JULY 77
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Big FILM Show
Moment of Clarity:
Places You Could Hang – Thrift Shop of Boston james moore
You love a good Thrift Store right? Who doesn’t? My fave (Thrift Shop of Boston) is tucked away in Roslindale center and is the longest-running charitable Thrift Shops in the US (90 years old). TSOB benefits “You” of course, being full of everything an urban thrifthunter could ever want, but also benefits The Home For Little Wanderers, a 200 year old charity looking after the needs of at-risk kids. Everybody WINS! Moreover, the staff are straight-up awesome folks, kind of heart and groovy of soul. Check out Carlotta’s Boutique rack before you go and paint the town red. Dig for vinyl nuggets, or stock up on gifts for the “little wanderers” in your own life. Plus, once you’ve loaded up on booty, you can stroll down Corinth St and discover the many hidden pleasures of Rosi. If that doesn’t keep you coming back, then TSOB’s weekly color-sale will...halfoff all tagged items of that week’s color (my favorite therapy for a Blue Monday). With any luck you’ll spot Sam or myself there shopping or loading up furniture going to a happy customer. Please come say “Hi” if you do!
Gentrification is more than an intriguing spectacle that the college-educated deconstruct; it's not an insight about neighborhoods changing, it's the real experience of (primarily) low-income Black and Brown folks, including many recent immigrants, getting evicted in the name of profit, or getting rent-hiked to the point where the only choice is to get out - with no more access to Boston's private housing market. What really matters about gentrification is displacement, and what really matters about displacement is doing something to stop it. Right now, before there's no turning back. The shift toward action was evident on a national scale at last week's Allied Media Conference, where many workshops discussed ways to intervene in the flipping - i.e. forced resegregation - of our cities. On the ground in Boston, teens in Egleston Square are mobilizing residents to create real affordability in the Boston Redevelopment Authority's "JP/Rox" rezoning plan. One core demand is that 70% of new housing in the area should be affordable relative to the area’s current income levels. On May 11th, a crew of over 50 youth of color and allies brought the people's mic to a Plan JP/Rox community meeting, winning an additional 3-months for the community process on rezoning and increasing time for deeper thought on affordability and preventing displacement. Speculative developers such as Mordechai Levin and City Realty Management heard from platoons of neighbors in early June who stood up against their exclusive apartments
Peristence of Vision Vol.3
June 29th with the series Persistence Of Vision, we have tried to highlight films by experimental and microbudget filmmakers from around the world. This month’s installment will highlight the films of Ben Russell, with a program of five films covering a wide variety of his recent work. Rock Me Amadeus By Falco Via Kardinal By Otto Muehl (2009) is part karaoke film and part remake of Viennese actionist Otto Muehl’s classic, Kardinal. Here Muehl’s pomposity is replaced with a playfulness as the provocation becomes a comic exercise in music video. Trypps #7 (Badlands) (2010), the most recent of Russell’s long-running Trypps series, highlights a perennial theme: the experience of the divine in the everyday world. The Garden Of Earthly Delights triptych - containing the films Let Us Persevere In What We Have Resolved Before We Forget (2013), Atlantis (2014), Greetings To The Ancestors (2015) - is a search for Utopia. These films blend documentary and fiction, ethnography imagined and experienced, postcolonial awareness and dream cinema, religious ritual and secular experience of trance states. Positioning himself between the reflexive ethnographies of Jean Rouch and the structuralist films of Michael Snow, and taking influence from Herzog’s documentaries - especially in his notion of the ecstatic truth - Russell’s films have created a singular viewpoint as he grasps for the Utopian. Persistence Of Vision also includes a musical component. Performing before Ben Russell’s films, we are especially excited to music from Boston improvisational master Vic Rawlings. Sstay tuned for programs from Zachary Oberzan, Raymonde Carasco, and more to be announced in the coming months. chris defalco ings. And Mayor Walsh got an earful from teens who visited his JP "coffee hour" and invited him to learn more. On the other side of the coin, a citywide coalition of longstanding community groups is in the peak of a campaign for "Just Cause" protections from eviction. High-end housing developers pitch their destructive imaginings as "placemaking" - as if low-income communities of color are just a blank-slate for redevelopment. But place-keeping is where it's at, in this moment, in Boston’s most beautiful communities. Sign up at eglestonkeepsit100.org to get involved – and visit justcauseboston.org and bostondisplacement.org to learn more and act! home fries
A Midsummer’s Hyped Scene Big ART Show
Boston Campaign Headquarters at Four South Market Building (up
through august )
The past few weeks have come with a mixture of disappointment and cautious optimism for many in the local art scene. While The Globe quietly cut most of its local gallery cov- colonizers, it is worth the erage, the city championed trip to see what local artist a new funding initiative for Pat Falco has cooked up beartists and small organiza- hind a door marked “Boston Headquarters tions. These opposite fore- Campaign casts are difficult to digest for U.S.A. Land of the free and sure and that is before bring- 200 million other people”. ing the much more frighten- Filled with hand painting shadow of the upcoming ed signs of political slogans similar to what we see plaselections into the mix. It is in the midst of this tered across the news, here impending bleakness and a we find a campaign aimed desire to change our cultural for the already heartbroken landscape that an unlikely public from the hopeless and timely project has popped politician. Yet one can’t help up among the storefronts of but notice the electric jolt the Faneuil Hall Marketplace. space causes in the mindless Typically a wasteland of stream that passes in front of tourism and bronzes of past its windows. maggie jensen
GRCB & Boston Hassle present Grass Stains at JP Porchfest w/ W00dy, Gravel, TRIM, Fur Purse, Cotton Candy, Juliet Olivier, Banana, Sister, Outside World (NYC), Lost Cosmonauts, the BQC plus DJ Dayglow between sets 12-3! @CityPOP JP 12PM-6PM All Ages $FREE
Supporting good causes is the best; the sense of helping others and improving yourself in the process…what’s better? One of the best orgs/causes out there is Girls Rock Camp Boston who for years now has helped young girls and women realize their full potential – as rock stars! We at BrainArts are HUGE fans (obvi) and have teamed up with the fine folks of GRCB to bring you…drum roll…the next Grass Stains! That’s right, this month we’re keepin it real and keepin it local as we set up shop at CityPOP
Nevermind the first week of the month, hosting bands from Tokyo, Baltimore and Portland, we be flippin come July’s second weekend with TWO daytime outdoor All Ages events, both happening steps away from Green Street Station in JP. First we gettin GRASS STAINS all over JP PORCHFEST Saturday 7/9 which we’re co-presenting thing with our big-sister org Girls Rock Campaign Boston and doing so in a radical new (and sadly temporary) warehouse space, at CityPop in Egleston. Then Sunday 7/10 we take over another under-utilized spot, the parking lot at 420 Amory Street, for our first ever outdoor BLACK MARKET! Thanks to City Realty for donating this incredible space to us, it’s gonna be bonkers. 11 more shows this month to boot too including Goodwill Smith for POOL 7/19, WICKED MESS for Dent and Gamma Pope tour homecoming 7/23, Alex Calder, Cloud Becomes Your Hand, Neptune and more. Easy now, Summer. We ain’t the only ones either. Not by damn far…. Scope our CHOSEN SHOWS calendar both here in-print and online for our favorite shows of the month, especially All Ages gigs but wherever the wild sounds go we go ya know? What about the wild sights you say? Well we also maintain a dank listing for FILM and ART events which need even more help keeping up with. This is a great volunteer activity actually, which turns idle downtime or even those paid working hours at your mindless job into rewarding culture boosting. Think about it... Bored at work? Chomp the comp, know the shows. Or maybe we’re missing something? We’re always on the hunt for more freaky junk so give us a shout if you think we should tout. It’s what we’re about. You get the idea. Thanks for picking up the rag. sam p .
during JP Porchfest on Saturday July 9th. Six hours of rock, pop, electronic, noise, punk, visual arts, and more brought to you by the likes of W00DY, Fur Purse, TRIM, Gravel, Banana, Cotton Candy, Juliet Oliver, Lost Cosmonauts, and Outside World teleporting up from NYC + the always eclectic DJ Dayglow maintaining the beats between sets. On these, the longest days of the year, it’s important to get out and stay out. So join us here at the Boston Hassle and the ever influential Girls Rock Camp team as we
soak up the sun and absorb all the weird…..p.s. it’s B ig MUSIC FREEEEEEEEEEEEEE mike achille
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