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EMERSON STAFFERS STEP UP PLUS: SERVICE INDUSTRY SETS STANDARDS
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APR 12, 2018 - APR 19, 2018 BUSINESS PUBLISHER Marc Sneider ASSOCIATE PUBLISHERS Chris Faraone John Loftus Jason Pramas SALES MANAGER Marc Sneider FOR ADVERTISING INFORMATION sales@digboston.com BUSINESS MANAGER John Loftus
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ON THE COVER Kuresse Bolds is an illustration major at Lesley University College of Art and Design working in editorial, concept art, and character design, as well as comic books. You can see his work at the Lesley BFA Illustration Exhibition in the college’s Roberts Gallery on Thurs., April 12 from 5 to 7pm. ©2018 DIGBOSTON IS PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY DIG MEDIA GROUP INC. NO PART OF THIS PUBLICATION CAN BE REPRODUCED WITHOUT WRITTEN CONSENT. DIG MEDIA GROUP INC. 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.
THE HIGHEST FORM OF FLATTERY
Dear Reader, I don’t only complain about our stories getting stolen out of conceit and contempt for large news organizations. Sure, I think our work is excellent, and cutting edge, and of course I loathe the gutless Boston Globe. But the primary reason that I speak up is to remind people that not all journalists write the first draft of history, as the old media adage goes; rather, critical topics and stories are typically dredged up in the first place by the grassroots and community reporters who comb streets and city halls around the state. In the past two weeks alone, the Dig has been excited to see several stories that we first dug into, in some cases with help from the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism, that have since been picked up by the larger mainstream media. There were international headlines about a judge, in a seemingly unprecedented move, ruling that the actions of people arrested for protesting the West Roxbury Lateral Pipeline were necessary; we covered that story at length in 2015, back when few others would touch it. We were also pleased to see an article about the move to close a loophole in Mass law that could potentially protect police officers who sexually assault perps, though it would have been nice if the Globe gave us credit for identifying said loophole in the first place. Furthermore, there are stories like those about Big City, an unlicensed Roxbury and Dorchester radio station that was recently shuttered, yet again, by the Federal Communications Commission Enforcement Bureau; those looking for background on that front will find our 2016 feature, “Too Legit To Quit,” in which Basim Usmani profiled the talented and dedicated community activists behind the frequency. And of course, it has been great to watch all the attention media of all kinds has paid to one Michael C. Doherty, the Boston cop who was recently found guilty of assaulting an Uber driver and more. Here’s an excerpt from our original 2015 story: With the car stopped at E 2nd and M Street, the report says “the suspect began hitting the victim.” The Uber driver said he then removed his seatbelt and exited the vehicle, only for the suspect to begin “chasing the victim around the motor vehicle.” Once outside the stolen taxi, the suspect “approached both the victim and the male assisting and stated to the black male ‘[What] do you want you fucking nigger’ and began swinging at both parties.” I’m not just bragging about scoops here. I bring up these examples because in some cases, such as with Uber cop, whose crime the Boston Police Department attempted to hide before someone leaked us the incident report, this stuff may have never been reported in the first place. In other cases, like with the natural gas mess in West Roxbury, we went in and wrote that historical first draft that bigger outlets can reference and build on. If you want us to be able to continue doing that, keep reading and sharing DigBoston pieces, and please consider supporting independent journalism at givetobinj.org.
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IMAGES VIA MASS STATE POLICE ‘IN-SERVICE CIVIL DISTURBANCE TRAINING’ MANUAL
POINT OF POWER
NEWS TO US
State police training included “hateful, terrifying” slide shaming protester BY SETH KERSHNER
Newly released public records raise serious questions about a state police “civil disturbance” training given to local law enforcement. A PowerPoint presentation released under the public records law includes slides depicting troopers assaulting a defenseless antiwar demonstrator, as well as a photoshopped image that ridiculed the body shape of a female Black Lives Matter protester. Although state police officials were not sure how many times the presentation was used during trainings, it was delivered as recently as October 2016 to a group of local law enforcement by Commander Robert Leverone and Trooper Charles Luise. At the time of the training, both were assigned to the Public Order Platoon, a state police unit responsible for quelling riots and civil disturbances. For manning barricades and training others to do the same, both received generous compensation packages. According to a MassLive database, Leverone earned $179,408 in 2016 while Luise hauled in a little over $140,000. In their introduction, Leverone and Luise state that the purpose of the training is to “review concepts, policies and tactics of civil unrest response, and prepare officers for the eventuality of deployment to such events.” The presentation begins on a nostalgic note, with slides showing “riot duty” through the ages: the 1973 Walpole prison uprising, UMass clashes from the 2000s, and other incidents. One slide shows a collage of photos of the state police during the April 1970 Harvard Square Riot. In several pictures, a male protester is seen cowering, hands interlaced behind his head. Truncheon-wielding troopers loom over him. News outlets at the time reported that more than 300 people were injured in the melee, which began as a protest against US involvement in the Vietnam War. In an email, state police spokesman Dave Procopio acknowledged that the photo “may show a trooper about to kick a protestor” and stated: “If that in fact was the 4
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action that followed, that was an inappropriate and unnecessary use of force.” Procopio went on to note that the photograph was more than 40 years old before adding: “We do not, in the current day and age, train troopers to utilize any such striking or kicking techniques against a non-combative person. Such action,” he continued, “would clearly not be tolerated today and the officer would be investigated and disciplined.” The presentation also highlights state police action at more recent disturbances. There is a photo of what appears to be a topless protester from a 2003 demonstration with the United States Marine Corps logo digitally pasted over her chest, while special attention appears to have been paid to the way police broke up the January 2015 blockade of I-93 by Black Lives Matter protesters. Passive resistance by demonstrators, many of whom formed a human chain across the busy highway by locking themselves together and to buckets of concrete, resulted in a major traffic jam and 29 arrests. Getting a slide of its own is a photograph of one protester, Nicole Sullivan, digitally altered to show her arm locked to a bucket of fried chicken. A Google image search quickly revealed that the original picture was snapped by the Massachusetts State Police Media Relations team and showed Sullivan and another protester with their arms locked to a concrete container. In a statement, Procopio maintained that state police personnel “did not create that image through any type of photo editing software or any other means. It is our understanding that the altered photo has existed on the Internet—source/creator unknown to us—for some time.” But the state police’s mea culpa rings hollow for Kade Crockford of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts. “Protest is a fundamental right in the United States, protected by the First Amendment,” said Crockford, who directs the ACLU’s Technology for Liberty program. That the training module, Crockford added, included “what appears to be a fat-shaming joke about
a Black Lives Matter protester is offensive and suggests officers don’t take freedom of speech seriously.” State police spokesman Procopio confirmed that in response to this investigation, the doctored image of Sullivan will be “immediately removed from the PowerPoint.” “The altered image is unprofessional and inappropriate,” he wrote in an email, and its inclusion in the training was “not reflective of the values of the Department of State Police.” For her part, Sullivan—a longtime activist in Greater Boston—said she was disappointed but “not surprised” to learn of her cameo role in the police training. Sullivan says she received threatening messages for weeks after the I-93 blockade, a harassment campaign she feels the state police could have done more to stop. “For them to use a hateful meme of me in what is supposedly training material is just terrifying,” Sullivan wrote. “It shows just how openly they condone harassment campaigns against anti-racist protesters.” A records access officer with the state police initially claimed to have found no evidence that the training ever took place. However, training records released by the Springfield police department indicated that Sgt. Matthew Benoit, a member of the department’s SWAT team, attended the civil disturbance training in October 2016. Subsequent public records requests filed with Springfield uncovered the state police PowerPoint. In 2016, the group Investigative Reporters and Editors awarded the Massachusetts State Police its annual Golden Padlock Award, recognizing the most secretive government agency in the United States. This article was written in collaboration with the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. If you would like to see more reporting like this, please consider supporting independent media at givetobinj.org.
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MADISON PERKS
Long-struggling vocational school provides new opps
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Two trade unions in Boston have partnered with Madison Park Technical Vocational High School to offer a pathway to apprenticeship and an associate degree for students studying carpentry, the culinary arts, television broadcasting, or any of the other 16 trade programs offered. The program, funded through a donation of $125,000 by International Painters Union (IUPAT) DC 35 and the Painters and Glaziers Employers Association of New England, has allowed Madison Park’s curriculum to add a certified pre-apprenticeship program that will enable students to walk into union membership after their graduation. “It’s the first real partnership that we have with the industry,” said Perino Watson, who teaches building and property maintenance at Madison Park. “That investment couldn’t just be transactional,” IUPAT Communications Director John Doherty added. “We could have gone in, handed over a check, and that would have disappeared into the Boston Public School system and we would have no effect. It had to be more of a transformational relationship where we have personal relationships to the people there.” Dig Boston.indd Teachers at Madison Park will instruct based on the curriculums offered in traditional apprenticeship courses. As well, students will attend field trips to job sites and have opportunities for real-world experience in community projects. By graduation, students are expected to have the skill sets of first-year apprentices and will be able to dive into their second-year apprenticeships. For students like Janice Williams, a senior studying in Watson’s shop and who will be joining IUPAT after graduation, the union will also allow members to work toward their associate degree, as IUPAT is now recognized as an accredited school. “If someone were to go to Madison Park, take our course for three years, and come to us for two years, they now have five years of education in a trade that pays $75 an hour with no college debt,” Doherty said. Bringing more of Boston’s youth into unions, meanwhile, will help supply a more localized workforce for contractors to hire. “The main thing [is] giving them a workforce that they don’t have to go to the employment agency to look for,” Watson said. According to Doherty, many graduates from Madison Park were not working on job sites in the city as a result of both private industry winning construction bids and a lack of communication between unions and the school in order to bring graduates into local unions. . “Most unions don’t have a communications director, somebody that’s making sure those partnerships come down the line, making sure that what we have to offer is getting into the neighborhoods [such as Dorchester, Roxbury and Mattapan],” Doherty said. “That’s not to say that we don’t have members in those areas, but one thing that comes up all the time is that if projects in the city are going union, they’re not going to people that live in the city.” “This ties into the whole conversation we’re having in the country right now,” Doherty added. “You have people pushing the fact that we have a skilled labor shortage and yet don’t invest in vocational schools.” The school’s executive director, Kevin McCaskill, emphasized the impact that a school like Madison Park can have on diversifying unions. “When you talk about the neighborhoods of Roxbury, Mattapan, and Dorchester, you talk primarily about students who are young people of color,” McCaskill said. “All it takes is access and opportunity so these students can really get gainful employment right in industry and fulfill some of their personal and family dreams and aspirations.” An increase in women union members would also be possible through Madison Park’s new opportunities, Watson added. “I think a lot of young women don’t realize the potential that they have in the city of Boston,” Watson, a member of IUPAT, said. “There’s so much work here, and the workforce is minimally women. Now they know they can come here and get the percentage raised.”
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AIRLINES SUING, UMASS SCREWING TOWNIE
Corporate attack on workers rights and a corporate-style attack on UMB by UMA BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS If there’s one thing I think people should do every day, it’s read the business press. Because that’s where you see how the world runs. A world that naturally includes Massachusetts.
Airlines sue Mass over sick time law Case in point, Airlines for America—a coalition that includes JetBlue Airways, United Airlines, American Airlines, and several other carriers, according to the Boston Globe business section—sued Mass Attorney General Maura Healey last week over a 2015 law that guarantees sick leave to many Bay State workers. Including airline employees. “Now surely,” you’re all doubtless thinking, “an industry that wouldn’t exist were it not for decades of massive government subsidies couldn’t possibly consider doing anything that might hurt its workers by attacking a government program that helps them.” But no, the airlines are totally doing that. It’s what big corporations always do to their workers. Along with endless union busting. According to the Mass.gov Earned Sick Time page, the law states that most workers “in Massachusetts have the right to earn and use up to 40 hours of job-protected sick time per year to take care of themselves and certain family members. Workers must earn at least one hour of earned sick leave for every 30 hours worked.” It further states that employers “with 11 or more employees must provide paid sick time. Employers with fewer than 11 employees must provide earned sick time, but it does not need to be paid.” Employers can “ask for a doctor’s note or other documentation only in limited circumstances.” The airlines are basically trying to argue—in the fashion of sadly deceased comic Phil Hartman in the role of Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer—that the Mass sick time law “frightens and confuses” them. And that with all the billions of dollars they either gouge out of travelers or simply have the federal government hand them whenever they cry poverty, they can’t possibly figure out how to sync up all their various state, national, and international sick time laws they’ve already handled for decades with the Commonwealth’s more decent law. Despite, you know, computers. Bottom line, they want an exemption from the law to make slightly bigger profits and escape regulation, and they’re suing Healey to get their way. Claiming it’s unconstitutional and shouldn’t apply to airlines. The same thing they did in Washington State in February, according to the Seattle Times. The AG should have fun with this one. But readers can give her a hand by calling up the airlines and their
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front group and telling them to stop attacking the Commonwealth’s sick leave program.
EXTRA: The killers of Palestinian journalist Yaser Murtaja must be brought to justice
UMass Boston suffers more cuts while UMass Amherst buys Mount Ida College
Typically, I mainly focus on Bay State issues in this column. But I’ll make an exception this time and stand with my colleagues at the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and their affiliate the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate (PJS) to protest the killing of Palestinian photojournalist Yaser Murtaja by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in the strongest possible terms, and to demand that his killers be brought to justice. I encourage all working journalists and editors to do the same. Murtaja was shot Friday by an IDF sniper near the border of the Gaza Strip and Israel, according to the Guardian. He had been covering one of an ongoing series of Palestinian protests demanding their right of return from Gaza to their families’ ancestral homes in Israel— from which they were driven in the 1947–1948 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine and the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. He was wearing a flak jacket clearly marked “PRESS” in English in huge block letters. According to the press rights group Reporters Without Borders, he was 31, the father of a young son, and one of the founders of the independent news agency Ain Media (“Eye Media”). Based in the Gaza Strip, Murtaja was never able to travel anywhere else even once. Largely because of the difficulties created by the longstanding Israeli military blockade of the territory. The IDF has promised to investigate the killing and the wounding of four other Palestinian journalists the same day, according to the Intercept. Regardless, calls are rising from the global human rights community to charge Israel with war crimes over the use of live ammunition on the “Great Return March” demonstrations. Starting with the 15 unarmed protesters killed and hundreds wounded by IDF snipers at a March 30 border rally of 50,000 Gazans. Followed by nine more killed—including Murtaja—and hundreds more wounded at last Friday’s action, according to Haaretz. Plus more deaths and woundings at other border demonstrations. Fatou Bensouda, prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, issued a statement on Sunday saying the court is considering opening an investigation into both the Israeli actions and the possible use of Gaza civilians as “human shields” by Hamas’ military brigades. The Gaza border demonstrations are expected to continue until May 15—known as Nakba Day (Day of the Catastrophe) to the Palestinians, the commemoration of the ethnic cleansing of their land that took place before and after the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948. According to the IFJ, “In a statement, the PJS confirmed that they will pursue action against Murtaja’s murderers in the international forums and courts and that they will intensify their efforts to bring the murderers of Palestinian journalists to international justice. The PJS also called on the UN and all its bodies’ to act immediately and to implement its decisions, specifically the [UN] Security Council’s decision no. 2222, and to take concrete steps to provide immediate protection to Palestinian journalists on the ground.” For up-to-date information on the campaigns to hold Israel accountable on this and related matters, check out the websites of the International Federation of Journalists, Reporters Without Borders, and the Committee to Protect Journalists.
A couple of related developments in the UMass system over the last several days. First, UMass Amherst is buying the private Mount Ida College in Newton for $37 million, according to WBUR. It plans to use the campus as a base for Boston-area internships and co-ops for its students. The school will also assume Mount Ida’s debt of up to $70 million. The situation is widely viewed as an unfortunate attack on UMass Boston turf by the more “elite,” better-funded, and melanin-challenged UMass Amherst. With UMB faculty, staff, and students; higher ed experts; and the editorial boards of publications from the Boston Globe to the Lowell Sun asking why it’s necessary for UMA to spend big money on a separate suburban campus to connect its students to Boston. Especially given that there’s already the perfectly good but woefully underfunded UMass Boston campus in the city itself. Which could certainly use an injection of tens of millions of dollars from any source of late. Speaking of which, second, UMass Boston is slashing the budget of 17 of its research centers by $1.5 million, including the famed veteran-focused William Joiner Institute for the Study of War and Social Consequences, as part of its attempt to get out from under the $30 million in mostly new construction-related deficit it’s been saddled with by a state government that insists on running its colleges like individual businesses. Rather than branches of a single statewide public service. It’s worth mentioning, as I do on a regular basis, that we need to move the state and nation to the kind of fully public higher education system that many other countries have. Which spends sufficient tax money to guarantee every US resident a K-20 education. And tells private schools like Harvard that they can only remain private if they stop taking public money. That’s the only way we’re going to stop this kind of spectacle. Where two parts of the same state public university system—one, Amherst, that primarily serves middle-class white suburban students, and one, Boston, that primarily serves working-class urban students of color—work at cross-purposes to one another. Amherst with a larger budget, and Boston with a smaller one. Separate and unequal. For the moment, readers can help out by joining me in signing the petition to save the William Joiner Institute at change.org. And those so inclined can protest the Mount Ida College sale to UMass Amherst at the Board of Higher Education meeting on April 24. But I think critical calls and emails to UMass President Marty Meehan will likely be most effective. You can find his contact page on the massachusetts. edu website.
Townie (a worm’s eye view of the Mass power structure) is syndicated by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Jason Pramas is BINJ’s network director, and executive editor and associate publisher of DigBoston. Copyright 2018 Jason Pramas. Licensed for use by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism and media outlets in its network.
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Emerson College has been my professional home for over a decade. I curate and direct the Bright Lights Film Series, a free public exhibition program screening more than 50 films an academic year for in excess of 4,000 attendees annually. I love my job and I know how valuable my work is to the students, faculty, staff, alumni, and Boston community. The screenings and discussions I host focus not only on the form— aesthetics and production values—but also on the content of films, providing a muchneeded opportunity to discuss critical issues like racial inequity, sexual assault, climate change, gun violence, and queer liberation in a communal setting. I have made my career promoting the stories of women through the Fifty Percent Female Initiative, screening at least 50 percent films by female filmmakers. I speak at film festivals and conferences on programming for gender parity, encouraging women into leadership roles in all areas of the film world. Yet, in the six years I have been directing this film series, I have been denied a director title and a salary commensurate with my male colleagues. I have tried to advocate on my behalf for many years to little effect. Things at Emerson are not the same as they were 18 months ago. We overwhelmingly voted in a union for staff and have been bargaining with the college for our first contract. Collective bargaining has shown how widespread such issues are: On average, women at Emerson earn 91 cents for every man’s dollar. Emerson’s workforce is 60 percent female, yet among the 15 employees in the highest pay grade, all but three are men. The lowest pay grade is 80 percent women. Emerson has an opportunity to lead on issues of gender equity through a good first contract. Unfortunately, the administration is insisting on a compensation plan that still includes merit pay as a significant portion of possible raises, doled out at the discretion of a supervisor. But the facts show that we do not live in a meritocracy at Emerson. Women are held back or not given opportunities to advance. Just like almost every other American workplace, we are stuck in a system that, at best, undervalues women and, at worst, creates an environment of abuse and assault. The #MeToo movement tries to make clear what many have long said—it is not easy to be a woman in the workplace. While it’s crucial to address instances of sexual misconduct, we need to look at the larger structures of gender inequality that make many workplace environments ripe for abuse. When we routinely devalue the work of women (by failing to promote them into positions of power, failing to pay them commensurate with their male colleagues, and failing to provide adequate maternity leave and child care) we contribute to a climate where inequality is allowed to flourish. Emerson is comprised of thoughtful, caring individuals who believe in social justice (so much so that we have an office dedicated to its pursuit). With the support of students, faculty, and alumni, we have the opportunity to set an example in the national conversation about work inequality, if we can do more than pay lip service to fairness and egalitarian values, and finally settle our first collective bargaining agreement. Ed. note: Just as we were about to print Feder’s letter, the following came in via email from SEIU Local 888 with the subject line “Emerson staff accuse management of making unilateral changes to their jobs and working conditions. Unfair Labor Practice charges filed with Labor Board.”: BOSTON - After 18 months of bargaining for a first contract, representatives of the Emerson Staff Union have filed unfair labor practice charges against Emerson College. The charges filed with the National Labor Relations Board included complaints that the college’s representatives have failed to bargain in good faith by making unilateral changes to employees’ jobs and working conditions. Charges were also filed for violations of members’ federally protected rights to engage in collective, concerted activity to improve their wages and working conditions.
A EULOGY FOR GRATUITIES AS WAGES TERMS OF SERVICE
It’s time to curb service industry harassment by ending dependence on tipping BY HALEY HAMILTON @SAUCYLIT
I don’t know how you got into those pants, but I’d love to try to get ’em off you. I like you, you’re sassy. I bet you’re great in the sack. So what else can you do with those hands? This isn’t a roundup of things random men have said to me on the street. This is a small sampling of things I’ve had said to me in bars. While I was working. Workplace sexual harassment is having a national moment: #MeToo has spread like wildfire through Hollywood, and the movement has, finally, come to the restaurant industry, where perhaps it’s needed most. Restaurants have the highest reported rates of workplace sexual harassment out of any industry in the country, and, thanks to #MeToo, we have seen the resignation or “stepping away from” of several prominent chefs who, while busy building a culinary empire and a small fortune, were severely mistreating the women in their restaurants. But that’s only half the story. Sexual harassment in restaurants takes place on multiple fronts: 66 percent of restaurant workers of all genders have reported harassment from management, 78 percent have been harassed by guests, and 80 percent have experienced harassment from their coworkers. But, as the Restaurant Opportunity Center (ROC) demonstrated at the end of March with the #MeToo in the Restaurant Industry panel discussion held at the State House, the state has a chance to fix this. How? By getting rid of the tipped minimum wage. “We’re about to hit 13 million workers in the restaurant industry,” Saru Jayaraman, founder of ROC, said. “That is one in 11 workers in the country, and one in 11 workers in the state of Massachusetts. “Yet the hospitality industry continues to have the
lowest-paying jobs in the country and in this state.” As a bartender, I make $3.75 an hour, a wage that goes entirely to taxes. I am, therefore, fully financially dependent on tips from guests. And while tipping is deeply ingrained in the social contract of what drinking in a bar or dining out entails, nobody has to tip: Just ask any server who’s had zero dollars left for them because a table’s food took longer than expected, or a bartender who’s been stiffed because they cut someone off. Or any woman working in a restaurant who refused to give a guest her phone number. Who, instead of smiling and nodding at the comments a man at her table made about her body, pointed out that his behavior is inappropriate. When speaking up for yourself or maintaining professional boundaries hurts your bottom line, guess what? You stop speaking up. “Depending on tips gives every man in the restaurant incredible power over women,” Jayaraman said. “The customer has power over her, because he needs to be pleased for her to walk home with any money. The manager has power over her because he sets her schedule and her shifts. And the kitchen staff has power over her; they know she relies on them to get the meal to please her table, all in order to get what she needs to please the customer to get the tip, all because we have allowed an industry not to pay its own workers,” she said. This isn’t a synopsis of the next dystopian-futurebased Netflix show, this is what one in 11 working people, a large majority of them women, face every day in Massachusetts because they depend on someone other than their employer to pay their wages. “I’ve been asked to dance on the bar, wear impractical footwear, I was encouraged to flirt,” said Andrea Pentabona of a former employer. Now general manager of food and beverage at the soon-to-open Comedy Studio in Union Square, Pentabona organized February’s service industry V-Day events and performance, part of a global
activist movement fighting to end violence against women and girls. Continuing about a former gig, Pentabona added, “As I’m sure you can imagine, none of my male coworkers were asked to do that.” It goes deeper: “Servers who complained about similar unfair practices were never seen again,” Pentabona said. “And so I turned my head and kept my mouth shut when sexist, uncomfortable things would happen.” One in two Americans have worked in a restaurant at some point in their lives, and the hospitality industry is where many young people find their first job. “This is the industry that inculcates us into the world of work, that teaches us what is normal, acceptable, legal, ethical; this is how we are told what is harassment,” said Jayaraman of the Restaurant Opportunity Center. The restaurant industry, in other words, sets the standard for the rest of the economy. And right now that standard silences the voices of the most financially vulnerable. “As tipped workers, we are pawns in an extraordinary power dynamic,” said Marie Billiel, a server and ROC member. “Without a proper wage to depend on, we can’t break free of this system. We’re upholding a system that allows businesses to not pay their workers.” Currently seven states—Alaska, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, California, Montana, and Minnesota—have eliminated the tipped minimum wage, and New York will become the eighth this fall. States without a tipped minimum wage, who pay all employees at least the state minimum wage, have higher restaurant sales, higher rates of job growth, and higher tip averages. And their industry rates of workplace sexual harassment are, according to ROC data, half of those in states where workers depend entirely on tips. In short: When you pay people who work in restaurants, things improve for everyone in the industry. “It’s not impossible,” said Katrina Jazayeri, co-owner of Somerville’s Juliet, which does not have a tipped service staff. “When we set out to open a restaurant, we said everyone will be paid above minimum wage. … Because we want to create a workspace and work environment with dignity for everyone. And that’s impossible if you force a subset of your staff to work for their money from their guests. “I think a number of businesses and restaurants will adopt this voluntarily, but we need a mandate. This is too important of an issue to rely on everybody having good judgment.” And Massachusetts, we are so close to getting that mandate. Bill S.1004, which would eliminate the tipped minimum wage in Mass, is set to be heard in the state legislature in May. Write your representatives. Talk to your friends and coworkers. Stay tuned for updates on this bill’s progress. Everyone is entitled to a harassment-free work environment. No one should have to choose between feeling safe and paying their rent. Time is up.
>> JOIN THE BOSTON AREA RAPE CRISIS CENTER (BARCC) IN ITS WALK FOR CHANGE ON SUN, APRIL 22. MORE INFO AT BARCCWALK.ORG. NEWS TO US
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TALKING JOINTS MEMO
KNOW THE REGS
Handy checklists and requirements, oh my BY DIG STAFF @DIGBOSTON
This product contains zero THC
First of all, we want to acknowledge the hardworking people at the Cannabis Control Commission. We had such a positive response to our first two Know the Regs columns, and especially the last one outlining the equity provisions written into the Mass recreational law to help certain populations get a leg up on the application process, that we wanted to make sure people realized that, in the task of writing these installments, we are essentially middlemen. The information we’re providing can mostly be found right in the regulations and tangential documents compiled by the CCC; we suggest that people check them out in full, whether you are going for a license or not, but in the meantime we are here to parse and dice the regs like strains among so many jars, and to occasionally add context where it’s needed. Speaking of the dutiful commission, anyone who’s even thinking about applying for a license should print out the extremely handy “Application Checklist,” available at mass-cannabis-control.com, as well as the guidance for licensure as a marijuana establishment. In broad terms, the latter breaks down the three packets you will need to submit in order to obtain any of the licenses—cultivator, microbusiness, craft cooperative, independent testing lab, research facility, retailer, product manufacturer, transporter: Packet 1: Application of Intent. Asks things like “Who is the marijuanaestablishment applicant?” “How is the business organized?” “How will the Marijuana Establishment be funded?” Packet 2: Background Check. Which includes but is not limited to “a description of any criminal action, whether felony or misdemeanor, that resulted in a conviction, guilty plea, plea of nolo contendere or admission of sufficient facts, in any jurisdiction, Massachusetts or otherwise.” Packet 3: Management and Operations Profile. Which “is intended to provide the Commission with a snapshot of the applicants’ approach to operating the Marijuana Establishment.” Sound excruciating? Perhaps, but don’t even bother applying if you’re afraid of compliance. We will comb through the innumerable rules of cannabis biz upkeep in the coming weeks, but at this point just consider a few of the state’s “General Operational Requirements for Marijuana Establishments”: Be prepared to have extensive “Written Operating Procedures [including] but not limited to … Security measures … Employee security policies, including personal safety and crime prevention techniques … A description of the Marijuana Establishment’s hours of operation and after-hours … Description of the various strains of marijuana to be cultivated, processed or sold … A staffing plan … Emergency procedures … You will also need “alcohol, smoke, and drug-free workplace policies … ” As well as “policies and procedures to prevent the diversion of marijuana to individuals younger than 21 years old.” And the fun is just beginning… As of Tuesday, 619 user accounts have been created in the CCC’s online application system, with 448 applications started. If you want to see the commission in action, whether to commend commissioners, state grievances, or get your questions answered, its next open meeting is Tuesday, April 17, at 10:30 am in the Mass Gaming Commission Public Meeting Room at 101 Federal St in Boston.
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SHOW AND TELL ARTS EXTRA
Dig illustration prodigies have senior exhibition BY DIG STAFF @DIGBOSTON
We have been blessed with countless awesome interns through the years, including many who have gone on to work at such esteemed places as the New York Times and Esquire, among other outlets that pay way more than DigBoston. This current semester, we have been especially fortunate to have two extremely talented illustrators from Lesley University on our team. On that note, thanks to Kuresse Bolds and the mononymous Murray, who have illustrated some of the sweetest covers in recent Dig memory. We asked them to share a little bit about themselves, and their senior show in Cambridge this week, with readers. What is the focus of your illustration studies? And how has that evolved in your time at Lesley? M: My illustration and studies focus a lot on narratives. I came into Lesley wanting to really just do tattoos and botanical illustrations, but it’s evolved a lot more to include my writing, and telling stories through image, along with maintaining some of those roots in scientific illustration and communicating the information there. KB: Very fantasy driven. Over the course of my time at Lesley, my art has kept consistent with that genre but evolved more into my own established style. I’ve obtained this by incorporating people of color for a sense of visibility and relatability to the viewers. We as artists always use other art for inspiration. But looking at my work from freshman year, it is so evident now that my work was copying from this show, or that manga/anime, etc. What will you be showing? Of all the stuff that you have worked on, why have you chosen these to represent you as an artist? M: I’m showing a series of five animated GIFs and a 44-page comic, both exploring the narrative of a short story I wrote in two different ways. I think as a small collection, it showcases a lot of my practice: my writing, my more involved illustrations, and my comics. It happens to use some surreal and scientific aspects too, which is always a bonus. DIGBOSTON.COM 02.15.18 - 02.22.18
KB: Three pieces from my series The Visible Invisible. [They] represent me as an artist because my identity of being black is so important to me. These pieces focus on adding black representation into multiple facets of life that usually exclude us. For me, work like this is empowering and validating. If you wind up staying in Boston after graduation, what is your ideal job? Besides head illustrator for DigBoston, of course. M: My ideal job would be to actually do comics and series-based illustration, mostly rooted in science with some fiction and weird content. I think that science has a lot to offer us, and I’d be honored to help people share that information, and make it easy and beautiful for other people to see and indulge in. Science really is beautiful, and it has a really special place in this world that I think is overlooked just because of what it is. KB: If I stay in Boston, my ideal job would be an editorial illustrator, character designer, and concept artist for gaming companies, and comic illustrator for Image Comics. Check out the Spring 2018 Illustration Senior Show at the Roberts Gallery at Lesley University April 11-15, with a reception on April 12 from 5 to 7pm. “The BFA Illustration Exhibition presents the achievements of our graduating illustrators from the College of Art and Design.”.
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COVER: COMEDY
CLASS CLOWNS MEET THE TEACHERS WHO MOONLIGHT AS COMEDIANS
EATS
CHILI SQUARE IT’S RIB TO BE SPARE
TRIVIA
GEEK BOWL A CHANCE TO GET REVENGE ON PHILLY
DIGBOSTON.COM 02.08.18 - 02.15.18
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A DIG V-DAY SPECIAL
THE ‘WE PUT A LOTTA LOVE INTO THIS’ ISSUE
CHOCOLATE TOURS | VDAY AGAINST VIOLENCE | DYKE NIGHT TURNS 20 | JAZZ FOR THAT AZZ
ILLUSTRATIONS BY MURRAY
ILLUSTRATIONS BY KURESSE BOLDS
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FIRST LOOK: OLD HAVANA, JP EATS
| RESTAURANT | INTIMATE CONCERT VENUE | | URBAN WINERY | PRIVATE EVENT SPACE |
From chicken soup to empanadas, a miracle under the radar BY MARC HURWITZ @HIDDENBOSTON
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in the haymarket lounge in the haymarket lounge
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Usually, “first looks” that are done here are of new (or newish) restaurants in and around Boston, but sometimes a dining spot is so little-known that it almost feels like it must have recently opened even though it has been around for awhile. And such is the case with the Old Havana, a four-year-old Cuban eatery that was recently discovered and is one of those restaurants that might leave you kicking yourself, saying, “Why didn’t I know about this spot earlier?” If you’ve never heard of the place, welcome to the club, because even media people and industry folks don’t really seem to have heard of it. The Old Havana resides in a homey-looking space on Centre Street that was once home to Tacos El Charro, a marvelous spot for Mexican fare that had been around for 30 years or so. Many in the Boston area may be familiar with Centre Street, as the lower section of this road cuts through a bustling part of JP with a number of very popular restaurants, but the section of road around Hyde Square is equally busy but less known to people outside of the neighborhood, with both the restaurants and shops reflecting the close-knit Latino community, which includes people of Cuban heritage—and is reflected in the dining spots such as this one, as well as El Oriental de Cuba and Miami Restaurant. Much like its predecessor, the Old Havana has a warm and inviting atmosphere, with two rooms of dining that include both high-tops and regular tables, mirrors along the walls that make the space seem larger than it is, televisions that are tuned to Spanish-speaking programs, and a fascinating old RCA Victor system in the middle of the place that has a record player, TV, and radio. The bathroom here, by the way, conjures up visions of Strip T’s in Watertown, where you walk down a staircase, wind through a basement area, then walk back up a bit to a “throne room” where, if you’re tall, you will definitely need to watch your head. The Old Havana tends to lean more toward cheap eats and street food than upscale fare, with such options as chicken soup, cod fritters, beef patties, empanadas, an avocado salad, steak and tuna sandwiches, a grilled chicken breast stuffed with shrimp, shredded beef in Creole sauce, fried pork chops, deep-fried whole red snapper, and seafood paella. A few items of note that were recently tried at the restaurant include round slices of garlic bread that are placed on the table at the start of the meal; savory omelet chunks with potatoes, onions, and ham; a slightly sweet, smoky, and spicy Spanish sausage; elongated ham croquettes that are deep-fried and have a thick breaded coating; crispy plantain chips that have a mild flavor and fried plantains, which are probably less healthy but have more of a meaty and juicy taste to them; a classic Cuban sandwich with ham, tender roasted pork, cheese, pickles, and mustard all stuffed into freshly made Cuban bread; a wonderful version of arroz con pollo with rice, olives (which are mixed into the rice), peas, slices of red pepper, and a good helping of bone-in chicken; and for dessert, a plate of churros with the fried strips of dough covered in cinnamon sugar. The Old Havana does not serve alcohol, but some of the drinks offered are very fine, including a rich-tasting mango smoothie and a milder mamey smoothie that has a unusual mix of flavors, bringing to mind everything from watermelon to sweet potatoes to even a bit of pumpkin. (Mamey is a tropical fruit found in Cuba and elsewhere in the region.) Initial impressions of the Old Havana are quite positive overall, with many more dishes to try there in future visits. How it got this far under the radar is anyone’s guess, but perhaps it is the space itself, because Tacos El Charro was also a real hidden gem back in the day. Cuban food in general is a cuisine that is often overlooked by diners, but it shouldn’t be, as it reflects exactly what simple comfort food should be all about, and the Old Havana seems to do it about as well as anyone in the region. >> THE OLD HAVANA. 349 CENTRE ST., JAMAICA PLAIN.
PAX EAST: MUSIC TO OUR 8-BIT EARS MUSIC
Explore the audio underbelly of Boston’s massive video game con BY NINA CORCORAN @NINA_CORCORAN
Coffee Crisis Out April 2018
Boston Convention Center was bursting with life, human and digital, this past weekend. Once again, the video game and tabletop game convention took over the entire building for four days of nonstop gaming, panels, and tournaments. Hidden in the sea of fans and beyond the surface images on each screen, PAX East also doubles as a convention of video game music. Sometimes it’s hard to hear. Most games let their music blend in with the overbearing hubbub of the event. Others opt for headphones, which give individual gamers the immersive listening experience but deny passersby the chance to get to know that element of the game. So we stepped in to do some investigating. Presented below are some of the best games we played at PAX East and how their music components helped elevate the gameplay. A handful of these games are available to purchase. Others won’t go public until later this year. But no matter which tickles your fancy, it’s guaranteed to have music worth listening to. 0°N 0°W Out now Some games are best left to first impressions, and 0°N 0°W is one of them. A remarkably immersive, dark, and hypnotic first-person exploration game deals in the surreal. As you wander strange dimensions like a desert town at dusk or a vibrantly neon house, you get the same type of claustrophobia and open-endedness that you would exploring these places in real life. Yet that only makes you want to play longer. The game’s dependence on sensory themes ropes you in. Each level, be it the ’60s pastel swirls of a blurred painting or the tech zigzags in a Matrix look-alike, alternates between sounds that complement the experience to make you forget you’re sitting at a screen. It’s available now for PC and Mac via Steam. Haunted: Halloween ’86 (The Curse Of Possum Hollow) Out now One of our favorite vintage video game developers returned to PAX East this year with a sequel. After garnering a small but adoring cult following around NES cartridge game Haunted: Halloween ’85, the folks at Retrotainment created Haunted: Halloween ’86 (The Curse Of Possum Hollow). Built specifically for the NES, this game sees you tackle zombies, skeletons, and mutant sea creatures while trying to save the town. True to form, the game follows 8-bit design and sound, with songs that eventually weasel their way into your head like any good modern chiptune song will. It’s available now for NES, PC, and Mac via Steam.
You need energy to last for the original multiplayer arcade version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, so the creators behind this similarly styled game decided to bring the caffeine to you. The fine folks at Mega Cat Studios created another vintage game, this time for Sega Genesis. In the arcade-style beat ’em up, you lean into coffee shop cliches hard, and it’s delightfully gaudy and comical because of it. Featuring real Pittsburgh locations, the game sees you use seven powerups to take on endless aliens and their eight bosses before they steal your free wifi, heavy metal, and coffee. True to the characters, you tackle foes while 12 professional metal tracks blare through the speakers. It fucking rules. Coffee Crisis is available now for Sega Genesis, PC, and Mac.
pitched synth, and digital strings. It’s a perfect pairing of visuals and sound. It will be available for PS4, Xbox One, PC, Mac, and eventually the Nintendo Switch. Genesis Noir Out Winter 2018 It’s hard to wrap your head around Genesis Noir because it goes far deeper than a human mind could ever dream of. Inspired by writers Italo Calvino and William Blake, this noir point-and-click adventure uses crisp white lines in a perpetually dark, starry night sky to try to stop the Big Bang. How it happened? Well, a fragment of shrapnel hurls toward the fragile heart of a god, your love, and you would do anything to stop it from hurting her. Honestly, it’s hard to describe the abstract universe (even the game’s on-site team struggled to summarize it in person), but the music should make the gameplay obvious. Tugging on influences like Sun Ra and other experimental jazz artists, it explores the smoky sound of horns, warm upright bass, and the sultry questions that come from undiscovered love. It’s scheduled for release later this year on PC and Mac via Steam.
Tori Out April 2018
The Stillness of the Wind Out Winter 2018
Nelly Furtado was first to claim an anthropomorphic alter ego with “I’m Like a Bird,” but now it’s your turn to be a bird… and your story doesn’t have to be as lonesome. In the minimalist point-and-click game Tori, you take the form of a small red bird soaring through the Japanese islands of Otokai, all of which float in the clouds. As you fly through various circular checkpoints, Spyro-style, you unlock various sounds and instruments of traditional Japanese music. That means every floating spirit lets you add things like lute and koto to the overall mix of soothing, wind-like music. It’s a peaceful game that’s perfect for a comedown after a long stressful day. Tori will be available via Steam for PC and Mac.
If you found the Sims to be too fast-paced, then The Stillness of the Wind is the game for you. The minimalist, sleepy point and click follows Talma, a lone and aging woman, as she takes care of her homestead in an abandoned village. You maintain her simple life by tending to goats, making cheese from the cows’ milk, and growing vegetables. The game’s hook, however, comes via increasingly disturbing letters from her family who, like everyone else in the village, left years ago for the city. Tied together by soothing ambient music reminiscent of Brian Eno, the game lets you revel in the simple yet demanding tasks of everyday life on a farm. It’s scheduled for release later this year on Steam.
Just Shapes & Beats Out May 2018
Mugsters Out Winter 2018
Though its title is meant to be straightforward and, to some degree is, Just Shapes & Beats is both simpler and more complicated than its title suggests. In-your-face 8-bit electronica pulses at the heart of the game and prompts various obstacles to swirl, rise, and swing in correspondence with the beat, pitch, and damage. While it sounds simple because it kind of is, the game quickly turns into a gripping affair, where a crowd gathers round to watch multiple people try to survive various songs. As the songs pick up their pace, so do the objects you have to dodge, making it impossible to pause—not like you would want to. It’s out soon on Steam and Nintendo Switch. Shape of the World Out Spring 2018 Does the thought of going on a relaxing walk to nowhere with no physical or digital map stress you out? Thankfully, there’s a game where you can do just that without having anxiety about making your way back home. In the aesthetically pleasing exploration game Shape of the World, you immerse yourself in a rich, soothing, and colorful world that grows around you. Your presence is the driving force behind a rapidly growing planet, where turning a corner prompts trees to grow and rocks to jolt out of the soil. Like famously chill games Journey or Flower, it removes the quest element of adventure games and lets you explore calmly. There to help is a peaceful soundtrack of tapping percussion, high-
Not every clean-cut game comes with clean-cut outcomes. In Mugsters, you make a whole lot of mess from a sharp-looking world. The action puzzle game centers around planes, cars, and aliens. In it, you’re called upon to solve puzzles, take out the aliens, and rescue survivors from a series of increasingly difficult islands—as a solo mission or with a friend for some co-op action. The music in Mugsters adds a subtle but mesmerizing hook, where quietly pulsing synths let you zone in without realizing how much time has passed. It should be available for PC, Xbox One, PS4, and the Nintendo Switch later this year. Isometric Epilepsy Out Winter 2018 Straightforward titles were the theme at PAX this year, and none was more literal than Isometric Epilepsy. In the rhythm-based 3D platformer, you play as a cube trying to roll your way out of various puzzles. As giant pillars rise up or the ground swooshes sideways, all in beat with the music, you’re forced to memorize patterns to beat each level’s riddles. If you don’t keep in time with the music, you die. The whole game flashes through a vibrant color scheme that mirrors the music. By trying to memorize the songs (and, hopefully, dance while doing so), you wind up associating various moves and directional choices in tandem with it. Unfortunately, the game won’t be out for a while, but when it does you can find it on Steam for PC and Mac.
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NO JOY WHEEL OF TUNES
The reluctant shoegaze band talks goth weddings, cats, and the Montreal Canadiens BY NINA CORCORAN @NINA_CORCORAN Jasamine White-Gluz for a round of Wheel of Tunes, a series where we ask musicians questions inspired by their song titles. With the band’s recent string of EPs—Drool Sucker, Creep, and No Joy / Sonic Boom—as the prompt, White-Gluz’s answers reflect various periods of her life, which will come to life when the band plays the Sinclair this Wednesday. 1. “A Thorn in Garland’s Side” Are you a fan of Judy Garland? Yes! When we were driving through Kansas once, we stopped at a truck stop that had a huge cutout of Dorothy. I kept taking selfies of it and sending them to my mom. It’s one of our favorite movies! I’m looking forward to the Renee Zellweger biopic on Judy Garland, too. 2. “XO (Adam’s Getting Married)” When was the last time you went to a nontraditional wedding?
PHOTO COURTESY OF NO JOY
Ever since forming in 2009, No Joy have been pigeonholed as a Canadian shoegaze band. While there’s nothing wrong with the tag, it began to feel restricting—so much so that frontwoman Jasamine White-Gluz wanted to break free from it. Back in 2016, the group decided to ditch the album cycle formalities and release a trilogy of stylistically differing EPs. The first came in the form of Drool Sucker; their 2016 EP stayed within the noise pop descriptor but was recorded live, mirroring the band’s jagged performances. Their 2017 EP, Creep, was tracked “in the box” of White-Gluz’s apartment, where the band could try different recording methods as they pleased. Then came No Joy / Sonic Boom, this year’s electronic EP that saw White-Gluz team up with Spacemen 3 member Pete Kember, aka Sonic Boom, to distance herself from guitars. All three releases saw No Joy twisting their sound, and the band was pleased with it by practice alone. “The idea to diverge with three EPs had to do with the album cycle and the industry process: There’s hoops, weird stress, and sometimes the record sits there for months while you’re waiting throughout all of that,” explains White-Gluz. “I had a lot of ideas I wanted to do but didn’t know if we could commit to touring for two years around them. So I figured EPs were a way to make small musical notes without making a major statement. I like them all differently, too, because they signify different bits of change and various years of my life.” To catch up on the last three years, we interviewed
Some friends of mine got married on Halloween last year. It was like a goth wedding. There was a fire in the forest, and the music they were playing was the Crows soundtrack. It was really fun. Once in a while, random people in Halloween costumes would wander by and join. At one point, a guy in an inflatable sumo wrestler suit randomly hung out. The day before the wedding, it was costumethemed at the events. My boyfriend and I went as Moby and Gwen Stefani from the “South Side” video, but really bad. Nobody really got it. The actual ceremony had everybody just wearing whatever they wanted, though. 3. “Theme Song” If you had a theme song that would play whenever you accomplished something, what would it be? Oh my goodness. This is a fun one. The song that comes to mind is “Fix You” by Coldplay, because that’s the theme song for the Montreal Canadiens. When they win, that plays. It’s not really a party song, but it feels like one now
because of that. So let’s go with any Coldplay song! 4. “Califone” What are two pieces of audio equipment—for making music or listening to music—that are on your ultimate wish list? Oooooh! I would still love a Fender Bass VI, which is a baritone guitar, but it’s super expensive. I bought a shitty knockoff of it, and it’s definitely not as nice. Someday! I guess Robert Smith uses one, and they sound so good. So someday, I hope to be able to afford that. I don’t know how many colors they have, but I would get a traditional sunburst wood one. They’re just so nice. Whenever we go to Chicago Music Exchange, they always have a bunch there and I play with them. And for the other item, I should probably get nice speakers. I don’t really have any. When I try to listen to my records, it’s always in my car or on really shitty headphones. 5. “Hellhole” Where was the worst AirBnB you ever slept in? You know, we’ve had pretty good luck with AirBnBs. But hotels have been not so good. I’m trying to think of the worst one, because there’s definitely been hotels where it was paid for but we decided to leave anyway and go elsewhere. I’ve stayed at friends’ houses where they let us crash but then invite like 200 friends to have a party. We just want to sleep! The worst experience I can remember is when we drove across the country and were in a place like Lansing. By the time we got there, it was 4 o’clock in the morning but everybody was outside of their rooms, the windows were open, and you could see people making things. They were all doing some sort of construction in their rooms. It felt like a weird zombieland, so we decided to bail. When you have gear in your car, you don’t want to be around that. 6. “Tearing Apart the Dark” Which environment do you thrive in: daytime or nighttime? Daytime between 11 am and 2 pm in the afternoon. That’s when I get all of my stuff done, go to the gym, and am most effective. I’m usually good at night, but now I go to bed when it’s 10 o’clock. So late morning to early afternoon is my peak. Everything else is a possible but not ideal option. FIND THE REST OF THE TRACKS FROM NINA'S PIECE AT DIGBOSTON.COM
>>BATHS, NO JOY, SASAMI. WED 4.18. THE SINCLAIR, 52 CHURCH ST., CAMBRIDGE. 8PM/18+/$18. SINCLAIRCAMBRIDGE.COM
MUSIC EVENTS THU 04.12
CHICAGO RAP CARES SABA + JOSEPH CHILLIAMS + LATRELL JAMES + MFNMELO
[Brighton Music Hall, 158 Brighton Ave., Allston. 7pm/all ages/$15. crossroadspresents.com]
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THU 04.12
MON 04.16
MON 04.16
TUE 04.17
WED 04.18
[Great Scott, 1222 Comm. Ave., Allston. 8:30pm/18+/$12. greatscottboston.com]]
[The Sinclair, 52 Church St., Cambridge. 7pm/18+/$22. sinclaircambridge.com]
[Royale, 279 Tremont St., Boston. 7pm/18+/$26. royaleboston.com]
[Paradise Rock Club, 967 Comm. Ave., Allston. 6pm/all ages/$25. crossroadspresents.com]
[Brighton Music Hall, 158 Brighton Ave., Allston. 7pm/18+/$15. crossroadspresents.com]
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PUTTING THE METAL IN INSTRUMENTAL RUSSIAN CIRCLES + KING WOMAN
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EVERY BAND FOR GUN SAFETY
Today Junior, Bruvs, and more rally to raise funds and awareness PRESENTS
BY NINA CORCORAN @NINA_CORCORAN
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Perhaps the biggest misunderstanding between pro-gun advocates and gun-safety advocates is their proposed plans. In the wake of hundreds of school shootings and dozens of terrorist attacks, the most common false narrative spread around the US is that gun safety advocates want to ban guns entirely—as opposed to the more logical, and achievable, goal of tightening gun laws to prevent automatic guns from landing in the hands of sinister people. In order to resolve this, there needs to be more discussion and clarification on both sides. Discussion, though it sounds simple on paper, is the first step toward getting the majority of Americans to agree on a plan to resolve disagreements. In the case of implementing gun safety laws, that needs to happen so everyone realizes increasing the pre-purchase paperwork will delay the process of fickle, violent acts running on rampant emotion. And it’s not just about the purchase process, either. Background checks, monitoring domestic violence, increasing mental health awareness, offering gun training, and more are vital to ending gun violence in America. But to get there, we need to talk. Discussion is important, and thankfully it can take place anywhere at any time. It can even happen onstage. That’s what led local surf-bent rock band Today Junior to organize a fundraiser concert in the aftermath of more school shootings. This Wednesday, the band will be performing at ONCE Ballroom alongside Bruvs, the Furniture, Dutch Tulips, and DJ C8. Their mission? Raise money for nonprofit organization Everytown for Gun Safety by donating all concert proceeds to help end gun violence and build safer communities. For a mere $10, it’s certainly worth the Somerville trek and the affordable tip. The way bands like Today Junior and Bruvs see it, the fastest way to prompt change is to take action yourselves. By helping to draw fans out, they can do their part to help raise money to jump-start change, even if that money may seem like chum change to some. “Gun safety is important to us because we believe guns are still necessary in certain situations and environments. There is too much evil in the world to get rid of guns, so we must find balance in the laws of firearms,” says Zack Petti of Bruvs. “We try to create change in people by showing them what we have done or do to transform ourselves. Through writing and recording our own music, we have opened doors that we never saw and we’ve met people we never would have known existed, all through the power of art. We’ve made great friends, like Today Junior, literally because we decided to write an album, and someone liked that album and introduced us, and boom, instant positive and beautiful connection between human beings. We need to get people to realize how easy and accessible art is.” It helps that the Everytown for Gun Safety concert for musicians against gun violence happens to feature some of Boston’s best bands. Fresh off the release of its newest album, Single Forever, Today Junior whips its way through jovial, sun-drenched, poppy punk. Meanwhile, Bruvs are getting busy making garage rock to blast through open car windows. Somerville act the Furniture yelps its way through amiable rock. Before all of that comes the crunchy rock ’n’ roll of Dutch Tulips and some mood-fitting music from DJ C8. Having all five artists on one bill is a hell of a treat. So skip your morning Dunks and breakfast burrito to spend Wednesday night soaking up good music for an even better cause. Discussion leads to change, and that probably includes talking about a show that benefits gun safety somehow, too.
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LIVE MUSIC • PRIVATE EVENTS 4/12
Everytown for Gun Safety
With Dutch Tulips, Today Junior, The Bruvs, The Furniture 4/13
Silent Season, Take Us Alive, Act of Arson, Resonate Melodic rock 4/14
Eye Witness, Long Gone, Hammer and Snake Indie Folk 4/16
Queer Kitchen Pop-Up Proceeds to benefit LGBTQ youth org, BAGLY 4/18
The Last Revel Front porch Americana
156 Highland Ave • Somerville, MA 617-285-0167 oncesomerville.com a @oncesomerville b/ONCEsomerville
>>TODAY JUNIOR, BRUVS, THE FURNITURE, DUTCH TULIPS, DJ C8. WED 4.18. ONCE BALLROOM, 156 HIGHLAND AVE., SOMERVILLE. 6PM/18+/$10. ONCESOMERVILLE.COM
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Playtime, Drawn, & Questions and Answers
BY DAVID CURCIO, FRANKLIN EINSPRUCH, AND HEATHER KAPPLOW
Playtime—Peabody Essex Museum You know that you’re in Playtime from the squealing emanating from one of Martin Creed’s two pieces in the show, Work No. 329 (2004). The installation, following the artist’s precise instructions to “fill latex balloons with half of the air in a given space and then fill that space with the balloons,” is the highlight of the show because it’s most appealing to children, who know far more about play than the rest of us. The shrieks are theirs, though they themselves are invisible save for the displacement of balloons as they navigate the glowing pink room. The best works for adults slip by our guard, using play to explore uncomfortable themes. Some of the strongest of these are videos: Mark Bradford’s 2003 short “Practice,” where he shoots hoops with deadly seriousness on a windy day while wearing an antebellum hoop skirt version of a Lakers uniform, and a collection of Angela Washko’s pieces (2012-17) set in World of Warcraft that focus on confronting sexism inside that sphere. Show runs until 5.6. Peabody Essex Museum, 161 Essex St., Salem. pem.org —Heather Kapplow
Klimt and Schiele: Drawn—Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Gustav Klimt drew snaking lines that wend silently around the sheet as if of their own accord, creating curves and warm hollows, ruffling hair and defining pubic patches in loops like the path of a blind animal. Yet his figure studies are too authoritative to capitulate wholly to eroticism. Egon Schiele, the world’s first punk, was 28 years Klimt’s junior—the same number of years he was to live before dying of Spanish Flu with his pregnant wife. His studio was a gathering place for delinquent youths. A charge of seducing a minor and exhibiting smut accessible to children led to many of his drawings being seized and destroyed. The judge even burned one in court. Klimt and Schiele: Drawn at the MFA brings a hundred drawings from the Albertina in Vienna by the Byzantine decadent and his obstinate protege, the latter who seemed to know that he was not long for this world and answered by producing writhing, angular nudes, eternally mangled, sickly, disabled. Show runs until 5.28. Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Ave., Boston. mfa.org. —David Curcio
Conny Goelz Schmitt: More Questions Than Answers—Kingston Gallery At Kingston, Conny Goelz Schmitt is displaying abstractions made out of old books, built across the wall and away from it. She relies equally on collage, decollage, and assemblage. For those of us who are aficionados of both abstraction and used bookstores, the exhibition is catnip. Behind the Scene (2017) is a boxy, irregular oval, five inches thick from the wall, with a rectilinear hub of cream paper, lightly foxed. It is in fact a color wheel, cycling through ROYGBIV as much as the old book cloth would allow, though the blue at the top spills outward, suggesting sky. The construction is sharp but humane. The treatment is hard-edge but the surfaces are redolent of times spent thoughtfully. CONNY GOELZ SCHMITT, Getting the right vintage of material, or BEHIND THE SCENE, 2017 degrading the surfaces just so, can turn collage into a precious process. Goelz Schmitt checks that tendency with a fortitudinous formal vision. The used bookstore ambiance is there, but the freshness of good abstract composition predominates. Show runs until 4.29. Kingston Gallery, 450 Harrison Ave., No. 43, Boston. kingstongallery.com —Franklin Einspruch These shorts are being simultaneously published at Delicious Line, deliciousline.org. David Curcio is an artist who lives and works in Watertown. His work can be viewed at davidcurcio.com. Franklin Einspruch is the editor in chief of Delicious Line. Heather Kapplow is a Boston-based conceptual artist and writer, heatherkapplow.com.
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AFTER (HIGH) SCHOOL SPECIAL FILM
On alternating qualities—sentimentality and sleaze—in Kay Cannon’s Blockers BY JAKE MULLIGAN @_JAKEMULLIGAN
IMAGE COURTESY OF UNIVERSAL PICTURES
It tells you something about Hollywood and its history that a director who is also a woman automatically becomes a pioneer simply by existing in the system. As such, much of the reportage surrounding Blockers [2018], the latest comedy film distributed by Universal Pictures, has focused on its director, Kay Cannon—and more specifically, it has focused on the inherently exclusive clubs that she entered just by directing the movie. As reported by pretty much all of the industry’s trade papers, the pitifully sad facts are as follows: Cannon is now one of only about 10 women to have ever directed a comedy that was rated R by the MPAA, as well as one of only three women to have directed a movie set for release by a major studio in 2018 (the other two are Ava Duvernay’s A Wrinkle in Time [2018], from Disney, already released, and Jennifer Yuh Nelson’s The Darkest Minds [2018], via Fox, set for August). But while Blockers is the first movie she’s directed, it’s hardly the first project on which she’s done heavy lifting. Cannon first gained prominence as a writer (and, eventually, producer) on 30 Rock [2006-13], which led to a co-producer position on the Tina Fey comedy Baby Mama [2008]; she also wrote Pitch Perfect [2012] as well as its sequels 2 [2015] and 3 [2017], while once again moving up to a producer credit on the latter two films. With regards to all those projects, I enjoy their absurdly expressive performances and their ecstatically punchy dialogue, while finding very little value in pretty much every other element of their filmmaking. The sole exception, obviously, is 30 Rock, a straight-up masterpiece. Blockers, unfortunately, is no such exception. Cannon’s film, which has a screenplay credited to five male co-writers, is a one-night romp that follows three parents—Lisa (Leslie Mann), a single mom and soon-to-be empty nester; Hunter (Ike Barinholtz), a Seth Rogen-adjacent party boy who’s been absent for much of his child’s life; and Mitchell (John Cena), a conservative sports dad who’s built like John
Cena—who snoop their way into discovering a “prom night sex pact” devised by their respective teenage daughters— Julie (Kathryn Newton), who’s in a committed relationship with Austin (Graham Phillips); Sam (Gideon Adlon), who’s attracted to women but hasn’t told anyone yet; and Kayla (Geraldine Viswanathan), who’s single and has her eyes set on their high school’s resident hippie narcotics dealer (Miles Robbins). This discovery rattles the older trio, and as the title implies, they respond by attempting to cockblock their own children. But the movie reaches its peak before it even gets that far. Blockers is at its best when the younger girls are just hanging out at school and contemplating their coming night—a period when the script allows Cannon and her crew the patience needed to find true irreverence. Like when the younger trio are eating their school lunch while calmly discussing the qualitative merits of giving blowjobs in relation to the taste of various candy products. In most films, dialogue like “I’d rather eat 10 dicks than one Mound” would just be a punchline. But via Cannon, her performers, and her editor Stacey Schroeder— who knows just where to place such punchlines in a conversation and just how quickly to blow past them—the line-reading becomes something more: It’s like screwball poetry. That sublime feeling is short-lived. The aforementioned Seth Rogen also worked on this project, by producing it alongside his creative partner Evan Goldberg. They were developing the project before Cannon arrived and recruited her to direct after she contributed to the screenplay of Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising [2016] (a film to which Blockers bears more than just a passing resemblance). As such, the rhythm of other Rogen/ Goldberg movies is very much the rhythm of this movie— that being a mixture of loose, improv-style dialogue scenes with broadly pitched, indifferently directed physical comedy bits. For the most part, the time spent with
>> BLOCKERS. RATED R. CURRENTLY PLAYING AT LOCAL MULTIPLEXES. 20
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the older characters is for the sake of the latter: Their attempts to foil their daughters’ romantic evenings requires a multistep quest, one littered with the kind of physical challenges that have become commonplace in our screen comedies (see also: Neighbors 2). In one such instance, the adults have to distract Mitchell’s wife so that a file with a relevant address can be stolen from her office; in another, they need to clandestinely steal a phone from Austin’s house while the boy’s proudly kinky parents simultaneously play Marco Polo in the nude; and in yet another, Cena’s Mitchell is made to “butt chug” a 40 oz., because it’s the only way some frat boys will let him into a party where his daughter is about to hook up. None of this contributes much to the film. And in one interview, Cannon has stated outright that the Marco Polo scene was a Rogen and Goldberg addition—and the film’s whole structure, where these ostensibly humorous physical scenarios play out like regularly scheduled interludes, feels attributable to them as well. But that interpretation does risk overlooking the many contributions that Cannon surely made herself— she may not have gotten a screenwriting credit, but in those same media interviews, she’s made clear that she made significant changes on the screenwriting level. Take, for instance, the scene in Blockers where all three girls ride a speeding limo away from their prom, along with their various romantic partners—all of whom have drank far too much, thus engineering a chain reaction of projectile-vomiting fits. It’s set to the overture from Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro. And while the sequence isn’t too far removed from the Rogen/Goldberg playbook, it’s recognizably Cannon nonetheless—not a perfect scene, by any means, but one that’d be right at home within the cutesy vulgarity of a Pitch Perfect movie. For various reasons (some more defensible than others), the conversation regarding Blockers has focused less on Cannon’s trademarks as a comedic filmmaker and more on her perspective as a woman in the film industry. One must admit that in this regard, Blockers is an illustrative case— by the accounts of everyone involved, Cannon shifted its nature quite radically. The screenplay originally focused on three male parents, with the teenagers relegated to small roles (its title, at the time, was Cherries). And Cannon made alterations that brought it to its current state: She is credited with diversifying both its cast and its characters, most notably by making one of the characters a mother and therefore giving Leslie Mann a lead role in exactly the kind of film where she’s usually just “supporting.” And Blockers, much like Neighbors 2, is well-aware of its own wokeness—it concludes with a series of conversations where the kids challenge their parents to be more progressive, in scenes that are less comedic than dramatic. “Sometimes I get nabbed on tone, where people don’t feel comfortable seeing these big comedy moments … with something heartfelt,” Cannon told Vanity Fair. “They don’t like it when you try to bridge it.” I’m not sure that bridge leads anywhere vital—what one viewer finds socially progressive might strike another as being the contemporary equivalent of an after-school special. But what’s certain, regardless of quality, is that Cannon has a voice and that we’ll hear it often. I suspect that she’ll eventually be in the Rogen/Goldberg role of imposing her own aesthetic onto the films of a younger, less-proven filmmaker. And that, once again, will be progress— industry-specific and utterly insular, but progress all the same.
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SAVAGE LOVE
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS BY DAN SAVAGE @FAKEDANSAVAGE | MAIL@SAVAGELOVE.NET
I’m a 36-year-old straight woman. I was sexually and physically abused as a kid, and raped in my early 20s. I have been seeing a great therapist for the last five years, and I am processing things and feeling better than I ever have. I was in a long-term relationship that ended about two years ago. I started dating this past year, but I’m not really clicking with anyone. I’ve had a lot of first dates, but nothing beyond that. My problem is that I’d really love to get laid. The idea of casual sex and one-night stands sounds great—but in reality, moving that quickly with someone I don’t know or trust freaks me out, causes me to shut down, and prevents me from enjoying anything. Even thinking about going home with someone causes me to panic. When I was in a relationship, the sex was great. But now that I’m single, it seems like this big, scary thing. Is it possible to get laid without feeling freaked out? Sexual Comfort And Reassurance Eludes Dame It is possible for you to get laid without feeling freaked out. The answer—how you go home with someone without panicking—is so obvious, SCARED, that I’m guessing your therapist has already suggested it: Have sex with someone you know and trust. You didn’t have any issues having sex with your ex because you knew and trusted him. For your own emotional safety, and to avoid recovery setbacks, you’re going to have to find someone willing to get to know you—someone willing to make an emotional investment in you—before you can have sex again. You’ve probably thought to yourself, “But everyone else is just jumping into bed with strangers and having amazing sexual experiences!” And while it is true that many people are capable of doing just that, at least as many or more are incapable of having impulsive one-night stands because they too have a history of trauma, or because they have other psychological, physical, or logistical issues that make one-night stands impossible. (Some folks, of course, have no interest in one-night stands.) Your trauma left you with this added burden, SCARED, and I don’t want to minimize your legitimate frustration or your anger. It sucks, and I fucking hate the people who victimized you. But it may help you feel a little better about having to make an investment in someone before becoming intimate—which really isn’t the worst thing in the world—if you can remind yourself that you aren’t alone. Demisexuals, other victims of trauma, people with body-image issues, people whose sexual interests are so stigmatized they don’t feel comfortable disclosing them to people they’ve just met—lots of people face the same challenge you do. Something else to bear in mind: It’s not unheard of for someone reentering the dating scene to have some difficulty making new connections at first. The trick is to keep going on dates until you finally click with someone. In other words, SCARED, give yourself a break and take your time. Also, don’t hesitate to tell the men you date that you need to get to know a person before jumping into bed with him. That will scare some guys off, but only those guys who weren’t willing to get to know you—and those aren’t guys you would have felt safe fucking anyway, right? So be open and honest, keep going on those first dates, and eventually you’ll find yourself on a fifth date with a guy you can think about taking home without feeling panicked. Good luck.
COMEDY EVENTS THU 04.12
HEADLINERS IN THE SQUARE @ JOHN HARVARD’S
Featuring: Kristine Blinn, Aaron ‘Tiny’ Smith, Josh Filipowski, Shyam Subramanian, Andrew Della Volpe & more.
33 DUNSTER ST., CAMBRIDGE | 9PM | FREE THU 04.12 - FRI 04.13
BEN GLEIB @ LAUGH BOSTON
Years ago, Esquire called Ben Gleib one of “six comedians who could be comedy’s next big thing.” The other 5 were Aziz Ansari, Patton Oswalt, David Cross, Demetri Martin, and Flight of the Conchords. It came true for each of them, and it now seems to be Gleib’s time. His first hour special, Ben Gleib: Neurotic Gangster, premiered on Showtime in June.
425 SUMMER ST., BOSTON | 8 & 10PM | $20-$25 FRI 04.13
JERRY SEINFELD @ THE BOCH CENTER
Seinfeld has been hailed for his uncanny ability to joke about the little things in life that relate to audiences everywhere. He now sets his sights on performing both nationally and internationally in 2018.
270 TREMONT ST., BOSTON | 7 & 9:30PM | $67.50 SAT 04.14
COREY RODRIGUES @ NICK’S COMEDY STOP
In 2008 Corey was the winner of the Catch a New Rising Star comedy competition. In 2009 he was a semifinalist in the New York Comedy Contest. He played a major role in R&B singer Samsonís music video, appeared in a pair of Sam Adams Commercials and a variety of cable television shows. In 2010 and 11 Corey was a semifinalist in the Boston Comedy Festival and was the winner of The Funniest Comic in New England Contest.
100 WARRENTON ST., BOSTON | 8PM | $20 SAT 04.14
BOSTON COMEDY CHICKS @ DOYLE’S
Featuring: Emily Ruskowski, Jocelyn Chia, Courtney Reynolds, Comedian Nonye Brown-West, Kathe Farris & more. Hosted by Kindra Lansburg
3484 WASHINGTON ST., JP | 8PM | $12 SUN 04.15
LIQUID COURAGE COMEDY @ SLUMBREW
Featuring: Kathleen DeMarle, Jimmy Cash, Emily Ruskowski, Arty P, Zach Armentrout, Tooky Kavanagh, & Dan Boulger. Hosted by Rick Jenkins
15 WARD ST., SOMERVILLE | 8PM | $5 MON 04.16
COMEDY NIGHT IN THE SUPPER CLUB @ CAPO
Featuring: Mike Whitman, Dan Crohn, Dan Boulger, & Kwasi Mensah. Hosted by Will Noonan
443 WEST BROADWAY, BOSTON | 7PM | FREE WED 04.18
PAID FOR BY @ LAUGH BOSTON On the Lovecast, Mistress Matisse explains the horrifying SESTAFOSTA bill: savagelovecast.com.
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PAID FOR BY is a Boston based comedy web series that pokes fun at the zany and backwards world of politics as seen through the lens of political commercial production. Our heroic producer, Margot Meriwether (Kelly MacFarland), is an environmental zealot, feminist, and passionate about her job producing political commercials she believes in. The painful truth of politics is embodied in her boss, campaign advisor and commercial director, Seth Nelson (Tony V), who wholeheartedly believes in compromise and the value of a dollar…or as many dollars as he can put in his pocket. Making the world a better place with honest ads is a difficult task for Margot, because money is the driving force of politics, and duplicity is the nature of politicians. Join us on this fun, comedic romp through commercial production in our post Citizens United world.
425 SUMMER ST., BOSTON 8PM | $20
Lineup & shows to change without notice. For more shows & info visit BostonComedyShows.com
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