DigBoston 5.2.19

DIGBOSTON.COM 05.02.19 - 05.09.19

FEATURE

FIGHTING SUBOXONE

REAL TALK ABOUT TREATMENT MEDS

RITE HOOK RETURNS COVER: MUSIC

EATS: THAI MOON - OUT OF THIS WORLD

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BOWERY BOSTON WWW.BOWERYBOSTON.COM VOL 21 + ISSUE 18

MAY 02, 2019 - MAY 09, 2019 BUSINESS PUBLISHER John Loftus ASSOCIATE PUBLISHERS Chris Faraone Jason Pramas SALES EXECUTIVES Victoria Botana Matt Riley FOR ADVERTISING INFORMATION sales@digboston.com

EDITORIAL EDITOR IN CHIEF Chris Faraone EXECUTIVE EDITOR Jason Pramas MANAGING EDITOR Mitchell Dewar MUSIC EDITOR Nina Corcoran FILM EDITOR Jake Mulligan THEATER EDITOR Christopher Ehlers COMEDY EDITOR Dennis Maler STAFF WRITER Haley Hamilton CONTRIBUTORS G. Valentino Ball, Sarah Betancourt, Tim Bugbee, Patrick Cochran, Mike Crawford, Britni de la Cretaz, Kori Feener, Eoin Higgins, Zack Huffman, Marc Hurwitz, Marcus Johnson-Smith, C. Shardae Jobson, Heather Kapplow, Derek Kouyoumjian, Dan McCarthy, Rev. Irene Monroe, Peter Roberge, Maya Shaffer, Citizen Strain, M.J. Tidwell, Miriam Wasser, Dave Wedge, Baynard Woods INTERNS Casey Campbell, Morgan Hume, Jillian Kravatz, Olivia Mastrosimone, Juan A. Ramirez, Jacob Schick, Sydney B. Wertheim

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ON THE COVER PHOTO OF RITE HOOK BY TRESPASSION. CHECK OUT OUR INTERVIEW WITH THE BOSTON RAPPER AND SINGER IN THIS WEEK’S MUSIC SECTION.

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ACT NOW (OR LOCAL MEDIA WILL DIE)

I take no joy at all in using column space to address the sudden closing of the Improper Bostonian. As the editor of one of the few other periodicals that shares counter space in coffee shops and occupies hundreds of street corners around the region in boxes directly beside theirs, I find it utterly depressing that Bay Staters will have one less print magazine to run their fingers through in search of a next arts, food, or live music adventure. I believe that competition is healthy, as is having more options rather than fewer.

Still the shuttering must be addressed. Because while I see lots of people who are terribly upset about losing the Improper eulogizing on Facebook, I don’t hear anybody talking about what they—or rather, what we, as a community of people who appreciate informed and clever coverage of the colorful metropolis we live in—can do to help the remaining independent outlets (ahem) thrive and provide platforms for the journalists who curate and contextualize digestible organized guidance through the expanding glut of information that increasingly bombards us.

Look, I don’t know exactly why the Improper is finished. But as I seethed on social media last week (to the consternation of some), as a co-publisher in the same market, I am confident that the main cause of death—not making enough money—is linked to the scourge of media relations professionals, also known as publicists, who gobble up marketing and advertising dollars that formerly fueled publications like the Dig and the Improper. Instead of placing ads in local outlets, more and more restaurants and retailers are paying PR leeches who in turn pester editors and reporters for coverage, then cry crocodile tears when the glossy biweekly whose clips about their clients they took credit for and cashed in on without adding any value to the commercial or multicultural ecosystem prints its final issue.

Nobody should advertise with any publication out of pity. Rather, businesses should help the news enterprises that they love and need and which have tirelessly flanked local vendors and venues for years because we reach tens of thousands of regular readers and can connect with even more when we have the support of successful institutions and community members. I am talking to everyone, from those who appreciate the harder investigative work that we do, to theatergoers who rely on us to have the most diverse and comprehensive performing arts journalism in the state.

So, what can you specifically do to help out? For starters, we absolutely need you to support the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism, through which we are able to produce the kind of intensive multimedia and long-form material that is desperately needed, from school and city watchdog work to music coverage. You can also remind your colleagues or friends who oversee marketing budgets—maybe for a club they’re in, or a school they work at—that they ought to contact Dig Media Group. We offer a lot more than just print newspaper ads, and can even help brands get the word out through unique channels that range from major event programs to customizable campaigns that reach hundreds of thousands of targeted readers. We even have a ticketing platform that anyone can use (instead of Eventbrite or Brown Paper Tickets, etc.). You can contact our team at ads@digpublishing.com to learn more about that stuff plus other services we offer and that help pay for the news.

Most of all, it’s imperative for you to show love to and for your local media survivors in any way that you can, even if it just means sharing a Dig article instead of some dumb post about the POTUS next time you are on Twitter.

It’s sad to say, but the alternative to catching the backs of those of us who are still slugging it out is more than merely improper. It’s inconceivable, and yet totally preventable if more members of the public invest as much money in the industry as they do time complaining that the media is dying.

CHRIS FARAONE, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Need more Dig? Sign up for the Daily Dig @ tiny.cc/DailyDig

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THU. JUNE 20 CHARLES HAYDEN PLANETARIUM AT MUSEUM OF SCIENCE

Tickets for Royale, The Sinclair, and Great Scott can be purchased online at AXS.COM. No fee tickets available at The Sinclair box office Wednesdays - Saturdays 12:00 - 7:00PM FOR MORE INFORMATION AND A COMPLETE LIST OF SHOWS, VISIT BOWERYBOSTON.COM NEWS TO US

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NEWS US

WHO THE HELL IS BILL WELD? NEWS

Leave it to Mass to generate an anti-Trump Republican who whines about socialism

BY PATRICK COCHRAN

Elizabeth Warren won’t be the only candidate representing the Commonwealth in the 2020 presidential race, and Donald Trump won’t be the only one seeking the Republican nomination.

Former Mass Gov. Bill Weld announced last month his intention to challenge Trump in the GOP primary, marking the first time since 1992 that a sitting president has had to defend their presidency from within their own party.

“In every country, there comes a time when patriotic men and women must stand up and speak out,” Weld said at an event in New Hampshire, the first state to hold a presidential primary. “In our country, this is such a time.”

Considered a moderate in the traditional Massachusetts Republican mold—a free-market ideologue who supports socially liberal issues like abortion, LGBTQ rights, and cannabis legalization—Weld served as governor from 1991 to 1997. In 1994, he won reelection in the biggest landslide in state history.

With the announcement, Weld becomes Trump’s first legitimate challenger for the GOP nomination. Other more center-leaning Republicans like former Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake and former Mass Gov. Mitt Romney (now the senator from Utah) have been floated as potential candidates as well, but still haven’t thrown their hats in the ring.

Weld, like any Republican looking to unseat Trump, will face long odds. The president enjoys a nearly 90% approval rating among GOP voters, higher than any incumbent to face a challenge from within their own party. In 2018, Gov. Charlie Baker, who got his political start as undersecretary of Health and Human Services in the Weld administration, pulled less than 70 percent 4

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of the vote in his reelection primary against Scott Lively, an underfunded right-wing zealot who tied himself to Trump. All of this is compounded by the fact that a sitting president has not been successfully usurped by a member of his own party in modern history.

That doesn’t mean Weld can’t do damage. He refers to the prospect of another Trump term in the White House as a “political tragedy,” and he doesn’t shy away from the idea of his quixotic bid hurting the president in the general election.

“The last five primary challengers to a sitting president running for reelection, those presidents all lost,” Weld said. “When there’s no challengers, those presidents all won.”

Since the Richard Nixon administration, just three sitting presidents have faced serious challenges for their party’s nomination. Gerald Ford was challenged by Ronald Reagan in 1976, Jimmy Carter by Ted Kennedy in 1980, and George H.W. Bush by Pat Buchanan in 1992. All three presidents survived the primary but lost the general election.

But those challenges were different in nature to Weld’s. Reagan ran against Ford as a staunch supply-side economics advocate, Kennedy had challenged Carter from the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, and Buchanan took the hard-right populist position against the establishment-tied Bush.

Weld’s campaign, should it materialize, would be different. Whereas the aforementioned challengers took on their party’s president for a perceived move to the center, Weld’s bid will take on the populist right. But a fight for the soul of a political party, Weld says, isn’t without precedent.

“When the Whig Party broke in two in the 1850s over the issue of slavery, the southern half became the KnowNothing Party, because they would say ‘I know nothing’ at their secret meetings,” Weld said in an interview with Yahoo News. “They were characterized by violent anti-immigrant fervor. They hated Catholics, they hated immigrants coming over from Germany and Italy. Also violent rallies and a devotion to conspiracy theories.

Well that sounds awfully familiar to me, that’s the Trump campaign of 2016.”

That’s not to say that Weld doesn’t have any radically conservative ideas of his own; for starters, his platform includes further tax cuts and the elimination of the Department of Education. He’s also backed some of Trump’s most significant moves as president, including his policy toward Venezuela and the nominations of Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

But as the conservative movement, and the Republican Party, rapidly moves to the right, Weld’s business-minded libertarianism appears as moderation.

“We need the opposite of socialism,” Weld said, alluding to growing progressive and left-wing politics gaining salience in the Democratic primary.

While derailing Trump’s hope for another term is clearly on the former governor’s mind, he also claims to see a path for victory. The early phase of the campaign will focus heavily on New Hampshire, where he believes the independent nature of Granite State voters and the proximity to his home state could help make him competitive. The numbers look good for Trump, but some polling (which should be taken with a grain of salt, particularly at this early juncture) shows some glimmers of hope for Weld. A month ago, a poll showed that over a quarter of NH Republicans would be open to supporting Weld. More significantly, a poll from earlier this week showed Trump’s support among Republicans, which has been so reliable for so long, may be softening. And if he does well in the first primary, everything changes.

“New Hampshire can have a domino effect,” Weld said.

Weld’s candidacy represents the visceral disgust with Trump politics. Beyond some of the mainstream corruption charges and overt nods to white nationalism, policy critiques take a back seat among never-Trump conservatives. Weld, and the people he’s reaching out to, value the traditional concept of statesmanship over issues-based politics. In 2016, he spent a lot of his time as Libertarian VP nominee encouraging undecided voters in swing states to vote for Hillary Clinton, theoretically his opponent, to block Trump.

But for the Bay State’s former governor, this campaign is a culmination of the role he’s forged as a member of the conservative movement at war with the GOP’s right flank.

He left the corner office in 1997 to take a job as Bill Clinton’s ambassador to Mexico, only to have his nomination blocked by hardline conservatives in the Senate over his support for medical marijuana legalization. At the time, Sen. Jesse Helms said his opposition to Weld “has everything to do with the future of the Republican Party.”

“I’m going to rage against the dying light,” Weld told Rolling Stone.

THE SUMMIT: PART III SOMERVILLE

Residents vent on issues related to poverty and affordable housing

BY BOSTON INSTITUTE FOR NONPROFIT JOURNALISM @BINJREPORTS As a major initiative for 2019, the team at the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism (BINJ), in collaboration with partners at DigBoston, Somerville Media Center (SMC), and various other outlets, is focusing on identifying and reporting critical stories in the City of Somerville.

To that end, we have been leading journalism workshops at SMC, including some with high school students, and in February BINJ turned out more than 100 Somerville residents and active community members to the ONCE ballroom on Highland Ave to converse with area journalists about issues they think need more coverage. The information these participants provided has already seeded articles and will continue to bear fruit over the coming months.

In addition to our follow-ups, we have transcribed all of the presentations given at ONCE. It’s a lot to chew on, so for the purpose of reporting back we parsed sentiments of the participating Somervillians into the following categories (many of which overlap at multiple intersections): • Neighborhoods, transit, and accessibility • Union Square and other development • Low-income residents and affordable housing • Immigrant communities • Trees and the environment • Arts, artists, and artisans In addition to reports that stem from the February meetup, over the coming weeks we will also publish words and ideas that stood out at the summit. This week, we get into excerpts from various testimonies related to poverty and affordable housing.

Kate Byrne, Community Action Agency of Somerville Our mission is to end poverty in Somerville, which is kind of a big mission, but we do that through working with our Head Start families. We have a program right now that’s going in which we help low-income people do their taxes. … We also have just started a food pantry [and] do work with our homeless prevention program, which works with people who are at very high risk of being homeless. We have advocates that go to court with people and help people try to resolve their issues with their landlords. So we’ve got a big … big mission.

Lynne Doncaster, Somerville Homeless Coalition The Somerville Homeless Coalition runs two shelters—a 16-bed adult shelter and a shelter that can serve five families. We address the problems of homelessness, near homelessness, and hunger in our community. … Last year [we] served 900 households in Somerville, providing them with groceries and other essentials. …

Through housing assistance, we kept 72 families from becoming homeless.

Since the start of 2019 we’ve had 60 new households sign up for services at project soup. Most years, we get 100 in a calendar year. We think that this need for food and for assistance is in part due to the government shutdown [and] food stamp benefits [being] changed.

Maury + Ann Marie, Tufts Housing League We’re actually here because housing, while our group is called Tufts Housing league, is obviously relevant to all of us. … [What] we want to really emphasize is the fact that Somerville is in a housing crisis right now. … Over 2,000 students have to push Somerville and Medford residents out every single year because they can’t find housing on campus. This only adds to increased rents. …

Tufts Housing League is a radical student-run organization on campus that was founded just last year. … We’ve been doing lots of pushing and having lots of really difficult conversations with administration kind of saying, “Hey, why aren’t you building a new high-density dorm on campus? We needed that 10 years ago, you know, what gives?”

This is really a point at which we really need to rally around, we really want to talk to other housing-related community organizations that are here, so please come and find us. … We are on the side of community members, we’re all fighting the same battle. We all want accessible affordable housing. … We’re just really here trying to work together as community members … [to] find our common ground on what’s important to people, which is shelter.

Transcription by Spencer Walter.

This article was produced by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. To see more media like this visit binjonline.org, and you can support independent local reporting by contributing at givetobinj.org.

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LANDLORDS’ VIEWS ON RENT CONTROL.... REFUTED APPARENT HORIZON

Or: fun with Boston Globe comments

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS Most everyone has had the experience of reading something particularly enraging in the comment area below many online newspaper articles. I think it’s quite normal to feel frustrated and helpless in that situation.

Because the nastiest opinions often appear to be the most popular ones. And there doesn’t always seem to be an effective way to counter them. Certainly not as an individual. Matters are made even worse when there is clearly an organized campaign by a well-funded network to push a common line against a less well-funded community of interest… in an attempt to make it seem like there is more public support for that group’s opinion than there really is.

Which is exactly what I noticed going on in the comment section of a recent Boston Globe piece (“Rent control gets a second look in Cambridge”) on the growing debate over the possibility of the state legislature passing a proposed bill that would allow Mass municipalities to introduce rent control for the first time since a real estate industry funded referendum question banned the reform statewide in 1994. It was quite clear that said industry had put the word out to its network of landlords to jump on the article and leave lots of comments.

When I first read a dozen or so of the resulting attacks on anyone that believes government should have a role in regulating rents, my initial reaction was to get mad and start yelling at the screen for a few seconds about the injustice of it all. Especially since the article was framed around the opinions of the industry front group most visible in the effort to eliminate rent control—which the Globe apparently feels bound to quote in virtually every article about housing.

Then I remembered that I’m a journalist and coown a weekly newspaper. And that I can actually use that platform to reach an appreciably larger audience than will usually read a workaday Globe policy backgrounder—let alone its comment thread. As I did a month back when I wrote a column unequivocally supporting the return of rent control that went a bit viral among Boston-area tenants and our allies.

So, I thought it would be fun to reprint a few of the typical comments by landlords (and wannabes?) to the piece in question, and then respond to them as I would in open debate in any public forum. Focusing on engaging the best points on offer that rehearse standard real estate industry PR without stooping to pure invective. jondi5 4/29/19 - 10:32AM Loss of rent control was one of the best things to happen to the Boston area. It increased the tax base enormously, allowing the improvement of existing housing stock, the creation of new housing stock, and the expansion/improvement of other city services.

Each municipality is simply the creation of the state, which has full sovereign authority to regulate, merge, or dissolve any village, town, city, or county. If the state says “jump”, then municipalities must respond “how high?”

The answer to high housing costs is to increase supply, as much as possible. To do that, zoning restrictions need to be relaxed.

It’s a question of perspective, jondi5. If you’re part of the small group of landlords, developers, and financiers that have benefitted handsomely from the destruction of rent control, then naturally you will believe what you say to be true. In the face of all evidence to the contrary.

And, yes, each municipality “is simply the creation of the state.” But that cuts both ways.

In 1970, the state legislature voted to allow municipalities over 50,000 population to enact rent control regulations. If your whole “jump” and “how high” 6

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reasoning holds true, then the real estate industry should not have spent vast sums to push a binding referendum question to eliminate rent control. So, clearly that’s not much of an argument, and housing advocates have every right to push state government to reverse that referendum.

The state, in a democratic society, ultimately represents the will of the people, right? Not special interests like the real estate industry that put their own endless drive for profit over the good of the larger community time and time again. Although it’s true that sometimes higher levels of government have to act against majority opinion to protect a minority group. Yet landlords and your ilk are hardly the equivalent of black sharecroppers in the 1950s, now are you? You’re a rich and powerful group of capitalists seeking to get more rich and powerful off the backs of a legion of tenants struggling to make ends meet. And you deserve to be regulated in the public interest.

However, we agree that more housing has to be built. A no-brainer given the crushing need. It’s just that I think more social housing needs to be built in huge amounts by government at all levels—plus there must be significant public incentives created for cooperative and nonprofit housing developments. And you’re a supporter of Gov. Charlie Baker’s flawed plan to relax zoning restrictions to let commercial developers build more housing—even though little of that housing will be affordable by any metric, no matter what developers promise now. Check out what Rep. Mike Connolly (D-Cambridge) has to say on that issue for full background.

forces can keep the quality up.” The main reason any apartments degraded under rent control was because they were owned by slumlords who didn’t want to spend any of the profits they were definitely still allowed to make under the reform system on basic upkeep and repairs. That was certainly the case in the rent-controlled rooming house I lived in. But when rent control was defeated, my building was suddenly fixed up in a matter of weeks, in advance of jacking all the tenants’ rents and pushing us out.

Weird that our poor oppressed landlord suddenly had disposable income to make that happen, right?

What with the “lack of profits” and all… under that evil “communist” rent control system. Puuuhleeze.

TJBowman 4/29/19 - 10:15AM Rent control is state-sanctioned taking of property that benefits those who get the rent-controlled apartments... and is a serious and long-lasting punishment of everybody else who doesn’t get one of the limited supply, a supply that will NEVER increase in a rent-controlled environment.

Ask yourself who in their right mind would willingly build a rent-controlled apartment when they can build somewhere else and not suffer the outside control. If you are happy with the supply for a few decades, then go right ahead and redistribute the wealth. But if you want more housing, this is precisely the wrong direction.

In addition, rent controlled apartments degrade far more than those where the market forces can keep the quality up. So get ready for some seriously ratty buildings with just-barely-legal upkeep. Again, what do you expect?

ArrDee 4/29/19 - 10:25AM If your rent is too high, move to a suburb where rents are lower and commute. It is not your God given right to live in walking distance from your favorite bistro.

No, TJBowman, rent control is not the state-sanctioned taking of property. You are completely incorrect, and have not bothered to learn about the topic in question before commenting on it. And your argument on the people who get rent-controlled apartments punishing those who don’t is specious. By that logic, unionized workers negotiating a better deal than non-unionized workers in the same industrial sector amounts to the former “punishing” the latter rather than a societal advance (a talking point I’ve certainly seen right-wingers like yourself use before, unsurprisingly) and an inspiration to non-unionized workers to unionize.

You are also wrong that new housing wasn’t built under rent control. In the three cities that had it prior to 1994—Boston, Brookline, and Cambridge—new construction was exempt from the regulation. As to why anyone would build new housing under rent control in those locales, it’s because they’re in the major population center of this region. Where most of the jobs are. But I really love your line about “rent controlled apartments degrad[ing] far more than those where the market

ArmySteve 4/29/19 - 10:16AM You could make it a local issue but renters should not be able to vote on the referendum. Who wouldn’t vote to lower their rent at the expense of the property owner?

So you think it’s cool to deny renters their right to vote, ArmySteve? Even homeless people have the right to vote (made needlessly difficult in some states and “territories,” but nonetheless there) in the US. Why not say that landlords—who, after all, do nothing but extract profit as rentiers (people who live on income from property or investments), rig the political system to their own advantage, and distort the economy to prevent the production of needed housing for working families— should not be able to vote on any housing referendum?

Yeah, I thought so…

Neither is it your God-given right to be a landlord, ArrDee, and make a profit off a basic human need for decent housing that is also a basic human right. Actually, it’s funny that you mention God at all. Since essentially all monotheistic religions believe their God to be the champion of justice and fairness for the entire human race.

To give an example you’re doubtless familiar with, the Bible has that nice line, “And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God” (Matthew 19:24). And follows it up with an even better line about who gets into Heaven: “But many that are first shall be last; and the last shall be first” (Matthew 19:30).

Pretty much all polytheistic religions, pantheist religions, animist religions, and religions that are debatably either atheist or a mix of theist and atheist also have this ethical core. Yet religious practitioners and possessors of a straight atheist worldview alike seem united in their ability to jettison such inconvenient ideas in the name of profit. More’s the pity.

Anyhow, we’ll continue this little tête-à-tête when you’ve personally built a decent cheap public transportation system that goes far enough in the ‘burbs to allow working class people to find rents low enough to be affordable, but is fast enough to allow them to get to work in under an hour each way—at any time of week, day or night.

Are you a tenant with a few choice words for landlords?

Feel free to send opinion articles on the topic to me at execeditor@digboston.com.

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MOULTON FOR PRESIDENT? OPINION

Has the “service candidate” from Salem served other veterans well?

BY STEVE EARLY AND SUZANNE GORDON Did the 2020 Democratic presidential primary race really need a 19th participant, particularly one joining the lineup just before Joe Biden’s much-ballyhooed entry?

Last Monday, former Marine Seth Moulton’s answer to that question was “Yes, Sir!” So now the ambitious young congressman from Salem, Mass, is the fourth House member seeking the Democratic nomination, despite being totally unknown in the rest of the country— and little known elsewhere in the Bay State (at least compared to Elizabeth Warren).

Moulton starts out with a much lower profile than other veterans already in the race—namely, Pete Buttigieg, the gay mayor of South Bend, Indiana, or Tulsi Gabbard, the Hindu member of Congress from Hawaii, who supported Bernie Sanders last time and commands a strong peace movement following.

Nevertheless, the 40-year-old ex-military officer is worth watching, for as long as his vanity campaign lasts.

Moulton-style “service candidates” are now being widely recruited and strongly supported by both major parties and their wealthy funders.

Among fellow Democrats, Moulton has been a mentor, model, and fund-raiser for other exmilitary men and women seeking Congressional seats in other states.

He hopes to gain traction for his own fourth bid for public office by arguing that his Marine experience, plus multiple Harvard degrees, make him most qualified to be our next commander in chief.

On the day Moulton announced his candidacy, the New York Times noted that 10 “of the 67 new representative who swung control of the House to the Democrats in the 2018 elections…served in the military, intelligence agencies, or diplomatic service.” According to The Times, they “bring expertise to a body where practical skills and deep knowledge about war, peace, foreign aid, diplomacy, and geostrategic thinking are in short supply.”

Moulton believes there is a similar skills and knowledge deficit in the White House, enabling him to attack President Trump “where he is weakest,” while healing partisan divisions. On the campaign trail, the winner of a Bronze Star during four tours of duty in Iraq plans “to talk about patriotism, about security, about service … issues that for too long Democrats have ceded to Republicans.” In a Good Morning America interview, he told ABC viewers, “I’m running because I’m a patriot, because I believe in this country, and because I’ve never wanted to sit on the sidelines when it comes to serving it.”

A Primary Challenger This personal branding won over Democratic primary voters in his own district, north of Boston, in 2014.

That’s when Moulton unexpectedly beat John Tierney, a labor-friendly nine-term incumbent whose reputation was tarnished by a local scandal involving his wife and brother-in-law. Moulton’s challenge to Tierney was no more encouraged by the Democratic Party establishment than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s successful race against a member of the House Democratic leadership last year.

But Moulton was no AOC. He ran against Tierney from the right, not the left.

Among his backers was retired General Stanley McChrystal, former commander of US forces in Afghanistan. Another Moulton fan, who supervised his work on a special counter-insurgency team in Iraq, is 8

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retired General David Petraeus. Like McChrystal, Petraeus left government service under a cloud of controversy.

He pleaded guilty to mishandling classified documents as director of the CIA, which ended his own presidential aspirations as a service candidate.

As noted in a long profile in Politico last year, Moulton likes to recall a conversation he had with a fellow Marine during bloody fighting in Najaf in 2004. “You know, Sir,” his subordinate told him. “You ought to run for Congress someday so that this shit doesn’t happen again.” Once free to do that, Moulton has played the veteran card very differently than Congressional critics of foreign intervention like Gabbard, who also served in Iraq.

Moulton’s criticism of “this shit,” then and now, focuses on civilian leadership errors that made US wars in the Middle East less winnable. As he told one interviewer in 2007, “I feel the [Iraq] war would be going differently if you had leadership that really understood, No. 1, what it’s like to be on the ground, had actually served in the armed forces—and, No. 2, really had a good managerial grasp of making this thing work.”

A Technological Tweak Once in Congress, Moulton became a champion of greater bipartisanship, to the point where, according to Politico, he made sure that his wedding guests, two years ago, included “an even number of Republicans and Democrats from Congress.” As one “signature achievement,” Moulton touts his work with Republicans on the “Faster Care for Veterans Act of 2016.” Signed into law by President Obama, this bipartisan measure required the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to experiment with an online self-scheduling app for VA patients. According to Moulton, a VA patient himself, this allows them to make medical appointments “from their smart phones or computers with the click of a button.”

According to Rick Weidman, a Vietnam vet and Washington staffer for the Vietnam Veterans of America, scheduling convenience for some is not the same as better access to care for all. “Scheduling apps just mean that one veteran gets ahead of someone else in line,” Weidman points out. The real challenge—not met under Obama or his successor—is properly funding VA hospitals and clinics, so they have enough caregivers to assist all the new patients coming through the door. “You don’t do that with a scheduling app.” Weidman says, “You do that by filling the almost 49,000 vacancies at the VA.” Last year, Moulton joined forces with conservative Republicans and other wayward Democrats to enact legislation that addresses VA understaffing by outsourcing more of its direct care. Starting next month, the VA MISSION Act of 2018 will divert billions of dollars

from the VA to private sector providers, who are often less well-equipped to deal with veterans’ healthcare problems.

As Sen. Bernie Sanders warned, this major privatization move will adversely affect nine million patients, many of whom are poor, working-class, and/or people of color. And next on President Trump’s “to do” list, after the first stage of MISSION Act implementation, will be drawing up a list of VA hospital and clinics to close.

In the House, while Moulton was voting for all of this, Speaker Nancy Pelosi denounced the MISSION Act as a gift to “Trump Administration ideologues and the Koch Brothers” who want to “dismantle veterans’ health care.”

As Pelosi told a town hall meeting in San Francisco, “The people who want to privatize the VA don’t want to make it better. They want to make a buck.”

Generational Change?

Last year, Moulton made his biggest splash in the House with a failed campaign to oust Pelosi herself, in the interests of “generational change.” This attempted leadership coup not only created a backlash among female Democratic Party activists in Moulton’s own district. It was not popular among influential advocates for veterans in Washington, DC. Three of them—Joe Violante, Steve Robertston, and Dennis Cullinan— penned a piece for the Hill documenting what they called Pelosi’s “incredible legacy of leadership on behalf of our nation’s veterans and their families.”

(Violante, Robertson, and Cullinan served, respectively, as the past national legislative directors of the Disabled American Veterans, the American Legion, and Veterans of Foreign Wars.)

If Moulton’s bid for the presidency ends as badly as his plotting against Pelosi, he plans to seek re-election in his own 6th Congressional District. But potential primary opponents next year are already making hay out of Moulton’s tendency, in their view, to put personal ambition ahead of his district and, now, spend most of his time outside of it.

If a strong challenger does emerge and Moulton suffers a primary defeat like John Tierney did five years ago, he will be headed back to the private sector, where his resume is rather thin. His one foray into business involved a failed bid to “improve the health care system”—while making a buck or two—as president of Eastern Healthcare Partners.

When he ran for Congress in 2014, Moulton highlighted his role as a “successful entrepreneur” and stake-holder in EHP. Yet this weight-loss industry start-up, co-founded with a Harvard Business School classmate, went out of business the following year. According to the Boston Globe, its legacy includes an overdue Delaware state tax bill of up to $340,000 (still unpaid, as of March) and a dispute with Johns Hopkins University Medical Center over payment for its clinical trials of EHP’s “diabetes lifestyle prevention program.”

Today, for good reason, Eastern Healthcare Partners— or Moulton’s original leadership role in it—isn’t mentioned anywhere in his personal biography on the websites for his Congressional office or his just-launched presidential campaign.

Suzanne Gordon is the author, most recently, of Wounds of War: How the VA Delivers Health, Healing, and Hope to the Nation’s Veterans (Cornell University Press, 2018). Steve Early was a longtime union activist in Massachusetts. They are collaborating on a forthcoming book about veterans’ affairs. They can be reached at Lsupport@aol.com.

THE DELIVERY MAN TALKING JOINTS MEMO

How cannabis busts harm homebound patients

BY MIKE CRAWFORD OF THE YOUNG JURKS Grant Smith of Belmont is a disabled medical cannabis patient advocate with a unique perspective on the value that unlicensed cannabis delivery services offer homebound patients. We interviewed him about why he’s pushing for big changes in the way that the state licenses operators.

What conditions do you use medical cannabis for?

I fell seriously disabled in May of 2014 due to complications following a surgery. Sadly, my condition is causing my throat to collapse, which, in turn, affects nerves that run into my face and eye. I use cannabis in combination with other medications to help alleviate the agonizing facial neuralgia which would otherwise leave me in tears nearly every waking moment of my life.

Through the use of cannabis, I have managed to reduce my daily dose of narcotic pain medication by over 30%.

Beyond those issues, I also have a bleeding disorder which, in the absence of cannabis, would require treatment with steroids or other harmful medications.

Tell us about the new patients’ organization you started …

I founded Massachusetts Patients for Home Delivery (MPHD) as a way to give a voice to homebound/disabled cannabis patients and consumers who rely on small local delivery companies and cannabis caregivers to obtain cannabis at a reasonable price. Sadly, many people who are disabled are on a fixed income, and the prices charged by brick-and-mortar dispensaries [due to the complex nature of regulations for opening such an establishment] can oftentimes amount to as much as 40 to 50% of their monthly SSDI stipends. For this reason, homebound/ disabled patients have long gravitated towards smaller caregiver services and other mom-and-pop delivery operations due to their ability to offer their medication at a reasonable price point [such as] closer to 25% of one’s monthly SSDI income.

In spite of the wonderful service that these companies provide to those of us who are homebound, there are some who view such services as a threat to their profits, including some dispensary owners. Those dispensary owners with deep pockets and intricate political ties are in turn able to exert political pressure on regulatory agencies in order to have smaller operations of that nature shut down. While it is no doubt important to ensure the laws of the Commonwealth are upheld, and that services and dispensaries alike are operating in compliance with the regulations set forth by statute, MPHD, at its core, was founded to ensure that the enforcement of those laws and regulations within the cannabis industry does not adversely impact accessibility and cost for those in our society who are the most vulnerable due to their physical/ mental limitations and also their lack of voice in the political process.

months to find that service to begin with.

Having to begin another search for a caregiver, while dealing with a flare-up in my symptoms, was both terrifying and agonizing as I worried I would not be able to find another person willing to assist me with low-cost medication that was tested for impurities. In desperation, I began calling around to dispensaries only to be told I would be charged between $50 and $75 dollars in delivery fees alone due to my location, which would have brought the total cost for a month of my medication (1 oz of flower) to $450, more than 50% of my monthly SSDI stipend.

With dispensaries out of the question, I had to spend more than 3 weeks searching before I was eventually able to find another caregiver (who, to my surprise, waived all delivery fees for homebound/disabled patients). However, during that three-week period I was left with no medical cannabis and, in turn, my doctor ended up increasing the dosage of other, far more harmful medications. That entire process was frustrating, painful, and really opened my eyes as to how easily patients can fall by the wayside when cannabis regulations are enforced by police officers rather than civil regulators.

Why do you think about the proposed bill that aims to create a new cannabis law enforcement task force?

For the reasons I had just been discussing above, like the potential negative impact on accessibility for homebound/disabled patients who rely on smaller cannabis delivery services, I have serious concerns [about] the “task force” bill currently being proposed by Sen. Michael Moore and Rep. Hannah Kane. While I think the bill is, in spirit, attempting to be well-intentioned by trying to shut down the unregulated market, as written it sadly provides no pathway or amnesty for services which are currently operating that may want to transition into the regulated market.

Instead, rather than opening such a pathway, the current bill would focus resources on jailing and imposing back taxes on such services. As such, the proposed task force bill would end up serving as a form of regulatory capture for brick-and-mortar dispensaries by way of a return to failed drug war policies. In my view,

government should never be used to advance the profits of monied interests in that way.

Beyond that, the proposed law would undermine the fundamental goals of the Cannabis Control Commission, which are to engender equitable access to the industry for all business. As such, I will be opposing SD. 2387 and encouraging others to do so unless and until it is amended to offer a pathway/amnesty for small businesses who are currently assisting vulnerable patients and consumers if those services seek to apply for a license in front of the CCC. To protect the medical cannabis program, Mass Patient Advocacy Alliance is lobbying to ban discounts for rec patients. What do you think about that stance?

I have just today learned of the proposal put forth by others as to banning the use of discounts within the recreational market as a way to discourage for-profit dispensaries from enticing medical patients to transition to said recreational market. To me, while I think the problem is correctly identified—the risk of patients being pulled away from the nonprofit medical program in search of short-term discounts in the for-profit recreational sphere—the proposed solution misses the root cause of that core structural deficiency, the inherent conflict that exists when a single company is able to run both a nonprofit medical disciplinary and a for-profit recreational dispensary simultaneously.

What do you hope to achieve with MPHD? My goal is to provide an honorable voice for those who, due to physical or other limitations, may be unable to participate in the political process as it relates to the regulation of the cannabis industry. For me, success would mean a structure wherein no regulation or proposal would go forward in the cannabis industry absent consideration of its potential impact on accessibility for those with limited mobility or other disabilities.

Follow Mike Crawford on Twitter @mikecannboston and subscribe to his email newsletter at midnightmass. substack.com. You can listen to The Young Jurks at anchor. fm/theyoungjurks or wherever else podcasts are streamed.

You lost a caregiver a few years ago due to a law enforcement raid.

How did that impact you?

Sadly, the caregiver service I had used from the very beginning of my time as a medical patient was shut down in late 2016/early 2017. I was quite upset and scared as a result, as it had taken more than two NEWS TO US

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AN ORAL HISTORY OF THE DIG: EPISODE 6 FEATURE

The one in which we get suspended

BY BARRY THOMPSON

event, not a “party” for the public or whatever. But the reason that Berklee suspended internships with us was because we did a pro-marijuana publication, and we tasked an intern with calling every business or head shop at that time to talk about advertising. The intern put that in a daily report, and Berklee got back to us and said they did not support us having interns working on basically illegal activity, to which we responded in kind, informing them that we thought they were an open-minded and progressive college, and we certainly never harmed this individual intern. The ban had nothing to do with this party.

The ’90z - 2003 (cont.)

When last we checked in on the old Weekly Dig, the gang imbibed absinthe and cheered as an archaic statewide ban on body art was lifted. This time, as our scrappy staffers make numerous compromises—financial, moral, chemical, etc.—to reach new heights, destiny shows up to demand further concessions… [Ed. note: Nothing even close to the shit that goes down in this episode happens at the modern day Dig, we promise.]

Contrary to rumors, the distribution manager never lived in the delivery van MATT KING (classifieds manager): When the hookers came in to buy ad space, my approach was always, “You’re a customer, and I treat you with respect,” and I think they liked that, because they didn’t get it at other places. If they came in and said, “Oh, I don’t have any pictures,” I said, “Okay, we’ll take a couple pictures on the second floor, and you can pick the best one.” It was definitely, like, I was making it up as I went along.

CRAIG TERLINO (distribution manager): In 2000 when I started, we were up to probably 50,000 papers, and luckily, the place that printed the Dig was probably 40 minutes south of Boston. There was only one van, you’ve gotta beat the Phoenix, and they had a whole team of people delivering. Unless I had an assistant, I had to do it all myself. But I didn’t know any better. I was just doing the job I thought I had to do, I didn’t know I was getting overworked while [publisher] Jeff [Lawrence] was like, “I’m not going to tell him to stop until he says, ‘Enough is enough.’”

KING: I never got the sense that [the prostitutes] were all depressed about it. It was a lot of lower-educated young women using their bodies to survive in the city.

You can have an argument over whether that’s good or moral or bad or whatever, but it’s pretty much what kept the paper going for those early years. There were definitely some sketchy moments, though. The low point was when this guy made me write an ad for a 10

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pregnant escort. I was like, “She’s six months pregnant!?

Forget it!” He goes, “She’s got to pay her rent!” I was like, “Uggghhh….” I didn’t call those people back to renew.

TERLINO: There was a rumor that I lived in the van.

Sometimes I’d sleep at the Dig office just to get away, and it was cool to have a quiet place to write and not be bothered by my dumb roommates or whatever. So I lived in the van in the sense that I spent most of my days in the van, and sometimes, I did sleep in it. It was a good place to take mushrooms and just chill out. I used to take it camping. I’ve taken the van, not to the highest point of Mt. Washington, but as far up as I could before I’d smell the brakes burning.

CRAIG KAPILOW (associate editor): There was a very rowdy stripper party at the Kingston Street office with many, many hours of lapdances and everything else that Matt King arranged. [Editor] Joe [Bonni] got spanked, which, oh gawd, brings back terrible memories. I think all of us wanted to bleach our eyes. No one needs to see their boss’s bare ass getting spanked.

J. BENNETT (music editor): I feel like it was a birthday party for Joe, or maybe a going away party for me. It was a huge blowout with maybe two or three strippers. At one point, Joe was lying on his back on the floor with his pants around his ankles, and this is in front of about 100 people. And his Prince Albert piercing was out and available for the world to see.

JOE BONNI (EiC): I don’t think we ever thought about what the consequences of having strippers come to our office parties might’ve been. It’s not like we took people out to a club. This was in the offices.

KAPILOW: I mean, the interns there must’ve been like, “This is the most amazing thing,” or “This is the most horrifying thing.” I think it was Berklee who banned us from ever having one of their interns there again after they found out what was going on.

JEFF LAWRENCE (publisher): This was a private

LUKE O’NEIL (writer/music editor): J. moved to California, and they were hiring a new music editor. I remember it was kind of controversial at the time. There were a bunch of people there who didn’t want me.

LAWRENCE: Our lease was under CherryDisc Records.

CherryDisc sold to Roadrunner Records, and when that happened, nobody informed the landlord. So we just kind of stayed there. We didn’t pay rent for, like, two years. And the landlord walked in one day and said, “What are you guys fucking doing here?” We were like, “We don’t know!”

O’NEIL: I was pretty young, and I was kind of a shithead in the way young people are when they come out of school and think they’ve got it all figured out. But I came on as the music editor right toward the end of the Kingston Street era, and I remember the move over to East Berkeley Street.

LAWRENCE: They gave us 30 days and I called every fucking real estate broker in Boston and said I needed 200 square feet for two grand a month. Everybody laughed at me. Eventually a guy said to me, “You need to call [the owner of] the Medieval Manor building. Guy’s a socialist, hardcore progressive, says, “How much can you afford?” I say, “Two grand.” He says, “Done.”

BONNI: The office on Kingston Street being where it was, there was a J.J. Foley’s down the street there, and when we moved to East Berkeley Street, there was still a Foley’s two blocks away. That was fuckin’ amazing to me.

But that place on East Berkeley was very much more of an office building and very isolated, as opposed to the Combat Zone in Chinatown. I liked being dead center in the middle of the city.

LAWRENCE: When we got accepted into the AAN [Association of Alternative Newsmedia] in 2003, it was at the Pittsburgh convention. Myself and Joe Bonni went.

Every publisher, every editor, every board member pulled me aside and said, “Get rid of your editor.”

In the next episode: Our story takes a tumultuous turn as Jeff does, indeed, get rid of his editor.

CELEBRATE AND HONOR ASIAN AMERICAN HERITAGE CHINESE CALLIGRAPHY WITH RAYNA LO May 16 & June 20, 2019 | 5:00 PM - 8:00 PM Free Chinese calligraphy sessions! Practice writing the characters for your favorite Chinese dim sum dishes using traditional Chinese tools.

FILM SCREENING: “THERMAE ROMAE” June 5, 2019 | 5:30 PM - 8:00 PM

In partnership with the Japan Society of Boston and the Consulate General of Japan in Boston

Join us for a screening of Thermae Romae (subtitled in English), an adaptation of Mari Yamazaki’s popular manga of the same name. The story follows the adventure of Lucius, a Roman architect, who is criticized for his “outdated” thermae designs until he discovers a tunnel that leads him to a modern Japanese bath house.

Free and open to the public!

RSVP at northeastern.edu/crossing For more info, please contact: 617-373-2555 THE SERIES IS PRESENTED BY:

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HUNDREDS OF CREATIVE EVENTS STATEWIDE MANY FREE!

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F.I.G.H.T. SUBOXONE FEATURE

Real talk about medication-assisted treatment with Eric Spofford

BY THE BOSTON INSTITUTE FOR NONPROFIT JOURNALISM After years of struggling with addiction to opioids and heading straight for the grave or incarceration in his early adult life, Eric Spofford got sober in 2006. Two years later, he founded Granite Recovery Centers and embarked on a mission to help people kick for good.

Now, with 12 rehab facilities including two inpatient residential programs in his network, Spofford is among the most successful people in his field in New England— not only in business, but also in results.

He’s one of the most controversial figures in the national recovery community as well, and in December 2015 Spofford testified in front of the US Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions about the dangers of using addictive drugs in the service of getting people off of drugs.

“Granite Recovery Centers operates a lot differently,” he says. “I’m the one telling insurance companies, ‘No, we’re not going to put them on Suboxone.’”

In a time when everybody from the FDA commissioner to politicians in Mass are pushing for more medicationassisted treatment for people in recovery, Spofford says, “The doctor and the pharmacist are going to tell you that these drugs are the only way that people can get better from opiate addiction, and I’m just here to tell you that that’s not true.”

F.I.G.H.T. founder and filmmaker Johnny Hickey sat with Spofford for an in-depth discussion about problems that are getting worse as the government pours gas on the fire. Here are some highlights…

On the old days…

JH: When we were getting high and doing things, of course you could overdose, but it wasn’t like the fentanyl level of like a two out of three chance that you might fucking die.

ES: Back in my day, heroin was heroin. If you relapsed, and you used … you’d rob your family, end up homeless, catch a couple charges from running out of a Walmart with stolen shit, you’d go to jail, you’d burn your life to the ground, but chances were you were going to live to your next detox.

I had done Vicodin here and there, and I thought it was cool but it wasn’t really my thing. I wanted to sniff Special K and eat ecstasy and do all that. The point is I had no idea I was doing pharmaceutical heroin. As opposed to now.

On the dangers…

JH: It’s recognized across the board, state to state, especially here in New England. Governors, attorney generals suing the pharmaceutical industry. So you know where it’s at now. You know how bad it is.

ES: It used to be I’ve lost so many people to overdoses.

Now it’s like, literally, I’ve lost fucking all of them.

Everyone I know now are like newer friends. Kids that I shot dope with in 1999 are all gone. Not a single one left.

The story about messing around with drugs and prescription painkillers and then heroin, they’re still telling that narrative, but it’s gone. Kids are going like … trying drugs, doing fentanyl. It’s crazy. The game has changed entirely.

Now it’s like someone relapses, and you’re like, “He’s fucking dead.”

On blame…

ES: What I’ve seen over and over again is people just kind of going, “Oh yeah there’s an opiate epidemic and people are dying at scale, let’s throw it on the back of the governor or on the back of the president.” My response to that is like, dude, addiction is the largest public health 12

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epidemic and most confusing thing we’ve seen. This is worse than the Black Plague, Ebola, cancer, all of it. The government created the DMV. Have you ever been to the DMV? That’s one of their best creations. And you expect those fucking people to solve this? You’re out of your mind.

On the use of recovery drugs like Suboxone…

JH: When you’re putting something on the street that’s so simple—little Listerine strips … it’s like they figured out the subtle way to creep up with the pill to get you hooked without killing you right away.

Suboxone, maybe [if] used … for short-term detox, which is how it was pitched—just like how Oxycontin was pitched, that it wasn’t going to be addictive, same thing—has now turned into people being on it for five years, or however long they’ve been on it. It’s a currency in jail to get high. It’s a currency on the streets to trade.

ES: I got people telling me, “Yes, I’m in recovery, but who the fuck are you to tell somebody how they should recover? Who the fuck are you to tell somebody that they aren’t in recovery because they are on medication?” And I’m like, “Because they’re fucking not! What the fuck are you talking about?”

On Massachusetts…

ES: If you live in Massachusetts, you can get into detox like that. It’s not like how the politicians talk about it, [saying] we need more treatment. We have plenty of fucking treatment. Everybody goes to treatment.

It’s the social context of it, because we have to start asking hard questions that nobody wants to answer.

Everyone comes to me and goes, “Eric, why don’t you open up in Massachusetts?

We need a place in Brockton. We need a place in Southie, Quincy, fucking Western Mass.” In Massachusetts, by regulation, as a treatment center, you have to offer somebody medication-assisted treatment.

[Ed. note: Unlike in Massachusetts, where hospitals and treatment centers are required to offer medication assistance to those seeking treatment as of 2018, in New Hampshire there is still enough discretion allowed by state law for abstinence programs like Spofford’s to operate.]

Over the summer I had lobbying firms and lawyers and I spent a fuckton of money because I had problems with these [proposed New Hampshire] regulations.

[Lawmakers] snuck one line into the regulations that was brand new: “All clients must be offered medicationassisted treatment.” … It’s still there but it reads differently. It has a couple of words added: “All clients will be offered medication-assisted treatment when clinically appropriate.” That “when clinically appropriate” cost me a hundred-fucking-thousand fucking dollars.

On pressure…

ES: The amount of pressure that the insurance companies are applying on providers is getting greater and greater every year that goes by to put everyone on medication-assisted treatment. Eventually it’s going to come to a point where even going to treatment doesn’t get you off of Suboxone; detox becomes almost obsolete, and it becomes more of a stabilization.

One of the problems I’ve encountered is that even the recovery community, the prevention community, and the harm reduction community—10 years ago, eight years ago, that time period, when [drug companies] were trying to push this Suboxone agenda, everybody in a uniform voice was like, “Fuck you.” Now, I’m fighting with

not only insurance companies, I’m fighting with people that used to be on the same team.

On drug companies…

ES: They’ve done such a good job lobbying and advocating and so many different avenues of shit that people don’t even realize. They’re paying people to do their own research and write white papers and paying people like they’re actors to talk about their success stories. There’s such a disconnect between that and what’s actually happening. Motherfuck you. I’m on the ground. I am literally surrounded by hundreds of addicts every single fucking day. I come out of the trenches to make a video for social media and then go right back into the cave with all these people. I know what’s going on. I don’t see barely fucking anybody even just taking Suboxone successfully, let alone call that recovery. It’s a fucking miracle if I ever see anyone who’s like, I’m on Suboxone, dude, and I haven’t used an illicit drug in 12 months, and I’ve been taking my Suboxone prescription as prescribed. Fuck you and your studies, because that shit barely ever happens ever.

On the future…

ES: I won’t show up every day and fucking put everybody on maintenance. The second I have to put a single person on maintenance, I’m gone. I’m going home. … Eventually the insurance company will come in, or the state will rewrite the regs again, or something will happen, and I’m fucking out. …

At a larger scale it’s really an addiction epidemic.

In the last 12 months I’ve seen a big shift into crystal meth, which, like a year ago, if you called us saying you were using crystal meth, we’d be like, “What are you from, Kentucky?” … Now what we’re seeing is this new breed. The up-and-comers, they’re shooting fentanyl and they’re shooting crystal meth … because they’re scared of overdose and they think this is safer. …

The healthcare side of things, as far as treatment, we’re not helping anybody. We’re helping like ones and twos get better and clean up their life, but the agenda and policy driven by the state and the federal government, mixed with the insurance companies, mixed with the pharmaceutical industry, you’re really talking about three crime families of the same mafia there.

I don’t know if this is a government problem to fix.

But stop making it fucking worse. Right?

Film Intervening Getting High Team (F.I.G.H.T.) and the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism (BINJ) are projects of the Transformative Culture Project, a 501(c)3 nonprofit based in Roxbury, Massachusetts. For information about upcoming reports and videos sign up for the BINJ newsletter at binjonline.org.

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THAI MOON, ARLINGTON EATS

A tiny restaurant with big (and at times extremely spicy) flavors

BY MARC HURWITZ @HIDDENBOSTON You know that famous Mark Twain quote, “If you don’t like the weather in New England, just wait a few minutes”? Well, he didn’t exactly say that, but that’s another story for another day. The quote, however, can be used in a slightly different way to characterize the Arlington food scene, as in you don’t (or do) think much of it, but wait a bit and it’ll change.

Over the past several decades, Arlington has gone from being a town of sub shops and pizza joints to a town of interesting restaurants back to a town full of sub shops and pizza joints and back again, and in between, the town has sometimes had the scourge of lots of empty storefronts just waiting to be filled by new dining spots. The restaurant scene in this northwest suburb of Boston continues to change these days, and whether it’s for the better or for the worse pretty much depends on the person you’re talking to at the time. But there are some constants in town, including Jimmy’s Steer House, which has been around forever and which continues to serve up solid old-school dishes at moderate prices, and a handful of other spots that have stood the test of time (and in many cases, increasing rents), with one of the better ones being Thai Moon, an unassuming little eatery that’s virtually unknown outside of the immediate area but which has its fair share of followers who live nearby.

Arlington is one of the few good-sized towns you’ll find that doesn’t have a mall or a shopping center, so as you might expect, most of the businesses are quite small in size, and Thai Moon is about as small

as you can get and still be a full-service restaurant.

The interior is a bit less bare bones than when it first opened years ago, and with an ownership change earlier in the decade and upgrades to its dining area, the restaurant has while not quite a romantic feel to it, a little more of a cozy charm than before that makes it a fine place for a date. The lack of indoor space and the fact that there’s a municipal parking lot behind it—and 15 minutes of free parking along the street—helps make Thai Moon a popular spot for takeout, and much of its business is indeed of the to-go variety, though in the end, it feels like more of a true sit-down restaurant because of the updates to the space.

For some diners, Thai food begins and ends with pad Thai, and while there is so much more to Thai cuisine than this dish, it’s often what brings people to Thai Moon and other similar spots. You would think that a seemingly simple comfort food dish such as this one would pretty much be the same from place to place, but it isn’t, as some versions can be bland or have an unpleasant taste because the ingredients aren’t balanced correctly, but Thai Moon’s has been—and continues to be—one of the best northwest of Boston.

The standard pad Thai has a perfect mix of sweet, sour, and salty flavors, and you can get it with shrimp, chicken, or both, or as a vegetarian version with or without tofu, all of which are solid choices.

There’s plenty more at Thai Moon than just pad Thai, of course, including pork and veggie dumplings that can be ordered steamed or deep-fried (the fried

>> THAI MOON. 663 MASS. AVE., ARLINGTON. THAIMOONARLINGTON.COM 14

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ones can be a little dried out, so steamed may be the route to go); savory Thai pancakes that are made with rice and stuffed with scallions; a mellow tofu soup with chicken; a slightly spicy tom yum soup with lemongrass; a fiery hot chicken basil fried rice dish that can be toned down slightly if you ask in advance; drunken noodles (also known as noodles kee mao), which have the type of heat that can really sneak up on you; a mild massaman curry with sweet potatoes; and a wonderful version of country-style noodles, which is a good option if you love the taste of pad Thai but prefer wide, flat noodles instead.

Some specialty Thai dishes are also offered at Thai Moon, including a chili fish with tamarind sauce, shrimp in a pot with glass noodles, a deep-fried half duck with peanut sauce, and a stir-fried haddock with basil. Prices are pretty moderate, with most dinners costing between $10 and $20, and service is what you’d expect at a tiny family-run spot—low-key and friendly.

It seems like ever since Thai Moon opened more than 15 years ago, there has been chatter among locals that it wasn’t going to make it and that it was always about to close, but the place remains open and appears to be doing pretty well, which can’t be said for some other places in Arlington, as the town’s dining scene seems to be in constant flux. It might not be the biggest or best dining spot in the northwest suburbs, but Thai Moon continues to be a consistently good restaurant that just keeps on puttering along.

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WATCH FOR THE HOOK MUSIC

Sober and with Arcitype producing by his side, a Boston hip-hop stalwart modifies his craft and hustle

BY CHRIS FARAONE @FARA1 Rite Hook is leaning forward in the cockpit at the Bridge got to LA I finally had a clear head. That’s the only reason Sound and Stage lab in Cambridge. Behind him is a tilted Modify came out.” control board with a dizzying array of dials, plus a monitor If this sounds like a familiar tale to Hub rap fans, that perched directly above with the cover of his new album, may be because Slaine, who Hook has shared innumerable Modify, on the screen. The image is a creepy doctored marquees and album credits with, found a similar close-up of the artist, who designed it himself; somehow, salvation years ago. After earning a rep as a liquor- and his eyes stare right back at you from any angle you ogle coke-monger, Slaine put down the vial. In the time since, from, sort of like the Mona Lisa but a lot more menacing. he’s helped others do the same, and in this case assisted Huddled all around him in the studio are Hook’s mates his old accomplice into a much healthier gear. and collaborators, some of whom have cut pitch-dark “I’m a big fan, I’ve always been,” Slaine says of his music with the rapper since adolescent days of rolling longtime co-defendant. “He was with me when I was at deep in hoopties blasting Wu-Tang Clan and Slipknot. my bottom, passing out on stage, and he was sober at the Others, like top Boston producer Arcitype, whose chair time. I’ve been mentored by a lot of people in this game— Hook is currently occupying as he navigates us through helping each other is just what we do. I’ve watched him his latest masterstroke and all the misery that shaped it, develop from an 18-year-old kid into a unique and mature have added their energy to the matrix more recently. artist with a sound that nobody else has.”

Whether new or old associates, the reaction on all of “My whole team is sober,” Hook says. “Nobody really the faces in the room is some twist of insanely mesmerized.

This shit that we are listening to isn’t simply different. This shit is amazing.

It is neither corny nor hyperbole to say that few heads in this studio thought Hook would make it to this point. An open book and veteran of the Bay State’s perpetual opioid crisis, he’s lived through and gone on to tell more drug-addled war stories than most. Unlike the contemporary trap clowns who toast to inebriation without even mildly acknowledging the nightmares that haunt chronic painkiller abusers in reality, Hook has pulled fans head-first through the intravenous trials he endured, battering our brains with violent lessons from the toxic trenches.

While the beats are mostly morbid at his engagement in Cambridge, the mood is rather light. Hook has been clean for months and in that time climbed out of a rut he had been buried beneath for years. On the personal front, he got engaged; professionally, he linked with Arcitype of STL GLD fame and opened up his range. Those who came for this unveiling of the fruits of Hook’s sobriety appear to be as stunned by the fact that this night is happening at all as they are by the beats and bars.

“I moved to LA to get my shit together,” Hook says. For the past year, he’s been flying back and forth between Boston and Los Angeles, tattooing for rent money while working on new albums. “Before that I’d work on Modify a little bit, then fuck up, go into a [rehabilitation] program, and then try getting back into the music. But when I PHOTO BY HARRISON SEARLE >> MODIFY ALBUM RELEASE. SAT 5.4 AT THE MIDDLE EAST, 472 MASS AVE, CAMBRIDGE. 16

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gets fucked up, so I can’t even show up if I have been getting wasted.” Looking back on his musical purgatory before cleaning up, he adds, “I just didn’t go [to the studio]. I didn’t want to hear it from anybody.”

“LA isn’t the best place to get sober,” he laughs, “but Slaine was there and I had the opportunity.”

As for that unique sound… as was discovered early on by producers and concert promoters who pushed him to take his talent past rapping, Hook packs the kind of naturally electric vocals that cannot be fabulated using Auto-Tune or learned in voice lessons. It’s a light gravelly bass with elements of Aesop Rock and Eddie Vedder, not unlike the way that his creations split the hip-hop and hard rock divide. What started as mere vocal riffing at the urging of some early Hook producers like Lu Balz—who has gone on to work with bigs like Justin Bieber, Post Malone, and Halsey—has effectively evolved into a golden and distinctive ring under the tutelage of Arcitype.

“I think it’s been a slow progression and a gradual change,” Hook says of his versatility. “I know everyone thinks it’s something totally new, but I was singing on my first album.”

For Modify, Hook returned to his roots in a literal sense, with him and Arcitype enlisting musician and co-writer Jeff Gard, who Hook used to play with in the Worcester metal band Doomshot.

“We’d do the American Legion and Polish club halls,” Hook recalls fondly. “I moved from Winthrop to Central Mass as a kid, but split my time between both. In [Winthrop] I was exposed to writing graffiti and being in graf crews, which brought me into the world of hip-hop after being taught how to freestyle and beatbox from my cousins.

“In Central Mass, I was the only kid who didn’t have family there, so I ended up being the odd one out a lot. [I had] just a general feeling of not being accepted, which in turn fueled anger and the drive to do something no one else could do as a fuck you to a lot of people. I had a city mindset in a small town.”

All of which provided endless fodder for his first several albums, and even Modify to an extent. Now that he has a clear head, though, and is already back in the studio with Arcitype for a follow-up LP, Hook has had to look beyond the depths of despair for compelling content.

“It’s weird,” he says. “I had experienced so much awful shit when I was fucked up out of my mind—I had only written from a place of hurt. I had never written a love song. I’d never even tried.

“Not knowing anything but selfsabotage in the past, I’m just trying to figure out how to do this now that things are good.”

FIVE WITH PHONTE ARTS NEWS

From Foreign Exchange student to teacher and Little Brother to big sibling INTERVIEW BY CHRIS FARAONE @FARA1

I was taken aback to see that the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is hosting a discussion in which Phonte Coleman, along with chef Elle Simone of America’s Test Kitchen and Artists for Humanity co-founder Rob “Problak” Gibbs, will discuss pivotal moments in their lives. Not just because the event, moderated by former Dig contributor and current WBUR Engagement Producer Arielle Gray, promises to be a powerful session, but also because I happened to be there for a pivotal moment in Coleman’s life, the very day in 2004 that he met Dutch producer Nicolay, with whom the rapper and singer has since cut countless classic projects and even been nominated for a Grammy award as the Foreign Exchange.

I have followed Coleman closely, and so ahead of this week’s conversation about how the Gardner’s guests “broke through fears and challenges to invent new opportunities and change the scope of being artists in their fields,” I reached out to ask about his career arc and trajectory, from his start with the group Little Brother on through what’s up next.

Do you do many events like this? Speaking engagements, panel discussions, things of that sort? You can rhyme forever, but have you also considered teaching? Or is the microphone your foremost pulpit forever?

I don’t do a lot of them. I’ll get calls, but not really. I think as I get older I’ll have to start doing them. … Teaching isn’t really something I have an interest in. … I enjoy making music and I’m going to keep doing it until I’m out of here.

You’ve done quite a bit—the Foreign Exchange, Little Brother, appearances on countless records. At this point do you have the next couple of years kind of planned out? Or do you just kind of play it by ear?

The Foreign Exchange is definitely my 401k plan. You can sing and write songs until you’re 70. I don’t know if it’s the same for hip-hop. If you still have to rap at 70, that’s kind of sad. It’s one thing if you’re doing it for the love, but if your livelihood depends on it, that’s depressing. For me, doing the Foreign Exchange albums and doing voiceover work and my various income streams are the closest thing I have to a Foreman Grill.

When and how did you start to conceive longerterm career plans?

I don’t know if it was a plan as much as it was just taking a chance. Everything I’m doing now is something that I just have a curiosity about. Like singing songs—what is that like?

And it’s the same with the voiceover work. I tell young artists all the time, Don’t be afraid to use everything in your toolbox. You never know which one could be the one that will lead to a breakthrough for you. [Questlove of the Roots] is a great example. As much as I love him as a drummer, the Questlove brand as a DJ is worth more now. He’ll tell you himself. You never know. I’ve always tried to take every opportunity that comes to me.

Do you often find yourself in a position in which you can school young artists?

I’m not the kind of person who’s like, Come to me. But when there are people who have questions, I tell them to use me as a resource. It was tough when we were coming up out of North Carolina. There was no one to follow, there was no manual to look at. We were just flying by the seat of our pants. So I tell young artists, You’re gonna make mistakes. Don’t make the same mistakes that we made.

What was it like to come up doing your own thing at a time in which the rap music on the radio was significantly different from what you were making?

It was tough, but it kind of whipped us into shape. Nothing on the radio sounded like [Little Brother]. Now you have popular artists you could point to that sound like that—you have Wale, you have Drake. You have all these groups that are fruit from our tree in a lot of ways. But not back then.

The lesson I learned was to just keep going. … I really thought [the second Little Brother album] The Minstrel Show was the end. I just wish that somebody told me it was only the beginning. >> THE LARGER CONVERSATION: CREATIVE RESILIENCE W/ PHONTE COLEMAN, ROB “PROBLAK” GIBBS, AND CHEF ELLE SIMONE. THU 5.2 @ 7PM AT CALDERWOOD HALL AT THE GARDNER MUSEUM. MORE INFO AND TICKETS AT GARDNERMUSEUM.ORG/CALENDAR. NEWS TO US

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QUEERS TO THE FRONT ARTS

Queer Vietnamese artists showcase work at Vanguard retrospective exhibition

BY OLIVIA DENG

AIDEN NGUYEN, COFOUNDER OF VANGUARD ZINE. PHOTO BY OLIVIA DENG. Aiden Nguyen grew up in Dorchester, and for years he struggled to find a community of people like himself: queer and Vietnamese. Nguyen said that he initially didn’t feel comfortable embracing his queerness because he couldn’t find support or resources.

After graduating from college in New York City, Nguyen went back to Vietnam with his friend Thanh Nu Mai in 2014, with the goal of reconnecting with Vietnamese culture and finding a community of queer Vietnamese they weren’t able to find in Boston or New York. On a bus ride from Saigon, they talked about ways to bring together the queer Vietnamese community with art.

“We had this idea of creating a zine,” Nguyen said, inspired by the zine festivals he and Mai attended in New York City. They settled on the name Vanguard for the zine and planned on featuring art and writing from LGBTQ+ Vietnamese. “Vanguard is pretty much in an army, it’s the very frontmen,” Nguyen said. “We want to be at the forefront of this art revolution, this queer revolution of Vietnam.”

Five years after Vanguard’s inception, zine co-founders Nguyen and Mai will host the Vanguard Retrospective Exhibition at Dorchester Art Project, opening April 26, to celebrate the work of LGBTQ+ Vietnamese artists and the release of Vanguard 5. With more than 25 artists, the exhibit showcases their videos, installations, printed artwork, and paintings. The opening reception features dance, drag, spoken word, and violin performances. *** Nguyen prints the zines at his shared studio at Dorchester Art Project. The DIY aspect of zines appealed to both Nguyen and Mai. “Zines have always had an underground feel, punk and freedom,” Mai said. They added that zines were a relatively cost-effective way to assemble art and writing, then disseminate the messages.

“Our goal is to have the zine made by the queer Vietnamese community for the queer Vietnamese

community,” Nguyen said. “We’re kind of setting it up so that it becomes history, it becomes something that the future generations can look at when they’re trying to find queer Vietnamese history or queer Vietnamese community. Because that’s something I wasn’t able to do, even in the age of Google. I was googling ‘queer Vietnamese artists’ and there wasn’t a lot of resources, there wasn’t a lot of connections to be made. I want this to be the platform for that.”

Nguyen said that they don’t have specific submission requirements; the zine is open to artists and writers of all experience levels. The zine has featured short stories, drawings, watercolors, paintings, and digital art with topics including love, heartbreak, family, queer and Vietnamese identity, and the Vietnamese diaspora experience.

Mai added that they were also filling a void for LGBTQ+ artists in Vietnam who have run into censorship problems.

“Everything has to have a license. … It always requires artists to self-censor before they get censored. So a lot of artists don’t print their own artwork. They don’t have any galleries to represent them. Vanguard is a platform for artists and writers to submit whatever they want to talk about. … I think that’s one of the beautiful things about Vanguard, it’s opened up so many conversations that people want to have but they don’t have a place or platform to do that yet in Vietnam,” Mai said. “Oftentimes LGBTQ Vietnamese artists don’t have a platform for themselves already. A lot of the artists I’ve talked to in Vietnam have to draw children’s books. They have to draw commercials to be able to make money, to make a living. … What our zines want to do is increase visibility of queer Vietnamese artists.” *** Hosting the exhibit in Dorchester, home to one of the largest Vietnamese communities in New England, is significant, especially in a precarious time when

gentrification threatens existing communities in neighborhoods across Boston.

“To be able to have a queer Vietnamese exhibition here in Dorchester is huge in terms of introducing … this new me to an old home, or a community I have called home for the past two decades,” Nguyen said. “We want to bring together queer Vietnamese folks and introduce their artwork, so for artists and writers, this is an opportunity for them to showcase their art to a larger audience.

A lot of our artists and writers who are based outside the US are mainly based in Vietnam.”

Ngec-Trân Ve, a Dorchester-based Vietnamese multimedia artist, said that in the fight against gentrification, art plays in integral role in communicating stories and shaping narrative. “People are getting priced out, rents are rising, businesses are closing because it’s getting so unaffordable. It’s not just Dorchester, but the face of Dorchester is changing slowly,” Ve said. “Art as a form of engagement, art as community organizing, the role of art to create flyers, create graphics that attract people, to document and report narrative stories—a lot of that is super important to engage with. [And] also to help people heal and create their own narrative and stories in the form of empowerment.”

The exhibit serves as a reminder of who’s in Dorchester and why Dorchester residents’ stories should be heard.

“It’s [Dorchester] oftentimes left out of the conversation in Boston. Dorchester is labeled as a crimeridden and very violent, but there’s so much power in Dorchester,” Ve said. “There’s so many stories, families, resiliency, and struggle. It’s a really beautiful place and I definitely want to be a part of Dorchester, building it and transforming it.”

Nguyen also looks forward to rallying the Dorchester community and continuing the Vanguard zine. He noted that since being away from Dorchester for six years, he was surprised but delighted to see people of his generation being more open, political, progressive, vocal about community issues, and involved in community organizing.

“I think this is the perfect time for me to come back here and also join that movement, join that community that is growing here in Dorchester,” he said. “I’m excited to bring my queerness into this community. I want to be visible and I want other queer Vietnamese folks to be able to see other queer Vietnamese folks being open about their identity and being able to express themselves and to show the community that there are queer people in the Vietnamese community and that’s not an exclusively nonVietnamese thing, or exclusively American thing.”

For Nguyen, it makes sense to express queerness through art.

“When you think of queerness, queerness is about having an endless possibility of being. … I think art also exemplifies that. There are so many different forms of art and there are so many different ways of expressing yourself through art. And I think queerness and art kind of just goes hand in hand. For queer people, to express themselves in art, it allows them to tap into that endless possibility of queerness as well.”

>> VANGUARD RETROSPECTIVE EXHIBITION. 4.26-5.19 AT DORCHESTER ART PROJECT, 1486 DORCHESTER AVE., BOSTON. OPEN TO THE PUBLIC SAT AND SUN NOON-6PM. OPENING RECEPTION 4.26, 6-9PM. 18

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THE NEW GIRL IN TOWN PERFORMING ARTS

Jocelyn Bioh on her play School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play

BY JILLIAN KRAVATZ @JILLIAN_KRAVATZ In 2011, an American-born biracial woman was named Miss Ghana, beating out two well-known Ghanaian models (pageant officials hid the young woman’s American background). She went on to the Miss Universe pageant but did not place. “I thought that story was pretty damn interesting,” Jocelyn Bioh writes in the author’s note to her award-winning new play, School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play. “So I wrote a play about it,” she adds.

Bioh’s play, which premieres in Boston on May 3 at SpeakEasy stage, has all the trappings of a juicy mean girls saga—the head bitch in charge, the dumb one, the crony, the rival. Paulina happily rules over her clique at one of Ghana’s best boarding schools for girls. She’s all set to represent her school in the Miss Ghana pageant before a new girl, Ericka, comes on the scene. Though her father owns a cocoa company in Ghana, Ericka grew up in Ohio.

Her skin is fair, her hair is long. She is instantly the envy of all the girls, especially Paulina. The clique unravels as Ericka and Paulina duke it out over who will be the next Miss Ghana.

School Girls is hilarious and heartbreaking as it explores the pressure young women feel to fit in—in their own social circles, but also in the world. Beneath their obsession with designer dresses and hair products is the glaring question: Who is considered beautiful?

Ireon Roach, a BU sophomore who plays Paulina in SpeakEasy’s production, said that this has been one of the most joyous rehearsal processes she’s experienced.

“Being in a room with a cast full of black women is so powerful. We are always laughing because we know we have to. There is that lightness we need when diving into the depths that this play does,” Roach said.

In addition to the show’s opening, Bioh is coming to Boston next week to speak at a public forum on Tuesday, May 7, at Hibernian Hall with the show’s director Summer L. Williams. The Dig emailed with Jocelyn Bioh about her upcoming show, the ’80s, and beauty.

Your play takes inspiration from the 2011 Miss Ghana pageant, but is set in 1986. Why the ’80s? I instantly thought of other ’80s mean girl tales, notably Heathers and 16 Candles, which exclusively feature white “plastics.” Were you responding to these when you picked the ’80s? Am I way off?

Well, the short answer is I’m obsessed with the ’80s!

The culture, the music, the fashion, the TV shows—I think it was a crazy and amazing time to grow up in. Also, back in the ’80s, it was perfectly plausible for a pageant winner to go on to be a superstar. There was a lot of stock invested in these competitions back then so it made the most sense to me to set it then. As for the subtitle, well, that was intended to help contextualize/trick the audience. So many times, African stories are expected to have the singular narrative of poverty, war, struggle and strife. I write African comedy and because that seems to be a new concept for people, I added to subtitle to immediately contextualize the play and let audiences know (read: trick them!) that they are in for a good time. So you weren’t WAY off base, but it’s important for people to realize that white people didn’t invent being “mean girls, ha!” That’s universal.

How did your mother’s experience at Aburi Girls Boarding School influence your writing of the play?

It didn’t really, but I wanted to use her school as the setting of the play to highlight the universality of what I assume was a similarity in both of our experiences. I went to boarding school myself and I always knew that I wanted to write about that experience because it was so unique.

There are so many interesting and crazy personalities in school and girls are so vicious when they are left to their own devices.

I noticed the way your character Eloise (the prim pageant recruiter) uses euphemisms to tiptoe around her preference of a lighter-skinned candidate for the Miss Ghana pageant. She claims the judges “are fond of girls who have a more universal and commercial look” and refers gingerly to an “African skin spectrum.” What are you hoping audiences take away from your play, where skin tone and the “commercial look” clash?

Well, the play is about colorism which is a form of racism that exists within an ethnic group. Eloise’s quest for a lighter-skinned girl to compete in the pageant because she believes her to be more beautiful is incredibly problematic, especially as a former (dark-skinned) Miss Ghana herself. The fact that Eloise has bought into the concept that being lighter is better shows just how deeply Western ideas of beauty have become the standard for everyone—even in Africa. It’s disheartening and problematic but sometimes hard to describe which is why the word colorism is not said in the play. I wanted audiences to see what colorism does and how it affects these young women.

Your play is full of “knockoffs”: Paulina lies about her past and exaggerates the status of her US relatives, bragging about their sending her “Calvin Klean” dresses from Chinatown. When Ericka arrives, she disabuses the other girls of Paulina’s ruse. Instead, she has real Calvin Klein and beauty products that don’t sting. Yet Paulina later accuses Ericka of being a “knockoff” herself: a fake Ghanaian with perfect skin coming to steal Paulina’s rightful pageant title. Some of the juiciest parts of the play are when Paulina and Ericka duke it out. I was struck by how they each envy the other. Paulina longs for a fairer complexion more like Ericka’s, even to the point of using painful bleaching creams. Ericka envies Paulina’s dark skin, seeing it as a mark of her true African-ness. They are obviously both beautiful, but can’t seem to see it in themselves. How has your own past led to your rendering such complicated, real characters?

Well as a dark-skinned African woman, I have a deep understanding of the psychological effects of colorism and that is why I think there are some moments of the play that feel incredibly personal. I spent an embarrassing amount of years struggling to own my beauty. I was always made to feel inferior to lighter-skinned women. I constantly heard that they were prettier, smarter,

better, more desired. I understand in a visceral way what would drive someone like Paulina to take such drastic measures. As I’ve grown older, I realized that all women struggle with insecurities and that is why it was important for me to highlight that Ericka struggles with who she is as well. In the end, Ericka still has to reconcile with the privilege she inherently has.

Has anyone from the actual Miss Ghana pageant reacted to the play?

Funnily enough, I met the current Miss Ghana on a recent trip to Ghana. She had no idea who I was or anything about my play. It was marvelously humbling, ha!

THE CAST OF SCHOOL GIRLS. PHOTO BY NILE SCOT STUDIOS.

>> SCHOOL GIRLS; OR, THE AFRICAN MEAN GIRLS PLAY. 5.3-5.25 AT SPEAKEASY STAGE. 527 TREMONT ST., BOSTON, MA. SPEAKEASYSTAGE.COM. 20

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THEATER REVIEWS PERFORMING ARTS

BY CHRISTOPHER EHLERS @_CHRISEHLERS

CAROLINE, OR CHANGE AT MOONBOX PRODUCTIONS

performance as Caroline. Her voice is both a prayer and an answer, the most nuanced and breathlessly complete musical performance so far this year. Lyndsay Allyn Cox also does terrific work as Caroline’s friend, Dotty, but the rest of the cast is largely too much (Davron S. Monroe) or not enough (Ben Choi-Harris and Kira Troilo).

Caroline, or Change is a vital and important work of art that will likely go down in history (if it hasn’t already) as being one of the most overlooked and underappreciated pieces of musical theater. But aside from Yewande Odetoyinbo’s gorgeous performance at this production’s center, Moonbox’s Caroline would benefit from a little change.

It’s been 15 years since Caroline, or Change first premiered at New York’s Public Theater, and in that decade and a half, few new musicals have come close to matching its ambition or complexity. (An exception could be Fun Home which, like Caroline, also features a score by Jeanine Tesori). If ambition could sell tickets, it’s likely that Caroline, or Change would still be running on Broadway today (it unjustly shuttered after four short months).

When I saw George C. Wolfe’s production on CAROLINE, OR CHANGE. THROUGH 5.11 AT MOONBOX Broadway in 2004, I felt certain that I had just seen a PRODUCTIONS AT THE BOSTON CENTER FOR THE ARTS, 527 new masterpiece of American theater. Tony Kushner’s TREMONT ST., BOSTON. MOONBOX.ORG book and lyrics—along with Tesori’s penetrating and intelligent score—coexist in ways that remain rich and surprising to this day. After all, a musical that employs a singing washer, dryer, moon, and bus better—at the very THE RETURN AT ISRAELI STAGE least—be surprising.

In segregationist 1963 Louisiana, a maid named Caroline (Yewande Odetoyinbo) is suffocating in the stifling hot basement purgatory of the Gellman family There has not been a more taut, better-acted production home. She’s literally suffocating, yes—and the dryer only this spring than Israeli Stage’s swan song, The Return. makes it worse—but figuratively, too, as she finds herself Written by Hanna Eady and Edward Mask, and directed trapped not only by the limitations of her circumstances with staggering intensity by Guy Ben-Aharon, the play (she’s a poor, single mother of three) but also by the anger stars Nael Nacer and Philana Mia as two former lovers and resentment that has built up over the course of her who have been pulverized by both each other and the life. hatred that prevails between the Palestinians and the She works for the Gellman family where father Israelis.

Stuart (Rob Orzalli) is recently widowed and has sworn He is a Palestinian Arab and she is an Israeli woman, off God, and his 8-year-old son Noah (Ben Choi-Harris) and 13 years after the last time they saw each other, she doesn’t quite get along with his new stepmom, Rose flies through the door of the body shop he works at like (Sarah Kornfeld). Whether she likes it or not, Noah—who a missile, completely upending and destroying what is loosely based on Kushner himself—hangs around little life (and peace of mind) he’s been able to carve out Caroline and thinks the world of her, even if he wonders for himself. She asks for forgiveness—though for what why she’s so sad and angry all the time. isn’t immediately clear—and we begin to get the sense Rose is tired of Noah leaving change in his pockets, that something horrible has happened between these so to teach him a lesson, she instructs Caroline to keep two. Part of the thrill of The Return is that we never quite whatever change she finds in the laundry. But the idea know where the story will zig or zag next, and as such it’s of taking money from a boy ultimately plunges Caroline best that I don’t reveal much more here. He swears that in crisis mode: Every time she takes a coin out of the he was guilty and that she has nothing to apologize for, bleach cup, she sacrifices a piece of her integrity. But but we know that can’t be the whole story, not least of when Caroline takes $20 that she finds in his pants at all because we can see the intense storm brewing behind Chanukah, she feels that she has hit rock bottom. And in Nacer’s eyes. her 11 o’clock number, “Lot’s Wife” (one of the greatest and And that’s part of the marvel of Nacer’s performance: most wrenching songs written for the stage in the last 20 the quiet intensity with which he communicates the most years), she pleads to God to kill off the Caroline that has minute shifts in mood or feeling, the way the pain creeps dreams and desires so that she can return to her job, as up on him—and in effect us—and how he strips himself miserable as it is, so that her kids might one day have a emotionally bare, revealing a humanity that is central to better life. what The Return is trying to say about identity, love, and The struggle for Caroline is that she must learn to belonging. accept her life as it is without the desire for more. It is, in a sense, that she makes peace with the fact that she sacrificed her life so that her children would never have to be anybody’s maid. Her eldest, Jackie (Kira Troilo), already fighting for civil rights and dreaming of her future, is that glimmer of hope, even if Troilo feels miscast and doesn’t quite fully realize the potential of the role.

As much as I admire the musical— and Moonbox’s ambition for taking it on—this production frequently feels misguided, slapdash, and just not ready to do the heavy lifting that Kushner and Tesori’s work requires. There is not enough finesse in Choat’s direction to make this beautiful, painful, and defiant musical work on any real level.

But that doesn’t take away from SCENE FROM THE RETURN. PHOTO COURTESY OF ISRAELI STAGE. Odetoyinbo’s ruthlessly moving NEWS TO US

Similarly, Mia is riveting as a woman who clearly has something she needs to get off her chest, consequences be damned. There’s an electricity between her and Nacer—but also an uncanny weariness—that makes their pairing so alluring. And that may be Ben-Aharon’s greatest marvel here: threading this 75 minute play with a relationship so fractured, painful, and real that we can’t help but be swept up in the injustice of it all.

This is must-see theater.

THE RETURN. THROUGH 5.19 AT ISRAELI STAGE AT THE CALDERWOOD PAVILION, 527 TREMONT ST., BOSTON. ISRAELISTAGE.COM

VIETGONE AT COMPANY ONE THEATRE

One of the many things I’ve learned while reviewing theater in Boston over the last several years is that if a production is bold, exciting, and makes me feel alive, chances are it’s a Company One production.

Even the imperfect productions—and there are almost as many at C1 as there are at most other theaters in Boston—vibrate with such an urgency and vigor that it’s hard not to be in awe. Company One’s latest mounting—a deliriously fun and funny love story set in the aftermath of the Vietnam War—is a great example of how an imperfect play is given the Company One treatment and winds up being one of the surest bets in town.

Qui Nguyen’s Vietgone is a Technicolor and cinematic romantic comedy based on the story of how Nguyen’s parents met at a Vietnamese refugee camp in Arkansas in 1975. Quentin Nguyen-Duy plays Quang (the character based on the playwright’s father) with a sly, badass goofiness, making him the ideal leading man for this heartfelt quirk of a story. He left family behind in Vietnam, but so did Tong (a luminous Christina Mei Chen), who finds herself lonely and horny, thinking that maybe Quang is the guy that can scratch her itch.

The romantic plot of Vietgone is relatively straightforward, and part of the problem with the play is that it takes so long in the first act to get nowhere at all; it isn’t until Quang and Tong first hook up that the play really catches fire. And there are also random hip-hop musical numbers throughout the play that are unconvincing, tentatively performed, and wholly out of place.

But when Vietgone hits its stride—which it ultimately does in the second act—it approaches a kind of delirium that all but neutralizes the shortcomings of its first act; there is even a ridiculous ninja battle that had me crying with laughter. A wizardly trio of performers—Rob Chen, Kim Klasner, and Jude Torres—cover 16 roles between them and infuse each with comedic perfection. Director Michelle Aguillon manages to mostly strike just the right balance between heart and raucous comedy, and she is especially successful in her sprawling and smart staging, not always an easy feat in the Plaza Theatre.

Vietgone is a remarkably original theatrical blast with charm to burn, a refreshing and effervescent tonic that you’ll likely find hard to resist.

VIETGONE. THROUGH 5.25 AT COMPANY ONE THEATRE AT THE BCA PLAZA THEATRE, 539 TREMONT ST., BOSTON. COMPANYONE.ORG FEATURE

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QUICKIES

SAVAGE LOVE

WHAT'S FOR BREAKFAST

BY PATT KELLEY PATTKELLEY.COM

BY DAN SAVAGE @FAKEDANSAVAGE | MAIL@SAVAGELOVE.NETE3 I’ve been with my boyfriend for a few months. Prior to dating, I was clear with him that I would need to open our relationship at some point. He initially hesitated to respond, but then agreed we could do that when the time came. That time has come much quicker than I anticipated, but I feel like he’ll renege on his end of things because of many comments he’s made recently—comments like not understanding or liking nonmonogamy and how “his woman” sleeping around is a deal breaker. Is this a DTMFA situation?

Specified Open Relationship Early

Yup. “Haven’t met the right guy yet” ≠ “Haven’t met any guys ever.”

Almost everyone has done something and/or someone they regret doing—although it’s possible your ex-girlfriend doesn’t regret fucking her married boss for three years, SAAD, and it’s possible there’s no need for regret. Sometimes people have affairs for all the right reasons. Sometimes abandoning a spouse and/or breaking up a home with kids in it, aka “doing the right thing” and divorcing, is the worse choice. Life is long and complicated, and it’s possible for a person to demonstrate loyalty and commitment with something other than their genitals. Sometimes people do what they must to stay married and stay sane, and their affair partners are doing good by being “bad.”

It’s also possible—and perhaps likelier—that your ex-girlfriend made an impulsive, shitty, selfish choice to fuck someone else’s husband. It’s possible he’s a serial philanderer, a cheating piece of shit, and then, after fucking him that one time, your girlfriend felt pressured to keep fucking him and wound up having a years-long affair with her married boss. And then, when it was all over, she stuffed it down the memory hole because she wasn’t proud of it and wanted to forget it.

It’s also possible she didn’t tell you about this relationship when you asked because she intuited—correctly, as it turned out—that you are, in your own words, a bad person, i.e., the kind of guy who would punish his girlfriend for having a sexual history, for making her fair share of mistakes, and for deciding to keep some things private. (Not secret, SAAD. Private.) In other words, she correctly intuited that you would punish her for being human.

Finding out about a past boyfriend doesn’t give you the right to invade your partner’s privacy and dig through their ancient e-mails. Your girlfriend was right to break up with you for snooping through her e-mails and judging her so harshly. And she didn’t even lie to you, dude! Her boss clearly wasn’t “the right guy,” seeing as he was married and her boss, and the relationship ended before you two even first laid thighs on each other nine years ago.

And from where I’m sitting, SAAD, it looks like she still hasn’t met the right guy.

To be perfectly frank, I don’t want to help you get over your anger and disgust—not that you asked me to help you get past those feelings. It kind of sounds like you want your anger and disgust affirmed… and I’m going to go with that and affirm the shit out of those feelings: Stay angry! Stay disgusted! Not because those feeling are valid—they’re not—but because those feelings prevented you from taking your ex back when she reached out. She may not know it yet, but she’s better off without you, SAAD, and here’s hoping you stay angry and disgusted long enough for her to realize it.

This is another request for a kinky neologism. How about those of us who like the idea of our significant other having sex with somebody else but who aren’t into full-on cuckoldstyle humiliation? “Cuckold” savagelovecast.com implies a level of subordination that just isn’t my thing, and “hotwifing,” besides sounding incredibly sleazy, assumes that it’s a couple that is opposite sex and married, and the guy is only interested in watching. Can you or the hive mind solve this problem?

Cuck In Name Only

OUR VALUED CUSTOMERS

BY TIM CHAMBERLAIN OURVC.NET

RUTHERFORD

BY DON KUSS DONKUSS@DIGBOSTON.COM

I don’t think the term “hotwifing” is inherently heterosexist, as there are gay men and straight women out there into “hothusbanding.” (They get off on sharing their hot spouses with others, aren’t necessarily interested in getting with anyone else themselves, and don’t, à la cuckolds, get off on humiliation.) But if that term doesn’t appeal to you, CINO, there’s already an alternative: stags (a man who may or may not be dominant who likes to share his partner and may or may not participate) and vixens (a woman who may or may not be submissive who enjoys having sex with others in front of her partner and may or may not share them with others too).

On the Lovecast, Dan interviews sociologist and author Nicholas A. Christakis: savagelovecast.com.

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05.02.19 - 05.09.19 |

DIGBOSTON.COM

“So maybe you can’t sweat but, you can give blood & tears, brother”

SOMERVILLE OPEN STUDIOS ARTS

The soul of the city

BY THEA PANETH

“Somerville Open Studios is a jewel in the Somerville community art scene,” says Evelyn Battinelli, Executive Director, Secretary and Trustee of the Somerville Museum, “the Somerville Museum is very pleased to be a part of this wonderful celebration of the arts.”

On May 3, 4, & 5 Somerville Open Studios (somervilleopenstudios.org) celebrates its 21st year as more than 300 artists across the city open their studios during one of the largest single weekend open studio events in the nation.

Somerville bursts at the seams with art. From fashion to film to interactive art, there is something for everyone. The annual SOS weekend continues to inspire and enchant the art-loving public as artists open their doors in this family friendly event.

Visit home studios and commercial buildings to see a wide range of artists, artwork and creative space. Some participating artists show in the community space at Arts at the Armory, Saturday and Sunday at 191 Highland Avenue.

Organized entirely by participating artists and their loyal supporters, this citywide event showcases both established and emerging artists working across a broad range of fine art and craft—painting, sculpture, photography, fiber, jewelry, clay, glass, furniture, and installation art—anything you might want to explore is here in the ‘Ville.

“Somerville Open Studios connects artists with the community. SOS not only gives new and emerging artists a venue for showing and selling their work, but it also gives people living in Somerville a chance to see the wonderful art that is being made right within their own neighborhood. Many residents may not regularly attend museums and galleries to see and experience art, so SOS becomes a vital conduit through with people can be exposed to visual art and communicate directly with artists. It allows the community to become more knowledgeable and engaged with artists and the art-making process,” says Matt Carrano, former President of the SOS Board and participating artist at Central Street Studios.

Begin your visit at the First Look Exhibit of participating SOS artists at the Somerville Museum at 1 Westwood Road. Map Guides are available at the museum and can be used to locate artists whose work interests you at the show. Map Guides are also available in artist-made map stands across the city.

Free trolleys circulate the city Saturday and Sunday.

LAUGH BOSTON IS

BOSTON'S GO-TO COMEDY DESTINATION.

COME LAUGH YOUR UPCOMING HEADLINERS INCLUDE:

Sean Patton May 4

Christine Hurley May 2

Tim Dillon

May 16-18

EVENT INFORMATION - Thursday, May 2, Beyond the Pattern Fashion Show at Arts at the Armory, 7-9 PM - Friday, May 3, Sneak Preview, some artists open from 6-9 PM, see the website or Map Guide for exact information.

- Saturday May 4 and Sunday, May 5 from 12 Noon-6PM visit artists in their studios!

Orange balloons mark sites.

EXHIBITS: FIRST LOOK Somerville Museum, 1 Westwood Road, Open SOS weekend: Friday, 5-9 PM, Saturday and Sunday 11 AM – 6 PM

Gina Yashere May 30 - June 1

Inside-Out Gallery, participating SOS artists, Davis Square, CVS Windows SOS Kids Art Show, April 29-May 12, Arts at the Armory Café, 191 Highland Ave. LOCAVORE show at Ivy Realty, Davis Square, 20 Holland Street, SOS participating artists exhibit on the theme of HOME. Mid-April to mid-May VOLUNTEER APPRECIATION EXHIBIT Art by SOS volunteer artists who have contributed time and effort in organizing Somerville Open Studios, runs from April 15 – May 16 at Bloc Cafe in Union Square, 11 Bow Street

Doug Loves Movies June 1

PUBLIC CONTACT FOR SOS: sos@somervilleopenstudios.org, 617-398-0346

Real Comedians of Social Media June 23

“LATE SUN FOG GRASS”, BY PARRISH DOBSON

Paul Virzi

June 27-29

FULL LIST OF ACTS LISTED ON LAUGHBOSTON.COM

617.72.LAUGH | 425 Summer St at the Westin Hotel in Boston’s Seaport District NEWS TO US

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