DigBoston 6.29.17

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Dear Reader, You’ll need more than the five free articles available outside the Boston Globe’s $27/month paywall in order to read all of the love notes the newspaper ran about moving downtown from its home of six decades in Dorchester. The series has unfolded like a grade school graduation ceremony, every last installment far less necessary than the time your friend moved from Jamaica Plain to Cambridge and threw an enormous semi-ironic farewell party.

The nostalgia’s also been redundant, almost rivalling the repetition with which their adversary Howie Carr pegs Globe journalists as “bow-tied bum-kissers.” Headlines from the past week alone include “Fifty-nine years of stories: The Globe says goodbye to its Dorchester home”; “Four stories tall, a million stories long”; “The Globe says: Thank you, Dorchester”; “Globe’s presence in Dorchester will be etched in memory”; “With an eye on the future, Globe returns to downtown Boston”; “Game over on Morrissey Boulevard.”

Tribute after tribute aside, no Globie embarrassment is over until pro-business apostle Shirley Leung kicks the corpse. Apparently way too naive to realize that people past her paper’s paywall often criticize her coworkers for their insufferable snobbery, Leung writes: By now, you must have read that The Boston Globe has moved downtown from our longtime home in Dorchester, where most employees drove to work and enjoyed free parking. No such perk exists at the new space, which means hundreds of journalists, myself included, have joined the ranks of the T’s 1.3 million daily commuters … Could this possibly be transportation Secretary Stephanie Pollack’s worst nightmare?

I could holler endlessly about how unbelievably self-centered that approach to journalism is, or go back in the archives to tally all the righteous and reactionary save-the-trees screeds that the Globe printed while its reporters couldn’t bother to take the Red Line to JFK/UMass and walk to work.

But I don’t have to, because somebody named “T” summed it up perfectly in the comment section: Dear God in heaven, a journalist who works in and writes about the city finds public transportation a novelty. Give me a break. My mother who is 81 and lives out of state probably has ridden the t with more frequency. i don’t bash the media but, if not elitism, this piece smacks of a certain separatism that is quite jarring (like my typical orange line commute).

T and I aren’t alone. Similar sentiments have simmered forever, though I can think of only one that underscores the Globe’s cultural deafness more explicitly than Leung’s recent try at slumming it. It’s from Common Ground, the essential Pulitzer Prizewinning book by J. Anthony Lukas about Boston during the racially turbulent ’60s and ’70s: Of the paper’s top twenty editors, all but two lived in the suburbs … Even Irish reporters generally settled at one remove from the inner city in enclaves like Scituate and Hingham. The Globe’s prevailing voice was that of a Harvard-educated lawyer from the suburbs—affable, humane, and well intentioned, but no longer entirely comfortable in the city of his youth.

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NEWS US STATE OF UNCERTAINTY

When it comes to Puerto Rican statehood, what can Boston Boricuas expect?

BY SARAH BETANCOURT @SWEETADELINEVT

The topic of Puerto Rico’s status is one that divides islanders and mainlanders alike. But the desire for something more for “La Isla de Encanta” unites everyone.

For more than a century, the island has been an unincorporated United States territory, the most populous of all US territories with more than 3.4 million people. There are another 5.2 million self-identifying Puerto Ricans on the US mainland, with Massachusetts home to over 266,000. Mass Puerto Ricans are a proud people and have strong opinions about the island despite the nearly 1,700-mile separation.

On June 11, the Puerto Rican government held the latest in a series of controversial nonbinding referendums. The result: 97 percent of voters chose statehood.

The catch is in the turnout. Only 23 percent of registered voters cast ballots, in a place where local elections typically yield over 80 percent voter turnout.

Several political parties urged supporters to boycott the vote largely because Gov. Ricardo Rosselló’s administration pushed for a referendum before the feds backed it.

US media outlets have nevertheless written extensively about the supposed “landslide” referendum vote for statehood, without keeping in mind the complexity of Puerto Rican politics and the low voter turnout. Meanwhile, Puerto Rican Bostonians watch with concern—and with the resigned sentiment that vote or no vote, Congress will do nothing. Because it has a history of holding Puerto Rico at arm’s length.

After spending more than 400 years as a Spanish colony, Puerto Rico was ceded to the US following the Spanish-American War under the 1898 Treaty of Paris.

When the US government wanted more manpower for World War I in 1917, Woodrow Wilson turned to the island—where several thousand men had already volunteered for the US Army—and granted Puerto Ricans

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citizenship under the Jones Act. More men joined the armed forces, and the US government got their bodies.

The Jones Act gave Congress total power to control legislative actions for the island, be they related to finances, defense, or immigration management. Puerto Rico self-governs but doesn’t have much of a voice in Washington. Puerto Ricans cannot vote in presidential elections, have only one non-voting delegate to Congress, and have no senators or congresspeople.

Representation is a sore point for Puerto Ricans, especially for veterans. Tony Molina is the head of the Puerto Rican Veteran Monument Square Association in Boston and the first Puerto Rican wounded in the Vietnam War. As someone who has served in the military, and actively seeks to honor other Boricuas who have served in the US Army, he finds the territorial status to be insulting.

He told DigBoston, “You can fight for your country, but you can’t vote for the commander in chief of the Armed Forces. If I sacrifice my life, I have the right to vote on who is the next commander in chief.” Molina was wounded by sniper fire in Vietnam and says that more Puerto Ricans are killed in action per capita than are soldiers from any US state.

TANKED ECONOMY, MINIMAL CLEANUP Meanwhile, Puerto Rico’s economy is completely intertwined with American business interests. The result has been a downward spiral, especially since the end of the federal tax incentives offered to manufacturing companies by Congress. The 30-year policy created a bubble where pharmaceutical manufacturing encompassed more than 50 percent of all manufacturing on the island. But the tax breaks ended in 2006, and people began losing their jobs.

Unemployment is still over 11 percent, and the US Census Bureau reports that the unemployment rate for

youth under the age of 25 is at 41 percent. Academics who study the subject say that more than 10,000 people are fleeing the island every year for economic opportunity in the US, creating the largest migration in several decades.

Many people believe that the dire economic situation is tied to the relationship between the US and its territory.

Angel Carrasquillo, 56, is a Puerto Rican who has lived in Boston most of his life. He spoke with DigBoston at his South End cafe, Mana Escondido, about his pro-statehood position and family back on the island, where some have had to shut down small businesses during the economic crisis. Escondido said there’s no real disability program— just social security. He calls it “the elderly struggle.” “The quality of health insurance is bad,” he adds, and “the copayments are high.” Carrasquillo believes statehood would benefit Puerto Rico’s economy and says it is about time Uncle Sam pays it forward. “The US has used Puerto Rico for its benefits,” Escondido says. “Now it’s struggling, and the government is turning its back.”

How did it get this bad? For one thing, the Puerto Rican government took out debt in the form of municipal bonds to cover budget shortfalls. Because the bond debt was tax exempt and promised high returns, hedge funds and investors bought the debt … but now expect a higher payback. Typically, a state in this situation would file for bankruptcy. Yet because Puerto Rico is a territory, it’s not that simple.

NEXT STEPS In April, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the Department of Justice rejected the original version of the statehood ballot language, which did not include the island’s current status as a Commonwealth as an option, asking for postponement of the vote until changes were edited in. But the Rosselló administration went ahead anyway, raising questions of validity.

Congress holds the power to create the 51st state, but there is little political will to do so. Felix G. Arroyo is the chief of Health and Human Services in Boston. Asked if he believes Congress will act, the answer was a very strong “No.” “I don’t have a lot of confidence in the role these [votes] take.” He pointed out that with statehood, Puerto Rico’s newly allotted congressmen and senators would most likely be Democratic, and that “there’s no way a Republican [Congress and president] would bring in a state that could tip the scales.”

Rosselló has been touting the results of the referendum in Washington to half-empty press rooms.

Although almost half a million of his constituents pulled for statehood, the vast majority of eligible Puerto Ricans stayed at home. His party, the Partido Nuevo Progresista (PNP), intends to create a commission to push Congress to validate the referendum results.

Back in Boston, Felix G. Arroyo’s father, Felix D. Arroyo, a former Boston City Councilor and the first Latino to serve in that body, is pro-independence. Raised in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, he told DigBoston, “I believe Puerto Rico should be its own country in friendship with the United States.” Asked to explain further, he described the role that US colonization has played in Puerto Rican trade and economics.

“They have the obligation to help and make a functioning economy,” Felix D. Arroyo said. “Puerto Rico has been reliant on Congress’ trade and foreign policy decisions since 1917 … The US has had PR as a territory for over a hundred years. Even if 100 percent of Puerto Ricans voted for statehood, I don’t see Congress giving that.

“It’s a disaster that the US has washed its hands of while emptying the pockets of Puerto Ricans.”

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‘LET ME MAKE THIS DISTINCTION’ THE TOKIN’ TRUTH

Boston City Councilor Tito Jackson on embracing cannabis reform

BY MIKE CRAWFORD @MIKECANNBOSTON

Boston mayoral candidate and Roxbury City Councilor Tito Jackson recently visited my WEMF Radio show, “The Young Jurks,” and had quite a bit to say about the state of cannabis in Mass, among other things. Our conversation went down just a few days after the House of Representatives advanced a bill—which is now being negotiated and synthesized with a more cannabis-friendly Senate version by yet another special committee—which attempts to trample the will of voters by, among other things, raising the retail marijuana tax rate from 12 percent to 28 percent.

Since Jackson was among the few outspoken politicians who successfully pushed the House to at least remove some language in said horrid bill that would inevitably lock a disproportionate number of people of color out of the cannabis industry, we wasted no time in asking the councilor to dive into the issue.

Are you still against the House marijuana omnibus bill?

I believe what has happened in the state of Massachusetts has been a miscarriage of justice … The people, over 1.8 million of them, their voice actually should carry forward … If the folks at the State House wanted to actually legislate this, why didn’t they doggone legislate it?

Why did the people have to put a ballot question forward to legalize, regulate, and tax adult use of cannabis?

How would your Mayoral administration handle marijuana licensing?

As mayor of the City of Boston I look forward to ensuring that shops are open, that they are expedited in their opening … Unlike our current mayor, let me make this distinction, Mayor Marty Walsh was absolutely categorically against the legalization, regulation, taxation of adult use

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of cannabis in the state of Massachusetts, and he stood on the side of the alcohol industry and he stood on the side of Governor Baker, opposing the people in the City of Boston, because resoundingly people in the City of Boston said this is the direction we should go …

The reason why I did it? There has been a racist war on drugs for decades in this state. In 2008, possession of marijuana was legal, but if you were black between 2008 and 2016, you had a 330 percent higher chance of being arrested [for marijuana than white people] …

I do have to quote Tupac right now: “Instead of a war on poverty, they have a war on drugs so the police can bother me” When it comes down to it, we have been wrong in this, and sadly Mayor Walsh was unwilling to state that the state had been wrong.

The MassCann/NORML Boston Freedom Rally on the Common has sued the city six times in state court to get their permits, five times under the Menino administration and once with Mayor Walsh. What would you do as mayor to ensure that doesn’t have to occur again?

I believe we should have a city government that is based on democracy, accountability, and transparency, and it should be scandal-free. The Freedom Rally, the folks that want to celebrate their right in the City of Boston should be able to come to the oldest public park in America. We would welcome you versus having to fight us. General Electric didn’t need to get a permit … Do you need a helipad for the Freedom Rally?

And on the Walsh Boston Calling music fest indictments?

You would never have a situation [like that] under a Mayor Jackson administration, especially if you are bringing

Nas—especially if you are bringing Nas—but seriously, they should have had no problems, their licenses should have been expedited, not held. When bad things happen to an organization like Boston Calling, that indicates to others that Boston is not open for business.

How [could a Mayor Jackson] bring accountability to Boston Police Department?

I have been the chief proponent on the City Council for body cams for every single police officer. We have been sued for $38 million dollars over the past seven years, if that’s not a compelling enough thought. I will also be calling for a civilian review board with subpoena powers to actually review the actions of the police department.

Councilor Jackson confesses to his own cannabis experimentation…

Let me get this off my chest, I did actually inhale, I didn’t roll it though, I have to tell you about my trip to Amsterdam … I am on record … I have partaken, that’s why as mayor of the City of Boston I would expedite, but we need to kill that [House] bill. I truly appreciate the language changes in regards to minorities, but I think the tax is still too high and the heroes are the ones in the cannabis industry that brought us here and not the people at the State House, so hands off on our ballot initiative, leave it to the voters.

Join the Young Jurks and other cannabis rights organizers outside of Mass House Speaker Robert DeLeo’s home in Winthrop on Thursday at 6pm for a peaceful rally. The speaker hasn’t listened to voters thus far, so we need to get our message to him directly.

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BROKEN RECORDS

MONKEY WRENCHING A rare win on the public records front in Mass

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In Massachusetts, a state with a terrible track record on access to public information, any news about public records is usually bad news. But in an excellent turn of events, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s ruling in a noteworthy public records lawsuit is being hailed by advocates as a huge win for transparency.

The high court’s decision narrowly defines the limits of the so-called public safety exemption to the public records law, which was created to protect people, buildings, and infrastructure from terrorism and other threats—but has frequently been misused to withhold fairly mundane records.

Since 2014, the animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has been trying to get records from the state Department of Agricultural Resources related to the export and import of non-human primates, but the department has been steadfast in denying PETA’s request. The department did turn over 11 pages of interstate veterinary health inspection records, but it blacked out all information about the owners, sellers, and recipients of the animals, as well as the identities of veterinarians who inspected them. According to the department, disclosing the information would put the people and facilities involved in transporting the animals at risk because it would make it easier for animal rights extremists to carry out attacks.

PETA fought back by filing a lawsuit in Suffolk Superior Court, but Justice Christopher Muse sided with the department in a troubling ruling that could have had significant ramifications for public records access.

Muse ruled that the public safety exemption grants “a heightened level of deference to the keeper and supervisor of public records.” In practical terms, this means that courts shouldn’t second-guess the reasons agencies invoke the public safety exemption. That’s a big deal because the public records law explicitly states that there is a presumption in court that records are public; the burden is supposed to be on the agency to prove that records are exempt.

The public safety exemption allows agencies to withhold certain types of information that “in the reasonable judgment of the records custodian … is likely to jeopardize public safety.” According to Muse, “Such language as ‘reasonable judgment’ and ‘likely to jeopardize’ invoke a heightened level of subjectivity in the determination of the application of the exemption.”

However, the SJC reversed that ruling in a decision by Justice Barbara Lenk issued earlier this month. “Such language neither requires or even invites any heightened level of deference to the records custodian’s initial determination whether to disclose or withhold a record,” the ruling states.

Another problem the SJC had to resolve was the types of records that the exemption applies to. The exemption is ambiguous because it lists specific types of records, but also includes the phrases “including, but not limited to” and “any other records.”

The SJC concluded that the exemption is indeed “open, and not closed,” but it only applies to records that “are ‘likely to jeopardize public safety’ in a similar way to one of the examples listed in [the public safety exemption].” The court further ruled that the less a record resembles the types of records specified in the exemption, the greater the burden the agency has of showing that releasing the record poses a risk to public safety.

The Law Offices of Howard Friedman, which represented PETA in the case, issued a statement reading in part: “The opinion makes clear that courts will not rubberstamp [public safety exemption] claims … The opinion is a victory for government transparency and accountability in an era in which these basic democratic values are under attack.”

The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, which filed an amicus brief supporting PETA, stated that “[t]he Court’s clarification about the narrow scope of [the public safety exemption] will contribute significantly to the public’s right to access documents that shed light on the workings of its government.”

Meanwhile, PETA’s fight for the unredacted veterinary health inspection records continues. While the SJC’s decision was favorable to PETA, it did not determine whether the group will be granted access to the records. Instead, it remanded the case back to the Superior Court, which will now have to decide the issue using the SJC’s ruling as guidance.

In practical terms, this means that courts shouldn’t secondguess the reasons agencies invoke the public safety exemption.

Broken Records is a column produced in partnership with the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Follow @BINJreports and @BrokenRecordsMA on Twitter for upcoming installments and related news.

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BAD OLD DAYS DEPT. THROWBACK

Revisiting the standoff at Carson Beach

BY PETER ROBERGE & BINJ STAFF

It’s well known that behind the image of humanity and progress commonly projected by Boston since Revolutionary War times, there’s been more than just a touch of racism running through local history. Long before Baltimore Orioles outfielder Adam Jones had despicable slurs shouted at him while playing at Fenway Park, the city honed and has experienced a unique brand of bigotry dating back centuries.

Revisiting old stories in which heat only accelerated so much racial animosity, the turf wars that took place on Carson Beach in Southie in the summer of 1977 stand out as especially ugly. Mainly fought between white and black residents of South Boston and nearby Columbia Point in Dorchester, the events that unfolded were proof that America hadn’t exactly fulfilled Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of God’s children playing together. The following description of a day at Carson Beach comes from a WGBH newscast which aired nearly 40 years ago: Four Metropolitan District Commission (MDC) police officers escort a small group of African American youth on to Carson Beach in South Boston.

There are white swimmers and sunbathers on the beach. The Boston skyline is visible in the distance.

A group of older white men sit under a shelter near the road. Cars pass by slowly on the road. Groups of white people sit under the shelters or sunbathe on the sand …

African American beachgoers are seated in small groups on the beach. A line of police officers forms a ring around them. A group of white beachgoers stands nearby. Shot of a young white boy sitting by

himself on the beach … African American children play in the water. MDC police officers stand at the edge of the water. White beachgoers stand near the police officers, watching the African American children … The media record the scene …

Two MDC Police boats patrol the water … A line of police cordons off the African American beachgoers from the white beachgoers.

Digging through old headlines from that summer, we found unsettling echoes of the current racial climate, from animosity that’s sometimes aimed at new arrivals to people who purport to feel like strangers in the city they were born in. It doesn’t matter how far you go back, either; in From Brown to Bakke: The Supreme Court and School Integration, author J. Harvie Wilkinson recounts how historian C. Vann Woodward wrote that “whites in South Boston boasted in 1847 that ‘not a single colored family’ lived among them.”

As times changed, attitudes didn’t always follow. In 1950, more than 90 percent of Boston was white; by 1990, that number dropped to 62 percent, according to the US Census Bureau. For a lot of residents of South Boston, the span between those decades—particularly the years leading up to 1977, so thick with tension over school integration and busing—could be summed up in the recollection of Louise Day Hicks and James M. Kelly, two of many infamous pols of the era known for racist remarks.

As the latter commented about the Carson Beach collisions, “It’s us against the world in Southie.”

Boston still has major problems when it comes to race; for evidence, one can simply look at disparities in NEWS TO US

everything from housing, to job opportunities, to policing.

As the ACLU reported based on “data from reports of 200,000+ encounters between BPD officers and civilians from 2007–2010,” despite Boston Police Department claims to the contrary, the BPD “used racially discriminatory policing.”

Meanwhile, fights still pop off on the beaches around here, though of late there has been a less racial element, with youth from many backgrounds clashing on all sides.

It’s not necessarily a sign of progress, but while incidents at Carson Beach have made plenty of headlines, the race of those quarreling hasn’t been front and center. As reported in the Boston Globe back in 2011: Fights broke out among rival gang members on Carson Beach in South Boston yesterday and spilled out across the city, triggering a massive law enforcement response from at least five agencies to stem the violence.

Police said the gang members are part of a group of more than 1,000 youths who have used social media sites like Facebook to plan unruly gatherings on the beach on three of the past four nights. The beach falls under the jurisdiction of the State Police, who have been unable to prevent the violence.

This throwback was produced in collaboration with the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. For posts connecting old headlines with contemporary news stories, check out medium.com/binj-reports/tagged/throwbacks

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PHOTO BY MELANIE PATCHEN

EARNEST GOES TO CAMP FEATURE

Boston millennials take on our city’s biggest problems over s’mores

BY HALEY HAMILTON @SAUCYLIT Sleeping bag. Toothbrush. Flashlight. Rain jacket.

I hadn’t made a list like this since… maybe ever.

Summer camp wasn’t really something I did as a kid, but there I was making that list, and checking it twice.

At 29, I’m way too old for traditional summer camp, but the first weekend of June I joined more than 70 other millennials—folks generally between 21 and 35, the generation after Gen X—at Camp Robin Hood in Freedom, New Hampshire, just outside the White Mountain National Forest. The occasion: Camp City Awake, a weekend promising “robust dialogue, meaningful ideation and endless opportunities to play.” Hosted by the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, it was open to anyone between 21 and 39 “who is committed to the future success of the Greater Boston area.” Which includes me.

Yeah, I know. When I pitched this article, the working title in my head was, “Welcome to Camp Circle Jerk.” I was kidding. Mostly.

What, I thought, could be more self-congratulatory than members of the generation most decried for being self-absorbed, entitled, and obsessed with our personal brands convening to toast s’mores and gush about their start-up’s latest mention in the media? How many Snaps and Instagrams would I need to dodge over the course of an overnight? Would any of us survive without Wi-Fi? On the other hand, what could be more inspiring than a group of young people openly and honestly engaging with the problems their city faces? And who better to help build relationships around ideas and social innovation than the people poised to inherit a slew of systems that have been fractured for decades?

City Awake, launched in 2013 by Justin Kang, a millennial, has since become the “civic innovation lab” of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce. With projects and events like an upcoming economic mobility-focused accelerator, a social impact festival, a three-day nonprofit convention, and collaborative talks across sectors, City Awake is Boston’s largest official network of young 10

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professionals working for change.

“City Awake started as a hobby,” Kang says. “It was my outlet to be civically engaged in Boston. Ultimately the reoccurring theme was how to empower the next generation to be an active contributor in shaping the future of this region.”

What started as a retreat for a handful of friends in the local start-up community grew to a network of over 130 people attending monthly retreats to hash out the problems and challenges faced by the City of Boston.

“People in their 20s and 30s are not, for the most part, engaged,” Kang says. “We make up 35 percent of the population in Boston. If you have 35 percent of the population not engaged or represented, for whatever reason, that’s a civic tragedy.”

“That’s what City Awake is for.”

THE COUNCILOR’S COUNSELORS My try at adult camp starts on Friday with a series of icebreakers and teamwork-oriented activities, including a physical Boston trivia competition (quick, as a team, do your best impression of a Duck Boat tour!). After we all learn some names and embarrass ourselves with a few Paul Revere reenactments and Boston accent challenges, it’s off to the cabins for some shut-eye before a seven o’clock start time the next morning.

Instead of some kind of summer camp skills course, Saturday’s activities begin inside of Camp Robin Hood’s theater, a giant barn of a building, where myself and about 75 other campers spread out and divide into smaller groups, each team engaging an area of interest for city officials: transportation, housing, education, the economy, the environment, and civic engagement. The issues, dubbed “moonshots” by the City Awake crew for their piein-the-sky quality, were given to organizers by municipal leaders in the weeks before camp. According to the plan, our task is to work toward actionable solutions. Sounds simple enough.

“We’re not going to solve all the world’s problems today,” Kang says, “but we’re going to engage with some of them and make a platform for you to present to the people in office.”

My first group is presented with a civic engagement question posed by Boston City Councilor-at-Large Michelle Wu: Public testimony at City Council hearings or public meetings is the primary mechanism for gathering feedback on local government. Most hearings, however, take place during the workday and public testimony doesn’t come until after presentations from city officials, meaning that residents have to miss work for an unspecified amount of time (these meetings are long) to voice their opinion and be heard.

The councilor’s specific ask: How might we better inform the public and capture feedback from residents who cannot or prefer not to come to offer public testimony at hearings?

What types of technological tools or standard practices should we introduce to make Council business more accessible and encourage interaction from constituents?

With this, we’re handed a packet outlining the goals for our morning session. Some silent glances beg the question, What have we gotten ourselves into? Luckily, we have two whole hours to distill the information from our moonshots into a specific question and to start planning our answers.

“We wanted to go big,” Katie Greenman says. A consultant, strategist, and founder of the local consulting agency HumanSide, Greenman designed the camp curriculum and is facilitating the moonshot sessions. She continues, “Our generation is known for being a bit more aware of systemic problems, and this weekend is about

that, not just a Band-Aid solution.”

Greenman draws on the tenets of “design thinking”—a so-called human-centered approach to creative problem solving that is dedicated to the needs of people, as well as to the ideals of technological possibility and success in business—in composing guiding questions and group exercises to lead campers through questions that stump seasoned politicians, thought leaders, and city planners.

“I design leadership programs, teaching communications tools and collaboration tools,” she says. “[This program is] a compilation of best practices.”

SQUAD GOALS Remember how much you hated group projects in high school?

That’s what the morning session is like.

The established goals—to explore what we already know about the issue, decide on a clear point of view as a group, identify a problem that we want to solve, devise ways to share our solutions, and finally deliver an action plan—are daunting. Every group gets lost in semantics, or at least takes a brief detour. At one point my team has to verbally agree to assume, for the purpose of the exercise at least, that the Boston City Council does, in fact, desire to adhere to the tenets of representative democracy.

It’s frustrating—I understand what you’re saying, but I don’t think that’s relevant right now. It’s heavy in circular discourse—Isn’t that exactly what another person just said?

And it’s briefly nihilistic—Are they asking us to tell them how to solve public apathy?!

It makes my head hurt.

But it also leaves us with a clear understanding of the question that we needed to answer: How might we engage citizens for feedback and hold local government accountable for responding to and acting with feedback in mind?

After finally getting a handle on our problem statement, and on what my cohort will present to other groups during the second session later on, we get a break for lunch and a few hours of free time. Lawn games are introduced, people team up to play volleyball and, while the water is too cold for swimming, kayaks and canoes are made available for jaunts on Lake Ossipee. All while a bonfire glows on the beach.

The recess seems simple or even obvious, but

organizers say that building time into the weekend for us to do nothing in particular is critical.

“If someone makes one or two new friends, that’s awesome,” Kang says. “If people feel inspired and have more direction in their career and their passion, if someone feels more energized by hiking, that’s a win.”

The downtime pays off. Conversations circling the bonfire and PHOTO BY MELANIE PATCHEN around the mess hall, the quick introductions and asides—the networking, basically— come naturally. We’re not even finished, and campers are already looking to stay in touch with each other. Despite being in the woods, an email exchange list is set up.

“A lot of the issues with collaboration is people feeling like they’re not heard,” Greenman says. “You can’t really work with people if you don’t meet them where they’re at.”

MOONSHOT KINGDOM At three o’clock we reconvene in the theater. It’s time to share our problem statements, along with any deliverable actions we brainstormed. I’m nervous—I feel like our group’s proposition is too nebulous or overly straightforward. Basically, our complication cannot actually be solved. How do you get people to participate in local government when it’s difficult and time-consuming? And how the hell do you prove to them that their voice actually registers?

As we go around the room presenting our statements, it seems that everyone experienced the same thing: They were given a big messy problem and had difficulty boiling it down to one specific actionable question. Our next task: write down a way to answer the other groups’ questions and stick it, via Post-it, to their sheet. Fresh eyes and feedback are major components of camp.

“There are bad stigmas on our generation right now:

that we aren’t interested in participating or fighting for change,” Greenman says. “But that’s just not what’s going on. We are having these tough conversations, in bars, late at night, on the way to work.”

And at camp, of course.

Once everyone slaps their ideas around the room, we reconvene within our moonshot groups and tackle phase two: What’s the solution? How can we take a crack at fixing these problems? And finally, If we’re in a meeting with the city official who presented these issues, what would we tell them to do to address them?

It’s everything unbearable about the initial assignment all over again. Rinse and repeat.

And then… now what? Is this just a giant exercise to prove that people who are between 21 and 39 are capable of thinking about things other than Snapchat and Instagram? Or maybe the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, some of whose members many would argue help spur the exact same inequities we are tasked with addressing at Camp City Awake, is just trying to divert shade away from the business community.

“The people who posed these questions are very much looking forward to hearing back from us,” Greenman assures. For the purpose of the exercise, I believe her. She continues: “This [camp] is one piece in the bigger puzzle of bridging the gap between those currently in power and the rising generation.”

SUMMER FLASHBACKS In some ways, my Camp City Awake peers were as cringe inducing as Master of None makes us out to be.

(Shout-out to the guy who told me I should write about him. Just him, that’s it. I asked what I would write about specifically, and he said that he was learning things about himself.) At the same time, attendees were in tune with the world at large and articulate, steeped in business acumen, and motivated by philanthropy. They are start-up CEOs, college dropouts, grad students, volunteers, artists, and people working in psychology and health care. They are dedicated to Boston and to making their city better. In many cases, they have demonstrably gone beyond talking about problems and started doing something about them.

There were 75 millennials at Camp City Awake, and there are nearly 229,000 of us in Boston. If the outing taught me anything, it’s that the biggest issue with our generation isn’t that we are hopelessly self-involved, or that we don’t want to participate or help. It’s that even many of us who are motivated and engaged—and even some of us who work at newspapers, just sayin’—often don’t know how to navigate bureaucracies that were in many cases built to keep us out.

Which is why having a camp for this sort of thing is probably a good idea after all.

PHOTO BY HALEY HAMILTON NEWS TO US

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FARE HIKE EATS

10 restaurants to discover on beautiful long walks

BY MARC HURWITZ @HIDDENBOSTON Last summer, DigBoston looked at 10 hikes in the Greater Boston area that led to some truly great picnic spots, and while hiking to a place where you can eat a peanut butter sandwich or a salad is all well and good, hiking to a place that serves burgers and beer might just be a wee bit better (as long as you don’t drink too much beer at the hike’s halfway point). And surprisingly enough, there are a number of restaurants and bars in the local area that you can get to via long hikes through the woods or along the water; the 10 listed below are casual enough for you to go to even if the bottom of your sweats are muddy (though you may want to clean up a bit if you’re going to Steel & Rye, which is closer to being a “smart casual” spot).

Hillside Pub, Canton One of the best places to hike to is this tiny Irish pub in the shadows of the highest hill inside Route 128. Located more or less at the base of Great Blue Hill in the Blue Hills Reservation, the Hillside Pub is pretty easy to get to via the beautiful Skyline Trail, which starts all the way over in Quincy but can also be accessed from Great Blue Hill if you don’t feel like hiking 10 miles. It eventually goes up Little Blue Hill with trails there leading left onto Royall Street, which leads to the very short Royall Avenue where the place resides. Hikers (and others) may want to consider the excellent steak tips and outstanding Irish pizza here, along with a well-poured pint of Guinness.

HILLSIDE PUB. 2 ROYALL AVE., CANTON. HILLSIDEPUB.COM J.J. Grimsby’s & Co., Stoneham There aren’t too many restaurants or bars inside Route 128 that are in the middle of the woods, but this family-friendly eatery is one such place, as it is partially surrounded by the Middlesex Fells. J.J. Grimsby’s is one spot that can actually be hiked to directly from some deep woods, as a couple of minor trails lead from the bucolic Virginia Wood section of the Fells right out to the Pond Street/Lynn Fells Parkway intersection where the restaurant sits—and these minor trails can be accessed by a number of other trails within the Eastern Fells, with one starting point being the Flynn Rink in Medford. Grimsby’s focuses mostly on classic American fare, so a burger or wings might be good options before heading back out onto the trails.

J.J. GRIMSBY’S & CO. 301 W WYOMING AVE., STONEHAM. JJGRIMSBYS.COM Louis, Quincy Quincy is full of both good restaurants and great hiking areas, and the two definitely combine at Hough’s Neck, though the trails are a bit hidden here. It is possible to hike all the way from Wollaston Beach through a small neighborhood area to a long trail on top of an MWRA dike overlooking endless salt marshes, then cut through another little neighborhood to the stunning Edgewater Drive Beach, which at low tide allows you to walk directly to Louis. A good map, some online research, and a GPS are recommended since the dike trail is tough to find, but the hike is worth it for its constant scenery, and once you get to Louis, you’ll find a neighborhood spot with excellent seafood and lots of classic comfort food items.

LOUIS. 1269 SEA ST., QUINCY. LOUISHN.COM

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KO Pies at the Shipyard, East Boston While most people drive to this offbeat dining spot within the Boston Harbor Shipyard, it is actually along a route commonly used by walkers and hikers that extends from the back of Logan Airport into Jeffries Point and all the way into the heart of Eastie via the East Boston Greenway, making for a long and at times spectacular trek (especially at Piers Park, which has one of the best views anywhere of the Boston skyline). KO sits right along the route, making it a popular spot with joggers, walkers, and bikers, and its outdoor patio area is a great place to watch the world go by while eating Australian meat pies and drinking local brews.

KO PIES AT THE SHIPYARD. 256 MARGINAL ST., EAST BOSTON. KOCATERINGANDPIES.COM Country Pizza, Lincoln Much of the tiny town of Lincoln is conservation land, with trails found within every nook and cranny of this peaceful western suburb of Boston, and some of the best hikes in town begin at Lincoln Depot, which also happens to be home to one of the weirdest eateries in the region. Country Pizza is a bit tough to find, in part because it’s hidden away in an auto garage (yes, an auto garage).

This unassuming pizzeria actually has some very fine pizza, leaning a bit toward New London-style, which is a little like Greek pizza and with slight bar pizza influences as well. And while you might not want to do an 8-mile loop that starts at Walden Pond if you have a belly full of pizza, you can do just that by following a number of paths that cut through some of the nicest parts of town.

COUNTRY PIZZA. 161 LINCOLN RD., LINCOLN. DOHERTYSGARAGE.COM/COUNTRY_PIZZA.HTM Crossing Nines, Quincy For those who have climbed the Quincy Quarries, you know how spectacular the views are from these local treasures. Well, because of easy trails that lead up the ledges of the quarries, hikers make their way here as well, and there’s a route that can be taken from the Shea Rink in West Quincy (where the Blue Hills also begin) that meanders its way up to the quarries, then continues on via a hidden trail to the Granite Links Golf Club, which is home to the Tavern at Quarry Hills as well as this mostly unknown bar across the way. The Crossing Nines is a perfect place for hikers to grab a drink (but perhaps only one because remember, you’re hiking back through the quarries), as it has the same outstanding views of Boston that you’ll find along the way. It also has a perfect vantage point to watch the sunset over the golf course and the Blue Hills—that is, if you decide to start and end the hike here rather than at the rink or the quarries, since you’d be hiking

back in the dark (a big no-no).

CROSSING NINES. 100 QUARRY HILL DR., QUINCY. GRANITELINKSGOLFCLUB.COM Dumpling Daughter, Weston This is perhaps one for the more experienced hiker, not because it is technically difficult, but because both Lincoln and Weston have huge swaths of conservation land in which it is really, really easy to become hopelessly lost. But for those who are a bit on the adventurous side, a series of trails can be taken starting at Lincoln Depot (and maybe some pizza as an appetizer—see above), cutting through a long stretch of undeveloped land that includes Drumlin Farm in Lincoln along with Ogilvie Town Forest and Jericho Town Forest in Weston, eventually winding up on a little spur trail that leads to the outer edge of Weston Center where Dumpling Daughter resides. And what to get at this rather hidden spot? Well, dumplings, of course, but also great takes on ramen, buns, rice bowls, and more. Just remember—a map and compass are a must for this hike/ food outing.

DUMPLING DAUGHTER. 37 CENTER ST., WESTON. DUMPLINGDAUGHTER.COM Sullivan’s, South Boston Ah, Sullivan’s… so many people have so many memories of driving to this seaside snack shack at Castle Island for its

burgers, dogs, lobster rolls, ice cream, and more, but did you know that it makes for a perfect destination as part of a hike along the Boston Harborwalk? You can start at the JFK/UMass T station and walk several miles by the water past Carson Beach and onto the causeway along the “Sugar Bowl,” with endless views of the ocean, the Boston skyline, and the Blue Hills in the distance. Or if you’re really motivated, you can even start near the Rainbow Swash and make it a really long hike along the Harborwalk, and yes, while technically you could do an even longer riverside/ harborside walk all the way from Steel & Rye in Milton (see above), that would seem just a bit much, so don’t do that.

SULLIVAN’S. 2080 WILLIAM J DAY BLVD., SOUTH BOSTON. SULLIVANSCASTLEISLAND.COM Ocean Sushi, Melrose We wrap up with an odd one here, as this friendly little sushi spot can be reached via hikes through two separate wooded areas: Pine Banks and the Middlesex Fells.

It is the latter that is the focus here, mainly because of the much more plentiful hiking options. As with J.J. Grimsby’s above, you can hike a variety of trails from Flynn Rink in Medford or you could even hike from Winchester Center for a very long hike through remote lands. The end is tricky, as you come down a minor trail from the breathtaking Black Rock that more or less leads to the Oak Grove T station, then you cross the tracks right into the Windsor at Oak Grove luxury apartment complex, which is where Ocean Sushi can be found. By the way, Ocean Sushi has some of the freshest sushi we’ve tried in the Boston area, so if you’re ok with walking through the woods with a belly full of raw fish, this is the hike for you.

OCEAN SUSHI. 16 OAK GROVE AVE., MELROSE. OCEANSUSHIONLINE.COM Steel & Rye, Milton Until recently, you could take a gorgeous waterside walk from almost the Rainbow Swash gas tank by the Southeast Expressway in Dorchester all the way to Steel & Rye in Milton where the Neponset Trail/Neponset River Greenway ended.

And the key word is “ended,” as now the trail has been extended all the way to Mattapan Square, so instead of enjoying this wonderful New American spot at the end of a walk, you can hit it and then keep walking. As mentioned earlier, this dining spot is a bit more upscale than the others listed here, but since the trail is well-graded and paved in some spots, chances are you won’t be ordering a plate of charred octopus or slow-roasted pork shoulder while looking like Grizzly Adams.

STEEL & RYE. 95 ELIOT ST., MILTON. STEELANDRYE.COM

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DRINKS

GOT AN EVENT? LIST IT.

SUMMERTIME AND THE LIVING IS FIZZY Viale serves up one-of-a-kind Polar seltzer cocktails

BY NINA CORCORAN @NINA_CORCORAN

LIVE MUSIC • LOCAVORE MENU PRIVATE EVENTS 7/02 Cannibal Ox Crimson Godz (Kenyattah Black) Alternative hip hop!

7/03 Adult Mom Free Cake for Every Creature Romantic indie pop music.

7/07 The Sadies Governor Alternative country western.

7/09 Jesse Royal Signal Fire Jamaican roots reggae.

7/13 Destroy Babylon Stray Bullets, Riki Rocksteady Post-punk dub sounds.

156 Highland Ave • Somerville, MA 617-285-0167 oncesomerville.com   @oncesomerville /ONCEsomerville

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We don’t mean to burst your bubble, but whatever you planned on serving at your summer party won’t be as delicious as the seltzer-based cocktails a Cambridge restaurant just invented.

Viale, the ingredient-driven modern Italian restaurant in Central Square, is serving five cocktails this summer that are quintessential New England. Why? Because they incorporate Polar’s limited-edition summer flavors in bold, refreshing, and surprisingly innovative ways. For $11 each, it’s worth the change.

Co-owner and beverage director Mark Young met with the Dig to offer us a sneak peak at all of the flavors, dish some details about what is in them, and let us taste test the spread. “I was at the grocery store one day and walking around, stoned, when I saw this big display for Polar,” says Young. “Before this year, I didn’t know about the seasonal flavors. So I thought why not take it as a challenge?”

It took about two to three tries for him to nail down the mixture for each drink— the exception being the sangria, which he’s still trying to perfect before it rolls out at the end of July—which are based off traditional cocktails. After trying that sangria, and the rest of the cocktails, we feel confident in suggesting you not only go in to try them all, but you do so quickly. There will be a line, because nobody loves Polar seltzer quite like New Englanders do. Did we mention each one is named after a body of water in Worcester, the city where the family-owned business is rooted? Yeah, Viale went all out.

Green Hill Collins June 1-14 The best standalone cocktail of the bunch, this Tom Collins spinoff packs an airy punch. Made with the Strawberry Sunrise Polar, gin, strawberry syrup, and fresh lemon juice, it’s a refreshing cocktail to enjoy at sunset, especially if you’re looking for that extra fizzy kick. Plus it’s topped off with a fresh-cut strawberry garnish.

Burncoat Mule June 15-28 Moscow mule lovers should rush for this one, which pairs the Pineapple Grapefruit Polar with vodka, ginger syrup, fresh lime juice, and hellfire bitters. The latter packs a spicy kick while the seltzer itself balances it out with a summer-style brevity. It scales back from over-sweetening itself, so consider it your pasta sidekick.

Salisbury Spritz June 29 - July 12 The most alluring of the bunch, this one boasts a deep red ombre and sizeable, perfectly rounded bubble ice. Centered around the Mango Berry Polar, it mixes aperol, blueberry-infused Cocchi Rosa, and Prosecco, giving it an extra alcoholic kick if you’re trying to welcome the night faster. Polar diehards, take note: this packs the least fizz.

Hopeville Margarita July 13 - July 26 Of course the Watermelon Margarita Polar gets a classic margarita treatment with tequila, mint syrup, cucumber, and fresh lime juice. The cuke gives a cooling aftertaste, so its placement in mid- to late-July will partner with the weather well, or a spicy dish you’re looking to tone down.

Quinsigamond Sangria July 27 - August 10 Raspberry Rose Polar meets dry rosé wine, cognac, apple brandy, white rum, and orange and lemon juices. The Polar gets drowned out, but is that why you really got this? Sangria is the get-drunk-fast beverage of choice. If you want to test it, try to say this name correctly three times in a row. Just kidding; we can’t even do that sober.

“I was at the grocery store one day and walking around, stoned, when I saw this big display for Polar,”

VIALE. 502 MASS. AVE., CAMBRIDGE. VIALECAMBRIDGE.COM

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THE MOST ANTICIPATED SUMMER ALBUMS MUSIC

From Guerilla Toss to People Like You, here’s what to add to your BBQ playlist

BY NINA CORCORAN @NINA_CORCORAN Last week, we told you what records you missed out on.

This week, we’re telling you what records to look forward to. Someone’s gotta have your back. It’s fine, no worries, we’ll step up to the plate because we love you readers so dang much.

We’re officially in summer. While the weather is already getting finicky, the slate of music releases is dependably kickass. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself cradling new vinyl from Deep Thoughts or Armageddon like a proud parent. Because really, let’s admit it: No one does music quite like Boston.

So take out a pen and paper, start a new note on your smartphone, or tape this page to your fridge. It’s time to pay attention. These are the music releases that will make your party playlist one step above the rest, even long after the final summer sun has set.

Nice Guys / Black Beach Nice Guys // Black Beach (Split 7”) Burner Records Out now Each bubble of Boston’s music scene is led by a few bands. For the last few years, the ever-present reckless garage punk of Allston has been cultishly following Black Beach and Nice Guys, two bands that have arguably managed to maintain prioritizing fun instead of chasing fame, but, despite that, have seriously honed their sound over the years. The two teamed up for a split 7” that they’re releasing through their own one-and-done label, Burner Records. With a limited 250 copies available, and with both bands sounding at the top of their form, it’s a no-brainer purchase, especially if you plan on DJing a sloppy Allston party, crushed Gansett shandys and all.

Guerilla Toss GT ULTRA DFA Records Out now

The trio—comprised of singer-guitarist Ellis Hobby, singerdrummer Sam Mackenzie, and bassist Liz Sclafani—hails from Salem and performs shows on the regular, which explains how they got their brand of sad rock pop to sound airtight. From the freeing calls of opening number “Alright” to the catchy rhythm section on “Kelsey,” Been Better lifts itself up with the type of emboldening indifference and off-kilter screams that capture what it’s like to spend a summer in the city when you’re not quite sure if you’re in the right place chasing the right path, but you’re having too much fun to trade it for anything else.

People Like You Verse Topshelf Records Out July 28 There’s a rare type of calm at the core of People Like You’s music that’s hard to find, not just here in Boston, but in the music world at large. The five-piece wants to deliver “a sense of genuine authenticity through music as their creative, unifying outlet.” Lucky for them, the music they draw their sound from—avant-garde jazz, Japanese math rock, minimalism, and midwestern emo—lends itself towards exactly that. Their upcoming LP ditches the gimmicky tricks bands of a similar genre fall on. Instead, it’s full of warm trumpet, pointed lyrics, and well-thoughtout instrumentation, which you can hear on “Variations on an Aria” now and the rest of the album’s tracks soon when it comes out on July 28.

Badfellows Good Grief Midnight Werewolf Records Out July 29 Though technically from New Hampshire, Badfellows

is one of those storytelling-tied bands that feels like a Massachusettes act. Its upcoming LP tackles traditional narratives told in a college scene like ours, from anxiously waiting to leave a party to helping a pal try to locate their missing cat, over the course of nine songs. Badfellows pulls it off with melodic harmony, with loose ties to shoegaze and punk. If you swear by today’s emo revival, then put Badfellows on your radar immediately. While they’re not technically emo, their honesty turns heavy indie rock and sanded-down shoegaze into the type of record you find yourself returning to again and again in the car, volume turned up full blast, yelling to nobody in particular while your heart feels a little pang. Or maybe not.

Camino 84 New Mutant Disco Self-released Out Aug 22 Camino 84 has been on our radar for a while, and for good reason. Fans of Swim-era Caribou, disco funk, and nonaggressive house will fall for the dance floor genius of Ryan Lucht pretty quickly. We suggest starting with “Blue Rose,” the lead single off his upcoming full-length, New Mutant Disco. It’s an immediate party hit that places ’90s keys perfectly amid skittering hi-hats and sliced diva vocals. If you like that, just wait until the full album comes out. Lucht got guest features from singer-songwriter Sidney Gish, rapper Kool A.D., and MC Latrell James, all of which will be woven between his beats. Boston’s electronic scene is quiet, but when it comes out to play, it plays hard—and we trust Camino 84 to lead us onto the dance floor with enough hits to last until the sun begins to rise

CHECK DIGBOSTON.COM FOR NINA’S COMPLETE SUMMER LISTS

It’s been a while since Guerilla Toss were in the sweaty depths of Elks Lodge, stripping naked and playing ridiculous, seemingly unreal sets. Now, they’re signed to DFA Records, the infamous label of LCD Soundsystem, and released their second full-length on the label earlier this June. The art rock group reels things into a tangible format, where songs sound like a mix of Talking Heads, Factory Floor, and some bizarre ’80s electro funk sale bin finds. Most importantly, their inimitable sound gets the production it’s long needed, making each elastic bass line or wiry synth become a welcoming glitzy spasm, the type you can latch onto with glee instead of feeling intimidated by the intensity of it all.

Horse Girl Been Better Anxiety Pop Records Out July 14 For a band that’s been around for just over two years, Horse Girl has the form of one of Boston’s staple DIY acts.

MUSIC EVENTS THU 6.29

FRI 6.30

SAT 7.1

SUN 7.2

MON 7.3

WED 7.5

[Great Scott, 1222 Comm.

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

[ONCE Somerville, 156 Highland Ave., Somerville. 8pm/18+/$15. oncesomerville.com]

[Great Scott, 1222 Comm.

Ave., Allston. 9pm/21+/$10. greatscottboston.com]

[Middle East Upstairs, 472 Mass. Ave., Cambridge. 7pm/18+/$11. mideastoffers.com]

[Middle East Upstairs, 472 Mass. Ave., Cambridge. 8pm/18+/$10. mideastoffers.com]

[The Sinclair, 15 Church St., Cambridge.

8pm/all ages/$16. sinclaircambridge.com]

BOSTON HIP-HOP GETS INVENTIVE HASSAN BARCLAY + KYLE BENT + ED BALLOON

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BATON ROUGE DOOM THOU + CLOUD RAT + FALSE + MOLOCH + ASCEND/DESCEND

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ART ROCK YOU DON’T NEED A DEGREE FOR AVA LUNA + BIRTHING HIPS + THE CRATERS + ELLEN(PALEHOUND (DJ))

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A TASTE OF SOUTHERN BLUES THELMA AND THE SLEAZE + JULIE RHODES + POWERSLUT

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MUSIC

THE MOST ANTICIPATED SUMMER MUSIC BOOKS Beach reads from Twin Peaks to the Beatles

BY NINA CORCORAN @NINA_CORCORAN Toss those murder mystery beach reads in the bin (Just kidding, please donate them to your nearest independent book store). It’s time to read up on your music history—past, present, and future—instead.

From books about the Beatles to behind-the-scenes tales from New York City’s rock scene in the aughts, this summer, there’s an impressive stack of page-turners that you will be talking about with everyone. Because really, this list includes books that aren’t just for music nerds. They’re for everyone, and it’s likely you’ll be sharing them with friends and your parents’ friends alike, eager to discuss the stories told because they’re too ridiculous to believe by word of mouth alone.

We chose five books for your summer reading list. That leaves enough time for you to steadily churn through them in a week or two, but don’t be surprised if you flip through them faster than that. They’re ridiculously entertaining. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

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Clare Nina Norelli Twin Peaks Bloomsbury

(617)864-EAST

Like most of David Lynch’s works, Twin Peaks became a cult sensation immediately upon airing on ABC in April of 1990. It’s passed through generations of fans, coffee lovers, and angsty teens, making surrealism mainstream in the most unexpected of ways. Now, as Lynch revives the show for a second series still unfolding each week as you read this, you can learn more about the music that makes the TV show so eerie. Angelo Badalamenti uses percussive jazz and romantic synth to give emotion to a bizarre world, his soundtrack selling over two millions copies since it was first released. To help make sense of the show’s music, Clare Nina Norelli goes deep, getting into the nitty-gritty Twin Peaks fans will geek over.

Rob Sheffield Dreaming the Beatles Dey Street Books / Harper Collins

THU 6/29 5PM

IN HER OWN WORDS THU 6/29 8PM

SONEX DJ

Of course we all know the story of the Beatles. Even people who swear they hate the Beatles know the story of the Beatles. It’s impossible to go through life without hearing the music of the fab four, and yet talking about their music remains a timeless act, one that brings love into the lives of so many. Rob Sheffield’s book stands out among a sea of Beatles bios by breaking down why their legacy still matters, especially when most of their living fans weren’t alive when their records came out. So, the Rolling Stone columnist and bestselling author focuses on the emotional connections made by their music, drawing connections between them and Bowie, Fiona Apple, and virtually every artist in between. It’s a fascinating read, even for those who swear the mere mention of the band will drive them crazy.

Lizzy Goodman Meet Me in the Bathroom: Rebirth and Rock and Roll in New York City 2001-2011 Dey Street Books / Harper Collins

FRI 6/30 6PM

RIVERS & ROBOTS FRI 6/30 9PM

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It’s not easy interviewing musicians. Once you get them to crack, though, it becomes a goldmine of information, and author Lizzy Goodman manages to get dozens of iconic bands to spill every story, detail, and memory for her new book.

When cut and pasted into a new order, the bands’ narratives form one joint tale about what rock and roll of the aughts was like in New York City. Meet Me in the Bathroom is an incredible capsule of 2001-2011, digging up dirt about everyone from the Strokes to LCD Soundsystem, Yeah Yeah Yeahs to the Walkmen, and LCD Soundsystem to Vampire Weekend. It’s like Our Band Could Be Your Life, but about the alt-rock scene of the ’00s instead of ’80s DIY punk. In other words, it’s probably what the average DigBoston reader will be gushing about all summer long.

WEMF PRESENTS

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Brodie Lancaster No Way! Okay, Fine Hachette Australia

TROY RAMEY & JOHNNY GATES

Okay, yes, this book is technically about pop culture at large, but Brodie Lancaster explores pop music so succinctly here that it’s hard to justify why it shouldn’t be on this list. After being told that “girls can’t play the drums,” Lancaster grew up eagerly searching for examples that contrasted that. She looked for women who didn’t want to stay silent. She looked at musicians who decided to make noise. Through a lens of feminism and self-taught defiance, Lancaster explores the importance of pop culture not just as the art of enjoyment, but the art of empowerment. If you need more ringing endorsement, just look up what musician Courtney Barnett, actor Abbi Jacobson, and novelist Emma Straub have to say about it. (Hint: They love it.)

Ann Powers Good Booty: Love and Sex, Black and White, Body and Soul in American Music Dey Street Books / Harper Collins

FRI 6/23

DIONOSO SAT 6/24 1PM

GATES MON 6/26

BUSDRIVER

It should come as no surprise that the person to write the definitive book about popular music is NPR’s own Ann Powers. In her new book, Good Booty: Love and Sex, Black and White, Body and Soul in American Music, out Aug 15, she dives into the complex reasoning as to how pop music shapes American ideas and beliefs. It’s an expansive book that dissects the myths that make popular music popular, explains why music was and still is an erotic art, and reminds readers of why we turn to confessional pop to begin with. Powers is one of the few writers whose every sentence is original and every point, even on topics beaten to death, sheds light that our eyes hadn’t yet seen before. Good Booty is no exception.

TUE 6/27

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FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

17

SICK BIGNESS FILM

An interview with ‘Big Sick’ co-writer and actor Kumail Nanjiani

BY JAKE MULLIGAN @_JAKEMULLIGAN Kumail Nanjiani is a Pakistani-American actor, writer, and stand-up comedian. He recently co-wrote The Big Sick [2017] with his wife Emily V. Gordon, an “autobiographical” feature which dramatizes the pair’s trauma-laden courtship. In the film, Kumail plays “Kumail,” a stand-up comedian trying to navigate through a large selection of fraught relationships—with his parents (played by Zenobia Shroff and Anupam Kher), who are determined to arrange a marriage for Kumail with a woman of his own ethnicity; with his new love Emily (Zoe Kazan), who is white and falls into a coma shortly after their messy breakup; and finally with Emily’s parents (Ray Romano and Holly Hunter), who thus find themselves anxiously sharing a hospital bedside with an ex-boyfriend whom they’ve only heard bad things about. We spoke to Nanjiani following a preview screening of the film in Boston earlier this month.

There’s a trend I’ve been noticing in American independent films, which we might call “the stand-up comedian’s movie” (Sleepwalk With Me [2012], Obvious Child [2014], Dean [2017]). What interests me is how this is maybe becoming a subgenre of its own. There are various links between these movies—thematically, rhythmically, aesthetically.

There seems to be a bunch of stuff coming out that is about comedy. With our movie, when we were showing it

to people, we actually took out a bunch of the stand-up storyline. [Because] the storylines are Kumail and Emily, Kumail and his parents, Kumail and Emily’s parents, Emily’s coma, and stand-up comedy. Of those five stories … first off, stand-up has the lowest stakes. No one is gonna die. You’re having a crisis about your identity over whether or not you get into a Montreal comedy festival? It feels like it doesn’t quite matter. People are like, “We don’t care about your Montreal thing. A woman could die.”

Also, the other four storylines intertwine with each other and complicate each other. Whereas the stand-up storyline—and this is our fault—was just off on its own.

So in our movie, the stand-up turned out to be a little more like window dressing … in a way that maybe was unintended. We hadn’t really thought through that aspect of it. I think it ended up as the framework within which all these other things happen. So I would say, of the big standup comedy things that are happening, we focus on [standup comedy] the least.

To clarify then, what I’m talking about isn’t even so much about your character doing stand-up comedy on the surface of the film, but more about the way you as a writer and actor have this background in stand-up comedy, which must affect the dialogue of the scenes, which often build from a sort of riff-based joke-joke-joke-joke rhythm.

That’s interesting that you say that, because that’s Kumail’s issue in the movie. That’s how he deals with his problems. With his friends at [the comedy club], he can do joke-joke-joke and it’s funny. But then he takes that same attitude to issues with Emily’s parents, and it’s kind of disastrous.

Saying goodbye with “peace in the middle east” as he leaves a hospital.

That one, or his 9/11 joke. He’s doing material on them.

Or he’s riffing. And that whole section of the movie is missed communication. Part of that is that Kumail has this comedy language that he has with his friends, and he takes it out of that realm … that’s what most of act two is— things that work in a certain world not working in another world.

There’s a lot of independent movies right now that are all, sort of, “dramedies.” They’re kind of funny and kind of dramatic. And we, very purposefully, wanted the comedy to be as funny as in a big “comedy comedy,” and we wanted the drama to be as moving and emotional as in a “drama drama.” Usually dramedies walk a thin line. But we wanted to hit the extremes of both of those and ping-pong back and forth. That was the intention from the beginning.

James Brooks movies were the template for a lot of this.

That’s what we wanted to go for.

>> THE BIG SICK. RATED R. OPENS FRI 6.30 AT AMC BOSTON COMMON, COOLIDGE CORNER THEATRE, KENDALL SQUARE CINEMA, AND WEST NEWTON CINEMA.

FILM EVENTS FRI 6.30

FRI 6.30

FRI 6.30

SUN 7.02

MON 7.03

MON 7.03

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

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

[Brattle Theatre. 40 Brattle St., Harvard Sq., Cambridge. 3:15 and 6:30pm/NR/$9-11. Screens through 7.6 brattlefilm.org]

[Coolidge Corner Theatre.

290 Harvard St., Brookline.

Midnight/PG/$12.25. 35mm. coolidge.org]

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

35mm. hcl.harvard.edu/ hfa]

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

35mm. hcl.harvard.edu/ hfa]

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

9:30pm/PG/$9-11. Also 7.4 at 12pm]

FILMS OF ERNST LUBITSCH CONTINUE AT HFA WITH LADY WINDERMERE’S FAN [1925]

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NEW DIGITAL RESTORATION OF ANDREI TARKOVSKY’S STALKER [1979]

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COOLIDGE AFTER MIDNIGHT PRESENTS MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE [1987]

FILMS OF JEAN RENOIR CONTINUE AT HFA WITH THE RIVER [1951]

SPIKE LEE’S DO THE RIGHT THING [1989]

IT’S 4TH OF JULY WEEKEND PLUS NEW ENGLAND MOVIE HOUSES, WHICH MEANS JAWS [1975]

DOWN CITY BOOKS

Leah Carroll’s book revisits rough Rhode Island memories and tough personal trials

BY M.J. TIDWELL @MJTIDWELL781 Seeing the photos and seeing what they did with the hotel was very illustrative of Providence and the ways it’s come along.

You say in the book that you looked for repetition, stories or anecdotes about your parents that many people repeated. Could you tell me a little more about what that repetition means to you, why it’s important?

The repetition was important … because nobody talked about this, especially my mom’s death, for so long … there was a silence about it. There was an element of it where people wanted to forget it. They created a narrative about my mom that was very angelic. But my mom was wild!

That was part of her personality. She was loud and she was funny and she maybe actively courted danger when she shouldn’t. That was a whole new way of seeing her.

Another thing I would hear over and over again was that she and my dad were such a match. My mom was the only one who could say, “shut up Kevin,” because my dad would always command a room.

Some people might inherit a dimpled chin from their father, or perhaps a mother’s stubbornness. But we also see the shadows of their lives before us cast upon our own paths to adulthood.

These are the shadows that Leah Carroll explores in her new book, Down City. The story is a reckoning, a search to understand an addicted mother who was murdered by cocaine dealers with ties to the Rhode Island mafia when Carroll was just four years old, as well as a father plagued by alcoholism and depression until his early death when she was 18.

In equal measure tenderly nostalgic and honest, Down City explores a daughter coming to terms with her parents as full humans with choices, mistakes, and lives (and deaths) of their own against the backdrop of seedy yet hardy early 80’s Rhode Island.

Carroll writes that her search for the truth was one of “a lonely impulse of delight,” as quoted from the Yeats poem “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death.”

The author will read from Down City at the Brookline Booksmith on July 6. I caught up with her beforehand to ask about her truth-finding process and more.

Was there anything that really surprised you in the process of writing this book?

There were … I had always understood that Rhode Island is a very singular place, it’s a small place, and people stay there forever. It’s one of those places where, if you meet someone from Rhode Island, it only takes one or two steps to find a connection.

Right, like when you first met your husband who is also from Rhode Island and immediately knew 10 different people in common.

Exactly! I had always known that, but when I started going through all these archival documents and newspaper articles, just seeing the connections in people’s lives that I knew was just … insane. Going through all the legal documents and seeing all these names that I knew, police officers that I knew who would go to the bar with my dad, and the ways in which everything was so connected, even though my parents’ deaths happened 14 years apart. Their lives were so interwoven into the history of Rhode Island in that specific time. The connections blew my mind.

How was it melding together interviews and research like your father’s autopsy report with your own personal memoir?

I had so much research, and I had to give up a lot of that

research in the end for the sake of being able to tell a story.

It was a little weird from a technical perspective. I realized there were two storylines: my childhood storyline and the storyline of me as an adult looking through all this stuff.

Trying to find a way to connect those and try as best as I could to make a seamless narrative required a lot of drafts.

[I] decided to do this thing a little bit strange which is where the past narrative, the childhood narrative, is told in the present tense and the adult narrative is told in the past tense to differentiate them.

The documents were really helpful in telling about my mom’s death and the total lack of regard for her and the mess they made of her trial. I thought that my dad’s autopsy report was very telling because he had left me a suicide note. I wanted to find out if he had killed himself or killed himself slowly, which is really what he had done. In the autopsy report you can really see the destruction he did to his body.

In the process of going back and uncovering your own life as well as those of your parents, what was most difficult to put words to?

I grew up very close to my grandmother, and it was difficult for me to read the police reports where my grandmother had been informed of things. It’s not that I had never thought about it, but seeing clearly that she had lost a daughter, seeing the police describe her as “frantic,” seeing them describe coming to her house and telling her that the body had been found … that was really tough.

My grandmother has Alzheimer’s now, but she is just the most wonderful, caring, happy person. This was the most devastating thing to happen to her. We tend to think of our parents and our grandparents as just that: parents and grandparents. It was surprising and enlightening to look at them as people and to realize everything they had gone through.

Would you say this book has been a process to uncover your parents as people and … forgive isn’t the right word, but maybe come to a reckoning with them?

I don’t think … I didn’t need to forgive them. My mother … was so young when she died and in the prosecution of the people who killed her, her life was treated like a bargaining chip, like it meant nothing.

It was really important for me to reclaim her memory and say yes, she was a drug addict, yes, she was all of these things, but none of that matters. Our flaws are what make us who we are. Who knows what she could have been? She never had the chance.

And I’ve always been writing about my dad. He was a huge part of my life. There would be nobody who would be more thrilled about having a book written about him.

He was the one who encouraged my love of writing and literature.

They were an absence in my life, but they were such a presence. This book is a concrete way to celebrate them, while still talking about the things that were difficult in their lives.

The title, Down City, is for the part of Providence where your father worked and spent a lot of his time, right? What is it like to go back and visit there now?

It was a center of industry at one point, but by the late ’70s early ’80s it was blighted. The motel where my father died was there as well. One of the most telling things (a story I didn’t get to tell in the book that I think is very fascinating) is that this motel/strip club/ pay by the hour kind of rooming house hotel [where he died] is now a very nice boutique hotel. They did a beautiful beautiful job renovating it. I talked to the people who had the idea to take over the building and they had some before photos.

>> LEAH CARROLL: DOWN CITY. THURS JULY 6. 7PM/FREE. BROOKLINE BOOKSMITH, BROOKLINE. BROOKLINEBOOKSMITH.COM NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

19

ARTS

ALL EARS

Listen Hear adds a new dimension to the Gardner Museum experience.

BY CHRISTOPHER EHLERS @_CHRISEHLERS

Thinking back to your last visit to an art museum, it’s unlikely that sound played much of a role in your experience at all. Most big city museums serve as an urban oasis, a place to disappear and detach from the bustle of city life—including the cacophony of sounds that do their damndest to overwhelm us on a daily basis.

But what if there was a way that sound could be used to enhance the museum experience and somehow make us feel more connected not only to our own thoughts but to the art around us? That’s exactly what the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum has done with Listen Hear: The Art of Sound, a cutting-edge and altogether fascinating new sound installation that will continue through Sept 5.

The exhibition consists of nine sound works altogether, four of which are in the palace and three that are in the museum’s New Wing. One of them, Helen Mirra and Ernst Karel’s Municipals, is only operational on Fridays.

There are also two off-site works: Fens, by Teri Rueb and Ernst Karel, which can be experienced by anyone walking through the Fens by downloading an app, and Harmonic Conduit by Bruce Odland and Sam Auinger, on view both at Ruggles station and the Haley House Bakery Café in Roxbury.

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum has always, since its creation over a century ago, been more immersive than your typical art museum. A work of art in totality with each pillar, swath of fabric, imported tile, and placement of artwork chosen and painstakingly curated by Gardner herself, it is a museum that feels less like a museum and more like an escape into another world.

Sound, though, has always played a role within the ecosystem of the memory palace. Gardner herself hung a birdcage containing a finch from the fourth floor window

of the courtyard and installed trickling fountains amid the foliage below.

This is expanded upon in Small Conversation, a soundscape by Lee Mingwei installed in the courtyard. Lee used his own voice to record the sounds of certain wildlifelike insects and frogs. Four speakers with 15 tracks each play on a loop, upping the ante on the already serene courtyard.

Inspired in part by climate change and rapid deforestation, Leei wanted visitors to slow down and consider the sounds of nature that are frequently all around us but are only seldom ever truly heard.

In the Fenway Gallery at the end of the Spanish Cloister, opposite John Singer Sargent’s El Jaleo, is perhaps the exhibition’s most visual and modern work, Philip Beesley’s Sentient Veil. In part a response to Fra Angelico’s The Death and Assumption of the Virgin (also a part of the Gardner’s collection), the concepts of fertility and virginity got Beesley thinking about the origins of life.

The cave-like structure, made out of fabric, lights, and glass, is suspended from the ceiling and is completely silent until visitors interact with it, setting off different sensors that correspond with different primordial sounds. Small glass ampules dangle like stalactites and are filled with a variety of liquids, oils, metals, and even blood. Sentient Veil is sure to be the highlight for younger visitors, but for the adults, it raises some compelling questions about the boundless connections that can be made between art as seemingly disparate as a 15th-century Italian painting and a 21st-century sculptural sound piece.

On the second floor of the palace are the two installations that will, perhaps, resonate most deeply with Gardner Museum buffs. In the long, dark Tapestry Room is David Grubbs’ Your Shadow on a Cloud, an original

composition that plays in fragments at different times within each hour.

Just as Lee’s insectscape was inspired in part by Gardner’s own incorporation of sound into the courtyard, Grubbs, too, took his cues from Gardner’s love for and appreciation of music. When the museum first opened in 1903, the site of the current Tapestry Room was a two-story music room that was used for concerts. About 10 years later, the space was divided between two floors into what is now the Tapestry Room on the second floor and, below, the Spanish Cloister and Spanish Chapel. Music, however, continued to be performed in the Tapestry Room until the opening of the new wing in 2012.

Grubbs’ music draws from the kind of chamber music that was once performed in the room, as well as from flamenco records that Gardner owned and loved. His composition is less a complete piece of music than it is a series of fragmented, sometimes dreamlike sounds of the past that enriches the Tapestry Room experience in a thrilling new way. The ghostly plunking of a piano, the stomps of the flamenco dancer’s feet, and the crackle of an old record player giving way to a modern electronic ambiance seem to span the ages and connect the past and the present in a totally original, meaningful way.

Around the corner in the Dutch Room is perhaps the exhibition’s most moving installation, Moritz Fehr’s Undertone. The sense of loss created by the infamous 1990 theft is most palpable in the Dutch Room due in no small part to the now iconic empty frames, placeholders until the stolen art is returned. But with Undertone, the loss seems to smart anew.

Vermeer’s The Concert, missing since that March morning almost 20 years ago, shows a young woman sitting at a harpsichord, a man sitting with his back to us, and a woman standing and singing. A sonic evocation of the painting, Undertone frames its absence with its ethereal rendering of what may have been happening in the picture. Recorded as a rehearsal complete with starts and stops, a gentle harpsichord, a soprano, and a male voice seeming to coach the singer, it’s the closest I’ve come in my lifetime to actually experiencing the Vermeer itself. One thing to pay attention to when you’re there: Where does the sound seem to be coming from? You’ll probably guess wrong.

Su-Mei Tse’s Sound for Insomniacs and Philippe Rahm’s arresting Sublimated Music, both located in the new wing, hit that provocative sweet spot that the Gardner is so good at stoking, the meeting place of Gardner’s vision and the significance of art in an ever-changing contemporary world.

What you get out of Listen Hear is likely to depend on your familiarity with Gardner and her museum itself. But it provides all visitors with a new way to think about how the relationship between art and the viewer is a symbiotic one, one that will continually evolve. Its greatest gifts, however, are probably most heartily absorbed by those with a few visits under their belt.

>>LISTEN HEAR: THE ART OF SOUND. THROUGH 9.5 AT ISABELLA STEWART GARDNER MUSEUM, 25 EVANS WAY, BOSTON. GARDNERMUSEUM.ORG

ARTS EVENTS FINAL WEEKEND!!

LOS MEADOWS

[Boston Public Works Theater Company, 539 Tremont St., Boston. Through 7.1. bostonpublicworks.org]

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DIGBOSTON.COM

FINAL WEEKEND! RIPCORD

[Huntington Theatre Company, 527 Tremont St., Boston. Through 7.2. huntingtontheatrecompany. org]

ANDY GRAMMER & MELISSA ETHERIDGE BOSTON POPS FIREWORK SPECTACULAR [DCR Hatch Shell, 47 David C. Mugar Way, Boston. 7.4. bostonpopsjuly4th.org]

DRINKS, MUSIC, & ART FIRST FRIDAYS: SUMMER POP

[Institute of Contemporary Art, 25 Harbor Shore Dr., Boston. 7.7. icaboston.org]

SMASH HIT WICKED

[Broadway in Boston, 539 Washington St., Boston. Through 7.23. boston.broadway.com]

BIG APPLE, BIGGER MOUTH HUMOR

A Q+A with NY comic Paul Virzi

BY TOMMY O’DEED

Different regions produce wildly different styles of comedy, and New Yorker Paul Virzi packs a lot of what you might expect from a northeast comic making noise. With his meaty accent and fast talking, smart-ass style, he’s a guy to watch no matter where you’re from though, rival cities like Boston included.

With his album, Night At The Stand, debuting atop the iTunes comedy chart, Virzi is about to film a featurelength special produced by iconic Mass comic native Bill Burr. Along with comedian Mike Faverman, this Thursday I’m opening for Virzi at Kowloon in Saugus, where he’ll be warming up for said special, and so I threw a couple of questions at him beforehand …

When did you realize that comedy was something you wanted to do in life?

Eddie Murphy was a big deal for me when Raw came out in 1987. They didn’t want my dad to take me to the movies to see it, but he did. I loved it and became an Eddie Murphy nut. When I was a kid, I moved around a lot. It was tough because I’d make a whole new batch of friends, get girls, do all that, and then 4 years later have to move, so it was hard to adapt, but the people around me were always into my stories and thought I was naturally funny. We’d hang out, get drunk at parties, and I’d always make people laugh, be the life of the party and, eventually, a friend of mine told me about an open mic in Woodstock, so I did that …

It didn’t go well because I didn’t have anything written.

I just went up there with bad material talking about things I thought were funny. I got off stage not feeling good at all, so I went right up to the guy running the place and said

“book me here next week.” Then I went and wrote during the week, went back there and it went much better. Next I started calling [New York] clubs looking to do bringer shows. I started doing black rooms because those were the only comics that would book me. I’d be the only white guy in there on some Eminem 8-Mile shit … That was 17 years ago and the rest is history. I’ve been a pro now for 14 years.

Does being from the Northeast play into your style as a comic?

Yeah, I think it does play into your persona, the way you speak. One thing I’ve noticed is [that] when a New York comic or a northeast comic goes out west to perform, the audience always tends to look them differently because there’s more of a realness, more of an edge, and they seem to be more passionate. Not to say there aren’t great comics in LA, it just seems like they’re all out there trying to get famous. You’re from Boston, you understand. It’s the blue collar wise-ass remarks, fast talking with a little bit of swag to it. I think the audience gets a kick out it.

You’re set to film your first one-hour special. Can you tell me a little bit about it?

Pete Davidson, from SNL, is a really great guy and he approached me asking if he could direct it. I didn’t know what that meant, and when we were ready to shoot there was a big fallout between my people and his reps, so the project fell apart.

Bill Burr, who is a good friend of mine, reminded me that [former “Daily Show” correspondent] Al Madrigal had mentioned doing it. Al and Bill are the top guys over at All Things Comedy, which is a podcast network that also does

NEWS TO US

[video] content. I did my album with them and it did great.

They said they were looking to produce hours and would like to do their first one with me. We had a conference call, got a budget, and went to the same theater I had originally planned on using before the first attempt fell through.

Will you be doing your set for the special at the Kowloon?

Yeah, I’m always changing things. I’m always adding things, taking things out. So for the most part the people at the Kowloon will see parts of the special, but they will also see a lot of other material.

Do you think comedians have had to adjust to the current climate of political correctness?

There are a lot of things that have changed, some comics have changed their style, I haven’t. The audience has changed. One thing I have noticed is comedians on stage almost apologizing for things. I think this is a dangerous thing, but there is a line. No one is going to listen if you’re gonna go up there making fun of mentally handicapped children, then you’re just being an asshole, and it’s not funny. But if you say something that you wanted to put some light on, that isn’t PC, and you make it funny but you offend someone in the audience, they start blogging about you and telling people not to book you. Then you start apologizing, and that’s the downfall. I’ve seen that happen with a lot of bigger names. The late great Patrice O’Neal said, “If you’re gonna say something onstage, make sure you mean it whether it hits or not. Believe what you’re saying.” Things have changed and I think comedians need to stay true to their heart regardless of the outcome..

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

21

SAVAGE LOVE

SNEAKERS

WHAT'S FOR BREAKFAST

BY PATT KELLEY WHATS4BREAKFAST.COM

BY DAN SAVAGE @FAKEDANSAVAGE | MAIL@SAVAGELOVE.NET I had a great time at the live taping of the Savage Lovecast at Chicago’s Music Box Theatre. Audience members submitted questions on cards, and I tackled as many questions as I could over two hours—with the welcome and hilarious assistance of comedian Kristen Toomey. Here are some of the questions we didn’t get to before they gave us the hook…

If your partner’s social media makes you uncomfortable—whether it’s the overly friendly comments they get on their photos or vice versa (their overly friendly comments on other people’s photos)—do you have the right to say something?

You have the right to say something—the First Amendment applies to relationships, too—but you have two additional rights and one responsibility: the right to refrain from reading the comments, the right to unfollow your partner’s social-media accounts, and the responsibility to get over your jealousy.

A couple invited me to go on a trip as their third and to have threesomes. I am friends with the guy, and there is chemistry. But I have not met the girl.

I’m worried that there may not be chemistry with her. Is there anything I can do to build chemistry or at least get us all comfortable enough to jump into it?

Get this woman’s phone number, exchange a few photos and flirty texts, and relax. Remember: You’re the very special guest star here—it’s their job to seduce you, not the other way around.

Any dating advice for people who are gay and disabled?

Move on all fronts: Go places and do things—as much as your disability and budget allow—join gay dating sites, be open about your disability, be open to dating other disabled people. And take the advice of an amputee I interviewed for a column a long, long time ago: “So long as they don’t see me as a fetish object, I’m willing to date people who may be attracted to me initially because of my disability, not despite it.”

On the Lovecast, Dan chats with the author of Everybody Lies: savagelovecast.com.

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