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Buzz kill
Scottish shop a kilt-y pleasure
Most area towns to outlaw retail sales of marijuana — with Pennington a notable exception
American Highlander brings Scotland’s most famous men’s apparel to New Jersey
By BILL SanSerVIno
By Dan Aubrey
“Three years and expanding,” says Christopher Beyer, pointing to a freshly opened hole in the wall of his Ewingbased American Highlander shop. The additional space is for custom fittings and additional inventory. “The main focus is the kilt,” he says about his unusual product and business that managed to survive the pandemic — just as kilts have survived through time. “Scottish highland kilts,” Beyer continues about his offerings in one of the few kilt shops in the state and the only one easily accessible from both New York City and Philadelphia. “When you buy a kilt in Scotland, it’s pure wool and handmade. But not everyone wants a $350 kilt. So we have blended wool.” To illustrate the difference, he compares the kilts to single malt and blended Scotch whisky and says, “Some people want to wear their kilt to a See KILTS Page 14
Like many artists, jazz musician Tom Tallitsch adapted to the stresses and restrictions of the coronavirus pandemic. (Photo by Bryan Murray.)
‘Keep the kids playing’ For musicians like Tom Tallitsch, the great challenge of the pandemic has been to find ways to work with students By Joe EmanSKI
Tom Tallitsch is almost too busy to say how busy he is. Tallitsch, the accomplished jazz musician, composer, radio show host and music educator, took to Facebook last month to reveal that he had updated the look and feel of his website. Yet his calendar page con-
tains only the following message: “I’m all over the map and haven’t had time to keep this page up to date. Give me a shout to see where I’m at. tomtallitsch@gmail.com.” Few would begrudge Tallitsch for the oversight. Most fans would say they are glad to hear that musicians are too busy for anything. When it comes to the topic of musicians and the pandemic, the focus is often on the financial challenges that performers faced when there were few opportunities to perform. With weddings postponed, corporate conferences canceled, and restaurants and clubs closed to the public, gigs had been hard to come by, especially over winter, when it
was too cold to play outdoors. Tallitsch went through all of that. It got to the point that when offers to perform live started coming in at the end of the spring, he was concerned about how long it would take to shake the rust off. Since then, though, he has had plenty of work: a few restaurant and club dates as a side man, and “private parties galore,” he says. Truth is, live outings are only part of what keeps Tallitsch so busy. He spends a majority of his time, then as now, giving music lessons. Lately, he is able to do some half of the lessons in person, but for more than a year, he was teaching mostly online. See TALLITSCH, Page 11
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Marijuana might be legal in New Jersey, but residents of most area municipalities will have to travel to another town if they want to buy some. Only four Mercer County towns—Ewing, Lawrence, Pennington and Trenton— are set to allow the retail sale of cannabis within their borders. Also on that list is Bordentown City in Burlington County. Meanwhile, Bordentown Township, East Windsor, Hamilton, Hightstown, Borough, Hopewell Borough, Hopewell Township, Princeton, Robbinsville and West Windsor and Plainsboro have either passed, or are in the process of passing, measures that ban the retail sale of the drug. A law approved earlier this year by the state Legislature and Gov. Phil Murphy mandates that municipalities must vote to opt out of allowing businesses to operate under six newly-created licenses by Aug. 21. The licenses that businesses can seek in connection with the recreational cannabis market are: Class 1—Cannabis cultivaSee WEED, Page 6
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