterization is not all that surprising. Oozing with romance and the ache of lost love, there are a great many innately dramatic things about the rise and fall of a cocky Russian playboy who is forced to live out his life alone with his selfish and reckless decisions.

What is surprising—flummoxing, actually—is that Amiel Gladstone and Veda Hill’s adaptation would register as something that Stoneham’s Greater Boston Stage Company would feel the need to produce.

Somehow a supposedly big hit in Canada, Onegin is an uninteresting and underdeveloped exercise in needless adaptation, one that is devoid of any character development or earnestness. Speaking of earnestness, Greater Boston Stage Company opened its season this past fall with a musical adaptation of The Importance of Being Earnest, another head-scratchingly bad adaptation that—forgive me if I’m overstating here—no one asked for.

It’s hard to imagine that Onegin wasn’t at least in part inspired by the success of the brilliant and wondrous Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812, another modern musical that uses a dusty old Russian story as its jumping-off point. But Gladstone and Hill also seem inspired by Alex Timbers and Michael Friedman’s 2010 Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, a rock musical that reimagined historical figures as eyelinered rock stars.

It is often said that characters in musicals sing when

words alone won’t suffice. For Onegin, then, when simple singing won’t cut it, some characters grab a mic stand and turn into rock stars. Why, you might ask? That I don’t have the answer to.

Director Weylin Symes and company have difficulty navigating these rock moments with sincerity, usually due to awkward staging or a bit of miscasting. But other than that, for a musical I dislike so much, Symes’ production is largely very stylish and well acted. (Jeff Adelberg’s lighting helps immensely on the stylish front.)

This production’s primary trouble is by way of the doomed playboy himself. Mark Linehan just isn’t right for the role, visually or otherwise. With long, slickedback hair and eyes that veer more closely toward menacing than seductive, Linehan’s frantic and clumsy musical performances felt more in line with Dr. Jekyll’s transformation into Hyde than a Russian dandy at the end of his rope. Too frequently resorting to an oddly shrill, grave scream-singing, the score does Linehan’s voice no favors, and vice versa.

On the positive side of things, Michael Jennings Mahoney is an appealing and endearing Lensky, the man that Onegin kills in a duel, and Sarah Pothier is lovely as Tatyana, Onegin’s great love that isn’t to be.

During the musical’s opening number, the cast proposes a drinking game to make the evening go by a little faster. I just want to go on record and say that that would have been a very, very good idea.

ONEGIN. THROUGH 3.31 AT GREATER BOSTON STAGE COMPANY, 395 MAIN ST., STONEHAM. GREATERBOSTONSTAGE.ORG

MARK LINEHAN, KERRY A. DOWLING, SARAH POTHIER, MICHAEL JENNINGS MAHONEY. PHOTO BY MAGGIE HALL PHOTOGRAPHY.

NEWS TO US

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19

CARMEN LAGALA COMEDY

There are some things you just can’t do in Vermont

BY DENNIS MALER @DEADAIRDENNIS “How do you get the rights to serve alcohol?” Like I had no idea.

What was the daily routine of trying to keep it open?

It was mostly selling paninis and iced coffees. I really wanted to do the comedy side of things, but all the money was made on this fucking iced coffee. It takes like five minutes-plus to make this stupid stupid coffee. I would just sit behind this thousandyear-old register that would constantly make mistakes and dole out the coffee as well as trying to figure out the finances. We were losing hundreds of dollars a day. It sucked.

Do you feel like you came out like more knowledgeable, or was it that was a complete waste of everyone’s time and efforts?

Definitely more knowledgeable, but it was a place born out of ignorance.

If I had the chance, I would never do it again. It was a huge nightmare. It sucked so much. I was just getting blamed for things I couldn’t help. It was terrible.

Some comedians start their careers in their hometown, then move to the big flashy lights of New York or LA. Others launch in NYC and cut out the middle part. Then there’s Carmen Lagala, who started her career doing open mics in Burlington, was pivotal in fomenting a comedy scene there, and in time left for the Big Apple.

In her first year of comedy, Lagala became a co-owner of Vermont’s first comedy club. Eight years later, she’s heading to Boston, a town that’s been good to her over the years, among other places, to headline. Ahead of her performance at Zone 3 on Western Avenue in Cambridge, I asked about her humble Green Mountain beginnings.

What sparked the move from Vermont to New York?

I wanted to leave Vermont. I had been there for most of my life, but I was looking for a big change. I was looking to do comedy every night, multiple times a night. And you can really only do that in New York City. You can’t do that in Vermont.

How did you start doing comedy in a place where there wasn’t comedy to begin with?

It was very rare. I was doing it maybe three times a month at first. By the time I moved I could get up seven times a week. I would do music open mics and just sign up as a comedian. … I think my first year of comedy in New York City was about equivalent to four years in Vermont.

Even though that was crucial to forming who I am as a comedian.

Did you find the constant New York grind to be daunting?

Definitely. I really enjoyed doing it, though. I think what is crucial to not quitting is you kind of have to enjoy it and be masochistic. A lot of times you’re just like, How can I make a joke? All of these people hate me. It’s all about making friends. That is legitimately most of it, just making friends and getting booked by your friends. Your friends are the only ones who will help you in this industry.

One of the common downfalls of comedians happens to be social anxiety and being afraid to talk to other people.

Was that something you had to learn to get over?

Yeah, I have a lot of anxiety currently. But even before I did comedy, I wouldn’t talk in class. I would have panic attacks. I wouldn’t even raise my hand in a classroom full of people. … But I’ve always wanted to perform. … It took me seven years before I even approached a stage and tried it.

You co-owned and operated a comedy club when you first started comedy. What was the process of going from doing comedy to owning a business?

At that point, I just needed like a big change. I got an interview for a job at a newspaper. I was an English major, and I got that job at the same time that my friend was like, Hey, do you want to open a comedy club together? And I was like, I’m a year into comedy, that sounds great. I know everything. It’ll be perfect. I turned down the job with the newspaper. … My friend from New York City who had the money to do a startup business had a full-time job working for the state, so he could never help out. I would Google,

>>CARMEN LEGALA ON COMEDY PARTY AT ZONE 3 IN ALLSTON FRI 3.22. TICKETS AND MORE INFO AT COMEDY-PARTY.COM. 20

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Last year you made your network television debut. What was the experience from when the booker said, We would like you to do Stephen Colbert?

Before they even told me that they wanted me to do this show it was at least a two-and-a-half-month preprocess. And then once they wanted to work with me, it was another for four months until we taped and then another month or so until it aired. So it was almost a year. I met with the booker, and we picked out a set, she had three jokes she had in mind for me. … I asked if I could say “vulva” on stage and they didn’t answer me, so I was like, “I’m just going to say it and if they bleep it out, that’s fine.”

Have there been any incidents that separate you from other comics solely because of gender?

That was something I didn’t even think about as much at first.When I first moved [to New York], it was a lot of just being on guard constantly. Other comics would be, Oh yeah, I thought about this while I was on the train. I couldn’t think about my jokes walking home, I was thinking about that group of three guys on the corner, and how I should behave right now so I don’t draw attention.

What is Puppets Presents?

It’s a show Kelsey Caine and I came up with. We pretend the ghost of Jim Henson turned us into puppets, then we have to perform as puppets. We would interview comedians for as long as we could hold our hands up, which was usually two and a half minutes. It’s very fun and silly, it’s a lot of hard work. I’m always really, really sore afterwards ’cause puppeteering is hard.

I love puppets. I own puppets. I would love to own all the puppets in the world. I am obsessed with puppets. It’s more of like a creepy obsession that nobody knows about. …

I think they’re hilarious.

HEADLINING THIS WEEK!

Sam Morril

Comedy Central Presents Friday + Saturday

COMING SOON Rachael O’Brien

Special Engagement: Sun, Mar 24

Godfrey World’s Dumbest, Comedy Central Presents April 4-6

Dulcé Sloan

The Daily Show with Trevor Noah Apr 12 + 13

Chris Franjola E! Network, Netflix Apr 18-20

We Hate Movies

Special Engagement: Mon, Apr 22 Tickets available at DIGBOXOFFICE.COM

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

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CRAZY SWITCH ASIANS SAVAGE LOVE

WHAT'S FOR BREAKFAST

BY PATT KELLEY PATTKELLEY.COM

BY DAN SAVAGE @FAKEDANSAVAGE | MAIL@SAVAGELOVE.NET

I’m a straight white woman in my early 30s. In theory, I’ve always been into men of all races—but in practice, most of my exes are Latino and white. In September, I met this really handsome Chinese American guy, and I feel like he rewired me. I’ve been exclusively attracted to Asian guys since. I’m not writing to ask if this is racist, because I’m not asking these guys to, like, speak Korean to me in bed or do any role-playing stuff.

We just date and have sex, same as my past relationships. But if any of these dudes saw my Tinder matches, they’d be like, “This woman has a thing for Asian guys.” Which I do, but it’s pretty new. Is this normal? Do people just change preferences like that? Also, can you do a PSA about Asian dicks? In my recent but considerable experience, they run the gamut from average to gigantic. If small Asian dicks were a thing, I would have encountered at least one by now. That shit is a myth.

Asian Male/White Female Here’s my general take on race-specific sexual preferences: So long as you can see and treat your sex partners as individuals and not just as objects—we are all also objects—and so long as you can express your preferences without coming across and/ or being a racist shitbag, and so long as you’ve interrogated your preferences to make sure they’re actually yours and not a mindless desire for what you’ve been told you’re supposed to want (i.e., the currently prevailing beauty standard or its equally mindless rejection, the “transgressive” fetishization of the “other”), then it’s okay to seek out sex and/or romantic partners of a particular race.

I ran my general take on race-specific sexual preferences past Joel Kim Booster—a writer and comedian whose work often touches on race and desire—and he approved.

(Whew.) I also shared your letter with him, AMWF, and Booster had some thoughts for you.

“It doesn’t sound like her newfound preference for Asian men has anything to do with the uncomfortable fetishization of culture,” said Booster. “It’s good that she’s not asking them to speak Korean or do any sort of Asian role-playing—something that’s been asked of me before (and it’s a bummer, trust). Her interest in Asian men seems to be mostly an aesthetic thing, which you certainly can’t fault her for: There are a lot of hot Asian dudes out there.”

Booster also had some questions for you.

“It’s not uncommon for people later in life to discover that they’re attracted to something they’d never considered sexy before—full-grown adults are out here discovering they’re bi every damn day,” said Booster. “But she went 30 years before she saw one Asian man she was attracted to? And now this guy has ‘rewired’ her to be attracted only to Asian men?”

He said that he would like to see a picture of this magical guy, AMWF, and I would, too.

“If she was chill about it and just started adding Asian men into the mix, this wouldn’t seem like an issue,” added Booster. “But from what I can gather, she has shifted to exclusively fucking Asian guys and feels the need to write a letter about it. That feels like a red flag, and yet I can’t pinpoint why.”

Maybe you’re just making up for lost time—maybe you’re getting with all the Asian dick you can now to make up for all the Asian dick you missed out on before you ran into that one impossibly hot Asian guy—and your desires/preferences/Tinder profile will achieve a racially harmonious equilibrium at a certain point. But whether you remain exclusively attracted to Asian guys for the rest of your life or not, AMWF, make sure you don’t treat Asian guys like you’re doing them a favor by sitting on their gamutrunning dicks.

“I’m weary of people with a specific racial preference for Asian men. And it’s less out of a fear of being fetishized—though that’s certainly part of it—and more because of the implicit power imbalance that exists in those relationships,” said Booster. “It’s all artificially constructed by The Culture, of course, but I’m acutely aware that society views Asian men as less masculine and therefore less desirable. And I’ve learned that guys who have a preference for Asian men sometimes bring a certain kind of ‘entitlement’ to our interactions, i.e., ‘You should feel lucky I’m paying you this kind of attention.’ And that’s gross! It doesn’t sound like she’s doing that, but something about this letter makes me feel like she wants to be congratulated for being woke enough to consider Asian guys. She’d do well to keep this stuff behind the curtain—no one wants to feel like someone was into them only because of some witch’s curse a hot Chinese American guy put on them at a bar.”

OUR VALUED CUSTOMERS

BY TIM CHAMBERLAIN OURVC.NET

RUTHERFORD

BY DON KUSS DONKUSS@DIGBOSTON.COM

Follow Joel on Twitter @ihatejoelkim, and visit his website ihatejoelkim.com.

On the Lovecast: Musical-theater nerds rejoice, it’s Andrew Rannells! Listen at savagelovecast.com.

22

03.21.19 - 03.28.19 |

DIGBOSTON.COM

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FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

23

CITY GUIDE for visitors from out of town (and anyone else who can’t get cell phone reception in the Prudential Center)

EATS

DRINKS + NIGHTLIFE

TRANSIT

Beer Bar ● Bukowski Tavern (50 Dalton Street)

Cabs

Cocktail Bar ● Towne Stove & Spirits (900 Boylston Street) Live Music ● The Bebop (1116 Boylston Street) ● Wally’s Jazz Cafe (427 Mass Ave)

You’re in the middle of it all—from a three-story Italian market with several restaurants inside (Eataly), to several other restaurants and cafes in the Prudential Center, to cute and quaint establishments on Newbury Street, to college bars directly across the street from the Pru (which is what us locals call the NECANN venue). The truth is that you can probably just wander outside and find what you need, but we thought we’d make it extra easy for you.

LGBTQ Spots ● Machine (1254 Boylston Street) ● Jacque’s Cabaret (79 Broadway)

Mexican Spot ● Casa Romero (30 Gloucester Street)

NECESSITIES

Noodle Spot ● Santouka (66 Hereford Street)

Sports Bar ● Whiskey’s (885 Boylston Street) Tequila Bar ● Lolita Back Bay (271 Dartmouth Street) Wine Bar ● Sonsie (327 Newbury Street)

Art Supplies ● Blick Art Materials (333 Mass Ave)

Oyster Spot ● Saltie Girl (281 Dartmouth Street)

Banks ● Bank of America (133 Mass Ave) ● Santander (575 Boylston Street)

Pizza Delivery (After Hours) ● Supreme Pizza Back Bay (PHONE: 617-247-8252)

Convenience Store ● 7-Eleven (141 Mass Ave)

Power Lunch Spot ● Abe & Louie’s (793 Boylston Street) Seafood ● Jasper White’s Summer Shack (50 Dalton Street) Southern Spot ● Buttermilk & Bourbon (160 Commonwealth Ave) Steak House ● Capital Grille (900 Boylston Street / Inside Prudential Center) Sushi Spot ● Yamato II (545 Boylston Street) Vegan/Vegetarian ● sweetgreen (659 Boylston Street)

Pharmacy ● Walgreens (841 Boylston Street) Printing / Copies ● FedEx/Kinko’s (Inside Prudential Center) ● Sir Speedy (827 Boylston Street) ● UPS Store (292 Newbury Street)

● You can use Uber and Lyft just like anyplace else ● Pedicabs can typically be found in the vicinity of Bukowski Tavern on Dalton Street ● Or there are regular cab stands in front of the Prudential Center on Boylston Street and outside of the Sheraton Lobby

Train ● The closest Green Line (B/C/D) stop is Hynes (entrance on Mass Ave. between Boylston Street and Newbury Street) ● The closest Orange Line stop is Mass Ave

For a more complete city guide designed for NECANN attendees, visit

NECANN.com

Inside the convention center, be sure to visit DigBoston and Talking Joints Memo at

Booth #205