DigBoston 9.21.17

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SHAME TIME

Dear Reader, I’m sad to say that I see almost no way to write my annual “get out the vote” column without crashing upon cliche after cliche. There are the stats which show what kind of candidates we could have if a few more of you knuckleheads took the couple of minutes it takes to participate in elections. And of course there are the trite comparisons to American Idol turnouts, plus the noise of holier-than-thou laments about democracy and how a lot of people died for universal suffrage—all of which is understandable; still, I believe a new approach is needed. Here is my proposal: WE NEED TO SHAME THE SPIT OUT OF THESE ASSHOLES WHO REFUSE TO VOTE. They poison our Facebook and Twitter feeds, struggling to channel their emotions and be heard. But while they’re willing to piss into the bottomless rhetorical ocean that is social media, they’re not willing to pull the singular lever that has measurable impact. Imagine the nerve.

I’m not just talking about those who aren’t registered. I obviously hope to reach a few of them as well, though it will have to be for action at a later date, as they are not allowed to vote in Boston’s primary on Tuesday, Sept 26, since, for a number of undemocratic and sickening reasons, we don’t have same-day registration in the Commonwealth.

But here’s the good news for all those who are registered but who may not have realized that elections are happening in Boston and other cities and towns around here—drawing from my observations, I believe the underlying reason we must mock nonvoters openly is that there are a lot of decent people with progressive views who think they are above the polls, or that elections truly do not matter. Such positions are indefensible, as anyone who’s ever met a local town or state official, or who has gone to war with a municipality over a mundane matter has learned: There are a lot of average Joes and Marys out there who won office by a minor margin and went on to do notable damage.

Bottom line: I’m sure there are a number of abstainers who have barbaric views and who we should be happy stay at home on Election Day. Forget about them. It’s time to reach out to our friends who aren’t exercising their right but are better than the drones who have historically come out for small elections—the old-school centrist dolts who pray to party and provincialism before country and neighbor. The sort of people with such little self-respect that they actually vote for several generations of pols from the same wired pedigrees. These super voters don’t give half a tug that politicians bank on contributions from the companies that crush and even kill communities, but you do. You— those who cringe and withdraw at the mere mention of politics, as well as those who are irrationally certain that all polls are rigged, and all you lazy assholes out there who spend more time making up excuses for your apathy than I have ever spent going to vote—you are who we need to turn around the Titanic.

As you can plainly see, it’s even easier to be a righteous dick when you’re doing your civic duty.

CHRIS FARAONE, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

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THE SWEET SMELL OF INCUMBENCY NEWS TO US

In Boston politics, nothing helps more than already being in office

BY ZACK HUFFMAN This fall, some Bostonians will pretend that holding office isn’t always the best way to win elections around here.

They must be stuck in 2013, the only time in decades that the big office in City Hall was really up for grabs.

Four years ago, longtime Dorchester state representative Marty Walsh weathered a 12-way race to win the open mayor’s seat. This time around, he’s an incumbent, with thousands of city employees to enlist as campaign operatives and way more money than all three of his challengers combined.

Walsh served for 17 years in the state legislature before becoming mayor. He’s the product of Boston’s old-school labor tradition, and his victory relied upon his ability to bridge the gap between that base and the city’s newer trend toward progressive politics.

Much like any incumbent, his first advantage is that he has concrete accomplishments he can point to when making his case to voters. According to the sheet of talking points his campaign gives to canvassers, the Walsh administration has overseen the construction of 19,000 homes, increased the BPS budget by hundreds of millions of dollars, and launched a $1 billion capital plan to renovate deteriorating school buildings.

Walsh also packs additional bona fides: He says he led police to favor an intervention approach, thereby reducing “unnecessary arrests” by 25 percent, while on the transportation front, his administration demonstrably created more bike lanes and improved crosswalks throughout Boston.

On the flip side of his record, however, is Walsh’s willingness to sell the city out to an attempted Boston 2024 Olympics bid, as well as the botched Seaport Indy Car Race that took similar liberties and could have also wound up on the backs of residents who got no substantial voice in the matter until shit hit the fan, spurring activists to intervene and bad actors to back out. On top of those blunders, it doesn’t look good that Walsh had to put his tourism chief, Ken Brissette, on leave for allegedly extorting the organizers of Boston Calling to hire union labor, and get rid of his chief of health and human services, Felix Arroyo, for alleged sexual harassment.

Despite all that, and the deluge of concern about affordable housing coming from all angles, the incumbent has an advantage that a challenger can only dream about—the kind of leg up that, when removed from the equation like it was four years ago, drew more than dozen wannabe mayors into a dogfight. Holding the office that he’s running for, Walsh maintains a steady schedule of public appearances throughout Boston, for everything from special events to sporadic appearances at ceremonies celebrating city

If it looks like a duck and sounds like a duck, that’s fine. Just as long as nobody calls it a duck.

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improvements. Plus the built-in legion of supporters that comes with the job. *** Walsh has roughly 18,000 city employees, many of whom are likely to see the benefits of maintaining the status quo.

City employees are legally forbidden from using city resources, such as email accounts, to promote any political activity. But when a major component to serving as mayor is making public appearances, the line between official duties and campaigning can be blurred.

In January, right after Boston City Councilor Tito Jackson announced his intent to run against Walsh, the city’s attorney sent out an email to all employees with guidelines about campaign law. Employees were specifically instructed to refrain from using city resources for campaign purposes and were told that any volunteering must be done at night and on weekends— basically whenever they are not officially on city time and the taxpayer’s dime.

Despite such warnings, records obtained for this story show that in March, Walsh’s then-chief of staff Daniel Koh sent out a mass email to city employees urging them to march with the mayor in Boston’s annual LGBTQ Pride Parade.

Asked about a potential conflict of interest, a spokesperson for the mayor’s office explained that Koh’s email was on the level because he was only asking for city employees to march alongside Walsh toward the front of the parade, while his campaign was officially marching toward the rear of the parade.

In other words, Koh was only asking employees to march with the mayor. If they happen to hold campaign signs while walking alongside Walsh— which photos from that day show some of them did—that is their own prerogative, because Koh did not specifically ask for the signs.

Permitted to round up the troops through municipal channels, in a June email to city employees Koh asked for volunteers to accompany Walsh on his Mayor on Main trolley tour. This time, the email specifically asked that city employees who wish to join the mayor at his neighborhood stops do so after work hours or on the weekend—a distinction that ensures that the employees are following campaign law.

Herein lies the Walsh advantage, which often seems to occupy the gray between legitimate campaign activity and city events. If it looks like a duck and sounds like a duck, that’s fine. Just as long as nobody calls it a duck. Or admits that such behavior is potentially unethical.

At the time of this writing, according to the mayor’s office, no one has been formally disciplined for the emails we brought to the attention of administration spokespeople. *** Jackson, who has served as the District 7 councilor for Roxbury since 2011, is Walsh’s chief rival. He chairs the council’s education committee, and he’s championing his work on the education front while also speaking out about the city’s lack of affordable housing.

“This is a mayor who signs off on the Boston Olympics and never read the full documentation,” Jackson told DigBoston for this article. “This is the same mayor who brags about the AAA bond rating that the city of Boston has, and was going to give it all away for a one-month party.”

The City Council often serves as little more than a bully pulpit, which means Jackson will not have the same luxury of pointing to his record that the mayor has. Any substantive ordinance from the council must be approved by the mayor, meaning he is able to take credit for most actions. At the same time, Jackson’s position to oversee budgets and the time that councilors spend in hearings learning the ins and outs of municipal government minutiae enable Jackson to make nuanced attacks.

“People are being pushed out of the city at a faster rate than I’ve ever seen in my lifetime,” he said. “About 87 percent of the housing is being built for the top 20 percent. Who is Mayor Walsh building for? Is he building for the people that live in Boston right now?” *** John Hynes was the last person to defeat a sitting mayor. That was in 1949, and only after Hynes spent five months as acting mayor while the “Rascal King” James Michael Curley sat in prison on mail fraud charges.

Since then, voluntary resignation is the only thing that has been able to remove a Boston mayor from office. In part, that’s because regardless of whether or not City Hall employees volunteer in the campaign, Walsh can still expect to get a few votes out of each employee, including friends and family.

Cash flow always favors incumbency. The Walsh campaign keeps pulling in more money, maintaining a bank balance above $2 million for all of 2017, despite reporting spending an average of $159,000 each month.

After getting used to the constant stream of polls in national politics, which are not as plentiful on the

municipal level, campaign finances are an easy way to compare candidates with numbers. Jackson dismissed this metric.

“The mainstream reporting has only been on the piggy bank versus their actions or lack thereof. The reporting has been on fundraising, not people raising, not family raising,” said Jackson, who spun his comparative lack of funding as a positive.

“You won’t have to worry about those hooks being in my back because we are a grassroots campaign,” he said. “We are not beholden to the big dollars that this administration is beholden to.”

Nevertheless, it is hard to defeat an opponent who can outspend your campaign in a blink. *** The last person who tried to beat a sitting mayor was then- and current City Councilor Michael Flaherty when, in 2009, he masochistically ran against Thomas Menino.

Flaherty said that a mayor running for re-election has a major advantage in terms of available resources. From money that’s been raised over the course of a four-year term to having plenty of city employees who are able to take administrative leaves in order to work for the campaign and the ability to turn every city improvement, large or small, into a promotion.

“Citywide campaigns are difficult, and they are increasingly expensive,” said Flaherty. “You’re running to be the CEO of Boston. With that comes significant effort and significant responsibility. You’ve got to scratch and claw and meet as many voters as you can. You need to be meeting people in volume.”

By the end of the 2009 election, Menino won with 57 percent of the vote. It was the closest race he ran in his 20 years in office.

“Tito has a heavy task in front of him,” said Flaherty.

“It’s not completely insurmountable, but several factors will have to break his way in order for him to remain competitive.”

Larry DiCara, a former city councilor, mayoral candidate, and longtime Boston politics historian, was more dismissive of Jackson’s chances.

“This is a nonevent,” he said. The closest that DiCara’s seen a candidate come to unseating an incumbent mayor was in 1975 when Joe Timilty challenged Mayor Kevin White, an anomaly that he says had much more to do with the state of the city than the quality of either campaign.

“The city was on its knees financially, and we were in the middle of a desegregation order,” DiCara said. At the end, White held on with 52 percent of the vote, and he then defeated Timilty again in 1979 with 54 percent.

“I expect that Marty will win and win handily,” added

PHOTO OF BOB CAPPUCCI VIA CAPPUCCI CAMPAIGN

DiCara, who himself made a go for the corner office in an open race in 1983. “I expect he’ll do well in most every neighborhood in the city … Tito will try to make some points, but I think it’s a very tough argument because times are about as good as I’ve seen.” ***

do something about the problems a majority of your constituents face.”

The sorry states of affordable housing and the city’s school system inspired him to go for the top office in Boston. Wiley argues that even though the city requires 13 percent of the units in every development to be designated as “affordable,” those homes still often remain out of reach for most residents.

“Half of the city makes $35,000 or less,” said Wiley. “It’s certainly not affordable to them.”

Wiley also said that he would like to improve the homelessness situation in Boston.

“There are 3,000 Boston school students who are homeless,” he said, citing a figure that was widely reported last spring.

“Am I the perfect candidate?” he asked.

“Nobody is, but I would love to be a decent mayor.”

This year’s race for mayor also includes two candidates who are less established than Jackson and Walsh. Both are running their own DIY campaigns, so there was no organization or office to visit.

Lifelong East Boston resident Bob Cappucci, 72, served as a police officer for 15 years, a Boston Public Schools substitute teacher for six years, and as a member of the Boston School Committee for four years during the 1980s, when the committee was still an elected position. He also worked as a vice president for the East Boston Community Development Corporation, which promotes and creates affordable housing in the neighborhood, so despite being a dark horse, the candidate is well-equipped to debate housing and schools.

Much like every other challenger, Cappucci is quick to criticize the city’s lack of affordable residences. Unlike his fellow candidates, he has vowed to place a moratorium on all real estate development.

“I think there’s much more interest in building as opposed to the people,” said Cappucci.

“You get out there and you listen to people.

Someone has to help them, and I don’t think they’re being helped.”

Cappucci is also leaning on his education experience as a former member of the school committee. He plans to make the city’s exam schools more accessible, and he would like to reorganize all of the public schools into four tiers, ostensibly different than today’s four-tier system.

Unlike Walsh and Jackson, Cappucci is PHOTO OF JOSEPH WILEY VIA WILEY CAMPAIGN running an extremely small operation. In three months of fundraising, he brought in $15,500, with $13,000 of it coming from himself. That money has primarily gone toward 200,000 advertisement Wiley is candid about his lack of campaign funds. cards, with the rest of his campaign work focused on door So far, he’s only spent about $9,000 on a professional knocking and pressing the flesh. signature gatherer just to get on the ballot, and a few “Incumbency always has the advantage,” he said. “Any hundred more on a website, leaving about $300 in the candidate, if you make the decision to run, you just have bank. to work harder than the incumbent. I’m campaigning 20 “I don’t have any money, so you aren’t going to see any hours a day. I only get four hours of sleep. It’s an awful lot flyers,” he said. Instead, he said he hopes to get as much of work.” free press and publicity as possible.

Aside from cash, Cappucci may also struggle among In Boston, even before anyone decides to go headthe city’s many progressive voters. Among his campaign to-head with monolith incumbency, the credibility of pledges is to do away with Boston’s status as a sanctuary every candidate is determined and driven by media city. assumptions. In this case, it was decided almost a year ago “There are an awful lot of people that disagree with that the race for City Hall was between Marty and Tito, the sanctuary city. I personally don’t feel that the voice of two men on a first-name basis with Boston. the citizens of Boston has been heard. They do not want a So stuck are these foregone conclusions that, sanctuary city.” according to Wiley, some reporters have assumed he Cappucci is also the only anti-abortion candidate in has an ulterior motive for running and have asked if he the race. He told the host of a BNN anti-abortion show is a clandestine ringer who was encouraged to join the that he suspected that politicians who adopt a pro-choice fray to undercut Jackson. But while the theory of Wiley stance often do so to access campaign financing from as a candidate-operative may look interesting or even national pro-choice organizations. politically sexy on paper, it doesn’t makes much sense. For “Am I the perfect candidate?” he asked. “Nobody is, but starters, before the general election in November, there I would love to be a decent mayor.” is a preliminary on Tuesday, Sept 26, after which the field of candidates will narrow down to two. So unless Wiley *** finishes second, this is still by all means a race between Jackson and Walsh. Even if you buy the story that the Joseph Wiley, who also hails from East Boston, is purpose is to force Jackson to spend more campaign running perhaps the most quixotic campaign. dollars, why would the Walsh machine leave Wiley so Sixty-eight years old, Wiley is originally from Roxbury pitifully understaffed? and spent time living in San Francisco and New York City Wiley, and Cappucci for that matter, seem to be before returning to Boston about two decades ago. He involved in this race because they believe that they says that he came of age in the 1960s, which fuels his have something to add to the political conversation and idealism about public service, and that it was President because they both want to talk about housing and schools Barack Obama’s call to action in his farewell address that without worrying about burning any potential donors. inspired Wiley to try politics.

That’s probably why, in this election and innumerable “I’ve seen how effective an activist government can others, the incumbent refuses to take part in debates be if you actually have an activist leader,” Wiley said. before the preliminary. Who wants to be challenged by “The purpose of holding political office is to actually someone without much to lose?

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HEADLINING THIS WEEK!

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DREAMS DEFERRED

UMass Boston prof criticizes move to balance budget by cancelling courses

BY JOE RAMSEY The following speech was given at a Sept. 14 rally at UMass Boston in support of the release of a new report by the Coalition to Save UMB entitled “Crumbling Public Foundations: Privatization and the UMass Boston Financial Crisis.” The full report can be found at tiny.cc/umbreport.

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Thanks to all of you for being here today.

My name is Joe Ramsey. I teach English and American Studies here at UMass Boston. I am a newly elected member of the Executive Committee of our Faculty Staff Union (MTA), and a proud member of the Coalition to Save UMB. Like other UMB faculty, I love this university, and I am committed to its public urban mission. I am here to serve my students, to help them to develop as readers and writers, and to flourish as human beings, in relationship to the broader community.

Each day, my UMB students inspire me, with their commitment, their ideas, and with the stories they have to tell.

Here’s one I heard just this past Tuesday: Each weekend, in order to pursue her college education, my student Fotini works 28 hours at Dunkin’ Donuts, on top of her full-time course-load. A child of Greek immigrants, Fotini works back-to-back doubles, from 9 am to 11 pm, so that— unlike so many students at UMB who must rush off to work right after class—she can be fully focused on her studies during the week at UMB. (On top of this, she is still taking out thousands of dollars in student debt.)

What is this dream to which Fotini is sacrificing her weekends? To become a public school teacher. Not just any teacher, she tells me. She wants to be THAT teacher. That teacher who inspires her students with passion and creativity— making the classroom relevant to their lives. The teacher who makes a real difference: the one who stays late after class to discuss ideas, the one who keeps students from dropping out. In fact, Fotini has already stepped forward as a kind of teaching assistant in our class, volunteering to help those classmates who don’t have printers at home to print their papers before class.

I know all this about Fotini, after day three of our semester, because—unlike so many other first-year classes—our class-size is small. With 18 students, gathered face-to-face around the seminar table, I am able to give these young scholars the attention they deserve. Every day is a project of critical thinking; we work as a team, we read and write and discuss—we know each other’s names, and are learning each other’s stories.

Pack a few more students into my class, however, and this sort of intimate class discussion, this sort of daily writing and personalized response, becomes more and more difficult. As it is we are packed in against the walls of our seminar room.

And yet the plan now at UMB appears to be to jam more and more students into classes, and to cancel classes that are declared “under-enrolled.” Our UMB administration has stated their aim to address the budget situation in part by significantly raising the student to faculty ratio. 86 sections were cut from this Fall’s schedule; dozens of my colleagues had classes cancelled. In some cases, courses students need to graduate are not being offered. We are now worried that we will be seeing more of this in the days to come—unless there is a change of course.

Several terrific students I know personally decided not to come back to UMB this year because courses weren’t offered at times that would accommodate their demanding schedules.

As we UMB professors know: our students work, they commute, they take care of families, they have obligations—all of which makes them AMAZING students.

They have life experience. They have known struggle. They have roots in the local community and links to the world.

We need to stand against “solving” this budget situation either by cramming more students into our classrooms or by raising tuition, forcing our students to log work hours that leave no time for study. Our UMB students need and deserve better.

Let’s come together and fight to fully fund UMB, to make sure that students like Fotini won’t be denied the small class experience in which their dreams can bloom.

For as Fotini’s story reminds us, when we fund UMB, we are funding the common future of our Commonwealth..

Joe Ramsey teaches English and American Studies at UMass Boston, serves on the Executive Committee of the Faculty Staff Union (FSU/MTA), and is a member of the Coalition to Save UMB.

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TOKIN’ TRUTH

PROHIBITION IN A LEGAL STATE The war against cannabis in Milford has wider implications

BY DAN MCCARTHY @ACUTALPROOF

On Tuesday, as we put this week’s newspaper to bed, voters in the Worcester County town of Milford voted in a special election featuring a sole ballot question to decide the fate of the budding Massachusetts retail cannabis industry’s ability to operate within their town limits legally.

Local experts say the outcome of the vote on Tuesday could have implications for an industry already besieged by political bickering, cloak-and-dagger transparency concerns, and foot-dragging at the state level. If Milford puts the kibosh on retail weed, it will be another sign—and an ugly one—that problems in the newborn Mass grass industry are ramping up.

This past Saturday, organizers and supporters of Milford Citizens for Fairness—a community action group supporting retail cannabis—lined the streets of Draper Park with placards and toothy waves as carbound residents honked in support.

“When the wishes of the voters are not reflected by the people running the town, other towns should pay attention,” says Bryan Cole, spokesperson for the group. “Pay attention to what happens here, because it could happen across the state.”

A similar lively scene was afoot last week during a special “Community Forum on Recreational Marijuana” at Milford Town Hall. Mixed together out front were pro-cannabis advocates, along with counterparts flaunting their views (“kids could get access to the pot servings,” said one concerned woman). Lawn signs with similar anti-pot messages were popular in the more affluent corners of Milford, and came courtesy of an opposition force made up of a cross-section of Milford selectmen, school committee members, and community activists trying to overturn the will of the majority of Milford residents (who voted in support of Question 4, helping legalize adult use and retail cannabis). Their efforts focused on a referendum ban for not only retail storefronts, but all licensed canna-business establishments—from cultivators, to testing facilities, to manufacturers.

Last week’s forum was organized by a subgroup within Citizens for Milford called the Milford Community Against Recreational Marijuana Retail Establishments, or Milford CARES, if you can handle the incredibly strained acronym. Constituents were invited, along with CARES members, and at least one priest. They all fear the dangerous spectre of cannabis.

While CARES claims to support medical marijuana and the businesses associated with it, their members on the panel offered standard reefer madnessstyle rhetoric and fear-stoking, as well as misrepresentative statistical data. It was the kind of spectacle that leads to oblivious or pre-biased voters thinking that retail cannabis business of any kind is a one-way ticket to a suburban hellscape, marked by stoned children and the full disintegration of societal norms.

On the CARES side, much of the “experts say” and fact-sourcing came from anecdotes, including one a member heard “from someone I know at the the front lines” It’s a view that sees only negative impacts of recreational marijuana establishments. For them, it’s all about perception, and perhaps preconceptions.

As panel member William Kingkade, chairman of the Milford Board of Selectmen, said in his time on the mic, “I think it could be that way if we’re the only town around with proximities to highways.” Referencing the ribbons of interstates and major routes flanking the town, Kingkade added that offering such wideopen accessibility, involving a product and plant “we know so little about,” was something like lowering a drawbridge for pot-smoking barbarians wailing and gnashing their teeth waiting to stampede.

Whether the prohibitionists in Milford got their way or not, the war on weed there will be looked at as a lesson by politicians and activists in other cities and towns, and is worth paying attention to regardless of the vote tally on Tuesday.

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LESSON PLAN KILLERBOOMBOX PRESENTS: AROUND MY WAY

How Cambridge MC Millyz skipped Harvard and MIT to go worldwide

BY G. VALENTINO BALL @GVALENTINOBALL

10

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neighborhoods you didn’t see that. It’s just different. When I was growing up, these were all zombies walking. These were million-dollar drug blocks.”

Powered by a newly announced working relationship with one of the genre’s most respected lyricists, a brandnew album, SPED: The Sequel (which will be on full display when he takes the stage at his sold-out Brighton Music Hall show Sept 21 alongside Dave East), and its breakout single, “Lessons,” the Cambridge-born rapper (real name Myles Lockwood) hopes to give an education on not only the hood he grew up in but the special educational experiences that informed his worldview.

SPECIAL EDUCATION According to the numbers, if Millyz tops the charts, he will be an anomaly.

The US Department of Education reports that about 13 percent of American kids are put in some kind of special education classes. But one of the constant criticisms of such programs is that in the wrong hands, it becomes a dumping ground. The nationwide graduation rate for special education designees is about 20 percent lower than the national average. The minute you cross the threshold in a special ed classroom, the odds forever turn against you.

“I was always a class clown,” Millyz says. “In sixth grade, they took me and put me in the little class with all the bad kids. They took the six bad kids from the school and put us all in a room.

“I was already attracted to bad behavior. If one of my classmates would take a bottle and throw it against the wall, I’d be like, ‘He’s that dude.’ So I was fueled off of the chaos we would all bring at once. I guess when I talk about special education, it’s about how it altered the trajectory of my life through feeding off my environment.”

At one point, Millyz was assigned to a special program in Charlestown, where high school teachers from surrounding cities and towns sent their most difficult students. There, he quickly realized certain differences between his friends from Cambridge and the kids he met from more suburban settings.

BEST OF BOTH WORLDS Cambridge isn’t necessarily the melting pot that people often think it is. As Millyz puts it, the city’s more of a mosaic, with the talents of many—from the likes of Cambridge Rindge and Latin School grad and NBA legend Patrick Ewing to all the gifted individuals on campuses— strengthening an overall cultural effort. It’s not a facade.

Look into the bars and coffee shops, as well as the living

PHOTOS BY JOHN BREWER.

Historically, categorically, and definitely musically, Cambridge is a lot more than the Hub’s little brother.

One of the first towns settled in Mass (as Newe Towne), Cambridge has a legacy all its own. It’s a thriving minimetropolis that has forever made countless cultural contributions, all of those exports coming out of merely 7 square miles.

If we’re talking so-called innovation, it’s where Facebook’s founding footprint is just the tip of the iceberg.

Needless to say, as the home of MIT and Harvard, the city is the planet’s foremost classroom. At least for the elite.

But dig a little further underground, and you’ll find more than just a training haven where power brokers have honed skills for generations. When it comes to music, Cambridge has yielded innumerable trendsetters and influencers, including in the hip-hop realm.

For starters, the genre’s longtime culture bible, the Source magazine, was founded by David Mays at the same university where Mark Zuckerberg hatched Facebook.

Currently, the Middle East nightclub remains a hip-hop epicenter, a vaunted and respected venue where the top rap acts often begin or end their national tours. In other words, hardly an afterthought on the other side of the river.

Academic accolades aside, oftentimes when a place has a strong college presence, it’s easy to forget the lifers who make up the neighborhoods surrounding those campuses.

While the Hiphop Archive & Research Institute at Harvard, for example, studies the culture like it disappeared a thousand years ago, everything from mumble rap to boom bap events pop off nightly, with DJs, rappers, and producers rising through the mix for decades. Among them, hailing from Central Square right in between the attentionsucking entities of MIT and Harvard, is Millyz, one of the latest Greater Boston hip-hop voices to break nationally but one that has been rattling and traveling for years on the come-up.

“It’s two different worlds,” Millyz says about the gap between the colleges and blocks that he grew up on. “They never really mixed when I was growing up. You would see college students in Central Square, but in the actual

“I went to school with kids that, if we were on a field trip to the aquarium or something, they’d sit on a bench, sprinkle sunflower seeds on themselves, and let 100 birds peck them,” Millyz says. Still, more nefarious influences loomed. “The speds from the city would bring a gun to school, bring drugs to school.” As for lessons, Millyz adds, “From ninth grade, [instructors] were already like, ‘We just have to get you through this. We don’t have to teach you anything.’ So I’m learning shit from my class mates. And my classmates were nuts. And I was nuts.”

In the middle of this educational chaos, Millyz discovered solace in music. After getting kicked out of school as a freshman, he found himself hanging in Columbia Park near his Pearl Street home. It was a bit of low-key hate that brought out his inner MC and first recording experience.

“The music came directly from not being in school,” he says. “I remember once I asked this kid who was kinda my man, ‘Where you going, bro?’ And he told me, ‘I’m going to my man’s house to make some songs.’

“His man had like a little in-house studio. And that had me so hot. These dudes were living the dream. So I said, ‘Your man is garbage.’ I was hating. He went and told his man, and they made a diss song about me on the spot.

“Next day, they were playing it all in the school and shit.

So I got in touch with my father, and he took me to a studio out in Charlestown. I recorded a record over the [Prodigy] “Keep It Thoro” beat. And I crushed the dude who made a diss record about me. Destroyed him.

“We played it for everyone in the park the next day.

Everyone was like, ‘You can rap. It’s crazy.’ Then I went to the high school and personally played it for mad people. We played it for the dudes that I dissed and all of that. That’s how I started. That’s how I knew I was good, because of the reaction that I got.”

In the time since, Millyz has worn the somewhat derogatory term for special education students, sped, as a badge of honor. He’s also built a name for himself with projects like White Boy Like Me and with his high-profile affiliations and concert appearances; Millyz recently rocked the House of Blues in Boston with Jadakiss, who he’s collaborated with a few times, including on his latest single.

“I just try to catch a vibe and just get off my chest whatever I been thinking about,” Millyz says. “I really like to reflect on what I have been going through. Just tap into that part of me and what issues I want to get off.

“Lately I’ve been getting more vulnerable, or I’m trying.

How we grew up, you can’t be vulnerable at all, because sharks smell blood in the water. I’m so much from that.

Now that I’m a pure artist, I’m just trying to get to the point of being vulnerable, and give the fans all of me. I’m already making records my family don’t like me for. I’m already kicking my whole life.”

This relentless pursuit of success isn’t new. His childhood friend and fellow artist, Neva Soba, remembers Millyz during his younger days and says little has changed, “Loyalty. Inspirational. Driven. Focused. If you ask me, that’s what comes to mind when I think of him. That’s it.”

rooms and kitchens of the local families that are too often forgotten in considering the fabric of the city, and you’ll see far fewer trends than people simply being who they are when they are allowed to be whoever they want to be.

“It’s like that mural [on the side of the Middle East],” Millyz says. He notes that Ringe is well-known for the vast variety of languages its students speak. “That is the city.

That’s real people. That’s how it’s supposed to look. It always was a super diverse place.”

Diversity is one thing. Stability is another.

“I had two environments,” Millyz says. “My mother and my father split when I was like five. And my mother moved down the Coast [in Cambridge], and my father lived near Porter Square. He’s like an artistic dude. He’s like a real hippy from the ’70s. His house was full of artists. His house had way less structure. He was just free. I could do what I wanted. But at my mother’s house, that’s where all my homies were. That’s where it was going down. ” Being where it went down, as he puts it, led Millyz into more than just a couple of run-ins with the law. With sporadic musical successes have come losses; on the night of the Boston release party for one of his mixtapes, Roc Ducati, a friend and fellow budding national artist, was shot and killed. Millyz says the loss inspires his creative efforts and that drama he’s endured has only served to help him reach new heights and break through to something bigger after years of plugging away.

its way onto playlists organically after a groundswell of support from the internet, is a lesson in and of itself about being in the right place at the right time.

“This girl that was going to be in the video had did a Snap[chat] of her listening to it,” Millyz says. “She put that online, and that shit boomed right there. Then we started playing it for people before it came out. Dave East, Jadakiss, Cousin Stizz, and we got videos of them and it hit. People knew my whole first eight bars before it was even out. It’s been moving ever since.”

Soon after, fans everywhere were posting clips of themselves reciting the track. That projectile motion, coupled with his continuing commitment to lyrics, also led to his recent collabo with Jadakiss. More than just another album guest, Jada has also been mentoring Millyz, and coaching him to build his following on skill instead of connections and cosigns.

Which puts Millyz at a crossroads, in which he must navigate the depths of hardcore ’90s favorites like Jada and the Lox as well as the fast lane alongside trap rappers with their emotional rawness. With the rocky road that he has traveled in the rear view, Millyz approaches such adventures like it’s all part of the plan.

“I got fans that look at ‘Lessons’ and be like, ‘Damn, you

can really rap,’” Millyz says. “Rap is the NBA. See how the NBA switched? You gotta be 6’8”, know how to have an Iverson crossover now, and shoot the three. That’s what I’m doing. I’m really rapping at a high level, and I’m really making dope trap music at a high level.”

He continues: “I thought my life was over. You are in this type of school. You are in this type of environment. Look at all these kids. We’re going to be failures. So I started the alternative route, selling drugs and doing crime. I knew I wasn’t going to college.

“Most people start to navigate their life after college or high school. I knew from 11 it was over. I’m not dumb, though. That’s why I want to go back and tell those kids, ‘You can really be something, bro.’ Cuz I’ve surpassed everyone that was in my public school as far as my quality of life.”

Around My Way is a collaboration between KillerBoomBox, the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism, and DigBoston. To support long form music and arts journalism, become a BINJ Reporter Supporter (underwriting inquiries please email fara1@binjonline. org) and stay tuned for upcoming installments plus bonus audio and video components.

BAR EXAM How the does a tattooed kid from the Coast create a national buzz?

In short: he earned it, one bar at a time.

A fan from Philly connected him with Set Free, the well-respected DJ who created the epochal AND1 basketball mixtape, leading to a contract with an agency.

Knowing what it takes to make the leap, Free pushed Millyz to leave Cambridge for New York. After spending his life in a city where people from all over the world come to learn and explore, it was time for him to go abroad, so to speak.

New York proved to be the source of new beginnings and allowed Millyz to focus on his artistry. Putting that newfound discipline on full display, last year he turned out an appearance in one of the 2016 BET Hip Hop Awards Cyphers and was a standout highlight of the show displaying signed and unsigned artists for an international audience, guided by legendary likes of DJ Premier. Given a chance to rap on any topic of his choosing, Millyz chose to speak on rampant police violence in the hood, with the ensuing verse showing the kind of artist that he was becoming.

“You think about yourself, and you think that people know what I do,” he says. “But they don’t. You have to show them. Especially in today’s day and age. People have a short attention span. You gotta show and prove.

So I started going to radio.”

Set Free didn’t just use his powerful contacts to get spins for his client. Instead, Millyz put the real work in, going on a nationwide shock and awe tour that included airtime with some of the most respected DJs in the country, including Funkmaster Flex, Statik Selektah, and Cosmic Kev of Power 99 in Philly. Between the power of his freestyles and resulting internet and YouTube views, Millyz set forth toward the acclaim which once seemed so elusive.

“The more I show people what I really do, the more the world will understand what I have to bring to the game,” Millyz says. “I love being able to do both. I love being a versatile artist. It confuses people, but I feel like people want the whole package.”

RISING TO THE TOP To quote the artist, the debut single from the new Millyz project, SPED: The Sequel, is a peek into that package. The story behind “Lessons,” which has made >> MILLYZ AND DAVE EAST. THU 9.21. BRIGHTON MUSIC HALL, ALLSTON. 6PM/$20. CROSSROADSPRESENTS.COM NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

11

ALL EYES ON DISTRICT 9 BRAWL FOR CITY HALL

For the first time in a decade, there’s a race in Allston-Brighton worth paying attention to

BY PATRICK COCHRAN

It’s been a long time since Mark Ciommo faced a serious challenge for his Boston City Council seat. The councilor representing the city’s 9th district—the Allston-Brighton neighborhood—has a lot going for him in the way of money, institutional support, and hometown name recognition. They are the common advantages which often deter regular challengers, but in 2017, something has changed, as the nine-year council veteran will be the lone incumbent forced to wade through a preliminary election since two challengers—Brandon Bowser and Alex Golonka—have stepped forward in attempts to unseat him from the left, with housing and affordability the centerpieces of their respective candidacies.

Last year, Time reported that Boston averaged the thirdhighest rent costs in the United States, behind only San Francisco and New York. While Allston-Brighton remains one of the city’s relatively more affordable neighborhoods, it’s also an area that feels the brunt of regional income inequality. According to a 2014 report by the Boston Redevelopment Authority, Allston has the third-highest 12

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poverty rate among major Hub neighborhoods, with 37 percent of its residents below the line. Brighton met the city average at about 21 percent below the poverty line, with the entire district combined at over 25 percent. (Those numbers may have shifted in the time since, particularly due to displacement in the area, but not likely by very much over three years.)

With both candidates zeroing in on the affordable housing quagmire, the question is whether or not that issue will resonate deeply enough to drive voters to the polls in numbers that could lead to an unlikely unseating of a hometown incumbent for the first time in six cycles. *** Allston-Brighton consistently turns out to vote at a lower rate than the rest of the city, with district-wide participation hovering around a mere 12 percent the last time there was an election featuring a mayoral race on the ballot, back in 2013. Ciommo won with little more than 6,000 votes that year. (He topped a six-candidate field with

35 percent in the primary before winning the general with 59 percent.)

Nationally, there hasn’t been anything to indicate an increase in involvement in the democratic process since the 2016 presidential election. Citywide elections in Jackson, Mississippi, and Los Angeles have actually displayed a further decrease in the already low off-year turnout. If that trend holds here, it likely won’t be awakening a huge, formerly untapped source of voters that that floods a new candidate to victory in this race. As many have predicted.

However, another trend in the wake of Donald Trump’s election—of progressive candidates with strong populist backings—shouldn’t be overlooked, especially at the local level. Candidates supported by groups like the Democratic Socialists of America and Our Revolution have reaped the benefits of a more engaged and active base, all while promoting bold ideas and a change to the system.

Growing up the son of a pastor, Brandon Bowser says that he has had a sense of social justice ingrained in his life from a young age. A mission program his family ran took

them around the world, through Texas, California, and even some time in Russia.

“I was taught about going and serving others,” Bowser said. “That was kind of the basis of it all.”

Bowser’s nomadic young life eventually landed him at Central Michigan University, where he developed a deeper sense of activism campaigning for affirmative action, before finding a permanent home in Boston in 2009.

After spending five years as a teacher at the Jackson/ Mann K-8 and Thomas A. Edison K-8, both in AllstonBrighton, Bowser decided to take a hiatus and run for public office.

“I know this neighborhood, I’m invested in this neighborhood,” Bowser said. “How we maintain our identity and keep people from getting priced out. That’s what I’m about.”

To Bowser, a crucial part of that identity is the Allston arts scene. In addition to the tangible struggles and suffering caused by rising rent costs, such bubbles also take a sharp cultural toll on artists and their ability to devote time to their crafts. According to Bowser, as the cost of living in the area increases, so do the departures of its creative people.

“They leave, they go where they can afford to live,” Bowser said. “Providence has a great music scene because it’s all [Boston] expats.”

Bowser laments over the decay of Allston as a northeast haven for music: “They used to call it ‘Allston Rock City,’” he says. The neighborhood was even named after an artist, painter, and poet: Washington Allston.

Apart from finding ways to make living in Boston affordable and being an advocate for the arts, Bowser doesn’t dive into many specifics or pinpointed plans. In fact, he decries the idea of making “campaign promises” or offering potential resolutions he knows would be beyond his control.

“It’s easy to say something that sounds good,” Bowser said. “I don’t think that really benefits anyone.”

What Bowser does commit to is being a transparent and available advocate for his constituents. If he has anything that represents a campaign promise, it’s that, if elected, he plans to host regular community meetings to interact with and connect the district’s representation to local organizing, bridging the community to its government.

“I want to be a neighborhood candidate,” Bowser said.

“It’s important to have your decisions influenced by your neighborhood.”

His campaign embodies that sentiment. While Bowser has a good network of people “working their asses off” helping him through the election, he’s operating as his own campaign manager, taking on a workload rare even in local races.

“It’s crazy,” he says with a laugh. “I don’t suggest it.”

Bowser’s content to get his message out.

It’s just about “having a conversation,” he says. There’s no ill will toward Ciommo, a “great guy,” and Bowser is uninterested in any sort of a negative campaign.

But if he’s going to win, his first hurdle, theoretically, will be getting past Golonka in the preliminary election on Sept 26, a challenge Bowser’s not taking lightly.

“People are telling me I’ll make it through,” Bowser says with a grin. “I’m not so sure. I’ll believe it when I see it.”

It avoids platitudes.

It says, ‘I want to advocate policies that help everybody, rich, poor, black and white.’

***

It’s a sunny August day in Allston, where Alex Golonka’s campaign is holding its weekly Sunday meeting at the Avenue Bar & Grill. The somber mood is juxtaposed with the weather. A day before, Heather Heyer was killed in Charlottesville, Virginia, while protesting fascists among other unsavory characters, with many others being hurt and maimed.

“From any of these movements we’ve been a part of, it could have been any of us,” Golonka tells the group, in reference to the murder of Heyer. “Especially with Black Lives Matter. Around the time [activists] were taking the [Mass Pike in 2015], people were saying, ‘Oh, fucking drive right over them. Just plow through them with your car.’ I don’t want to make this about me, but this woman that was killed, she’s all of us, you know?”

The group’s been holding weekly meetups at the Avenue, in some capacity, for about a year, before necessarily knowing that a run for office was on the horizon.

“We started meeting in the runup to the [2016] election,” said Cody Ward, Golonka’s campaign manager.

“We were just trying to figure out, ‘Hey, what’re we gonna do?’ We know we can’t make a difference at the federal level, but we realized there weren’t really any great progressives at the local level, at the state level … And then we saw that the Boston City Council race was coming up.

And we saw that Mark Ciommo was hardly ever challenged.

We started thinking, ‘What would it take? What would it take to get on the ballot so we could start asking some questions?’”

Nobody was the natural leader, they say. They just needed someone to be the flag bearer, someone to put their face on the movement, and Golonka stepped up.

As the campaign checks spots off of the canvassing list, Ward “cuts up turf,” mapping out new spots for volunteers to knock. But getting the timing right on the weekends is a concern.

“You don’t want to wake people up on a Saturday,” says Garmil.

Golonka: “My theory is that there’s no good time. You either bother them during breakfast, lunch, or dinner.”

“Wake up! The Revolution’s happening,” Ward says to some laughs as the crew orders another round of drinks.

Growing up in the Massachusetts suburb of Milford, Golonka found his sense for left politics early on.

“I’ve been into politics and socialism from a young age,” Golonka said. “I guess some of it came from being bullied early on. I just got this sense that the world isn’t fair.”

That notion was only reinforced when Golonka moved to Boston for college 12 years ago, where he described living in the stereotypical, sardine-packed apartment as the only means of affordable housing.

Asked if he considers himself a “socialist,” a label that can even make some bleeding-heart progressives balk and cringe, Golonka’s response is unequivocal: “Hell yeah … It’s a better promise—being a socialist. It avoids platitudes. It says, ‘I want to advocate policies that help everybody, rich, poor, black and white.’ Saying you’re socialists doesn’t need to be pinpointed to some exact thing, just that you boldly know that you’re for working and struggling people.”

An active member of Socialist Alternative before seeking office, Golonka’s one of just two candidates for City Council to be endorsed by Boston’s chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

“The reason I’m running is because even since I moved here, the problems have gotten worse through both [former City Councilor Jerry] McDermott and Ciommo,” Golonka said. “The problems just never went away.”

His criticisms translate into an unabashedly progressive campaign platform: drastically increase affordable housing, implement rent control if necessary, enact a $15/hour minimum wage so that no full-time worker makes less than $31,000 annually, halt recent cuts to education, increase investment into bike lanes and public transportation, and cease the growing privatization of the

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MBTA. “I want to propose bold solutions,” Golonka said. “A lot of people around here don’t even know who their city councilor is … I don’t know where they stand, but you damn sure know where I’m at.” *** Councilor Ciommo has always called Allston-Brighton home. He was raised in the district by a single mother and says that he’s always felt a strong obligation to the community that fostered his upbringing.

“I have a 30-year record of service in this community,” Ciommo said, pointing to his work as a teacher, along with his time at the Veronica B. Smith Multi-Service Senior Center and the Jackson Mann Community Center before seeking public office in 2007. “I know the significance of being an advocate within the community.”

Part of that advocacy is in defending the institutions vital to his upbringing, which often “come under fire.” But another vital role for Ciommo is furthering development in the district. One such success includes the recent completion of the Boston Landing commuter rail stop in Brighton.

Ciommo has been a proponent of the Boston Landing development, a five-year project which was concluded in May. The commuter station, part of the Framingham/ Worcester Line, runs by the new Bruins practice arena and is expected to drastically cut costs and/or commute times for residents in the area, according to Ciommo.

“Being able to bring people from Brighton to South Station in 10, 15 minutes,” Ciommo said, “I think that’s going to help a lot of people.”

But Ciommo acknowledges the crisis that his opponents challenge him on and maintains that he is a “strong advocate” of affordable housing. When he first took office, the housing crash greatly devalued property in the city, with supply far exceeding the demand.

“We were in a Great Recession when I first came in,” Ciommo said. “Now the pendulum has almost swung the other way.”

Ciommo says that he is firmly with the city in its efforts to make Boston livable and affordable.

“The demand is exceeding the supply right now,” Ciommo said. “But we as a city are committed to advocate for affordable housing.”

The general consensus, if not explicit, is that Ciommo will cruise through the preliminary election. With no sort of official polling, the incumbent plans to use the first election as a barometer for assessing the electorate this time around.

Looking at the numbers, Ciommo obliterates his opponents when it comes to fundraising, with more than $80,000 on hand per the latest financial report. In the first two weeks of June, not long after his opponents declared their candidacies, Ciommo hauled in over $19,000. The steady contributions since will likely continue, considering that he receives a lot of his support from business and real estate owners, while both of his opponents are running campaigns centered around making housing more affordable.

By contrast, at the time of this writing, Bowser is hovering above $1,500 in cash on hand, while Golonka barely has $500 in funds, most of which came from family and friends. Still, judging by the palpable campaign activity in District 9 for the last couple of months, few people would deny that for the first time in a long time, there is a serious council race in Allston-Brighton.

“I knew what the rules were when I took the job,” Ciommo said of facing a re-election campaign. “Every two years you need to rely on your record and your vision. I’ve been able to do that every election since then, and I think I can do that this time too.”

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DRUNK BRUNCH LOVE The background (and pressures) of industry Mondays at Trina’s

BY HALEY HAMILTON @SAUCYLIT You’ll hear it before you see the queue—the rumble of voices, peals of laughter, a steady thrum of deep bass underlying it all.

You know when you’re getting close: The noise gets louder, you can see the end of the line.

You spot familiar faces, hug, slap hands, whatever it is you do when you run into each other.

Cigarettes are lit; anticipation sets in.

It’s going to be a great time. Some bad decisions will likely be made. Someone’s definitely going to black out.

The line inches forward.

It’s 2 pm on a Monday.

If you’ve ever stood on the corner of Hampshire and Cambridge streets in Somerville on an afternoon like this, you know exactly what I’m talking about: Industry Brunch at Trina’s Starlite Lounge.

Monday brunch at Trina’s is a hallowed tradition for the restaurant industry. If you don’t work in a restaurant, I’m sure it sounds odd: brunch on Monday? But think about it.

Sunday is the busiest day for brunch, right? So when would all those people slinging bloody marys and mimosas get a day to meet en masse and have a boozy brunch?

You got it—Monday, the start of everybody else’s work week.

While the legend (and the often hazy memories) of Trina’s Industry Brunch precedes it, few know the origin story of this timehonored tradition: It has, for almost eight years, just been there— and been awesome.

But if the popularity of shows like Jessica Jones and Luke Cage teach us anything, it’s that the stories of the roots of superheroes are just as important and as interesting as the feats that they accomplish and the wrongs they right.

I sat down with Emma Hollander, co-owner and managing partner (and everyone’s favorite Monday brunch bartender) of Trina’s to demystify this local champion of restaurant staff’s beginnings and magical powers. Whether you’re a devout follower, a backsliding bruncher, or have never even heard of Trina’s, the story of how and why the best reason to never work a Monday came to be is a tale worth imbibing.

Trina’s opened in 2009 and launched Industry Brunch in early 2010, a few months after they opened.

“When we started, a lot of local restaurants were closed on Mondays,” Hollander said, “and we thought, ‘How cool would it be if we got a chance to let our friends, our peers, enjoy themselves?’”

How cool it is: If you work in (or have ever worked in) a restaurant, you know working brunch is soul-sucking. You have to come in earlier, sometimes much much earlier if your place is typically only open for dinner, often after working until the wee hours of the morning the night before, and then get smothered in a crush of 9-5ers who all woke up tired and hungover after putting people who work in restaurants through the wringer the night before.

Working Sunday brunch after working all weekend is one of the fastest ways to lose your cool (or your sanity, whichever you have left).

Basically, like Hollander told me, “Brunch is just the fucking worst.”

“We were really looking for something that is different, something for restaurant kids that was like, ‘Hey, you worked your ass off all weekend long, how about you get brunch for a change?’”

And it took off from there. Very, very quickly.

“Three years ago we all looked at each other and said, ‘Holy shit, we did it,’” Hollander said. “We just cleared Friday and Saturday night sales on a Monday brunch.”

Being in Trina’s on a Monday afternoon, it’s impossible to miss why Industry Brunch is such a mainstay. The food is great, the drinks are fantastic, the music is loud, and the shots just keep appearing. But most importantly, the atmosphere is seemingly impossible to match.

“I used to joke it was just my friends at the bar,” Hollander said. “I would sit on a cooler behind the bar and talk with everyone. We weren’t doing shit for sales. We probably lost money on it when we first started.”

“But there was a lot of love in the room,” she added. “Part of our success has been the amount of love that’s always been in this building.”

While there is no shortage of warm fuzzies floating around the bar, working Industry Brunch isn’t exactly a walk in the park.

“I think people underestimate how much pressure it is,” Hollander said. “I have a bunch of professionals at my bar, and I can feel the eyes on me. No one’s judging in a negative way, but that’s what we do.”

“On Monday brunch, everyone in that building is a VIP because we know them from somewhere. It’s intense. How do you not give away half your sales? How do you not do $1000 in comps?”

And what do you do when the 9-5 crowd crashes your party on a holiday Monday?

“I was annoyed at first, and then I thought maybe on holidays we’d do Tuesday brunch too so the restaurant kids get their day,” she said.

“But you know what? On holiday Mondays we have a line out the door, and you know what: good for them. Those 9-5ers look forward to a Monday holiday year-round so they can come here, so let’s give them that. Restaurant kids have every Monday.”

“It’s become such a big party no one really cares any more.”

By 6 pm, when folks start trickling in for dinner, Hollander says she’s constantly asked if the space is closed for a private event because the dancing and the Fernet-slinging just has not stopped.

“I’ve created this really weird monster, and I’m really excited about it, but we never thought it would be this.”

“It’s also become a thing for hairdressers,” she said, “and we have some guys who work construction who come in. It’s for a lot of people who work nontraditional schedules. We’re giving back to people who bust their asses all weekend long.”

“We all deserve to eat hot eggs not standing up in the dish pit.”

PHOTO BY PAT PIASECKI

boston’s urban winery, intimate concert venue, private event space & restaurant

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WWW.PHOENIXLANDINGBAR.COM NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

15

AND THE NOMINATIONS GO TO...

MUSIC

There’s a reason the 2017 Boston Music Awards picks aren’t what you’d expect

BY NINA CORCORAN @NINA_CORCORAN Forget about the college students flooding the streets again and the basketball draft news. There’s a different roster you should be paying attention to: the nominees for the 2017 Boston Music Awards.

Once again, the BMAs are back to celebrate the best of Boston’s music scene, but this year marks its 30th year as well as its most impressive set of nominations yet. The event will award various musical acts, venues, promoters, producers, blogs, and more for their hard work. The BMAs committee narrowed the awards down to 36 categories, including potentially overlooked sections of the scene like Unsigned Artist of the Year, Session Musician of the Year, and Music Photographer of the Year. Voting is now open to everyone through the awards’ website. The winners will be announced at the official celebration on Dec 7 at the House of Blues. Tickets to the ceremony can be purchased online.

The most coveted award is Artist of the Year, a title which everyone keeps a close eye on.

But if you look at the names listed, the acts who scored a spot on that list (Animal Flag, Cousin Stizz, Julie Rhodes, Joyner Lucas, Palehound, Pile, PVRIS, STL GLD, the Ballroom Thieves, Weakened Friends) earned the nomination by working hard for years. In that sense, for us, the most exciting award is the one that highlights which musicians will fill those shoes in the coming years: New Artist of the Year. Rising musicians are the bread and butter of DigBoston, which is why we keep track of them with a magnifying glass. So it’s with genuine pride that we can say the 2017 BMAs choose a group that’s impossible to pick a singular best from: Ali McGuirk, Baby!, Bat House, Carissa Johnson, Lilith, Mint Green, no hope / no harm, Oompa, Sidney Gish, and Vintage Lee. For the majority of those artists, being nominated is an unexpected surprise. Folk pop songwriter Sidney Gish tells the Dig that the nod validates the work she put into making her album, especially given that she didn’t know if anyone outside of her friend group would care. For others, like pop punk act Mint Green, it highlights what a band can accomplish if they push themselves, getting recognition in what feels like a flash of weeks.

“I’ve dedicated my life in the last year to what I’m doing, and it’s amazing to feel seen—not in this superficial way, but in a very humanizing way,” says nominated rapper Oompa. “I was simultaneously surprised and very reassured when the nominations came out. I feel like I worked my butt off this year and have been putting myself in the right positions to grow, to be heard, and felt,

and it was such a huge feeling of payoff when I saw the nominations. At the same time, I was so prepared to not see my name and try again for next year, so it was also incredibly surprising in that way.”

The change in coverage comes from a change in ownership. Though the team is miniature in staffing— owner Paul Armstrong and his wife handle the event, marketing, sales, booking, production, and anything else that comes up, while a video team captures the event itself—the new owners have turned the BMAs into an event that’s more representative of our city ever since they

took over two years ago. “With the new venue, 12-strong artist performances, new award categories, branding, newly designed awards, etc., I think the excitement leading up to the awards was palpable,” says Armstrong. “It was important for us to shift perceptions, and I think we did exactly that, which was arguably one of the biggest successes from last year. While the night is about the nominees and winners, I also think it’s equally about getting as much of the Boston music scene and community into a room before the holidays and saying, ‘Hey, what a year we’ve had! Let’s celebrate.’”

A peek behind the scenes reveals the BMAs aren’t just picking personal favorites for nominees. When Armstrong took over, they tried to include as many local music heads as possible. The nomination committee was around 200 people. Now, it’s over 400 people. The more people they have on the committee, the better chance they have at identifying artists most deserving of a nomination. While some information locks down who can and can’t be nominated—like how all material eligible for nomination at the 2017 BMAs must have been released between Sept 9, 2016, and Sept 8, 2017—it’s the eyes and ears of Boston locals that decide who gets the spotlight turned on them for their hard work.

“To be carrying the torch for the 30th anniversary is a great honor. These aren’t ‘my awards,’ they’re Boston’s,” says Armstrong. “So this is something I’m both proud of but also taking very seriously.”

The awards turn the tables in a way where everyone who’s seated can both celebrate those across from them while also receiving applause for their own work. It’s a hyperlocal award celebration that’s increasingly becoming more in tune with the city’s actual rising and established talent.

“My first Boston Music Awards experience was in 2013 when my friends at the Brain Trust snuck my underage self into the Liberty Hotel,” says nominated electronic act Camino 84. “They were booking Moe Pope & Rain at the time and Let The Right Ones In had come out that year. Right after the actual awards ceremony where Moe & Rain won Hip Hop Artist of the Year, there was a Bearstronaut set in, like, a conference room and Moe and Chris Talken jumped on stage and did a verse during the bridge of ‘Moniker.’

And then I ran into one of my professors, David Herlihy of ’80s Boston stars O Positive, across the room. It’s a long-winded way of saying that, to me, the Boston Music Awards is just a big cross-genre party where we can recognize all the great artistry in the city and walk away feeling good about the creative environment in Boston and the people we get to collaborate or share bills with.”

No matter what, the Boston Music Awards aim to represent Boston’s music scene, a section of our city that will always be great. It’s constantly rotating and lifting others up. In that, it’s not the upcoming BMA winners that best illustrate the city’s talent, but rather the list of BMA nominees in full. That’s what creative diversity results in: wild, inspirational, scattered talent that’s consistent only in its hard-working ethics. Perhaps the best common thread any artistic group could ask for. The musicians themselves know it to be true.

“Boston has so many amazing artists with a range of styles and talents, but the city is very small. It often feels like there isn’t enough room for everyone here. And maybe there isn’t—I hope there is!—but if you put your ear to the ground and really go out to find the talent and music that exists out here, you will not be let down,” says Oompa.

“Boston is flowing with amazing artists and deserves the attention that other cities have gotten for years. Other artists know it, too. We’re up now. We’re next. That’s undeniable. We’re just waiting for the proper channels with respected opinions to catch on.”

>> BOSTON MUSIC AWARDS. THU 12.7. HOUSE OF BLUES, 15 LANSDOWNE ST., BOSTON. 7PM/18+/$30. BOSTONMUSICAWARDS.COM

MUSIC EVENTS THU 9.21

ELECTRONIC OUTFITS WITH OUTLETS CMB + HALL OF MIRRORS + ANDRÉ OBIN

[Great Scott, 1222 Comm.

Ave., Allston. 9pm/18+/$10. greatscottboston.com]

16

09.21.17 - 09.28.17 |

THU 9.21

BRUTAL HONESTY FROM A STANDOUT SINGER-SONGWRITER MARGARET GLASPY + SLOW DANCER + MORE [The Sinclair, 52 Church St., Cambridge.

8pm/all ages/$17. sinclaircambridge.com]

DIGBOSTON.COM

SAT 9.23

POST-HARDCORE ILL-LUMINARIES QUICKSAND + NO JOY

[Paradise Rock Club, 967 Comm. Ave., Allston. 8pm/18+/$28. crossroadspresents.com]

SUN 9.24

MINIMALIST GROOVES IN YOUR HEART NOSAJ THING + JACQUES GREENE + JIM E-STACK

[Brighton Music Hall, 158 Brighton Ave., Allston. 7pm/18+/$17. crossroadspresents.com]

SUN 9.24

MID-’90s EMO GOODNESS RAINER MARIA + OLIVIA NEUTRON-JOHN

[The Sinclair, 52 Church St., Cambridge. 7pm/18+/$16. sinclaircambridge.com]

TUE 9.26

INDIE ROCK RECORD RELEASE LINA TULLGREN + TREDICI BACCI + MEGA BOG + SITCOM

[Middle East Upstairs, 472 Mass. Ave., Cambridge. 8pm/18+/$12. mideastoffers.com]

NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

17

PREVIEW: 70MM & WIDESCREEN FILM FEST FILM

A second festival of film formats begins

BY JAKE MULLIGAN @_JAKEMULLIGAN

In September 2016 the Somerville Theatre hosted its first annual 70mm and Widescreen Festival, dedicating nearly two weeks to film screenings projected via high-resolution analog formats. And for evidence of its apparent success, one need only take note of the theater’s latest purchase: As announced on its Facebook page last week, the Somerville Theatre will be commissioning a new 70mm print of 2001: A Space Odyssey [1968], to be struck for the theater’s own exclusive use. That print will be ready in time for the third annual 70mm and Widescreen Festival, in 2018—which, it just so happens, will coincide with the 50th anniversary of 2001.

“We chose 2001 because number one, when I think of 70mm film, it has to be one of the top three titles that you think of,” explained Ian Judge, director of operations for the Somerville Theatre (he’s also the head programmer of the 70mm and Widescreen Festival, though he notes it’s a “group effort” among the theater’s staff, including “essential” input from head projectionist David Kornfeld).

We spoke in the Somerville’s main auditorium last week, right after the 2001 announcement. “That, and Lawrence of Arabia [1962],” he continued. “We played those titles last year, and we’re playing them both again this year.” On that note, this year’s iteration of the 70mm and Widescreen Festival began this week, opening with screenings of The Agony and the Ecstasy [1965] and Lawrence of Arabia (Sept 21 at 7 pm, Sept 23 at noon). The 2017 fest continues until Oct 1, when it will conclude, appropriately, with 2001 (Oct 1, 7:30 pm)—a relatively older 70mm print, of course, given that the Somerville’s own won’t be ready until next year.

Regarding that commissioned 2001 print, Judge continued on: “And let’s face it: It’s also a moneymaker! It’s a movie that has a demand to be seen in that format.”

Moneymakers have always been intrinsic to the 70mm format, which in America has mostly been utilized for the sake of high-budget genre films (historical epics, action blockbusters, and adventure stories, to be specific). For

the 2016 festival, the Somerville showcased 70mm’s most storied run: More than half of the movies played last year were made in the late ’50s and early ’60s, representing the first wave of American studio films that were both shot and released in the format. The 2017 festival will include a few movies from that era—Agony, Lawrence, and Cleopatra [1963] (Sept 28, 7 pm), along with 35mm screenings of North by Northwest [1958] (Oct 1, 1 pm) and Vertigo [1958] (Oct 1, 4 pm). But for the most part, this year’s program is focused on another part of 70mm film history: Eight of the 15 movies in the 2017 festival were made between 1982 and 1993. They span across the aforementioned genres, including historical epics (Gettysburg [1993], Sept 29, 7 pm), action blockbusters (The Untouchables [1987], Sept 24, 7 pm; Days of Thunder [1990], Sept 25, 7:30 pm), and adventure narratives (The Dark Crystal [1982], Sept 22 at 7:30 pm, Sept 24 at 1 pm; Hook [1991], Sept 24, 3:30 pm); and they also range from the lasting financial successes of the era (Top Gun [1986], Sept 27, 7:30 pm) all the way down to the film that may be its most notorious economic failure (Howard the Duck [1986], Sept 22, 9:45 pm). They’re each connected, however, by one particular formal quality: All eight were originally shot on 35mm formats and were then “blown up” to 70mm for limited specialty releases, which were marketed on the basis of increased resolution and remarkably superior sound quality (the blown-up 70mm prints featured six-track analog sound, which the respective film’s 35mm prints could not replicate).

“I wanted to focus on something a little different this year,” Judge told me. “We’ll probably return to more of a ‘classic’ form next year, but you’ve got to mix it up. Aside from 2001 and Lawrence—which people will come to see all the time—you’ve got to give people a reason to come back right away … They may not want to see West Side Story [1961] every year … they may not want to see It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World [1963] every year … so what do you put in its place? And there’s certainly a limited amount of 70mm titles in general. The good news is that during the ’80s, so many films were blown up to it for the sound and everything else.”

To say that “there’s certainly a limited amount of 70mm titles in general” seems, if anything, to be a significant understatement. Contemporary films do occasionally get 70mm rollouts, if the director has the necessary clout (Dunkirk

[2017], The Hateful Eight [2015]) or if the studio has the desire to do so (10 70mm prints of Wonder Woman [2017] were struck this summer, for instance; one of them will play at the Somerville on Sept 26, 7:30 pm). But older films are rarely exhibited or reprinted in the format, giving this festival its whole raison d’être. Which is also to say that once these prints are gone, they can be gone for good. And that kind of disappearance happens suddenly, which is something the Somerville team knows all too well. They had to cancel a planned 70mm screening of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan [1982] last year once the distributing studio deemed the lone print unplayable. And this year, they ruled out Chitty Chitty Bang Bang [1968] because the only available 70mm print had faded to an extent that made it not worth showing. In some cases, the prints are lost to “natural causes,” like color fading. But in other cases, the damage is more preventable. As Judge says himself, all it takes is one ill-equipped projection booth to irreparably damage a print. And given the way that digital technology has nearly eradicated the proliferation of analog screening materials, as well as the very craft of film projection on the nationwide level, the risk that such damage will cause rare exhibition prints to go extinct is almost certainly on the upswing.

Part of the reason new 70mm prints of 2001 can be struck is because the film’s stature has ensured its careful preservation. But that’s the exception, hardly the rule.

With regards to most other films originally released in the format, the 70mm prints currently in circulation are quite possibly the last ones that will ever be played. For even more evidence that the opportunity to see specific films in the 70mm format may be quickly expiring, Judge gave yet another example, which was linked to the main focus of this year’s programming: One of the most wellregarded ’80s action films to ever receive the 70mm blowup treatment may never be seen in that format again. “We wanted to book The Road Warrior [1981] this year,” he told me, “but the [70mm] print was mangled by the last place that played it. So that print is not in circulation anymore.

You face things like that.”

>> THE 70MM AND WIDESCREEN FILM FESTIVAL. 9.20–10.1. SOMERVILLE THEATRE, 55 DAVIS SQUARE, SOMERVILLE. $15 PER FILM, WITH SOME MATINEES AT $12.

VISIT SOMERVILLETHEATRE.COM FOR COMPLETE SCHEDULE AND SHOWTIMES. ALL SHOWTIMES GIVEN ABOVE ARE FOR MOVIES SCREENING VIA 70MM UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED.

FILM EVENTS FRI 9.22

SAT 9.23

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

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

[Harvard Film Archive, 24 Quincy St., Harvard Sq., Cambridge. 9pm/NR/$7-9. hcl.harvard.edu/hfa]

COOLIDGE AFTER MIDNIGHT PRESENTS ROLLING THUNDER [1977]

18

09.21.17 - 09.28.17 |

NEW DIGITAL RESTORATION OF CHANTAL AKERMAN’S GOLDEN EIGHTIES [1986]

DIGBOSTON.COM

SUN 9.24

NEW DIGITAL RESTORATION OF MICHAEL POWELL AND EMERIC PRESSBURGER’S A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH [1946] [Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle St., Harvard Sq., Cambridge. 7pm/PG/$9-11. brattlefilm.org]

MON 9.25

TUE 9.26

MON 9.28

[Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle St., Harvard Sq., Cambridge. 7pm/NR/$12.

Co-director Jairus McLeary will be present for a post-screening discussion. brattlefilm.org]

[Mount Auburn Cemetery, 580 Mount Auburn St., Cambridge. Films begin at sunset. $23. Rain date is Wed 9.27. coolidge.org]

[Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle St., Harv Sq., Camb.

7pm/NR/$12-15. Brokaw performs live score for some films. brattlefilm.org]

THE DOCYARD PRESENTS THE WORK [2017]

COOLIDGE CORNER THEATRE PRESENTS THE SEVENTH SEAL [1957] AND HAROLD AND MAUDE [1971]

COMPOSER/MUSICIAN CHRIS BROKAW PRESENTS FIVE FILMS BY PETER HUTTON [1975-2004]

necann.com NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

19

THE ART OF MAKING ART ARTS

A look at the genesis of A.R.T.’s WARHOLCAPOTE

BY CHRISTOPHER EHLERS @_CHRISEHLERS

STEPHEN SPINELLA AND DAN BUTLER AS ANDY WARHOL AND TRUMAN CAPOTE IN WARHOLCAPOTE. PHOTO: GRETJEN HELENE PHOTOGRAPHY There is little doubt that WARHOLCAPOTE, now in previews at the American Repertory Theater, is one of the most compelling and hotly anticipated theatrical events of the season. This “non-fiction invention,” as it is being called by adapter Rob Roth, has been in the works for over a decade and is drawn from the actual recorded conversations between Andy Warhol and Truman Capote, two touchstones of 20th-century pop culture.

Roth, best known for his direction of the stage adaptation of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, was holed up in his room on a cruise ship with a copy of The Andy Warhol Diaries, a book Roth says he’s read 20 times, when a particular line jumped out at him in a way that it hadn’t before: “Went to Truman’s apartment,” wrote Warhol, “got six good tapes for the play.”

For an entire decade of his life, Warhol walked around with a tape recorder. Over 3,000 cassette tapes were discovered after his death, though laws about recording people without their consent have kept them from being released. Thus, they’re locked away at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburg where lawyers are likely to make sure that they never see the light of day.

But Roth’s wheels started turning, and he was fascinated by the idea that Warhol and Capote may have been collaborating on a play together. Might any conversations between the two be preserved on some of the thousands of tapes? It could make for an interesting play, Roth thought, but the first step would have to include getting access to those tapes. It took a while, but Roth successfully got the Warhol Foundation on board.

An archivist at the museum spent eight weeks sorting

through the tapes and found 59 90-minute cassettes labeled “Truman.” The 70 hours of recording became 8,000 pages of transcription, and from there, work on WARHOLCAPOTE began.

This world premiere production stars Tony Awardwinner Stephen Spinella (who originated the role of Prior in Angels in America) as Andy Warhol and Dan Butler, a constant presence on television for over two decades (probably best known for playing Bulldog Briscoe on Frasier) stars as Truman Capote. Tony-winner Michael Mayer—one of the best stage directors of our time, responsible for the likes of Thoroughly Modern Millie, Spring Awakening, and the recent revival of Hedwig and the Angry Inch—is at the helm.

Although a world premiere event of this nature would be quite thrilling enough on its own, A.R.T. has partnered with Harvard Art Museums for a fabulous series of Act II events that will aim to further engage with audience members following the performance. What’s more, on view at the museums’ Art Study Center on select Mondays will be six screen-prints from Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe series.

The prints, which were acquired by the museums in 2015, will be shown side by side, offering an unprecedented look at some of the most iconic and important images of all time.

Your time is running out, though: The screen-prints will be on view for only two more Mondays, Sept 25 and Oct 2, 1-4 pm. Museum admission still applies, though free admission will be granted to WARHOLCAPOTE ticketholders who show their tickets stubs at the admissions desk.

Mary Schneider Enriquez, the Houghton associate

curator of modern and contemporary art at the Harvard Art Museums, is thrilled about the partnership and the opportunity to see, up close and personal, Warhol’s ideas behind the iconic image of Marilyn. “[Warhol] is known as someone who was all about making the consumable something that is high art,” said Enriquez. “Marilyn was obviously also a consumable in some sense because she was this figure who society made into a kind of representation of the beauty and the starlet and fame all at once. You get to see both his ability as a printmaker but also the idea behind the subject matter.”

Enriquez, who is admittedly not a Warhol buff, says that working with these prints has opened up a whole new way of thinking for her about Warhol and the important contributions that he made to 20th-century art.

“When you look at these versions of Marilyn side by side in a series, you begin to see layers of depth and a means of representation that is completely different based on how you change the colors and the ways in which they contrast with each other,” said Enriquez.

Warhol and Capote were both obsessed with fame— both being famous and being around famous people— and that’s one of the things that drew them to one another. It is hardly a coincidence, then, that the dark side of fame is one of the things that stuck out for Enriquez as she spent more time with the prints.

“You see her as a mask because each time you see a variation of her and you look at the color difference, you think: ‘Okay, it’s just the same image over and over.’ But somehow it looks completely different when you combine a bright blue face with bright green and orange hair versus a pale pink face with golden hair and turquoise eye shadow. She doesn’t look the same even though it’s absolutely the same face. She looks completely different, and she becomes both a mask that is completely superficial on one hand and, on the other hand, you read more deeply into the idea that there’s actually a person behind that mask. And yet fame made her into a mask, which Warhol accentuates with these images. I can use words to describe them, but seeing them is far more powerful and almost painful, on some level. You begin to see that this one person is actually a person—not just a mask.”

Enriquez herself will be participating in a discussion with artist Jesse Aron Green following the Wednesday, Oct 4 performance. Other Act II guest artists include DJ, artist, and writer Jace Clayton on Sept 20; adaptor Rob Roth on Sept 27, 28, and Oct 12; author and journalism professor Dick Lehr on Oct 3; and—incredibly—Warhol “superstar” Jane Holzer will be on hand following the Oct 10 performance.

Ryan McKittrick, dramaturg and director of artistic programs at A.R.T., says that the theater is committed to thinking about how it can inspire dialogue after the curtain comes down and how post-production discussions can be curated.

“We’re thrilled about the people who are coming,” said McKittrick. “There are questions about what it means to make art and where art comes from. What is art? Those are the type of questions that are arising from the play.”

>> WARHOLCAPOTE. THROUGH 10.13 AT THE AMERICAN REPERTORY THEATER, 64 BRATTLE ST., CAMBRIDGE. AMERICANREPERTORYTHEATER.ORG >> ANDY WARHOL’S MARILYN MONROE PORTFOLIO. 9.25 & 10.2. 1-4PM AT HARVARD ART MUSEUMS’ ART STUDY CENTER, 32 QUINCY ST., CAMBRIDGE. HARVARDARTMUSEUMS.ORG

ARTS EVENTS

FREE CONCERT! THE SILKROAD ENSEMBLE WITH YO-YO MA

[OBERON, 2 Arrow St., Cambridge.

9.26 @ 7 PM. amrep.org/ silkroadOBERON] 20

09.21.17 - 09.28.17 |

DIGBOSTON.COM

FINAL WEEKEND! REVERSIBLE

[ArtsEmerson at Cutler Majestic Theatre, 219 Tremont St., Boston.

Through 9.24. artsemerson.org]

SCOTT EDMISTON DIRECTS CONSTELLATIONS

[Underground Railway Theater at Central Square Theater, 450 Mass.

Ave., Cambridge. Through 10.8. centralsquaretheater.org]

GREATEST AMERICAN MUSICAL GYPSY

[Lyric Stage Company, 140 Clarendon St., Boston. Through 10.8. lyricstage.org]

LEGENDARY SONDHEIM MUSICAL MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG

[Huntington Theatre Company, 264 Huntington Ave., Boston. Through 10.15. huntingtontheatre.org]

GARETH HINDS BOOKS

Poe returns to Boston in graphic novel form

LIVE MUSIC • LOCAVORE MENU PRIVATE EVENTS

BY M.J. TIDWELL @MJTIDWELL78 Boston’s prodigal son returns home with a new Edgar Allen Poe graphic novel adaptation

by Gareth Hinds. Acclaimed for his adaptations and illustrations of the likes of Beowulf, The Odyssey, and Macbeth, Hinds now takes on Poe’s dark and twisty world. He will discuss his book, Poe Stories and Poems, at several Boston-area events in the next week, including a stop at the Brookline Booksmith on Sept 26.

Each of the seven stories and poems brought to life in the book receives its own special treatment, style, and mood. A sepulchral raven with wings of skulls looms here; there, a glistening eye shines through a sliver of lantern light.

For the illustrator, he says he saw an opportunity to use different styles to reflect the moods of the writing. On the last page, there is an elegant pencil drawing of Poe’s grave with a smudged raven perched atop.

One of the most difficult parts of the adaptation process with this book for Hinds was that Poe often wrote with first-person narration.

“That presents a challenge in that Poe leaves the narrator ambiguous,” he said. “And that’s one of the things that’s lovely about it, is that the narrator sort of could be anybody.

But I had to actually choose.”

To find the right visual pairings, Hinds made test pages and played with color and tone, sometimes digitally but in large part still using traditional graphic novel techniques.

He said his favorite to adapt was “The Telltale Heart.” For the one person in North America who hasn’t read it, the story involves some slightly gruesome dismembering and the undulations of its titular telltale heart.

“He describes the narrator dismembering this body, which is horrifying enough, but when you do that visually, it becomes over-the-top grisly,” Hinds said. “I had to strike the right balance, which actually was to show very little and leave a lot to the reader’s imagination.”

Leaving a lot to the reader’s imagination does involve the careful laying out of various saws and tools, however, so don’t expect to escape with a clear mind’s eye.

Though Poe left his Boston birthplace with no love lost, and indeed took to calling its residents “Frogpondians,” his eerie prose has resonance as the first leaves begin to change around the Frog Pond. Coupled with Hinds’ exquisite renderings, Poe Stories and Poems is a haunting welcome into autumn.

GARETH HINDS: POE STORIES AND POEMS GRAPHIC NOVEL ADAPTATION. FRI 9.22. 6:30PM/FREE. BLUE BUNNY BOOKS, 577 HIGH ST., DEDHAM. BLUEBUNNYBOOKS. COM SAT 9.23. 2PM/FREE. AN UNLIKELY STORY, 111 SOUTH ST., PLAINVILLE. ANUNLIKELYSTORY. COM MON 9.25. 7PM/FREE. PORTER SQUARE BOOKS, 25 WHITE ST., CAMBRIDGE. PORTERSQUAREBOOKS.COM TUE 9.26. 7PM/FREE. BROOKLINE BOOKSMITH, 279 HARVARD ST., BROOKLINE. BROOKLINEBOOKSMITH.COM

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SAVAGE LOVE

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My relationship with my husband is bad. We have been together for twelve years, and we were married for eight years before getting divorced last year. We have small kids. We reconciled four months after the divorce, despite the affair I had. I have a history of self-sabotage, but in my relationship with him, it has become near constant. Everyone thinks I’m a smart and kind person that occasionally makes mistakes, but I’m not that person with him. With him, I’m awful. I make promises I don’t keep and I don’t do the right things to make him feel loved even though I do loving things. We have been in couples therapy a number of times, but I always derail the process. I have been in therapy solo a number of times with similar results. I always get the therapists on my side and no real change happens. I want to change but I haven’t. I want to stop hurting him but I keep doing it. He doesn’t feel like I have ever really fought for him or the relationship. Why can’t I change?

My Enraging Self-Sabotaging Yearnings It’s unlikely I’ll be able to do for you in print what three couples counselors and all those therapists couldn’t do for you in person, i.e., help you change your ways—if, indeed, it’s your ways that require changing. Have you ever entertained the thought that maybe there’s a reason every counselor or therapist you see winds up taking your side? Is it possible that you’re not the problem? Are you truly awful, MESSY, or has your husband convinced you that you’re awful in order to have the upper hand in your relationship? (Yeah, yeah, you had an affair. Lots of people do and lots of marriages survive them.)

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