1744dig by DigBoston

DIGBOSTON.COM 11.4.15 - 11.11.15

SWAT TOPIC FEATURE

TESTING THE COMMONWEALTH’S MOST NOTORIOUS SWAT TEAM

ARTS

LYRIC STAGE COMPANY KATORI HALL GOES TO WAR

THE TOKIN’ TRUTH

THE COLUMNIST FORMERLY KNOWN AS

MIKE CANN RE-BOOTS

MUSIC

HASSLE FEST

LOCAL MUSIC DOES BOSTON

EATS

LOUIS

HOME COOKED DESTINATION

11.4.15 - 11.11.15

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Bill Blumenreich Presents

BILL BLUMENREICH PRESENTS

FRANKIE VALLI

VOL 17 + ISSUE 44

NOVEMBER 4, 2015 - NOVEMBER 11, 2015 EDITORIAL

DEAR READER

EDITOR + PUBLISHER Jeff lawrence

Every time a new restaurant opens in the Boston area, or an established and usually well-loved house of grub closes, or when Mario Batali tries and fails at life, I usually hear about it first from Marc Hurwitz and his must-read blog, Boston’s Hidden Restaurants. It’s the kind of go-to content that I love and find palatable because it’s straightforward, on-point, and 30 minutes ahead of everyone else. It’s also an amazing destination for honest reviews and simple listicles that inform instead of condescend and highlight instead of trash. In a New World Order of snark and click-bait content, Marc cuts through the hack and delivers bite-size portions free of bitter and sours. Which is why I begged him to write a column—and thankfully, he agreed to. Starting this week, and every other week moving forward, you’ll find his uncanny taste for food and life within these pages and online. The focus will be put squarely on what he does best: tell stories about new places, old faces, and gastronomical celebration. In true style and form, he kicks it off with a great review of Louis, a place in Quincy you’ve never heard of but should run to the next time your ZipCar is ready. I hope everyone enjoys his mini-tomes as much as I always have and offers him a hearty welcome! In addition to this new foodie, we’ve also got plenty of other great wordsmiths in this here rag. We take on corruption, speak truth to Boston Hassle Fest, and re-introduce you to the blunt truth via Mike Crawford, one of the hardest working advocates in the medical Canna scene, and his newly branded fist-pump, Tokin Truth. Enjoy. Imbibe. Embrace.

ASSOCIATE MUSIC EDITOR Nina Corcoran ASSOCIATE FILM EDITOR Jake Mulligan ASSOCIATE ARTS EDITOR Christopher Ehlers COPY EDITOR Mitchell Dewar CONTRIBUTORS Nate Boroyan, Renan Fontes, Bill Hayduke, Emily Hopkins, Micaela Kimball, Dave Wedge INTERN Oliver Bok, Mary Kate McGrath

DESIGN CREATIVE DIRECTOR Tak Toyoshima COMICS Tim Chamberlain Brian Connolly Pat Falco Patt Kelley INTERN Chesley Chapman

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BUSINESS ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Marc Shepard SENIOR ACCOUNT MANAGER Jesse Weiss OPERATIONS MANAGER John Loftus ADVISOR Joseph B. Darby III DigBoston, 242 East Berkeley St. 5th Floor Boston, MA 02118 Fax 617.849.5990 Phone 617.426.8942 digboston.com

ON THE COVER This week we conduct a daring raid into the heart of the SWAT industry ... actually, we just walked in there and did some honest to goodness reporting. Check it out on page 10.

©2015 DIGBOSTON IS PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY DIG PUBLISHING LLC. NO PART OF THIS PUBLICATION CAN BE REPRODUCED WITHOUT WRITTEN CONSENT. DIG PUBLISHING LLC CANNOT BE HELD LIABLE FOR ANY TYPOGRAPHICAL ERRORS. ONE COPY OF DIGBOSTON IS AVAILABLE FREE TO MASSACHUSETTS RESIDENTS AND VISITORS EACH WEEK. ANYONE REMOVING PAPERS IN BULK WILL BE PROSECUTED ON THEFT CHARGES TO THE FULLEST EXTENT OF THE LAW.

RAINN WILSON The Bassoon King Book Tour NOV 11

CRAIG ROBINSON NOVEMBER 6 & 8& THE NASTY DELICIOUS NOV 13

ROBERT EARL KEEN NOV 14

ART GARFUNKEL NOV 15

DAVE RAWLINGS MACHINE NOV 16

WHITFORD/ST.HOLMES BAND NOV 17

BILLY GIBBONS AND THE BFG’S

JEFF LAWRENCE - PUBLISHER+EDITOR, DIGBOSTON

NOV 19

DIGTIONARY

MIKE EPPS

CNBCNILE

adjective 1. A mainstream journalistic condition in which one hack, or a group of hacks, is so putrid, so pathetic, and so sensationally inclined that they actually appear to be the most desperate dumbasses in a roomful of Republicans.

NOV 27

AUGUST 2 OH, CRUEL WORLD

CHRIS BOTTI DEC 6 - 8

Dear Librarian, I forgot my ID, and so I asked if you could find a pic of me online and match it to my face, so that you could verify that I am who I say I am (even though it’s kind of crazy to believe that someone was impersonating me in order to steal day passes to the aquarium, but I digress) … You obliged, and found my Facebook page, plus a couple of staff pages from places I’ve worked. Then, after verifying my identity, you told me that I still needed to go home and get my ID. Which was weird, is all I’m saying, because why they hell were you wasting my time then, dickhead?

Third Show Added

CHRIS BOTTI DECEMBER 6 -8

TODD RUNDGREN DEC 16

JIMMY TINGLE DEC 31

ILLUSTRATION BY CHESLEY CHAPMAN

NEWS + FEATURES EDITOR Chris Faraone

NOV 6 - 8

FOR TICKETS AND INFORMATION PLEASE VISIT WWW.THEWILBUR.COM NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

NEWS US IN SEARCH OF COMMON UNITY NEWS TO US

A conversation with Hawah Kasat about youth violence everywhere BY CHRIS FARAONE @FARA1 Sadly, there is very little solutions-oriented media coverage of youth violence. That is to say tabloids and five o’clock news hacks highlight blood and violence to no end, while more cultivated outlets like the Boston Globe stop short of drawing direct links between the entities which poison and oppress wounded communities and the actual victims of systemic neglect. Meanwhile, poverty and trauma endure, and income inequality runs rampant. All too often, the public conversation about possible solutions is reduced to passing interviews with scripted reverends and a narrow cast of community power brokers. If there’s any hope, it’s with a number of organizations working at the roots of broad systemic problems. One such local nonprofit with whom DigBoston has collaborated through the years is Press Pass TV, which trains young people to fill voids in the media with their own voices and narratives. On the hunch that those who work on the front lines know more than bureaucrats and bean counters, we’ve dedicated this week’s news well to our conversation with Hawah Kasat, who is the executive director of the intensive and transformative youth-building nonprofit One Common Unity in Washington D.C. With Press Pass TV hosting the Boston premiere of Fly By Light—his inspirational and immersive new documentary project with director Ellie Walton—this coming Monday, we asked Hawah for his unique perspective on the seemingly unbreakable cycle of violence, both in Boston and beyond. Tell us about what’s happening in D.C. There’s a lot of struggle and turmoil. The schools we work in, 90 percent of the kids are eating free or reduced price lunches. Gun violence has been a statistical nightmare. It’s been a real challenge. All of the poverty and homelessness has created a bad situation for young people who don’t have places to go. In [Fly By Light] you see that struggle of being homeless, of not having an ID, and of trying to stay warm and get food. And we wonder why there’s so much violence in the streets. 4

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What do you do with your program that’s different? As much good as we try to do, we have to be real and recognize that we’re still a small grassroots nonprofit— we don’t have housing, we don’t have a place for a kid to go if they’re homeless. We’re providing after school programming, we do programming on weekends, we take kids into the mountains, but we don’t have social services. So we’re struggling with our own limits and capacities in trying to make up for the immense disparity in wealth. Based on your experience, what’s missing from the conversation about problems with our youth and youth violence? There’s a big debate that has to be had around the nonprofit industrial complex. The same nonprofits are fighting for the same crumbs on the table. We’re all out there applying for the same [$10,000] and $20,000 grants to provide services that really are a bigger institutional problem than we really have the capacity to fix. It requires a serious restructuring in how wealth is distributed through this country. There are conversations happening around police brutality, but I think we have to always come back to the core issue, which is poverty. You can’t expect a kid to learn in school if they’re not eating breakfast. What problems are common from city to city, and what universal solutions are there, if any? I think there’s a lot of overlap. I’ve been around this nation working, and teaching, and speaking in schools, and the basic underlying issues remain the same. It’s a question of access, a lack of access, a lack of family structure, not enough role models at home. There’s a disconnect too with what young people are spending their time doing. Without creative constructive time, we’re just going to keep losing young people in the cracks.

What’s it like to hear a 17-year-old say that they have never experienced love, as one of the young people says in your film? The movie is important because the images allow someone to have a real narrative beyond just the words. These people have real lives, and you can’t quantify this stuff … Violence is a learned behavior, and we have to be honest about that. Violence is something people are more and more desensitized to because of media, because of music, because of what we read, because of what we see and watch. But peace, and caring, and empathy—these things can also be learned. I think it’s really important that we stress that. We can’t judge the scale of a problem. Our at-risk kids aren’t just the ones living in poverty—they’re also kids whose parents work on Wall Street making six or seven figures, and their parents are nowhere to be found. I think those kids are at risk as well. How are you going to go about spreading this? We want to have a community dialogue and discussion, and to bring other groups that are doing similar work in [other] cities to the table. We want to be proactive about collaborating, and we want to work on helping to inspire a national conversation around solutions. I understand that we’re talking about bigger systemic issues—and this ultimately is still a small program—but what I hope is that this movie generates a buzz, and instigates a conversation about the need for a deep shift in how our schools are operating and how these young people are learning. Join Hawah and Press Pass TV Co-Director Dr. Cara Lisa Berg Powers on Monday, Nov 9, from 6 to 9 pm at City Year for a screening of Fly By Light with a Q&A to follow. 287 Columbus Avenue, Boston. RSVP at flybylightboston. eventbrite.com.

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N OV 1 1 - S C H O L A R S 25 School St., Boston Doors at 7pm, FREE, 21+

N OV 1 8 - M O K S A ( N E W DAT E ! ) 450 Mass Ave., Cambridge Doors at 7pm, FREE, 21+

ROLL THE DICE AND YOU COULD WIN DIAMONDS AND GOLD! NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

THE TOKIN’ TRUTH

INTRODUCING: ‘THE TOKIN’ TRUTH’ Don’t call it a Cannback

BY MIKE CRAWFORD @MIKECANNBOSTON

In the late 1990s, as a head high school wrestling coach at Triton Regional High School in Byfield, Massachusetts, I was fiercely going at it with another competitive coach during an open mat off-season training in West Newbury. I took him down a couple of times using my best offense, but after the third time, he was pissed. The fellow coach caught me in a perfect—a vicious—lateral drop, full force, and I hit the unforgiving mat at the base of my spine (L5-L6). I felt my legs go out, and I couldn’t get up. Crawling, I was helped out of the gym by Matt Cena, another wrestler in that day’s session, as well as by his older brother John (yes, that John Cena, though years before he joined the WWE), who helped lug me to my car and suggested I call an ambulance. I probably should have called an ambulance, though I didn’t have any health insurance. For pain management, I became a medical marijuana patient, having to obtain medicine illegally for the first several years. Teaching public school students and the career that I later embarked on in financial services, I lived in fear of my employer finding out about my use of medical cannabis—especially prior to legislative wins in Massachusetts in 2008 (decriminalization) and 2012 (medical marijuana). Before that, any mention of marijuana in professional circles was a cause for concern. I’m not sure how much has changed for the general population, but in my case … It wasn’t long before I was hosting fundraisers and becoming a force for reform, volunteering and later serving on the board of MassCann/NORML—all while being worried, like many other activists back then, that I might forfeit present or future employment by advocating for marijuana reform. In my case, at one point I was managing tens of millions of dollars worth of assets for thousands of customers at universities and hospitals like UMass-Boston and Brigham and Women’s. I had plenty to worry about, especially after my name and an accompanying picture appeared in High Times, and so I heeded the advice of local artist and punk rock legend Dave Tree, who I met booking fundraisers for MassCann. “You know my name’s not really Dave Tree, right? You are Mike Cann. Be Mike Cann.” And so I was. I started a blog, and organized protests, concerts, and events. I booked Onyx! I hosted “Two Hotheads” on UnRegular Radio, and started the weekly column Blunt Truth for DigBoston—all under the name Mike Cann. The same goes for my current show on WEMF Radio, The Young Jurks. While I left the financial industry in 2010—after too many sleepless nights worrying about my working class customers—and have been associated with cannabis reform in public under my government name, Mike Crawford, in the time since, I still used the byline and handle Mike Cann. For me, the name represented those who aren’t allowed to speak up because of their employment, or because they are worried about losing a job or a child custody case. For the tokin’ unheard. Now, with exactly one year to go until Commonwealth residents pass an initiative for legal marijuana, I am making a few token—tokin’—changes. The first is that I will now write under the byline Mike Crawford, since it’s especially important in the current political climate to show people that marijuana users and patients are their friends, their family members, their co-workers. Secondly, in collaboration with the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism, I am also renaming my column The Tokin’ Truth, with a goal of expanding our former work on issues like criminal justice reform and sensible drug policy, and bringing even more guest contributions and commentary from reliable voices like Nichole Snow, Jill Hitchman-Osborn, Andy Gaus, and many more. You can still find us in DigBoston every week, but our plan is for The Tokin’ Truth to ring louder than ever before at this important moment in cannabis history. P.S.: You can still call me Mike Cann, and I’m still @mikecannboston on Twitter. 6

11.4.15 - 11.11.15

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CELEBRATING BOSTON’S BEST WINTER!

ED BY

NOV 12-15

PRESENTED BY

Seaport World Trade Center Thur: 3pm-10pm • Fri: 3pm-10pm • Sat: 10am-8pm • Sun: 10am-6pm

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FUN FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY!

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PRESENTED BY Ofﬁcial Snow Report of the Expo

SKISNOWexpo.com NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

SKISNOWexpo.com

BEWI Productions, Inc. For exhibit info: 781.890.3234 • bewisports.com

For more info and to purchase tickets

MEDIA FARM

PUFF POLICE

Contrary to commish claims, BPD masturbated by media BY CHRIS FARAONE @FARA1

HOUSE OF

TRAP Ramzi Nobel HIP HOP, REGGAE, DIRTY SOUTH, R&B

FRI Nov.6th 9:30PM

SHAKE VS. THE NIGHT

SHIFT Oneman (Rinse FM), Fens + Ernest Baker, Brian Padilla & Alex Russel GRIME BASS, TECHNO, HOUSE + HIP HOP, REGGAE & PARTY JAMS MON Nov.9th 7PM

MMMMAVEN GRADUATION

PARTY MMMMAVEN CLASS OF 2014 OPEN FORMAT THU Nov.12 8PM

COMEDY

NIGHT Comedy Host: Anjan Biswas Featuring: Lizz Hall Headliner:

LAMONT PRICE

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DIGBOSTON.COM

JOB WELL DONE Exhibit A: Violent crime in Boston on decline since previous year Daily Free Press (Oct 15, 2015) HISTORIC BPD ACHIEVEMENTS IN COMMUNITY POLICING Exhibit B: Boston Police pulled this man over for a very heartwarming reason BDCwire (Oct 2, 2015) THAT POLICE DOG SURE IS CUTE Exhibit C: Tuco the K9 now in training with Boston Police Department WHDH-TV (Oct 7, 2015) HOW INNOVATIVE! Exhibit D: Guns taken off Boston streets are turned into manhole covers MassLive.com (Oct 12, 2015)

FREE RADICAL

BAD LIEUTENANTS

AP investigation reveals Commonwealth doesn’t track officer wrongdoing BY EMILY HOPKINS @GENDERPIZZA In a recent bombshell of an investigation, the Associated Press revealed that there are hundreds of documented cases nationwide of police officers losing their badges for sexual misconduct, including charges of rape, fondling, and child molestation. The nearly 1,000 cases that stacked up over the past six years is a low estimate of the number of such crimes that actually took place, says the AP, because it only accounts for places where offending officers are subject to losing their shields. Some states don’t keep tallies of this type of misconduct. The Commonwealth is one of those states. It’s laughable to think that Massachusetts doesn’t maintain such data, especially considering the amount of other information that authorities here collect on us. You don’t have to look far to find Big Brother—there are surveillance cameras on every corner, shiny new machinery perched on our rotting infrastructure. Despite their ubiquitous nature, and even though DigBoston has uncovered thousands of documents on surveillance in the Commonwealth, a comprehensive list of cameras has not been made available to the public, and may not even exist. I’m not done. While the city now says it decided against adopting facial recognition software, Boston authorities had no qualms about secretly testing biometrics out at Boston Calling two years ago. Meanwhile, an ACLU survey published last week revealed that Commonwealth schools do not extend the right to privacy on their computers and tablets to pupils. Some policies go as far as to claim that students have “no expectation of privacy” on these devices. Finally, let’s not forget Boston’s automated license plate reader (ALPR) data, which city contractors left on an unsecure server, open to anyone who knew where to look. Our state seems preoccupied with surveillance. Eyes pointed out, authorities can’t even manage to protect the data they collect on us, all while the state says it doesn’t keep numbers on officer wrongdoing. The whole thing smacks of willful ignorance, especially in light of AP news that some departments allow their “bad officers to quietly resign, keep their certification and jump to other jobs.” Earlier this year, the Massachusetts secretary of state ruled that the Boston Police Department is not required to release the names of officers charged with drunken driving, citing an exemption from the public records law. This is one area where the state is clearly committed to privacy, but these protections shouldn’t extend to the public lives of cops. It is our right to know the numbers when it comes to sexual misconduct, and it’s the state’s responsibility to provide them.

THU Nov.5th 10PM

Boston Police Department Commissioner William Evans made a familiar claim last week. As he’s done before, during one of his regular rap sessions with Jim Braude and Margery Eagan on their WGBH show Boston Public Radio, Evans said the media unfairly focuses on BPD fumbles. “You don’t hear about the good things,” the commissioner argued. Though Jim and Margery are reluctant to call him on it, Evans is completely full of shit. Or he doesn’t have the internet. One or the other. To show the extent to which his department is actually showered with positive press, we plugged “Boston Police Department” into the Google machine, and parsed all of the puffery from just October into four distinct categories. Check DigBoston.com for the full roundup.

TIC SA KET LE S O NO N W !

CURATED BY SHEA ROSE & SIMONE SCAZZOCCHIO

Tues 11/3 7PM - (Synth)

HOWARD JONES SOLO Wed 11/4 8PM - (Synth)

BAD AND BLUE Thur 11/5 7PM

BIRDSONGS OF THE MESOZOIC Thur 11/5 10PM - (Turkish Psychedelia)

BABA ZULA

Fri 11/6 7PM - (Chicago Blues)

SUGAR RAY AND THE BLUETONES Fri 11/6 10PM - (Acoustic Rock)

ONE FINE MORNING

Introducing a new way for audiences and musicians to connect. Featuring pop, rock, and hip-hop artists performing in our sonic cube, Calderwood Hall.

LIZ LONGLEY

Featuring: MATT ROSEWOOD

Thursday, November 19

Sat 11/7 7PM - (Blues/Swing)

THE LOVE DOGS

Sat 11/7 10PM - (newcomers/jam)

YAMN AND TEDDY MIDNIGHT

Sat 11/14 7PM

Sun 11/8 8:30 PM - (comedy)

ZACH DEPUTY (JAM FUNK, SOUL)

BOSTON COMEDY FESTIVAL LENNY CLARK

17 Holland St., Davis Sq. Somerville (617) 776-2004 Directly on T Red Line at Davis

7PM CALDERWOOD HALL 25 EVANS WAY BOSTON, MA TICKETS: GARDNERMUSEUM.ORG/MUSIC/RISE THE LEAD SPONSOR OF RISE IS THE ABRAMS FOUNDATION. THE SERIES IS ALSO GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY HAL AND JODI HESS AND VALENTINE TALLAND AND NAGESH MAHANTHAPPA.

THE MUSEUM RECEIVES OPERATING SUPPORT FROM THE MASSACHUSETTS CULTURAL COUNCIL MEDIA SPONSOR: IMPROPER BOSTONIAN

NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

SWAT INC. FEATURE

The Commonwealth’s most infamous militarized police force continues to flout records law BY MAYA SHAFFER AND ANDREW QUEMERE OF THE BAY STATE EXAMINER

“There’s just a receptionist working there, and she’s afraid of them. They have a camera in her face, and they’re kind of yelling at her, and she doesn’t know what to do.”

So claimed Carlisle Police Chief John Fisher on a call to a Wilmington police dispatcher. Fisher, who is also the president of the Northeastern Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council, or NEMLEC, was reporting that a “group of bloggers” was “harassing” one of NEMLEC’s employees at its Wilmington office. In reality, the “group” Fisher was referring to was only one of us, Maya Shaffer. “Is it a possibility you could send a police officer to kind of keep the peace?” Fisher asked. NEMLEC is the largest of several Massachusetts “law enforcement councils,” or LECs, which are 501(c) (3) nonprofit corporations that coordinate regional police activity. Among other functions, NEMLEC has a SWAT team that deploys a BearCat armored vehicle and conducts forced-entry raids on homes throughout the Commonwealth. Maya, on the other hand, was only trying to politely hand-deliver several public records requests at the council’s headquarters in a nondescript office building—no forced entry, no yelling, no harassing. And no group of bloggers either. NEMLEC became infamous in 2014 after it was revealed that the council was claiming exemption from and refusing to comply with the Massachusetts public

MAYA “GROUP OF BLOGGERS” SHAFFER 10

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CARLISLE POLICE CHIEF JOHN FISHER records law, which is supposed to keep government agencies transparent by requiring them to furnish documents upon request. After battling it out in court with the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, NEMLEC publicly agreed to abide by the law. However, judging by our recent experiences, the group is off to a bad start. Consisting of 59 police departments and two sheriff’s departments in Middlesex and Essex counties, NEMLEC has a board of directors comprised of the heads of those agencies. In theory, police are allowed to form LECs so they can pool their resources and personnel during emergencies and other serious incidents that call for more resources than a single department can manage. NEMLEC’s mission statement, which was removed from its website last year in response to scrutiny by media and civil liberties groups, explains that the group was founded in the 1960s by eight police chiefs who were trying to address “disorder associated with suburban sprawl as people migrated from larger cities, the development of the interstate highway system, the civil rights movement and the growing resistance to the Vietnam War [all of which] threatened to overwhelm the serenity of the quaint, idyllic New England towns north and west of Boston.” Since those early days, NEMLEC’s mission has evolved. The “emergencies” NEMLEC now responds to include all sorts of routine aspects of police work. It operates a motorcycle unit, a cybercrimes division, and mobile crime labs, and sometimes even conducts internal affairs

investigations for departments in its membership. But the group’s most vexing feature by far is NEMLEC’s massive regional SWAT team. This SWAT team is what brought NEMLEC to the attention of the ACLU. While investigating the militarization of police in 2012, the ACLU made public records requests to five LECs. “We heard something quite remarkable in response,” said Kade Crockford, director of the Technology for Liberty Project at the ACLU of Massachusetts. “They told us that they are actually private 501(c)(3)s and therefore immune from the public records law. We filed a public records lawsuit. We asked the judge to order NEMLEC to produce the records and to hold that, in fact, NEMLEC is a public agency under the public records law.” NEMLEC initially fought to get the suit dismissed, but later reached a settlement, after which the council’s Executive Director Laura Nichols said in a statement, “At its core, NEMLEC is a public safety agency, and we hold ourselves to the highest standards of law enforcement.” The outfit’s sole employee at the time, Nichols continued: “I am proud we were able to come together on this matter, because I firmly believe that both organizations have the same desire for safety and openness.” “It’s the right thing to do,” John Fisher told the Associated Press, adding that the council hoped to hire a second part-time employee to help with record-keeping. NEMLEC also provided the records that ACLU lawyers requested, and from those documents we learned a bit about the group’s SWAT activity over the past few years. NEMLEC claims its “highly trained and well-equipped” SWAT team exists to respond to “critical incidents,” but the ACLU records showed its forces are frequently used for mundane purposes like serving search warrants in drug investigations. In one 2013 incident, NEMLEC sent a 35-person army, including 26 of its SWAT “operators,” to smash into a family home with multiple battering rams around 5 am—all so they could arrest two brothers over a few ounces of pot. After wrapping up this so-called “emergency call-out,” NEMLEC posted the address and

a picture of the residence on Twitter. On October 31 two years ago, the council dispatched an astonishing 51 people to patrol for drunken Halloween revelers and unspecified “gang related activity” in Salem, and were urged to “maintain a professional demeanor” because “everyone has a camera phone and you don’t want to be on YouTube or the news later.” As journalists and advocates for the public records law, we were pleased to see that the shroud of secrecy surrounding NEMLEC was beginning to be lifted following the ACLU settlement. But words alone aren’t good enough. We wanted to see if the Commonwealth’s biggest LEC would really follow through on its promise of a new era of openness, so we put its commitment to the test. To follow the law, agencies must make themselves available in person to members of the public who want to make public records requests. With that in mind, we visited NEMLEC’s office in Wilmington to drop off our requests—that’s when Fisher, the NEMLEC president, called the local police on us. Luckily, we brought a camera along, so the public can see NEMLEC’s transformation for themselves. What follows is a timeline of our struggle to get NEMLEC to comply with the law:

summoning the Wilmington police to stop the “group of bloggers” that was “harassing” Flaherty. After getting off the phone, Flaherty demanded that Maya leave the office, but Maya remained until she finished changing the dates and was able to submit the requests.

OFFICER PAUL KREMINSKI As Maya left, she was surprised to see that the Wilmington police had arrived. Officer Paul Krzeminski approached her car and asked if anyone was still inside the NEMLEC office. Maya explained that she was alone and that—having made her requests—she was now leaving. “Drive safe,” Krzeminski said, then radioed to his supervisor that the conversation had been “pleasant.” SEPTEMBER 8, 2015: We followed up on Maya’s September 3 visit by drafting a new records request for NEMLEC’s visitor policy. We drove back to the Wilmington office, but arrived around 12:30 pm to find the door was locked again, so we slipped the request under the door.

NEMLEC’S WELCOMING DOOR SEPTEMBER 1, 2015: We drove to NEMLEC’s headquarters in Wilmington, arriving at about 1:55 pm. The office is located on the second floor of an unassuming office building, an amusing contrast with the massive SWAT operations the agency coordinates. Unfortunately, the office door was locked. And there was no sign with contact information for its records custodian, which is required by state regulations for any agencies that do not keep regular office hours. After striking out, we left a voicemail for NEMLEC using the number on its website in order to figure out a better time to drop by.

SUSAN FLAHERTY SEPTEMBER 3, 2015: NEMLEC’s part-time assistant, Susan Flaherty, returned our call, and Maya explained that she would be turning in our requests. At around 10:30 am, Maya—and, as we said earlier, only Maya—arrived at NEMLEC’s headquarters with a camera rolling and requests in hand. Flaherty was on the phone when Maya entered. She froze, and silence filled the room. After a brief pause, she hung up the phone. Flaherty, who presumably is the part-time employee hired by NEMLEC to assist with records-keeping, conceded that she was not equipped to handle public records requests. As she put it, “I don’t know anything about [the public records law]. I don’t know any of the rules. I don’t know any of the regulations.” Still, Flaherty agreed to accept the requests, but insisted that Maya change the dates on all of them (since they were dated September 1 from our first attempt). Maya worked on changing the dates as instructed, but within minutes, Flaherty said she was calling her director, presumably Nichols. Somehow, this call led to John Fisher

SEPTEMBER 15, 2015: The Massachusetts public records law requires agencies to respond to requests within 10 days of receiving them. NEMLEC missed the deadline on our first round of requests, so we returned to follow up in person once again, and brought a fresh request for NEMLEC’s incoming and outgoing communications regarding the Bay State Examiner. We found NEMLEC’s door locked yet again when we arrived at 11:45 am, but the windows were open, and we heard someone moving around in the office through the door. We knocked several times and called out to whoever was inside, but they didn’t answer. When we exited the building, Maya briefly caught a glimpse of someone peeking out the window, presumably checking to see if we were leaving, although we didn’t catch them on video. We called the office’s phone. Whoever was inside didn’t answer. With the hope that he would intervene, we directly called NEMLEC President Fisher using the number we obtained from a recording of his September 3 call to the Wilmington police, which we obtained through a separate records request to the Wilmington Police Department. Fisher told us NEMLEC would respond to our requests later that day, but was in a hurry to get off the phone, citing a mandatory training conference. He hung up on us without addressing our concerns about being locked out of the office and the absence of a posted sign. We slipped our latest request under the door and left. Later that day, NEMLEC director Laura Nichols sent us a response by email, telling us we would need to pay more than $1,000 in fees for the records we requested. We also spoke to Fisher again in the evening, and he promised that NEMLEC would put up a sign with contact information within two days. SEPTEMBER 24, 2015: We returned to NEMLEC’s office at around 10:30 am to pay for some of the records. The door was locked, and no one was inside. Contrary to Fisher’s promise, there was still no sign. SEPTEMBER 29, 2015: We headed back to NEMLEC’s office at about 11:50 am to find it locked yet again, and there was still no sign. We called Fisher from the hallway outside the office, hoping to arrange a way for us to pay in person. Fisher suggested we mail a check or slip one under the door. We explained that we’d rather get a receipt, but he refused to help us. Over the next few days, we exchanged emails with Laura Nichols and explained to her which records we hoped to pay for. NEWS TO US

OCTOBER 15, 2015: Having heard nothing new from NEMLEC in some time, we reached out to Nichols for an update. She claimed she was working on preparing the records at that moment. OCTOBER 21, 2015: We received another email from Nichols: “I am working on completing your request by tomorrow.” We asked her when we should arrive to pick up the records, but she didn’t answer. OCTOBER 22, 2015: Despite the lack of a reply from Nichols, we returned to NEMLEC’s headquarters at around 12:20 pm to pick up our records. Once again, the door was locked and the office was empty. NEMLEC had finally put up a sign, but all it included was a phone number. Missing were the name, position, and address of the person who handles records requests, which are required by state regulations. To top it off, the number on the sign was for the landline in its routinely empty office. We called Fisher again, and he surprised us by saying that our records had already been sent to us. Nichols soon confirmed this in an email: “I mailed a package (an 8 lb box actually) to you today with documents I have been able to gather to date. 11 of the 18 items you requested have been completed.”

“AN 8 LB BOX ACTUALLY...”

Which brings us to where we are now. After nearly two months, seven in-person visits, numerous phone calls and emails, and a run-in with the Wilmington police, we finally received some of the records we requested. The box we were sent was filled with hundreds of pages of records, including contracts, emails, and more. We even got a copy of an email that Laura Nichols sent to every police chief in NEMLEC in which she made up even more nonsense about Maya’s September 3 visit. “[Maya] was very aggressive, attempted to video paperwork on Susan [Flaherty]’s desk, and insisted that we immediately provide her with records and information about our office,” Nichols claimed. We’re still waiting for more documents, since Nichols left town for a week after servicing the first round of records. Until then, we have our work cut out for us in taking the deepest look yet at an elusive police force more than half a century in the making. Stay tuned as we continue to hold NEMLEC accountable, and as we reveal more about the history and tactics of its covert operation. This is part one of a multi-part investigative series in a collaboration between the Bay State Examiner and the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism.

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

MAC ATTACK

EATS

LOUIS

The end of the line in Quincy BY MARC HURWITZ @HIDDENBOSTON

WEDNESDAYS NOVEMBER 4TH -25TH 5-11pm MAC-ANCINI

Flash Fried Mac & Cheese Croquettes | Spicy Tomato Herb Gravy

DECADENCE

Crème Fraiche | Fontina Cheese | Gemelli Pasta | Bordelaise Sauce Truffle Essence

SOUTHERN STYLE Macaroni | Cheddar Cheese | Fried Chicken | Collard Greens Corn Bread Crumble

ROASTED PUMPKIN Shell Pasta | Mascarpone Cheese |

Vermont Cheddar | Maple Cured Bacon Crispy Fried Sage

BACON BOMB

Penne Pasta | Pepper Jack Cheese | Smoked Bacon | Pork Belly Pancetta | Crackling

FARMER’S MARKET Spinach Pasta | Vermont Goat Cheese | Roasted Local Veggies

Portobello Mushroom | Foccacia Herb Crumbs

BLUE RIBBON Macaroni | Cheddar Cheese | Buttermilk Biscuit Crust

Slow Smoked Baby Back Ribs Before placing order, please inform your food server if anyone in your party has a food allergy *Consuming raw or undercooked meat/poultry/ seafood/shellfish/eggs may increase risk of food borne illness

@MAGOUNSSALOON OLDEMAGOUNSSALOON 518 Medford St Somerville

magounssaloon.com|617 - 7 76 - 2 6 0 0 12

11.4.15 - 11.11.15

DIGBOSTON.COM

With the ever-increasing influx of chain restaurants in the Boston area and beyond, it can be refreshing to find an independent dining spot that’s under the radar. There are some, of course, that are more hidden than others. Such is the case with Louis, a nearly completely unknown eating and drinking establishment in Quincy that gives the phrase “off the beaten path” new meaning. In a way, getting to Louis is half the fun: Starting at Route 3A just east of Downtown, Sea Street is initially a busy road with four lanes of traffic, but as it heads east, it drops down to two lanes right around where the spectacular ocean views begin, becomes a local road as it cuts through the heart of Hough’s Neck, and basically peters out after four miles near the dubiously named Nut Island, which isn’t really an island but is still part of the Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area. Near the end of Sea Street is a place that looks like it could be a private club, or perhaps a local dive bar, or maybe a house owned by a guy named Louis. It is none of the above, however; instead, it’s actually a laid-back restaurant and bar that’s frequented mainly by local “neckahs.” The setup here is a simple one, with a comfortable family-friendly dining area to the right and a large bar area to the left, and while the bar has its share of characters, it is welcoming to those who somehow stumble across it. Like so many other old-school neighborhood joints in the Boston area, Louis offers a varied mix of pub grub, classic American fare, and ItalianAmerican dishes. Some of the highlights here (depending on the season and what specials are offered) include a very meaty chili; chicken bites with quite a bit of bleu cheese on top; flaky fish and chips made with fresh haddock; zingy bourbon steak tips; a substantial burger that can be ordered with such toppings as chipotle, banana peppers, and BBQ sauce; a very reasonably-priced lobster casserole with house-made seafood stuffing; and a nap-inducing turkey dinner. Drinks at Louis are mostly mass-market beers and a few wine options, along with a full bar for those who may be looking to do shots or mixed drinks. Hough’s Neck is not exactly a place you drive through to get somewhere else (unless you’re looking to fish on Nut Island), so in a way, Louis is a hidden gem almost by default. It’s also about the only game in town for dining on this long and mostly unknown peninsula, which further gives a sense of discovery to those outside of the neck who happen to stumble across it. If you want a good alternative to some of the American and Italian chains out there, Louis is about as far away from those places—both literally and figuratively—as you’ll get.

“Like so many other oldschool neighborhood joints in the Boston area, Louis offers a varied mix of pub grub, classic American fare, and Italian-American dishes.”

>> LOUIS. NOW OPEN. 1269 SEA ST., QUINCY. LOUISHN.COM

Stop waiting in line for brunch Brunch served Saturday and Sunday 11 : 0 0 AM - 3 : 0 0 PM 9 2 H A M P S HIR E S T, CA M B R ID G E, M A | 6 1 7-2 5 0 - 8 4 5 4 | L O R D H O B O.C O M

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FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

ARTS ENTERTAINMENT

ANYONE CAUGHT YELLING “THIS CIDER HOUSE RULES!” AT THE BANTAM CIDER TAPROOM TASTING WILL FEEL OUR WRATH.

WED 11.04

FRI 11.06

SAT 11.07

SUN 11.08

Encourage the Voice Open Mic Nights

ImprovBoston Presents: DoubledOver

Boston Hassle Fest 7

Marjorie Liu at Comicopia

Bantam Cider Taproom Tastings!

Reggae Yoga Flow

We all need a little encouragement from time to time, and tonight Medicine Wheel is offering free encouragement to any and all patrons. Whether it be a song, a poem, or a performance, now’s the time to let it out. Maybe that’s not your thing, but if your thing is instead listening to those songs, poems, and performances, now’s the time to hear it out. Plus, with free food and drinks, what’s not to like?

Do you like comedy? Of course you do, who actively dislikes the pleasures of laughter and joy? ImprovBoston is presenting DoubledOver for one last night, so I’d seriously consider going if I were you. It’s not often that life throws us improv comedy from Boston’s very own comedians, and it’s far less often that two of them get together for a hilarity-filled night. Power, punch, pizzazz, and maybe some pizza afterwards are presenting themselves for an evening that promises laughs and genuine comedic talent.

All the way from New Jersey, Screaming Females is sending its love through Boston for a little indie rock nurture and care along with other great artists for Boston’s seventh annual Hassle Fest. The Underground Music Festival is bringing the big guns this year with the likes of Flipper, Downtown Boys, Container, Guerilla Toss, Bugs and Rats, and plenty more. If one night isn’t enough for you, go the next day, same time, same place, and check it out all over again.

Novelist and comic book writer Marjorie Liu will be headed to Comicopia in Kenmore Square to do a book signing for her latest release Monstress(Image Comics). Set in an alternate 1900s Asia, a young woman named Maika discovers she has a psychic connection with one of many powerful, otherworldly creatures that roam the earth, which puts her smack dab in the middle of a struggle between supernatural and human factions. With gorgeous artwork provided by Sana Takeda, Monstress is an early Christmas gift to your comic library. You can thank Marjorie in person.

Cider: the alcoholy, appley nectar of the gods. In many cultures, it’s considered the most November of the alcoholic catalogue. This November, join Bantam in the Willy Wonka of ciders. With the first-ever cider-dedicated tasting room, indulge in sip pints and flights of cider all made from New England apples. Gaze upon the fermentation tanks as they bring cider to life. And finally, linger at the full-service bar as you contemplate life and the wonderful choices you’ve been making.

Come on down to Pop Allston and soak up some good vibes with a reggae-inspired yoga class. Whether you’re just starting yoga or you’ve been doing it for a while, Reggae Yoga Flow will add a new burst of creativity and energy to your life. “But I don’t have a mat!” Don’t worry, there will be a mat rental service there. Now you have no excuse not to go. Give your body some well deserved R&R&R; it’s earned it.

Medicine Wheel. 110 K St., South Boston. 6-8pm/ all ages/$5 donation. allevents.in/events/ encourage-thevoice-open-micnights/410830709106718

Improv Boston. 40 Prospect St., Cambridge. 10-11:30pm/18+/$18, $14 with student ID.

Brighton Music Hall. 156 Brighton Ave., Allston. 5pm-1am/all ages/$30. bostonhasslefest.com

Comicopia. 464 Commonwealth Ave., Boston. 1-3pm/all ages/free. comicopia.com

Bantam Cider Company. 40 Merriam St., Somerville. 1-8pm/21+/FREE. bantamcider.com

Pop Allston. 89 Brighton Ave., Allston. 9:30-10:30am/ all ages/$5 donation. yogahubboston.com/ popallston

11.4.15 - 11.11.15

DIGBOSTON.COM

NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

MUSIC

AN EDUCATION

SOMETHING BORROWED Natalie Prass talks nostalgic love songs

How and why to train your ears for Hassle Fest 7

BY MARY KATE MCGRATH @MKMCGRATHS

BY NINA CORCORAN @NINA_CORCORAN Boston’s already got so much music stuffed into its nooks and crannies that a festival highlighting its underground acts seems redundant. Why draw attention to those already left in the shadows? But Hassle Fest, a three-day music festival now entering its seventh year, goes beyond simple cherry picking to foster a community, style, and sound that challenges listeners as much as it rewards them. Presented by BRAIN Arts Organization, Hassle Fest 7 brings a whopping 50 bands to the stages of Cambridge Elks Lodge, Out of the Blue Too Gallery, and Brighton Music Hall, combining local tours de force (Downtown Boys, Pile, Guerrilla Toss) with national headliners (Flipper, Screaming Females, Tyondai Braxton of Battles) for mind-bending experiences. What separates it from the likes of other local festivals is simple: At Hassle Fest, you relearn how to listen. Math rock, noise punk, and glitchy electronica don’t hit with the spoonful of sugar pop does. When you get them, though, they’re wildly more delectable. There’s a reason genres that challenge stereotypes and song structure never lose their appeal: They dart across your brain, leaving you dizzy, shaken up, and curious as to where that innovation came from. By rounding up pools of acts who put this songwriting into motion like Cloud Becomes Your Hand or Serengeti, Hassle Fest ensures three nights’ worth of music that reminds you what it’s like to hear music that blows your mind for the first time. Listening, an act that seems simple solely because of the ways in which we take it for granted, is the hardest challenge out there. When you’re at Hassle Fest, you learn how to listen. You listen to something fully and openly. You listen to a band you’ve never heard of. Then you listen to another band that’s new to you, over and over, and don’t fall into the comforts of knowing an act’s music inside and out. For an hour or two, you both hear and fall in love with new songs at the same time, and it’s a colorful swirl of sonic space that pays itself off in the end. Considering its inclusive approach to music organization beyond the festival, this creativity makes sense. The music blog Boston Hassle—which, in case the name didn’t make it clear, throws this whole shindig—fosters an innovative, compelling, and interconnected experience through grassroots and inclusive participatory culture. That means running off volunteers only. That means putting passion at the forefront. That means getting all-ages access to music normally presented in 21+ spaces. Thursday’s show at Cambridge Elks Lodge is all ages, as is the show immediately following it at Out of the Blue Too Gallery.

Both Brighton Music Hall shows on Friday and Saturday are all ages until 11:30 pm, when those under 18 have to leave. In a city slammed with curfews and restrictions, Hassle Fest’s ability to work out a deal speaks to its priorities and persistence. At the first Hassle Fest I ever went to, I knew about five bands on the bill. Looking back on that, I can’t help but shudder. What was I doing that left me unaware of the fruitfulness of our own musical backyard? It was a lineup stacked with Boston greats and niche touring acts who delight live. To think I almost missed half of them because I thought I wouldn’t miss anything “big” if I showed up late—probably to sleep in, refresh Facebook a dozen times too many, and read a few chapters in whatever book I was reading that, really, could wait. It’s the local festival that smashed my preconceptions regarding the negative connotations that come with the label “local” and the stiff upper lip I thought the music scene had. When you come to Hassle Fest, you come to learn. It isn’t just the musicians who are the teachers, though. You step up to the plate to teach yourself how to readjust your mentality, no matter how open-minded or liberal you think you are to begin with.

>> BOSTON HASSLE FEST 7. THU 11.5 - SAT 11.7. BRIGHTON MUSIC HALL, 158 BRIGHTON AVE., ALLSTON. 2PM/ALL AGES/$75. BOSTONHASSLE.COM

MUSIC EVENTS WED 11.4

THU 11.5

FRI 11.6 + SAT 11.7

SAT 11.7

[Great Scott, 1222 Comm. Ave., Allston. 9pm/18+/$15. greatscottboston.com]

[The Sinclair, 52 Church St., Cambridge. 8pm/18+/$15. sinclaircambridge.com]

[Brighton Music Hall, 158 Brighton Ave., Allston. 6pm/all ages/$30. crossroadspresents.com]

CIVIL TWILIGHT + KNOX HAMILTON

INDIE-POP PARTY RA RA RIOT + BENT SHAPES

11.4.15 - 11.11.15

SYNTH DANCE PARTY DALE EARNHARDT JR. JR. + BROTHER TIGER

DIGBOSTON.COM

THE UNDERGROUND CELEBRATION BOSTON HASSLE FEST

SLEEPY FOLK

[Great Scott, 1222 Comm. Ave., Allston. 9pm/21+/$13. greatscottboston.com]

Natalie Prass is missing her old Nashville apartment. It had peach-painted walls and was covered in inspiring cutouts, making it equal parts cozy and creative. Though she has been trying to be more minimalist in her life, there was definitely a comfort in the apartment’s clutter. She hopes her new Richmond home will someday have that same sparkle—but in the meantime, her music already does on this year’s self-titled full-length. Romance has helped her find this special quality, filling her songs with the perfect dose of sentimentality. Falling both in and out of it inspires her, but it is the feeling of heartbreak that truly unlocks her best songwriting. “I think it’s easier to write when you’re kind of in a place of sadness and longing,” Prass tells me over the phone. “That feeling when you’re at your lowest point, you want to kind of do whatever you can to get out of it, you know?” The instrumentation on the album has a romantic feel to it as well, featuring sweeping orchestral arrangements that took a great deal of studio time to record. The recording process forced her to be persistent. Nashville, with its slightly competitive culture and opportunity for collaboration, helped Prass find the right mindset to create the album. Co-writing allowed her to stop being so hard on herself about lyrics, which she tends to beat herself up about the most. Song structure and melody, on the other hand, come naturally, as this is what draws Prass to music in the first place. “When I listen to music, I don’t listen to the lyrics right away; I listen to the groove,” Prass says. “I listen to the melody, how it makes me feel, and then I start to digest what is actually being said.” As for the future of her work, Prass has simple but concrete hopes. She aspires to the same kind of long and productive career as someone like Carole King, one of her heroes. Prass is on the right track, showing an unrelenting need to keep making and sharing music since she was very young. “As soon as I kind of doubted myself, and was at rock bottom, and was like maybe I’m not a musician after all, right before I got hired for Jenny’s band, I got the call. Something happened in the universe,” Prass says. “As soon as you think you’re done, just push yourself a little bit further and see what happens.”

>> NATALIE PRASS + LOAMLANDS. SUN 11.8. THE SINCLAIR, 52 CHURCH ST., CAMBRIDGE. 7PM/18+/$15. SINCLAIRCAMBRIDGE.COM

SUN 11.8

NOSTALGIA PUNK BEN KATZMAN’S DEGREASER + PUPPY PROBLEMS

[Great Scott, 1222 Comm. Ave., Allston. 9pm/18+/$10. greatscottboston.com]

SUN 11.8

ROMANTIC RAMBLES NATALIE PRASS + LOAMLANDS

[The Sinclair, 52 Church St., Cambridge. 7pm/18+/$15. sinclaircambridge.com]

261 MAIN ST., WORCESTER, MA

JUST ANNOUNCED!

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 10

THU 11/5 - BOWERY PRESENTS:

RAURY

SUNDAY, MAY 8

INDIA SHAWN FRI 11/6 - SECRET SESSIONS PRESENTS:

AVA I L A B L E N O W AT

MAX CREEK

THIS SATURDAY! NOVEMBER 7

RED ROOM

OTIS GROVE, MOTHER TON SAT 11/7

GOVINDA

MON 11/9 - LEEDZ PRESENTS:

NOV. 12 @ CAFE 939

B O YA N D B E A R . C O M

SOLD OUT

WIN 2 TICKETS TO THE SOLD OUT SHOW! TO ENTER VISIT bit.ly/BandBBos

MICHAEL CHRISTMAS

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 14

TUE 11/10 - LEEDZ PRESENTS

DEVIN THE DUDE

THU 11/5 REVOLUTION BREWING PRESENTS:

THE DAZIES NEUTRINOS - FREE 21+ FRI 11/6

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 28

DAN & THE WILDFIRE SAT 11/7, 1PM

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 18

THE BUNNY THE BEAR

SUN 11/8 - LEEDZ PRESENTS

MURS

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 19 11/8 11/8 11/19 11/19 11/20 11/20 11/21 11/21 11/29 11/29

TEXAS TEXAS IN IN JULY JULY II THE THE BREATHER BREATHER GHOSTOWN GHOSTOWN THE THE FACELESS FACELESS DANCE DANCE GAVIN GAVIN DANCE DANCE

KING FANTASTIC MON 11/9

PINKISH BLACK TUE 11/10

ROAM

All shows, All ages. Tickets available in person at the Palladium Box Office, FYE Music and Video Stores, online at Ticketfly.com or by phone at 877-987-6487.

www.thepalladium.net NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

HYPNOTIZING.”

“

FILM

A LOT OF BUZZ

– Tim Grierson, PASTE

“Pushes

the envelope .”

– Ramin Setoodeh, VARIETY

Alice Rohrwacher’s festival favorite finally opens in Boston BY JAKE MULLIGAN @_JAKEMULLIGAN

STARTS FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 6

SOMERVILLE WEST NEWTON FEI Somerville Theatre West Newton Cinema (617) 625-5700 (617) 964-6060 CHECK DIRECTORIES FOR SHOWTIMES • NO PASSES ACCEPTED

“A POWERFUL, IMPORTANT, TIMELY FILM.” REVISE 1 Scott Mantz, Access Hollywood

DIGBOSTON WED 11/4 1 COL. (2.18") X 4"

ALL.LOV-R1.1104.BWD

“RIVETING AND INSPIRED!” Rex Reed, New York Observer

The first shot is of car headlights passing through the darkness. There are no streetlights here to illuminate the drivers, no kids with cell phones on the side of the street, no televisions offering their glow through neighborhood windows. We’re in rural Italy—the border between Umbria and Tuscany, to be exact—on farmland that’s being used to produce honey. And we seem to be a few decades behind 2015, although the film doesn’t tell us exactly what year we’re in. For director Alice Rohrwacher, those headlights may as well be spotlights. And the cars serve a purpose as well. In literal terms, they’re carrying hunters in search of game. But they carry us into this strange environment, too. That’s how far away we live from these people. It’s like we need to be ferried into the movie itself. The people we spend the next 110 minutes with are the 14-year-old Gelsomina, her mother Angelica, her three sisters (Marinella, Luna, Caterina), Coco, and Wolfgang. Which is also to say that the one man in the household is outnumbered six to one. One of the first times we see him, he’s sleeping alone on an undersized couch in his briefs. Rohrwacher doesn’t indulge this family with modesty edits; she leaves those unglamorous moments in. Marinella, who’s the second-oldest of the siblings—Gelsomina is her elder, Luna and Caterina her little sisters—is first found rushing to the toilet, for example. The family, awakened from their slumber, gathers around her while she defecates. “I think we need a door here,” one of them caustically jokes, while pointing to the empty doorframe that leads to their bathroom. The filmmaker seems to disagree. You can’t point a spotlight through a closed door. Rohrwacher, whose own life history matches up with this setup in a number of superficial ways, has gone to great lengths to stress that this is not an autobiographical film. Whether it is or isn’t is of little matter. But the reason that the topic keeps coming up is because The Wonders—which was shot on 16mm by Helene Louvart, and edited by Marco Spoletini—has the structural shape of a A LOT OF BUZZ continued on pg. 20

FILM EVENTS FRI 11.6

THE GREAT AMERICAN MOVIE GOODFELLAS ARTWORK © 2015 FOCUS FEATURES LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. MOTION PICTURE © 2015 PATHE PRODUCTIONS LIMITED, CHANNEL FOUR TELEVISION CORPORATION AND THE BRITISH FILM INSTITUTE LIMITED. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

www.SuffragetteTheMovie.com

NOW PLAYING IN THEATERS EVERYWHERE CHECK LOCAL LISTINGS FOR THEATER LOCATIONS AND SHOWTIMES

digboston.com DIGBOSTON

WED 11/4

2 COL. (4.62") X 6"

ALL.SFR.1104.BWD

/weeklydig 18

11.4.15 - 11.11.15

@digboston DIGBOSTON.COM

@digstagram

[Brattle Theatre. 40 Brattle St., Harvard Sq., Cambridge. 5 and 8pm/R/$9-11. Also screens Sun 11.8 and Mon 11.9—see brattlefilm.org for showtimes.]

COOLIDGE AFTER MIDNIGHT PRESENTS TROMEO AND JULIET

[Coolidge Corner Theatre. 290 Harvard St., Brookline. Midnight/R/$11.25. 35mm. Also screens Sat 11.7. coolidge.org]

SAT 11.7

DIRECTOR THOM ANDERSEN PRESENTS THE THOUGHTS THAT ONCE WE HAD

[Harvard Film Archive. 24 Quincy St., Harvard Sq., Cambridge. 7pm/NR/$12. hcl.harvard.edu/hfa] MON 11.9

IT’S STILL A TRIP FANTASIA

[Coolidge Corner Theatre. 290 Harvard St., Brookline. 7pm/G/$11.25. coolidge.org]

GEORGE A ROMERO’S MARTIN

[Harvard Film Archive. 24 Quincy St., Harvard Sq., Cambridge. 7pm/R/$7-9. 35mm. hcl. harvard.edu/hfa]

TUE 11.10

PRESENTED BY DIRECTOR GERALD PEARY ARCHIE’S BETTY

[Brattle Theatre. 40 Brattle St., Harvard Sq., Cambridge. 7:30pm/ NR/$10-12. brattlefilm. org]

Boston’s Best Irish Pub

512 Mass. Ave. Central Sq. Cambridge, MA 617-576-6260 phoenixlandingbar.com

WEDNESDAYS GEEKS WHO DRINK Free Trivia Pub Quiz from 7:30PM - 9:30PM

MONDAYS

RE:SET WEDNESDAYS

MAKKA MONDAY 14+yrs every Monday night, Bringing Roots, Reggae & Dancehall Tunes 21+, 10PM - 1AM

Weekly Dance Party, House, Disco, Techno, Local & International DJ’s 19+, 10PM - 1AM

THURSDAYS

FRIDAYS

SATURDAYS

ELEMENTS

PRETTY YOUNG THING

BOOM BOOM ROOM

15+ Years of Resident Drum & Bass Bringing some of the worlds biggest DnB DJ’s to Cambridge 19+, 10PM - 2AM

80’s Old School & Top 40 Dance hits 21+, 10PM - 2AM

80’s, 90’s, 00’s One Hit Wonders 21+, 10PM - 2AM

THE BEST ENTERTAINMENT IN CAMBRIDGE 7 DAYS A WEEK!

1/2 PRICED APPS DAILY 5 - 7PM RUGBY WORLD CUP SHOWN LIVE, STARTING ON SEPTEMBER 17TH WATCH EVERY SOCCER GAME! VOTED BOSTON’S BEST SOCCER BAR ENGLISH PREMIER LEAGUE

Saturdays & Sundays Every Game shown live in HD on 12 Massive TVs. We Show All European Soccer including Champions League, Europa League, German, French, Italian & Spanish Leagues. CHECK OUT ALL PHOENIX LANDING NIGHTLY EVENTS AT:

WWW.PHOENIXLANDINGBAR.COM

starts friday, NOVEMBEr 6 NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

CHECK LOCaL ListiNGs fOr tHEatErs aNd sHOWtiMEs

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

ONE OF THE BEST DOCUMENTARIES OF 2015

“UNEXPECTEDLY INTIMATE AND EMOTIONALLY-CHARGED.” – Zach Schonfeld, NEWSWEEK

A COLIN

HANKS FILM Featuring DAVE GROHL, ELTON JOHN and BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN

THE DOORS ARE CLOSED. BUT THE LEGACY LIVES ON. #TowerRecordsDoc TowerRecordsMovie.com

STARTS FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 6 4.625" X 3.5"

BOSTON DIG DUE MON 12PM (PT)

CAMBRIDGE LANDMARK KENDALL SQUARE CINEMA One Kendall Square (617) 621-1202

WED 11/04

INVITE YOU AND A GUEST TO AN ADVANCE SCREENING WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 4TH AT

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AMC BOSTON COMMON ART AT APPROVED 6:30PM

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AE APPROVED CLIENT APPROVED Please visit www.sonyscreenings.com/ Bond617 to download your complimentary passes! PLEASE NOTE: Passes are limited and will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis while supplies last. Limit one pass per person. Seating is not guaranteed. No purchase necessary. MGM Studios, Columbia Pictures, The Dig Boston and their affiliates accept no responsibility or liability in connection with any loss or accident incurred in connection with use of this ticket. This screening will be monitored for unauthorized recording. This film has been rated PG-13 for intense sequences of actions and violence, some disturbing images, sensuality and language.

IN THEATERS NOVEMBER 6

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A LOT OF BUZZ continued from pg. 18 young girl’s diary. We watch from beside Gelsomina, the “head of the household” per Coco, as she quietly passes through the sort of events that typically make up adolescent female-focused bildungsromans. She’s bullied and repressed by a father threatened by her intelligence. She meets and develops an attraction for a boy her age. She’s infused with anxiety and stress by the possibility that the family business is going under. She bonds with her little sister, and then worries that she’s not grown up enough. She yearns for a life in the big city, all while wearing worry on her face for the people she’ll leave behind. All that adolescent angst might make The Wonders sound like the kind of movie that’s more like a music video: These are all beats we’ve heard before. But it’s rare to hear them played this quietly. Rohrwacher is indebted to the reserved neorealists of her country’s past, and to the low-budget, handheld filmmaking movement that has carried that tradition on in recent years. That’s to say that she’s after a lyrically reserved tone that grants a sense of nobility—perhaps even cosmic importance—to this family. Her main technique is omission. The movie keeps your brain turning by redacting all that isn’t within the frame. All that we know about this family is what we witness in their present tense. The parents seem to be aging leftists still living closer to consumerist society than they’d like, but their low economic position may have been entirely involuntary, too. Coco may be the girl’s aunt—but she may just as well have been a former threesome partner for Angelica and Wolfgang. And the boy that Gelsomina begins to look at, a German-speaking juvenile delinquent named Martin, doesn’t speak a word of dialogue. He’s been taken in for the state funds that come with him, and to get another male hand into the work rotation. He doesn’t like to be touched; he doesn’t like to be spoken to. He only likes to whistle. Maybe that’s because he’s antisocial, or maybe that’s because he’s mute. The family doesn’t know—so we don’t know either. He may even be a ghost. That whistle may be the wind. And strangely enough, that’s not a joke. Oneiric instances continue to intrude on the picture, as if Rohrwacher is working to bend reality’s shape. The diary-style structure allows for a succession of symbolically loaded moments. There’s the unsurprising ones, like two sisters retreating from the family to sing a duet. But there’s also a series of increasingly odd visions that mix in with the otherwise pedestrian compositions. A woman dressed like a mermaid-princess stationed in a rural cave. That’s Monica Bellucci, playing the host of a game show. Gelsomina has roped the family into competing, given that their landlords are threatening foreclosure. Bellucci’s character speaks into the camera, saying that whatever family best illustrates Etruscan traditions “will win a bag of money,” blissfully exposing the exploitive nature of her mission. And it plays like an unconscious slip. Then there’s Martin, standing like a statue, entirely detached from the action—seemingly aware that this family, with their outdated practices and their narrowing options, are nothing but walking spectres, just like he is. And all that’s closer to the language of dreams than it is to realism. But then, when transposed to the big screen, all those different worlds can look the same. And this is one of those cases. Rohrwacher shoots in what you might call “film festival chic.” She allows her actors to roam her sets while the handheld camera chases them, reorienting the compositions of her long takes as they occur. The upside is the immediacy of the performances. The downside is the generic nature of the images themselves. There’s a moment of violence here, and it’ll take you a short while to realize what has happened. Maybe that’s part of the “omission” thing. But it’s also because Rohrwacher is on the other side of the room, watching another character, and has no other angle to cut to. This is the strange brand of cinema that can take us halfway across the world, and shine light on a shrouded people—but doesn’t have the time, money, or interest to properly frame the actions that it’s documenting. Maybe it’s an act of privilege to cast a formalist aspersion on a movie like this. Certainly it’s social subtexts are knotty enough to be worth untying: Caught up in its sequences are gender relations, family relations, international relations, intergenerational relations, reality television, GMOs, the unsustainable nature of lower-class living, the psychosexual confusion of female adolescence, and the dangerously seductive visage of Monica Belluci. Rohrwacher has more thematic ideas than she knows what to do with, and that’s a true pleasure. But the traditional framing of it all fights off the filmmaker’s most daring ideas—the ripples of the unconscious that bubble up above the social considerations—until they retreat back into the recesses of memory. The cinema is a spotlight that you dance under. And The Wonders only watches from the wall.

“All that adolescent angst might make The Wonders sound like the kind of movie that’s more like a music video: These are all beats we’ve heard before. But it’s rare to hear them played this quietly.”

>> THE WONDERS. UNRATED. OPENS AT KENDALL SQUARE CINEMA ON FRI 11.6. 20

11.4.15 - 11.11.15

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ARTS

KATORI HALL

Rewriting the narrative and making history BY CHRISTOPHER EHLERS @_CHRISEHLERS

As the Lyric Stage Company opens up its production of Saturday Night/Sunday Morning, playwright Katori Hall talks about her unconventional journey, Memphis as her muse, and making history as the first black woman to win an Olivier Award for Best Play for The Mountaintop—before even turning 30. The Mountaintop was a hit on Broadway with Angela Bassett and Samuel L Jackson, and dozens of productions are now popping up worldwide. Saturday Night/Sunday Morning is a hysterically funny, achingly beautiful play about a group of women in a Memphis beauty parlor/boarding house during the final days of World War II. They are unsure about what their futures hold or if their men will make it back, but along the way they forge new relationships and discover new things about themselves. Your path to playwriting wasn’t very conventional. How did you go from studying African American studies and journalism (at Columbia) to acting (at Harvard) to playwriting (at Juilliard)? What were those transitions like? African American studies was preparing me for this particular career, I just didn’t know it then. But then, you know, I ended up catching the acting bug. I was taking acting classes and kind of coming up against this very frustrating reality where my teacher told us to go to the library and find a play that had a scene for you and your scene partner’s type. I happened to be partnered with another young black woman, so you have these two young black women going to the library and we were just unable to find a play that had a scene for us. And that’s when I decided that I was going to write the play. I have to write plays where there’s just a wall of women on stage, and it doesn’t matter the time period or where they are; I just always wanted to tell the particular experience of being a young black Southern women. Saturday Night/Sunday Morning really exemplifies that mission statement. You said you were going to do it, and you not only do it, but you make history. How does that make you feel? You know what, it was kind of surreal. I didn’t think much of it! And I know that sounds crazy, but for me, the accolades have been an opportunity to achieve two goals: of writing roles for men and women of color and also bringing in an audience that do not look like the traditional theatergoing audience.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen or heard a story about what black people were experiencing as a result of World War II. Was World War II always the setting? Definitely. If I’m writing about something, I want to write something that I want to learn more about. To really linger on the last months of it, I thought was just a really interesting, dramatic parenthesis, because it took people time to come home. They really had to take care of themselves. Absolutely. But they’re forced to become a sisterhood because all the men are gone. Not only did this happen to black women, it also happened to white women. Like you said: Who has done that? When has that story been told? That’s the problem with history and the narrative: People can be erased. Whole experiences can be erased if someone doesn’t write them down. >> SATURDAY NIGHT/SUNDAY MORNING. RUNS THROUGH 11.21 AT THE LYRIC STAGE COMPANY, 140 CLARENDON ST., BOSTON. FOR MORE INFORMATION, VISIT WWW.LYRICSTAGE.COM

PRODUCTION PHOTO BY GLENN PERRY | KATORI HALL PHOTO BY XANTHE ELBRICK

Would you say that Memphis is your muse? Oh, definitely! I find that it’s very hard to see an authentic Southern experience, and the opportunity that I get to tell these really amazing, complex stories about a city that I think has been extremely misunderstood—it’s just an honor.

NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

SAVAGE LOVE

SEXLESS MARRIAGES

WHAT'S FOR BREAKFAST BY PATT KELLEY WHATS4BREAKFAST.COM

The Last Word

BY DAN SAVAGE @FAKEDANSAVAGE | MAIL@SAVAGELOVE.NET DEAR READERS: Two weeks ago, I announced I would be taking a nice long break from questions about miserable sexless marriages. (I don’t get questions about happily sexless marriages.) I tossed out my standard line of advice to those who’ve exhausted medical, psychological, and situational fixes (“Do what you need to do to stay married and stay sane”), and I moved on to other relationship problems. Readers impacted by sexless marriages—men and women on “both sides of the bed”—wrote in to share their experiences and insights. I’ve decided to let them have the last word on the subject. Since you don’t want to give any more advice to readers stuck in sexually unfulfilling marriages they can’t or don’t want to end, will you allow me to give a little advice from the perspective of the other woman, i.e., the person who makes it possible for them to “stay married and stay sane”? I contacted an old flame when my marriage ended. He was married. His wife refused to have sex with him but also expected him to stay faithful to her. Their kids were still in school. He honestly believed that staying together was the best thing for the kids. I went into it thinking it was going to be a fling, a temporary thing to get me over my husband and back in the game. But the sex was mind-blowingly good. And here’s the thing about amazing sex: It bonds people. We fell in love all over again. He told me our affair made his sexless marriage bearable. He was happier and a more patient father, he bickered less with his wife. He made me feel beautiful, desirable, known, and accepted—all feelings that had been lacking in my marriage. But I was in the shadows. Every assignation was a risk. I couldn’t introduce him to my friends, my son, or my family. After four years, I couldn’t take it anymore. My ego was shredded. So I ended it. I was tired of the fear, lying and hiding, and being secondary. My advice to readers stuck in sexless marriages who cheat to “stay sane”: Beware of unintended consequences. You can have an affair with the most discreet, careful partner who accepts your circumstances, who makes no demands, who provides you with both a warm body to fuck and the passion that has drained out of your marriage. You can be careful not to get caught. It might be incredible for a while. But the chances of nothing going wrong and of everyone remaining happy over the long term are vanishingly small. It’s a matter of time before someone gets hurt. Ruby Tuesday On the Lovecast, Dan Savage and guests get baked in our pot-themed Denver live show! Listen at savagelovecast.com. THE STRANGERER BY PAT FALCO ILLFALCO.COM

11.4.15 - 11.11.15

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THE PORTLAND

CANNABIS

CONVENTION presented by NEW ENGLAND CANNABIS NETWORK

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SATURDAY

Nov. 7th: noon-6pm

SUNDAY

60+ vendors

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Nov. 8th: 11am-5pm Industry programming & live demos USM Sullivan Rec Center, Portland $15/day or $25 for a two-day pass

Buy Tickets at: NECANN.com

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