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Dear Reader, As petty and unfair as it can be to criticize a work of journalism for omissions, as opposed to on the grounds of what was actually reported, in recounting what went down around the “Free Speech” rally last weekend in Boston and in deconstructing the outrageously misleading narrative that’s since developed, it’s important to consider what was not covered at all, or at least not covered as extensively as are the dangerous right-wing ballbags who have been crashing America’s around-the-clock news cycle of late. While some major news outlets did not even show up to a Black Lives Matter conference last week, leading up to Saturday’s festivities, many interviewers swooned around Boston Free Speech Coalition organizer John Medlar, effectively giving him a platform to both humanize his efforts and offer his trite sophomoric spiel about the First Amendment. In the time since, many journalists have strained themselves to applaud the right-wing instigators for their pacifism. The standard-setting Boston Globe ran stories that were favorable toward counterprotesters but that were also distant to the point of being aerial in scope. For opinions, one of the newspaper’s popular columnists wrote a puff piece about the police and the governor, both of which were primary points of contention for legions of marchers; their token righty, meanwhile, called the “Free Speech” crew a “couple dozen courteous people,” but on the other side saw nothing but 40,000 time-wasters who “showed up to denounce a nonexistent cohort of racists.” (How could there be racists on the Common if they don’t exist?) On television, Boston 25 News led its 10 pm newscast with a voiceover claiming that counterdemonstrators caused problems, while reporting that the “Free Speech” circle was surprisingly peaceful. After a commercial break, a 25 reporter interviewed BPD Superintendent-in-Chief Daniel Linskey for the “police perspective,” only for Linskey to applaud his brothers in blue, black, and camouflage. “People were able to have their First Amendment right on both sides,” Linskey claimed. “BPD hit it out of the park today like they usually do.” Commercial media needed to pin a medal on somebody, and that person wasn’t going to come from any of the many groups that peaceably managed tens of thousands of people. Nor would an award for saving the day go to the significantly few brash pro-Trump attendees, obviously. Unlike loudmouthed POTUS sycophants or black bloc anarchists and people marching with either of those groups, police made for an easy hero story. The problem, however, is that while there were certainly many skilled and even ethical cops in the mix—one platoon impressively removed a firearm from a guy in a Trump hat—that’s hardly the entire story. All of which is why our team was out in unusual force, interviewing people, snapping several hundred pictures, and reaching for the root problems and issues that spurred a crowd half the size of Somerville’s whole population to converge on the Common.
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Lawmakers push to rename the Yawkey MBTA station BY BRITNI DE LA CRETAZ @BRITNIDLC
Tom Yawkey has long been considered by some to be a blemish on Boston’s history, and a group of legislators are stepping in to do something about it. Yawkey, who owned the Red Sox from 1933 to 1976, has the famed street to the west of Fenway Park named after him, as well as the MBTA commuter rail station near the ballpark. A new bill is petitioning to have the name of the station changed to something that is “consistent with and reflects the values of the commonwealth.” The bill is sponsored by Reps. Ruth B. Balser of Newton and Byron Rushing of Boston. The full text of the measure is not yet online but was provided to DigBoston. “I think [the proposed bill] makes perfect sense,” says Segun Idowu, a racial justice organizer and co-organizer for Boston Police Camera Action Team. “I’m confused how it’s named ‘Yawkey’ anyway, in light of what we know about him.” In fact, in a Thursday story in the Boston Herald, Red Sox principal owner John Henry is quoted as saying the franchise should lead the effort to rename Yawkey Way, saying the club is still “haunted” by the former owner’s legacy. Yawkey the man’s history, like that of many others, is complicated. He was a philanthropist whose foundations have given a great deal of money to cancer research and
“I’m confused how it’s named ‘Yawkey’ anyway, in light of what we know about him.”
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treatment in the city of Boston, including building the Yawkey Center for Cancer Care at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He also donated 20,000 acres of land in South Carolina as a wildlife preserve upon his death. But under Yawkey, the Red Sox were the last team in Major League Baseball to integrate, not signing Pumpsie Green until 1959, a full 12 years after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in the league. And while it’s not confirmed who yelled a racial slur in the direction of black players—including Robinson—who worked out before the team in 1945, it is speculated that the words came from Yawkey. In a 1965 Sports Illustrated interview, Yawkey lamented that people blamed him for the Red Sox’s slow move to integration, and attempted to defend himself against the charges. “I have no feeling against colored people … But they are clannish, and when that story got around that we didn’t want Negroes, they all decided to sign with some other club,” he told the magazine. “Actually, we scouted them all along, but we didn’t want one because he was a Negro, we wanted a ballplayer.” The Yawkey commuter rail stop was opened on April 29, 1988. Used initially only for special service to Fenway Park on game days, it was used by trains on the Framingham Line, as well as by “Fenway Flyer” trains on the Attleboro (now Providence/Stoughton) and Franklin Lines. Regular commuter service began in 2001, and in 2014 the MBTA reopened it as a brand-new full-service station on the Framingham/Worcester Line. Today, Yawkey Station is a beautiful sight to behold. It’s futuristic, majestic, and sparkling. Visible from the Mass Pike, you can’t help but notice it as you drive by. But some people argue that its name tarnishes the gorgeous new infrastructure. When the renovated and expanded station debuted in
2014, Larry Lucchino, then-president and chief executive officer of the Boston Red Sox, told the Boston Globe, “The renovated Yawkey Way commuter rail station and the expanded Worcester-Framingham rail schedule will have a profound impact on many of our fans who use public transportation.” But for some Massachusetts residents and baseball fans, seeing Tom Yawkey’s name honored with its own station has a profoundly negative impact. Day in and day out, the station serves as a reminder not only of Boston’s racist history but of the fact that the city and state are still willing to celebrate people who engaged in racist and oppressive behavior. Idowu says that while renaming these significant points in Boston where people gather is important, it is also important that legislators are not just focusing on symbols. “If this bill says it wants to make sure our symbols are consistent with Massachusetts values, my hope is if it passes, they will also pass legislation that is in line with those values, like prison reform and [bills to support communities of color in the marijuana industry],” he says. “I think the communities who would be offended and brought down by the symbols we have up, these same communities are also tired of only being given symbolic victories. Let’s also make sure people of color are not being discriminated against in the transportation realm when we file transportation bills.” This bill, filed long before the events in Charlottesville, Virginia, last weekend, becomes incredibly prescient to the ongoing conversation around whether there is a place for things like Confederate monuments and symbols that honor people with racist histories in this country. As Boston prepared for white supremacists to descend on the city for a “Free Speech Rally” this past weekend, we had an opportunity to examine who we want to be and what legacy we want to present to the world. Taking a hard look at whom our monuments, streets, and public stations are named for is one way of doing that. If the bill is approved, a special commission would be assigned to create a new name for the station. The commission would include a wide array of people, including a representative for the secretary of transportation, people appointed by both the House and Senate, a racial justice expert, someone from the Fenway neighborhood community, someone from the Boston NAACP, and someone from the Red Sox organization, among others. Zineb Curren, senior director of corporate communications for the Red Sox, told DigBoston that the team is “aware of the bill, and since it has not passed, there is no committee or participation from the club at this time.” “There’s a fair number of people who are very concerned with the history of Mr. Yawkey,” the bill’s cosponsor, Rep. Balser, told DigBoston. “There is considerable evidence that Yawkey was resistant to integrate the Red Sox … A state-overseen railway station should be named for someone more reflective of Massachusetts’ values.”
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APPARENT HORIZON
THAT ‘FREE SPEECH’ THING
Mayor Walsh and various police agencies were no friends of civil liberties at Boston’s monster protests against the ultra right BY JASON PRAMAS
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Despite the “mission accomplished” happy talk in most of the news media, Saturday’s 40,000-strong Boston protests against extremism—and the tiny ultra-right rally that sparked them— were only wins for free speech to the degree their organizers and participants made them so. From a civil liberties perspective, they were highly problematic affairs. First, Mayor Marty Walsh and various department heads in Boston city government slapped the right-wing rally with ridiculous restrictions on what otherwise would have been a very standard rally permit. Although scheduled for a public park that hosts dozens of similar rallies every year, only 100 people were allowed to attend. On the day of the event, the rally site—Parkman Bandstand on Boston Common—was surrounded by fences and a large number of police. The cops kept virtually everyone out of the arbitrarily-imposed cordon sanitaire—including a number of people who said they were supposed to participate in the rally and, as DigBoston reporter Sarah Betancourt criticized in the Columbia Journalism Review, the entire press corps. Now, city solons certainly had reason to be concerned. But that doesn’t change the fact that, regardless of their extremist politics, the reactionaries had the right to hold a rally on the Common, and that right was severely and probably illegally curtailed. Second, Boston Police Department Commissioner Bill Evans stated at a press conference last week that Boston would not use riot police at the outset of the protests and that “we plan on handling this on a very soft approach. You won’t see the helmets and sticks out there.” Yet “helmets and sticks” were very much the order of the day. Platoons of Boston police and Mass State Police in nearly identical black riot gear were deployed all around the protests. Some were used to escort attendees of the right-wing rally off the Common when it ended and into waiting police wagons. But as Chris Faraone and other DigBoston reporters witnessed, those wagons tried to leave on the Boylston Street side of the Common where huge numbers of protesters were essentially trapped in relatively small spaces. When trying to move the wagons out of the park, the riot cops on hand did what riot cops do—they started shoving people, hitting them, and inevitably arresting those who argued they had nowhere to go. They even pepper-sprayed some people later in the afternoon. That’s a problem right there—and the early stories we’re hearing from several of the 30 people arrested all around the protests are similar—but it’s not clear why the right-wingers were given a police escort at all. Aside from some black bloc-style antifa groups that typically limit themselves to defensive violence, and maybe a few random tough kids looking for a fight, the overwhelming majority of protest attendees were there to demonstrate peacefully. So the right-wingers were in little danger. Ultimately, the BPD fielded at least 500 officers—including riot police and an unknown number of undercover cops. The MSP had around 200 troopers available and definitely deployed at least some of them, the MBTA Transit Police had a “substantial presence” including undercovers on duty, and security forces from other agencies were doubtless also on the ground. There’s really no way of knowing the total number of cops at this time. But even assuming the rough numbers we have are in the ballpark, that’s a lot of cops to deploy to a right-wing extremist rally that had already been cowed into submission by serious violations of its organizers’ rights to freedom of speech and assembly, and by the impressive outpouring of nonviolent protesters against it. All of this is simply unacceptable in a democratic society. It’s perhaps understandable that any city government will have a police presence at such a big political event. But it makes little sense to have hundreds of cops—including militarized “robocops”— from a number of local, state, and, almost certainly, federal agencies on hand. Unless the city, state, and federal governments were more concerned about the protests against the ultra-right extremists than they were about the extremists. Which would absolutely be in keeping with the policies of most levels of American government—in ceaseless and ongoing collusion with the capitalists that own the country—since the founding of the nation. The things this “large-s” State fears most of all have always been democracy and social justice. Returning to my first point: Why should anyone care about the right-wing extremists having their civil liberties violated Saturday? Because if the government can do that to a motley crew of nazis, fascists, racists, and little weasel shitposters of the type I regularly mock and deride on the interwebs, then they can do it to the broad left wing… and, well, anyone really. Which means that protestors interested in defending democracy won’t succeed by beating back a still-weak ultra-right street sideshow. No. The incipient movement for democracy won’t have won until the rise of what’s looking very much like a corporatist police state is stopped. But it wasn’t even slowed on Saturday. Quite the reverse actually. Apparent Horizon is syndicated by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Jason Pramas is BINJ’s network director, and executive editor and associate publisher of DigBoston. Copyright 2017 Jason Pramas. Licensed for use by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism and media outlets in its network.zzxx
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WE CAME, WE SAW, WE COVERED #FIGHTSUPREMACY
Between the protesters, the counterprotesters, the media, the cops, and a handful of trolls, countless stories unfolded in Boston last weekend. These are several we encountered… PHOTOS, WORDS, AND REPORTING BY SARAH BETANCOURT, BRITNI DE LA CRETAZ, CHRIS FARAONE, KORI FEENER, NATE HOMAN, ZACK HUFFMAN, DEREK KOUYOUMJIAN, JAY LANCASTER, DAN MCCARTHY, JASON PRAMAS impose poverty, and suppress the voices and needs of oppressed communities. This supremacy is upheld by all who benefit from it, and is in alignment with capitalism, cis-hetero patriarchy, ableism, queer and trans antagonism, misogynoir, and all existing forms of oppression. “We are very clear that we are focused on a peaceful engagement, [and] that we do not want weapons of any kind,” said Angelina Camacho, one of the organizers and a candidate for Boston City Council in District 7, where the presser was held. “We do not want to entertain anything that would actually detract us from expressing our message.” -CF
PHOTO BY DEREK KOUYOUMJIAN
Many have suggested that Bostonians were essentially trolled this past Saturday, when the ratio of white supremacists along with rank-and-file Donald Trump supporters to supporters of an open multicultural society on Boston Common turned out to be roughly 100:40,000. Maybe people were punked, maybe they weren’t; it’s an easy argument to make either way, as both those in the stark numerical minority who spoke amongst themselves on the Parkman Bandstand and the passionate picketers barking at them from more than 200 feet away got their messages across to some extent—the former through the media, which apparently loves nothing more than shining big bright lights on assholes with intolerant views, and the latter through the direct screams and streams of tens of thousands of hollering people. Whatever happened, in the aftermath, it would be truly foolish to allow the handful of provocateurs who set up a “Free Speech” rally to keep on racking up wins. Which the trolls accomplish every time that some tendentious pundit wonders out loud if an individual with shitty xenophobic views should be labeled alt-right or white nationalist or another kind of hate monger, or when anybody suggests that it’s more egregious when the cops step on the First Amendment rights of conservative extremists than when they step on the arms, legs, and faces of protesters and pepper-spray crowds. They’re both unfortunate scenarios, but in the wake of these dramatic and traumatic happenings, the establishment outlets have been far more concerned about free press than freedom. With so many stories of the protesters who marched, rallied, and romped—against hate, as well as in response to local, national, and international concerns, which sadly seem to accumulate faster than usual these days— disappearing in the emerging master narrative, our crack team of writers and photographers compiled this attempt at an expansive people’s history of what unfolded from Roxbury to the Common, all compiled from our firsthand accounts on the front lines.
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PHOTO BY KALEIGH O’KEEFE
PHOTO BY CHRIS FARAONE
On the day before the rally, organizers of one of the counterprotests held a press conference in Roxbury…
The scrum at the Thursday morning Black Lives Matter media availability in Dudley Square was noticeably thinner than the crowd outside of City Hall three days earlier for a conference called by Mayor Marty Walsh and Gov. Charlie Baker. Which was interesting, since the organizers—from groups including Violence in Boston, Black Lives Matter Network, Black Lives Matter Movement, Black Lives Matter Boston, and Black Lives Matter Cambridge—were expecting more than 30,000 people to join them out in the streets the next day. In comparison, the organizing instigator of the so-called Free Speech rally got extensive coverage all week, including at least one intimate interview with an international outlet. For the cameras that showed up in Roxbury, Violence in Boston organizer Monica Cannon read from an exceptionally pointed statement written by the joint alliance: The individuals and institutions most effective in harming Black and Brown people do not carry torches or wear white hoods. Instead, they aggressively patrol our neighborhoods, enforce laws unequally, systematically
Meanwhile, another group, which would ultimately merge with the Roxbury marchers downtown, had been planning a counterprotest of sorts—to take place in front of the State House—for weeks…
With organizers starting to put plans in motion even before the events in Charlottesville, Virginia, that fomented tension in Boston, the Stand For Solidarity Rally was meant to be visible opposition to what planners described as “grass-roots led, far-right mobilizations.” Led by C.O.M.B.A.T., the ANSWER Coalition, Boston Party for Socialism and Liberation, and Boston Democratic Socialists of America, organizers set their programming to include a variety of speakers, with the goal of bringing attention to local issues that the community is currently fighting. We spoke to three organizers about why they led this mobilization, and asked what they hope Boston should be doing to fight white supremacy in general. Kimberly Barzola, a coordinator from the ANSWER Coalition, explained: “We saw a similar [free speech] demonstration in May with a fairly large group of free speechers at the Common and, at that time, they greatly outnumbered us. We wanted to bring attention to active campaigns and the different kind of struggles and work our organizers are engaged in. Today is actually also the Millions For Prisoners Human Rights March in Washington, DC, and some of our organizers are there. [MCI-Norfolk] prison has been promised a new water filtration system since 2011, and it’s resulted in really egregious water quality, black and brown water.” Added Stephanie Houten of the anti-Trump mobilizing outfit C.O.M.B.A.T.: “One of the things we were worried about was safety because last time we were very close to a WE CAME, WE SAW, WE COVERED continued on pg. 10
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PHOTO BY DEREK KOUYOUMJIAN free speech rally and they had [members of local far-right, anti-government group] Oath Keepers with open firearms on the Common, which isn’t legal in Massachusetts, but they were allowed last time. So as a safety procedure and political strategy, we wanted to be in front of the State House, where Beacon and Park streets meet.” Houten continued: “[Our goals] have to do with things that are a direct result of white supremacy and systemic racism, things like justice for Terrence Coleman, who was killed by a Boston police officer last year. Police brutality generally—there are people in jail who shouldn’t be. We wanted to show, in the context of Boston, what does white supremacy mean here? We wanted it to be about local struggles and what white supremacy means in Massachusetts and Boston, like [how Gov.] Charlie Baker is cutting funding for HIV services [and homeless youth].” -BDLC
Before cops in riot gear escalated protest and counterprotest activities into a raucous scene in which marchers, including many people of color, were trampled, bound, and shoved to the ground, Saturday in Boston started off on a positive The Roxbury leg note…
of the resistance focused on issues germane to the city’s struggling neighborhoods.
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As thousands of demonstrators waited on Boston Common for participants in the “Free Speech” rally to surface their hideous heads, thousands more from the Black Lives Matter front gathered 2.5 miles south of downtown in Roxbury. In front of the Hub’s beleaguered
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vocational institute, Madison Park High School, organizers stepped onto the bed of a pickup truck soon after the 10 am start time to wake up the crowd. “Today we are going to make white supremacists hide again.” With every new speaker, the benevolent horde, which by 11 am filled an entire four-lane street for several blocks, grew louder, more determined. “WE ARE THE RESISTANCE. RESISTANCE ISN’T SOMETHING YOU SAY. IT’S SOMETHING YOU DO … THESE FASCISTS PICKED THE WRONG TOWN TO COME TO.” The Roxbury leg of the resistance focused on issues germane to the city’s struggling neighborhoods. As one speaker noted, “We need to fund schools more and the police department less.” City Councilor Tito Jackson, who is currently running for mayor against the incumbent Marty Walsh, noted the severe cuts to the vocational school behind him and to programs for poor people in general. “We are the Boston that you refuse to see,” Jackson said. “We are the Boston that you refuse to hear. But ladies and gentlemen, we are right here, and we are going to be heard.” The slog downtown was slow but inspiring, with people walking in the open sunny street and sweating while they danced and chanted. Different spots on the march featured varying flavors. The front, where organizers tagged along with the truck and sound system, packed the energy of an Apollo Creed ring entrance. Antifa activists held down the middle: “GET UP, GET DOWN, ANTIFASCISTS RUN THIS TOWN.” There were countless clumps of friends, as well as many families, though very few children, as parents said they didn’t want to put their kids at risk of injury. In the whitest section, people chanted, “This little light of mine,” with some walking up to thank BPD Commissioner William Evans for his service as they walked past police headquarters. Organizers threw the brakes on several times to dance and remind people about the housing crisis around them, the whole time taking rhetorical shots at the racists they were prepared to encounter. Police in shorts on bikes and on foot in regular uniforms also manned the route, and—save for one who rolled by a local photographer and shouted “FAKE NEWS,” his badge hardly in view—appeared to be treating the marchers respectfully. -CF
People on the Common said they came out for innumerable reasons. Here are a few who we spoke with…
“I’m here today to stand for what I believe in, and to protect people who will be potentially hurt. After Charlottesville happened, I caught wind of this one, and I feel a duty to be here … I can use my privilege to get more done in some situations while others could be unfairly judged. I have a duty to be here because of that.” -Lily Mangan, 18, college freshman coming from New Hampshire “After Charlottesville, I felt it was important for me to get out on the ground and see things as it happened … I’m an odd case. I go to Emerson, but I came here from Alabama, so I’m used to navigating this conservativeliberal divide. They talk past one another and what the other is saying.” -Christian Gibbons, 22, Emerson College student studying globalization “I came to show that there is opposition to the white supremacy that has been going on lately, and how that’s affecting not just my own life but my friends’ lives and my family’s lives … I think they’re realizing that you can say what you want, but that doesn’t mean anyone has to listen to you, or that it doesn’t have consequences.” -Gabby O., Boston resident “It’s not about free speech; that is a coded way of trying to slip in white nationalist beliefs. If it was about free speech they would have a variety of speakers coming from different political perspectives talking about the history of what free speech was and not focusing on violent and hateful speech.” -Jesse Snedeker “We can’t tolerate white supremacy in this town, in this state, in this country at all … I don’t think it was ever really about free speech. I think it’s about the right to hate.” -Maddy, Boston resident and UMass Amherst research assistant
“There was a time when people didn’t stand up to Nazis, and some really terrible things happened, so when they come around again, I feel like it’s my duty as an American to stand up against Nazis … I believe that is hate speech, and I believe that hate speech is violence, not free speech … I think violence for some people can feel like a last resort when you feel hopeless and helpless and don’t feel like you have channels that you can actually make change with, but I entirely disagree with violence and I don’t believe that it changes anything.” -Tara, mental health worker from Hudson, Mass -Interviews by SB + JAL
PHOTO BY BRITNI DE LA CRETAZ
All along Tremont Street in the South End, people lined up like paradegoers, even hanging out of windows to cheer marchers on while snapping pictures. Others watched as they ate brunch…
One of the most jarring parts of Saturday’s march out of Roxbury was the walk through the South End. As organizers of color led 40,000 people through the streets of Boston, the sidewalk looked more like a parade route, with people waiting to gawk, wave, and snap photos. But perhaps the most dissonance occurred when a march made up predominantly of folks who are marginalized in some way— most marchers were people of color, queer, trans, Jewish, and/or women—passed restaurant patios full of mostly white people leisurely brunching and watching the crowd go by. At Stephi’s on Tremont, people pulled out their phones to take photos of the march as it passed, while staff came outside to cheer. Most people remained seated, but a few stood up to get a better shot. Several of the patrons knew the march was happening and had chosen to brunch there for the stellar view. They all said they were there to show support for the march, which, in their case, looked like waving and taking photos. The pedicab drivers I spoke to, who were parked next to the restaurant, eventually became frustrated. One said, “The optics are so bad. Like, a bunch of privileged people gawking at people who are just asking to have their humanity recognized.” Further up Tremont Street at the Beehive, with its unique patio set up in the middle of a sidewalk, one in a group of three women was sporting a “Fuck Trump” shirt. They were paying their tab, and planned to eat some food and join the march when it reached them. They hopped over the chains surrounding Beehive’s outdoor seating and jumped into the crowd. At Barcelona Wine Bar, two men stood gawking at the crowd. “This is, like, a rally against Trump, right?” one asked. “Wait, really?” the other one asked. Despite being given an explanation about the actual purpose of the march, the first guy remained steadfast in his understanding that it was “a Trump protest.” The two men, both from the Boston area, had no clue that either the “Free Speech” rally or any of its counter actions were taking place. At Picco, an older white couple said they had been with the march since it started. But they were hot, tired, and really, really hungry, and they had to call it a day. They were going to have pizza, because marching is important, but so is making sure you’re hydrated and fed. -BDLC
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One guy brought a gun to Boston Common…
PHOTO BY KORI FEENER
And then two counterprotests became one…
It took more than two hours for the mass to move from the South End to downtown, where the scene was markedly different. Helicopters hovered. Tension lingered. And despite the mayor and police commissioner’s boasting earlier in the week that their cops have rarely had to sport riot gear, authorities were decked from boot to helmet with clubs drawn. With the minimal “Free Speech” gang sectioned off by barricades up on the elevated bandstand, way out of earshot from adversaries, counterprotesters from all walks of life surrounded the metal, screaming, chanting, and scanning for Nazis among them. While things were relatively calm on the perimeter for the first several hours—by the Park Street MBTA stop, Boston’s favorite busker Keytar Bear jammed away—by 1 pm, as Black Lives Matters marchers finally arrived, the police state manifested in full force. Near Emerson College on the Boylston Street side of the Common, cops safely escorted speakers from the hate stage out of the area. In other cases, activists from groups like Black Lives Matter also helped with such extractions, blocking potentially volatile actors from attacking chumps leaving the inner ring. As two massive counterdemonstrations merged, the cops began to mark their territory. One group of stormtroopers attempted to impede the Black Lives Matters swarm from getting near the “Free Speech” set; another miniature army suddenly appeared near the State House, ensuring that ensuing aggravation wouldn’t spill up Beacon Hill. Resulting melees ended with a score of counterprotesters in plastic ties, some face down on the ground. This as white supremacists, in some cases, were taken off the premises in wagons. -CF
PHOTO BY KORI FEENER 12
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“buddy works with security and must have forgot he had it on him.” He was visibly aggravated, adding that the friend who was arrested was supposed to give him a ride to his niece’s birthday party. -SB + BDLC
As free speech activists, white supremacists, Donald Trump supporters, Antifa, Black Lives Matter And then came the incident that protesters, and others converged on Boston on Saturday, one exchange led to conservatives won’t stop talking a man with a gun sprinting away from about… the Boston Police Department. The crowd was thick with various small groups of The man was wearing a “Make activists in full-body black bloc garb, complete with America Great Again” hat, and bandanas and masks in some cases. These are the according to witnesses he attempted to protesters who are often shown on television news starting pull out a gun on the black man he was street fights, but in Boston there was barely anyone to arguing with. brawl with. In the moments prior to his arrest, he and a small “I came here to tell fascists and racists that they aren’t group of men gathered on Boylston Street, just outside of welcome,” said one of the few masked demonstrators who Boston Common. Some of their clothing identified them was willing to speak to reporters. as supporters of Donald Trump, with a few wearing MAGA The “Free Speech” crowd seemed to get the message, as hats. As the conversation escalated, counterprotesters asked attendees of the “Free Speech” rally why they viewed themselves (white people) as superior. In response, one man replied that “race doesn’t matter, as long as you’re American.” The argument continued until one of the counterprotesters thought that he saw one of the men in the MAGA hats reach for a gun, and then alerted police. That’s when the man in the MAGA hat took off, attempting to run from the cops, who chased after him. He was apprehended just a short distance away, police confiscating his firearm and taking him into custody. The PHOTO BY KORI FEENER Boston Police Department also arrested two men with artillery vests. At a 4:30 pm media availability, more than an hour after the masses cleared their rally was cordoned off by fences forming inner and out, police went into minor detail about the gun incident. outer boundaries. The only way in and out was through a Commissioner William Evans said, “We don’t really know if phalanx of police in riot gear. they’re white supremacists, but I can tell you the three we Meanwhile, counterprotesters flowed into the did arrest had a ballistic [vest], and when we brought them Common, with little else to do but wonder where the white and the vests back to the station, one had a gun.” supremacists were hanging out. A friend of the armed man arrested who identified At one point in the early afternoon, a dust-up took place himself to these reporters as Luke said that he came to the by the Frog Pond, when a person who appeared to be a “Free Speech” rally from the Worcester area. He said that his man in a vest grabbed an American flag out of the hands of an elderly Trump supporter. She chased the culprit, but tripped on the flag dragging behind him. While the details remain murky, activists contend that while masked medics may have been in the vicinity, it was a random instigator who caused all the trouble with the flag. Whoever’s to blame, those same medics, some of whom ran over to assist the fallen woman, said that police used the incident as an excuse to search the bags of several counterprotesters and in the process trashed a water station. Meanwhile, as that episode went viral on Fox News for all the wrong reasons and with infinitely asinine interpretations, some of the “Free Speech” folks were escorted out of the park like rock stars ducking paparazzi. Without a larger riot on their hands, the significantly staffed force was available to help the speakers escape, leading some through the Boston Common parking garage and to the edge of the park, where arrest wagons and police chauffeurs awaited, and others onto Boylston Street, where all hell later broke loose. “In my opinion, the arrangement was very problematic,” said Urszula Masny-Latos, executive director of the National Lawyers Guild, Massachusetts Chapter. “It was obvious that the BPD’s goal was to protect the Nazis, not the counterprotesters. The number of cops at the protest was overwhelming and unnecessary, and what they did was just to show their authority and power and to limit the movement and speech of the counterprotesters. “Boston’s police commissioner claims that they needed this kind of buffer zone to protect both sides. I find this
people on my side to be so judgemental … I know I look different, but I’m not a Nazi wolf. It’s not right that they would just assume that just because I look different.” -NH
After about 1:30 pm, events followed a troubling pattern, from the State House on the hill atop the Common to some narrow side streets…
PHOTO BY DEREK KOUYOUMJIAN
statement problematic. Violence in Charlottesville was a result of lack of proper police intervention. Nazis there showed up with sticks, torches, and guns, and when they attacked, cops didn’t do much to protect anti-Nazis. In Boston … there was no need to bring such ridiculous force and restrain people to a suffocating level.” -SB + ZH
Overall, there were more furries in attendance than friends of the Fuhrer… There was no use in searching high and low for groups that could be waiting in the wings to flank the speakers. There were not even apparent fascists loitering around the South Station bus terminal, nor in the alleyways around the Common and Chinatown. According to the gentleman outside of the Centerfolds strip club, no free speech fanatics or people dressed in white sheets were seen getting lap dances. Though you never really know who may have been amid… Back in the day, you could spot the neo-Nazis at punk,
metal, and hardcore shows by their shaved heads and the red laces on their combat boots. These days, it’s difficult to distinguish between the average cul-du-sac-bred boat shoe dude and a tiki torch-wielding preppy brobag with bad intentions, as seen in Charlottesville. The circus came and went with zero hardcore fascists making an appearance. Not a single swastika either, other than the ones that were crossed out on many homemade placards. No stars, no bars. No tiki torches. No Proud Boys. No Pepe. Not even any Kekistani garb, like “Free Speech” rally organizer John Medlar wore to a similar event on the Common in May. No Milo Yiannopoulos. No David Duke. No Richard Spencer. It was like going to Disney World while Mickey Mouse was away on vacation. But I did spot Wolftits under a tree. Wolftits was in a full werewolf costume and seemed to be enjoying some mindaltering substances. He wanted everyone to “calm down and respect each other.” Wolftits had a tough day. “I hate mean people, man.” He moaned, “I didn’t expect
Police platoons popped up to arbitrarily block protesters, some of whom held their turf and were pushed, threatened, and at certain points even peppersprayed in the process. Some were dragged, mangled, and bruised, others left to wipe the tears and vomit from their chins as medics came to aid them. Reporters got it too; to compound the insult of being kept outside of the barricades and away from the speakers, many journalists were tossed aside in the effort to clear the area. One writer working with DigBoston and the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism was pushed to the ground by a cop, where she was nearly trampled, while another had his phone broken as the fuzz plowed a crowd to make room for the wagons. By 4:30 pm, the only remnant left that revealed there had been a significant action was by Park Street, where departing protesters hung signs on fences, making for a Berlin Wall of anti-Nazi messaging. At a press conference near the site of his department’s cold aggression, Commissioner Evans answered a few simple questions, sticking to the basics like arrest numbers. Addressing reporters alongside Mayor Walsh, Evans said of the 33 people arrested, “We had some kids block the street, and they got a little confrontational … They were given every option to leave, but the officers … were getting bottled, they were getting pushed, and I think they did a good job handling it.” Nobody explained how, or why the department came into a charged but relatively peaceful rally in militarized gear and made a moderate situation markedly worse while defending the rights of some racists to shout in the wind. -CF + SB This dispatch was produced in collaboration with DigBoston and the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Edits by Mitchell Hansen-Dewar.
PHOTO BY DAN MCCARTHY
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Believe it or not, summer is quickly winding down, but there will still be plenty of days (knock wood) to hit the beach—and for those who like to stay close to Boston, one of the best options is historic Nantasket Beach in Hull, which was once home to the legendary Paragon Park and still has all the tacky and cheesy stuff that beachgoers tend to love. And while Nantasket still has places to play arcade games, eat junk food, drink cheap beer, and listen to live music, sometimes it’s just nice to enjoy a relaxing meal and some peace and quiet at a pleasant full-service sit-down restaurant. Hull does have a handful of such places, with one of the better ones being Mezzo Mare, a borderline upscale spot that features the type of Italian food you might expect to see in the North End, and with a move by the restaurant that took place awhile back, the eatery now has more modern digs and feels a world away from the sights and sounds of the ocean across the street. The old location of Mezzo Mare on Nantasket Avenue certainly had its charm, with its two quiet rooms and fireplace making for a nice date spot, but it did feel a bit tired and worn, and its location just off the main drag in a strip of small businesses rendered it nearly invisible. The restaurant’s “new” space (as in a few years old) a couple of blocks south continues the romantic feel and old-world charm of the old location, with a pleasant bar off to the left, a main dining area to the right, and an “overflow” room in the back that has slightly dimmer lighting and a fireplace. The exterior of Mezzo Mare really isn’t much to look at, and as was the case of the older location, it is very easy to drive right by the squat structure without even knowing it is there, which tends to keep the dining spot a bit of a secret to all but Hull residents even though it is right in the middle of one of the busiest intersections in town. Because Mezzo Mare is within sight of Nantasket Beach—and because Hull itself tends to be a low-key and unpretentious beach town—you might think that an Italian eatery here would be a casual cheap-eats spot that is more geared toward the takeout crowd. This is definitely not the case, however, as the dining spot goes well beyond the basic pasta and meatballs and chicken marsala dishes (though you can find both of those here) and is in fact only open for dinner, so don’t expect a quick midday snack between beach sessions. The menu tends to be everchanging here (and it also has nightly specials), but a few options might include bruschetta with grilled bread, meatballs, and baby spinach; savory arancini stuffed with peas, cheese, and Italian meats; house-made mozzarella sticks that are stuffed with pepperoni; a classic appetizer of asparagus with prosciutto and mozzarella; a penne and broccoli dish that comes with spicy Italian sausage; a seafood lover’s risotto dish with lobster, scallops, and shrimp included; a moderately garlicky gnocchi pesto; a rich and creamy gorgonzola ravioli with chicken; and a wonderful version of veal piccata. Mezzo Mare has a few beer options, though wine may be the better way to go here, and a rotating list of desserts includes a rich and decadent German chocolate cake. Prices tend to be more in line with Italian restaurants in Boston than in the suburbs, but even though they are a tad higher than average, you can certainly get dishes for around $20—especially among the pasta options. Mezzo Mare has been around for a number of years, but it still gets overlooked even within the town of Hull, perhaps because Hull does seem to be all about burgers, hot dogs, lobster rolls, beer, and sweets, especially during the summer months when the beach is packed. If you want a change of pace from the more typical beach food, however, this little restaurant is indeed a very nice option, and its slightly upscale vibe doesn’t include any kind of dress code, so unless you plan to have dinner while wearing swim trunks or a bikini, you will be more than welcome here. >> MEZZO MARE. 245 NANTASKET AVE., HULL.
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BABY BOOMING MUSIC
Why indie popper Baby! ditched Florida to find a new home in Boston BY NINA CORCORAN @NINA_CORCORAN raspy voice. Opener “Weather Girl” is quintessential breezy pop over a surf rock beat. Her goal—to record a full album, that’s it—sounds simplistic, but that’s what gives the album such authenticity. There are no self-imposed hurdles to jump over. She isn’t trying to prove herself to anyone. She wanted to see if she could do it. That innocence comes across with concrete material, music that gets lost in the fun while being unaware of how good it really is. Luckily, someone else took notice: Yellow K Records, the label that helped break Japanese Breakfast, Eskimeaux, and more. When the company noticed she followed it on Instagram, staff scrolled through her page. When they saw a Bandcamp link in the bio and Mitski listed as a follower, their interest was piqued, but it was a video of her playing then-unreleased Sunny, F.L. cut “Weather Girl” that won them over. They did what anyone caught fawning does on the internet: They slid into her DMs. “I felt really lucky because I try to listen to my intuition with where I’m supposed to be in life,” Honeycutt explains. “Before I recorded the record, I was doing graphic design. When I felt inspired to record the album, I quit that job and got a shitty job at a restaurant, but I had a lot of days off to write and record. I went for it because I felt it’s what I was supposed to be doing. To have them reach out? It made me feel even more validated for following my gut.” Honeycutt followed that intuition even farther. The music scene in Orlando is cool, but limited, at least in regards to how often musicians pursue their craft seriously there. Honeycutt started a booking collective, Ugly Orange, which organizes concerts and commissions artists to do visual art, typically an installation, for each concert. She worked on poster artwork. She recorded her whole album. But she couldn’t find a good job, her bandmates constantly rotated, and the motivation felt dull. After scoring a job teaching music and art to kindergartners in Cambridge, she decided to move to Boston. “I was hearing about the music scene here in Boston, and everyone I looked up sounded so cool. As soon as I moved, I found a new band immediately,” she says. “I remember listening to the Birthing Hips record specifically and thinking, ‘Damn. This is something really unique and exciting to hear.’ It’s funny because they wound up being one of my earliest Boston shows at a warehouse type of space. I went up to them afterwards and was gushing. I talked to their drummer Owen, and they wound up being my drummer for the first several months I was here, and having them interested in being in my band was totally surreal.” Baby! as a band is often in flux. Though Honeycutt tries to keep the members consistent, touring schedules and life often split her backing musicians up. She met each of her bandmates through quintessential Boston means. Ari, her bassist, met her at a house show. Chad, who recorded guitar on Baby!’s excellent Pick Me EP from this year, reached out after Honeycutt posted a flyer in Berklee’s Anime Club, an intentional placement to avoid Berklee bros. Chris, her current drummer, had written about the EP for SlyVinyl. Though other bandmates have come and gone, Honeycutt doesn’t pass them off, nor does she overlook
their help in the live setting and beyond. “I didn’t know anyone in Florida who was actually pursuing music full time, so I’ve been so lucky to be here in this city. I get to be friends with such great bands, people who have incredible work ethic, and see how they do things. I feel very inspired by everybody,” she says. “My bassist Ari in particular. She’s super serious and very hardworking, but finds it very important to relax, have fun, and not take yourself too seriously. I definitely got hit with the reality that I have to work my ass off, but I met someone who showed me the ropes, which includes taking it easy on yourself sometimes.” Honeycutt lives in a co-op where there’s a giant living room table. Most days, it’s covered in work. There’s a laptop where she’s editing a music video, a utility knife at the other corner where she’s carving the lineout cut for a new T-shirt design, markers sprawled across as she draws a poster for the show, and the dates written out nearby. She can’t help but juggle it all. She’s a creatively driven person who doesn’t just do these things because she has to. She does them because she wants to. The rigid caliber of expectations of Boston’s culture also extends to its art, and those expectations are addictive. “It’s the norm to be in multiple projects, to tour with multiple bands, and make zines or a music video for your friend here in Boston. It’s not like people here are goofing off. They’re doing really cool stuff, and it’s super inspiring,” she says. “So I’m a fucking nobody band, but I come after work every day, stay in, and do all of this.” All that’s left now is to tighten Baby!’s live sound. Honeycutt keeps focusing on improving her sound in any setting, so that no matter what the venue she’s in she feels comfortable with how Baby! sounds. Luckily, Boston has a lot of varied venues, and the only way to get better playing live is by playing live. It’s a learn-as-you-go process. Though Baby!’s record release show this Wednesday at the Middle East Upstairs should imply she’s got a lot to learn, one listen to her debut LP is enough to show she’s already miles ahead of the rest of the game—say, the 1,300 miles from Orlando to Boston—but hey, we’re not picky.
PHOTO BY ANDREW PICCONE
It’s impossible not to sing along to Sugar Ray. It doesn’t matter who you are or where it’s playing. There’s something about those sunny guitar riffs and Mark McGrath’s voice. Their hit “Someday”—it’s the band’s best song, really, so don’t try to argue otherwise—is playing overhead at Pavement in Allston. Kaley Honeycutt, the singer-songwriter behind beach pop act Baby!, can’t help but smile. “I was in a Lyft a few months ago and I remember crying to that song for some reason,” she says, laughing at herself. “I don’t remember what was happening in my life, but I remember listening to the lyrics and tearing up, thinking, ‘Wow, I’m crying to Sugar Ray… in a stranger’s car.’” The scenario isn’t out of the ordinary for Honeycutt. Despite being 23 years old, she lives up to the moniker. Everything about her shines with youthfulness, the type of charisma, style, and voice of someone who makes you feel younger just by proximity. With glitter-flaked fingernails, a pink shirt tucked under a pair of overalls, and a safety pin tattoo on her right bicep, she’s sipping on her drink with the open-mindedness of someone a quarter her age. Maybe it’s because she hails from Orlando, Florida, a place where the sun always shines. Maybe it’s the lingering effect of her upbringing. Honeycutt is the youngest of five children, the oldest of whom is 17 years her elder and the second-youngest of whom is two years her elder. She is the only girl. “I am a baby. I am. My brothers used to make fun of me for crying all the time and singing sad songs all the time. My last partner had an issue with that, because he got nervous people would read into it when we were together, and, to be fair, sometimes they did,” she says. “But it’s a wide range of crying. I cry when I feel inspired, or happy, or I relate to something—so I cry in public all the time.” Baby! isn’t a lifelong nickname, though. In fact, Honeycutt only chose the moniker after she recorded an album. As a kid, she used to sing to her mother, only later picking up guitar in the 10th grade. She opened up Audacity on her computer, plugged a Rock Band microphone into the USB slot, and recorded material. Back then, Honeycutt penned tracks in the vein of early aughts folk revival: Jose Gonzales, Iron and Wine, Sufjan Stevens, Feist. Now, her songs carry low-lying influence from pop acts like Sylvan Esso and Regina Spektor, even if her music is incomparable to theirs. “I never really wanted to play music publicly. It was just personal. My mom used to tell me I should be on The Voice,” she laughs. “One day, I wrote a song that is on the record—‘Sunny Florida’—and it came out so organically. It was about feeling like a big change was coming. After I wrote that song, I felt really proud. So I decided I’d try to record a whole album. That was my only goal.” It’s a goal she pulled off better than she could have imagined. Her debut full-length, the aptly titled Sunny, F.L., is an eight-track record of warm bedroom pop with beach vibes for days. Recorded back in spring of 2016, the album capitalizes on her Florida roots. “If I’m Sorry” sways with a blissful blush, tightened by taut percussion behind her
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SAT 8.26
FREAKS AND FOLK IN DISPOSABLE AMERICA ME IN CAPRIS + LUBEC + EDGAR CLINKS + PUPPY PROBLEMS
[O’Brien’s Pub, 3 Harvard Ave., Allston. 8pm/21+/$8. obrienspubboston.com]
SAT 8.26
KING OF THE TEENS LIL YACHTY
[The Wilbur, 246 Tremont St., Boston. 10pm/18+/$29. thewilbur.com]
WED 8.30
SOMEWHERE BETWEEN ALTERNATIVE AND MEDITATIVE PEOPLE LIKE YOU + MOTHER EVERGREEN + MORE
[O’Brien’s Pub, 3 Harvard Ave., Allston. 8pm/18+/$8. obrienspubboston.com]
VERY FUNNY SHOWS.
BOXING THE MONOLITH MUSIC
Esh swings hard with latest. Trust me, I’ve felt the punches.’ BY NATE HOMAN
Seven Nights A WWk. PHOTO BY MICHELE EAGAN
I had no idea that I was squared off against a seasoned MC, producer, and DJ when Esh and I traded blows in front of a raucous crowd at a charity fight night at Boston Boxing and Fitness a few months ago. It wasn’t until after that I heard the name in musical context and found out that my sparring partner had the seventh project of his underdog career, Darwin’s Frankenstein, about to drop. Some of this happened in the ring. Formally known as Esh the Monolith, my friendly adversary tossed out a few feeler jabs to get heads bobbing in late July. “Good Night for a Daydream” showed me why this guy was so resilient; while I can pop him every now and then, it’s clear that Esh can take life’s beatings and put them to beats. Depression, drugs, and Tinder be damned. “My last album was all about losing control of my life, and finally reining myself in at the last minute before I got lost in the debaucherous abyss,” Esh says. “I am in control on Darwin’s Frankenstein. It’s not an exercise in discovering who I am, but one of knowing who I am, turning the lens outward, and observing my surroundings. It’s still totally selfish, but in a different way. I’m trying to make sense of the world around me, not myself.” Once he regained his composure, Esh started slugging with the reflexes, finesse, and stamina of seasoned vocalist. His rhyme schemes are more clever than ever before; his footwork and his inside hooks are heavy like those of the legend Micky Ward. Tracks come blasting from the bell to the finish, with an atmospheric groove you might equate to butterfly floatation. The Providence-born puncher’s pugilistic spirit was forged in the fury of the punk and hip-hop scenes, with the boisterous bare-knuckle wordplay of Wu-Tang, Kool Keith, Souls of Mischief, Sean Price, Ill Bill, and Dead Prez, all of whom taught the young gun the ropes. “I’m extremely proud of this body of work and I just want people to hear it,” Esh says. “I’ll tour the album towards the end of the year if I feel like it and if the right opportunity presents itself. Other than that, it’s about creating more art. It’s always been about that. Also, going more than three rounds without feeling like I’m dying would be nice.”
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8/25 Brick + Mortar, The Moms, Thrills, usLights Alternative, indie, drum & bass. 8/28 Taco Monday Mess-Around Feat. Jay Allen, Justine Covault, Tom Baker, Lee Harrington & Scott Pittman 9/04 Sextile Post-apocalyptic punk 9/05 Freddie For A Day Feat. Gunpowder Gelatine & Friends Celebrating Freddie Mercury’s b-day & benefitting GLAD AIDS Law Project
156 Highland Ave • Somerville, MA
>> ESH ALBUM RELEASE PARTY WITH CESCHI, ORCHIDS, AND CLIFF NOTEZ. THU 8.31. GREAT SCOTT, 1222 COMM. AVE. ALLSTON. GREATSCOTTBOSTON.COM
617-285-0167 oncesomerville.com @oncesomerville /ONCEsomerville
NEWS TO US
FEATURE
DEPT. OF COMMERCE
ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT
17
FILM
GOOD TIME
The Safdfie Brothers’ Reality feature BY JAKE MULLIGAN @_JAKEMULLIGAN
According to the people involved, it had been just one day since production had wrapped on Josh and Benny Safdie’s Heaven Knows What [2015] when Buddy Duress—one of many nonprofessional actors featured in that picture— was arrested by police, who were acting on a year-old warrant. In a story published just this week by the New York Post, Duress explained the situation in more detail: He was busted for heroin possession in his native Queens in 2013 but had managed to escape custody while awaiting transfer to a drug treatment facility; his time “on the lam” eventually led him to the Upper West Side, where he found company with a number of fellow heroin users, one being a young woman named Arielle Holmes. Holmes, in her own time in that area, had previously met Josh Safdie, who was researching a still-to-come film project set in the Diamond District. The director would commission Holmes to write material about her life as a so-called street kid, and those pages would go on to form the basis for Heaven Knows What, which both Josh and Benny would direct, with Holmes and Duress in lead roles. After the shoot finished, Duress was apprehended and then incarcerated at Rikers Island prison—and while there, he kept diaristic notes for the filmmakers, just as Holmes had before. With an assist from one of the planet’s more recognizable movie stars, all these various events would lead the Safdie brothers to their next film project. “Robert Pattinson saw a still from [Heaven Knows
What], got my email through the grapevine, and sent me an email, like, I saw this image, and don’t know what it is, but it feels tied to my purpose in some way,” explained Josh, the elder brother by about two years, speaking from the stage of the Brattle Theatre. He’s at a Q&A session following an early screening of that “next project”—it’s called Good Time [2017], it co-stars Pattinson and Duress, and it opens in Boston this Friday. At the Brattle, he’s joined by Benny, as well as by the film’s composer, Oneohtrix Point Never (Massachusetts native Daniel Lopatin). The brothers are based in New York City and have made all of their feature-length narrative films there, up to and including Good Time. “I had seen Cosmopolis [2012] and The Rover [2014],” Josh continued, on the subject of Pattinson, “but I hadn’t seen the Twilight movies, and I didn’t really know who he was as a person, so that email already stuck out to me. Then he saw the movie, and we met, but there was no Good Time, there was no movie whatsoever. I just had this lifelong interest in a specific type of character— the American criminal—and I had been reading The Executioner’s Song for the first time, and In the Belly of the Beast. The first thing I said to him was that I wanted to do a movie that takes place in this milieu—about the American criminal, about the prison ethos in America, about what’s going on in America in 2017. And the only other person I want to be in it is Buddy Duress.” “He can say whatever and it sounds real,” Josh told me
a couple hours earlier. Josh, Benny, and I were seated at a table overlooking the lobby of the Liberty Hotel, where we were excitedly speaking about the line deliveries of Mr. Duress—in the two films he’s made with the Safdies, they have a speedy, drug-addled musicality to them, so that his words often seem to trip over one another. If the “street kids” milieu of the Safdie brothers’ last two pictures feels authentic, that’s in large part thanks to his performances. “I’ll tell you where that comes from,” Josh continued. “When I met him, he’d never acted in anything. He’d never even thought about acting. But every single day of his life, he was acting. He had five different identifications in his wallet, so he was constantly different personalities— it’s the opera of the street, of the city specifically. Yeah, he was a con man, but he was a genuine performer. He loved to perform for people. You can see that quality in certain people. And if you can tap into it and mesh it with reality, then all of a sudden you can make an everyday performance look like a [movie] performance.” Buddy Duress is hardly the first nonprofessional actor to give an “everyday performance” in a Safdie brothers movie. At the start of our interview, the Safdies and I spoke at length about their time as students in Boston— and even when recalling their university days at Boston University, most of their stories still end with “so we put him in a movie” (the two are lifelong filmmakers, having started with camcorders at a young age). Benny tells me about Danny, from Millis, whom he met at a painting class at the university, “who’s probably 70 years old now” and framed houses for a living. Josh tells me about Peter Rand, an author and journalist who still lectures at the university, and who indulged the young filmmaker “at my most pretentious state.” And Benny tells me about Ivan Gold, another author/professor, whose works include the novel Some Friends, who had once invited the younger Safdie over to talk writing and to watch baseball, and who died just weeks after playing a role in Benny’s short film The Acquaintances of a Lonely John [2008]. All three of the men, in fact, along with countless other acquaintances, filmed roles under the Safdies’ direction, for one project or another. This tendency of “personal” casting, I think, is essential to understanding what the Safdies are chasing after as filmmakers—that being a particular kind of urban texture, a specific type of street charisma, and most importantly, a certain kind of face. JOSH: I got into South by Southwest with We’re Going to the Zoo [2006], and when I was registering, this guy walked out of the convention center. I didn’t know who he was. But like Benny’s teacher Ivan Gold, he was just a face. I was like, this guy’s incredible. But I was very intimidated by him, so I didn’t want to introduce myself. And then I heard he made a movie called Frownland [2008] … at the festival’s awards ceremony, [Frownland director] Ronald Bronstein won, and a programmer came up to me, saying, “I want to introduce you to Mr. Bronstein, because your short and his movie have something in common. I don’t know exactly what it
FILM EVENTS FRI 8.25
OPENING NIGHT OF FILMS AT THE GATE 2017 MY LIFE IN CHINA [2014] [Outdoor screening at the Chinatown Gate, 70 Beach St., Boston. Games and family activ. at 5:30, martial arts at 7, film at 8pm/NR/free]
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FRI 8.25
EXTREMELY RARELY SCREENED DOCUMENTARY ON JEAN RENOIR, JEAN RENOIR, THE BOSS, PART 1: THE SEARCH FOR RELATIVITY [1967] [Harvard Film Archive, 24 Quincy St., Harv Sq., Camb. 9pm/NR/$7-9. Pt 3 on 8.27 7pm, Pt 2 8.28 at 7pm. ]
DIGBOSTON.COM
SAT 8.26
COOLIDGE AFTER MIDNIGHT PRESENTS DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE [1995] [Coolidge Corner Theatre, 290 Harvard St., Brookline. Midnight/R/$12.25. 35mm. coolidge.org]
SUN 8.27
LIVE MUSIC BY JEFF RAPSIS GET YOUR MAN [1927]
[Brattle Theatre. 40 Brattle St., Harvard Sq., Cambridge. 5 and 7:30pm/NR/$9-11. 35mm. brattlefilm.org]
MON 8.28
THE ROBERT MITCHUM CENTENNIAL TRIBUTE CONTINUES AT THE BRATTLE THE YAKUZA [1974]
[Brattle Theatre. 40 Brattle St., Harvard Sq., Cambridge. 4:30, 7, and 9:15pm/R/$9-11. 35mm. brattlefilm.org]
MON 8.28
BIG SCREEN CLASSICS PRESENTS THE GODFATHER [1972]
[Coolidge Corner Theatre. 290 Harvard St., Brookline. 7pm/R/$12.25. 35mm. coolidge.org]
is, but you need to know each other.” So then Ronnie and [cinematographer] Sean Price Williams, actually, went to go see We’re Going to the Zoo that next day, when I was already out of town. They wrote me an email, and then I saw Frownland in New York, and now he’s one of my best friends now. With Daddy Longlegs [2010] (which stars Bronstein), we wrote this crazy thing, and we went through it all scene by scene, and he was like, “No, I think this should happen,” or “This is how I could play it.” And we realized this was the start of a very fruitful relationship. At this point he was 36 years old—I’m 33 now, so even then he was ahead of me—and he could bring what I’m only now starting to see. He was jump-starting vision for us. Ronald Bronstein would indeed become the next “face” for the Safdie brothers at this early point in their career, playing a fictionalized version of their own father in the aforementioned Longlegs, which was the first feature-length film the brothers directed together. Bronstein is now an essential part of their ongoing filmmaking troupe: He’s co-written two of their narrative features and one of their short films in the years since Daddy Longlegs (usually with Josh), and he’s coedited many of those projects as well (usually with Benny). The aforementioned Sean Price Williams would also join the Safdie team, albeit later, working with the brothers on short film The Black Balloon [2012] before returning to lens Heaven Knows What and Good Time. There are other recurring figures on the Safdie cinema machine, including production designer/art director Sam Lisenco, and Eleonore Hendricks, who has worked for the brothers as both an actor and in the casting department. And now Duress, with his second major role in as many features, seems the latest addition to the group, adding a texture all his own, far beyond just his “face.” As a performer, he maintains that abrasive lyricism, modulating it scene by scene depending on where the script is emotionally and what his character has ingested physically. He’s got a command over a particular kind of diction, one that innumerable professional actors have struggled with or succumbed to—and that quality, all by itself, may well justify the very practice of what the Safdies call “street casting.” Heaven Knows What was and is, thus far, the Safdies’ most ambitious pass at that practice (it’s also, to put it bluntly, one of the very few truly great American movies of recent years). Taking Holmes’ journals as its guide, the film stages a melodrama on the sidewalks of New York City—with Harley (Holmes) alternating between her passionate love for pseudo-nihilist Ilya (Caleb Landry Jones) and her more economical partnership with her dealer and fellow junkie, Mike (Duress). Adding to the street authenticity, numerous scenes take place in chain stores, like a Dunkin’ Donuts or a White Castle—and to continue the authenticity kick, those scenes often end with the addicted characters getting unnecessarily kicked out. It is, in essence, a true story being dramatized by the individuals who were actually involved and who are often performing in stolen, unpermitted, “nonfiction” settings. It keeps one foot planted in fiction, and the other hidden away. To achieve that, Heaven Knows What frequently utilizes a trademark Safdie composition: a shot of a city street, captured from the opposite side of the block with a long-lens camera, and with the actors mic’d up—so that we’re seeing them, and hearing them, and watching people walk past them unfazed, but all from the safe distance of a curious bystander. This composition is present in The Pleasure of Being Robbed [2009], the first feature-length movie directed by Josh, as well as in Daddy Longlegs and in many of their shorts. But in Heaven Knows What, the editing provides a stronger contrast to that composition—the film alternates between that faraway bystander’s gaze and more intimate close-ups (usually of Holmes, but also of Jones, Duress, and other performers). Deep contrasts also well up in the film’s soundtrack, which alternates between electronic recordings of classical pieces by musician Isao Tomita and hardstyle tracks preferred by Holmes and her friends— the former seem to align with the voyeuristic long shots and the latter with the intrusive close-ups. All these contrasts, visual and aural, are emphasizing a gulf between the characters in the film—i.e., the people who inspired the film—and the filmmakers who are gazing at them, whose perspective often seems to be far away. Which is a way of saying that the Safdies’ films completely acknowledge the fact that they need help in capturing the texture of a city, the texture of New York City— the filmakers, and the film, are bystanders, and they want to find the characters, the texture, the “faces”; they want to steal it, record it, from whatever street corner allows them to do so. And the films themselves, in recent years, to their immense credit, seem fully aware of all these dynamics. One particular short feature by the brothers, the Seattle-set piece Straight Hustle [2011], lines up with Heaven Knows What, and with these concerns, more than any other. Straight Hustle documents the process of a panhandling con—a man and woman, essentially playing good cop and bad cop, work to trick bystanders into thinking they’re stranded travelers collecting bus fare to leave town—from that trademark Safdie composition, at the voyeuristic safety of the other side of the street. The couple try to find a mark, failing at their first try, then succeeding at their second. And the first man, who saw through their con—who is not a performer, but a bystander, a part of the “nonfiction”—begins narrating their scheme to his own friends, while now watching the performers run it on the second man, speaking so loudly that the microphones pick up his every ecstatic word. So in just a few minutes, this short provides a microcosm of everything the Safdies have set their camera on in recent years: their focus on the narratives of
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ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT
19
people making livings on the margins of the lower classes, their interest in the cons and hustles that can become necessary to maintain life at that economic level, and their use of unknowing bystanders as visual texture. So they’ve been making movies about the people most filmmakers don’t notice, casting the people that most filmmakers don’t notice—and texturing the films themselves with the populace of the cities they’re set in, because the people in the locations they steal don’t seem to notice the Safdies are making a movie at all. BENNY: Straight Hustle was this perfect confluence of reality and fiction and the one-shot, and characters embedded within it. JOSH: On Straight Hustle, we wanted to tap into a certain kind of movies, many from the ’90s, where they were messing with reality in a way. Close-up [1990], or The Mirror [1997]. BENNY: The across-the-street shot from Close-up. JOSH: There’s a lot of them. And obviously in Heaven Knows What, we took that to an almost perverted level. With Good Time, the Safdies have created something decidedly poppier, leaving behind the melodrama of Heaven Knows What in favor of something more like a crime odyssey. The picture follows Connie (Pattinson), who starts by breaking his developmentally disabled brother, Nick (Benny Safdie), out of a psych center, commits a bank robbery in Flushing, gets foiled by a dye pack, and ends up leaving Nick behind to be arrested by the police—at which point, wracked with guilt, he begins chasing down the $10,000 he needs to bail Nick out of Rikers, doing so by running scams on anyone in his vicinity (the privilege that allows Connie to get away with these schemes in plain sight—his being a white man, and a pretty one at that—is a constant factor in the narrative). The film, as shot by Williams, scored by Oneohtrix Point Never, and edited by Bronstein and Safdie, is an anti-symphony, an anxious nightmare of urban signifiers—neon signs, red headlights, police sirens, carnival attractions—which come together to press down on Connie, who’s quickly seeing his options shrink down to “prison,” just like they seemed to for so many of the characters who populated the Safdies’ last film. “The movie is really about time,” said Oneohtrix Point Never, after the screening at the Brattle. “Because until there’s a threat, you don’t worry about time. But once there’s a problem, it’s oh shit. And this movie brings that to a crazy level. Intuitively, without really working it out, the music embodies that stress. With simple formal things, like pulsation, we really work on the stress.” His soundtrack
achieves the task, because Good Time is a film of sheer propulsion: Lights and sounds bleed into one another, scenes play out entirely in close-up to keep you unsettled spatially, and Scorsese-style swoop-in close-ups arrive to wake up any scene that’s been static for more than a minute. But even as its aural and visual elements dip into excess and abstraction, the authentic texture of Good Time holds together. It’s not just Duress’ vernacular that does it, but also that of Brooklyn rapper Necro, another veteran of Heaven Knows What, who can weaponize his diction similarly. Plus there’s the work of first-time actor Taliah Webster, playing a 16-year-old girl at a Queens home that Connie manipulates his way into, who is as striking and surprisingly vulnerable as Duress was in his film debut. And really, the entire soundscape of the picture, including the score, is of course rooted in a form of reality—the beep-beep-beep of Oneohtrix Point Never’s electronic compositions often line up with electronic devices, like car alarms or heart monitors. That’s got to be the stress that Oneohtrix is talking about—the stress of constant sensory overload—the stress of “what’s going on in America in 2017”—American life in 2017 being an existence that, like Good Time itself, often feels like it’s careening between the rules of realism and those of genre. JOSH: The nonfictional elements of Good Time are in the casting, and in some of the screenwriting … but it’s a highly scripted movie, by far our most plot-driven thing. We went crazy with this narrative … It’s very much Through the Looking Glass. BENNY: There is something about that way of storytelling. Like even Gogol, Dead Souls, that constant movement. JOSH: Which we’ve been doing with character-based stuff. But now we were like, we have all these tools that we’ve refined, let’s put them into genre. Let’s make a popcorn movie. Let’s make a thriller. This idea of constantly pulling the audience forward—but also infusing that with a character study. So there’s two different types of viewings of Good Time. There’s the normal moviegoer, who just goes to the movie to be entertained and who will be. But we’re also doing this thing that genre movies have been doing ever since they came to be, where you’re infusing social commentary within the guidelines of the genre. BENNY: Someone asked us if there’s an appetite for this movie. There’s always an appetite for these movies, because there’s always going to be a craving for pulp. It is a classic form of telling a story. This idea that you go to the movies to escape, then you leave the movie and you can’t stop talking about it, because there’s little things you catch up with.
JOSH: All of that stuff comes from someone like Sean Price Williams, in a weird way. We grew up idolizing these movies like 48 Hrs. [1982] or The Running Man [1987]. And there is a movement among cinephiles, where you’ll see the same person at a Wiseman [nonfiction] movie that you’ll see at, like, Shakedown [1988], which is a pulpy 42nd Street grindhouse movie. Sean would do that. He is the master of high and low. He will revere a Fassbinder film, but he will also revere some blockbuster from the ’80s that is ostensibly a piece of trash. He sees the importance of them both. We made Heaven Knows What together, but [on Good Time], he would say, “Now we’re making a tapehead movie.” A movie that is like the VHS tape where people are like Oh, shit! Put it on! Put it on! It’s taken almost a decade of professional filmmaking for Josh and Benny Safdie to get to their genre movie— their tapehead classic—but it’s good that they got to it now. They’ve slowly transitioned away from a predilection toward the abstract and the dreamlike—which is very present in their student films and shows up in moments in their early features, including in their documentary film Lenny Cooke [2013]. In The Pleasure of Being Robbed, in Lenny Cooke, and even in moments of Daddy Longlegs, their films would place the weight of subtext and cosmic significance on individual characters, sometimes with a heaviness that the characterizations couldn’t bear. But in Heaven Knows What, in some of their shorts, and in Good Time, you sense that the Safdies have grown past that tendency. Even while they treat lights, sounds, and places with abstraction, they now seem to see characters for nothing more than who they are, in all their incomprehensible human complexity. JOSH: I think you could attribute that to the fact that, starting as teenagers, we were literally hustling on the side to make these movies. And as we began to be more and more in the real world, where we’re getting beat down by it, people saying no to us all the time, having to do shitty commercials to make ends meet, you start to get a little hardened. Things become less representative, and more real. BENNY: You look at John’s Gone [2010], and it’s the same character as The Acquaintances of a Lonely John. And we always say it’s just John after life put him through the motions. JOSH: … There is a level of joie de vivre when you’re younger. And I don’t think we’ve lost it, but I think we’re seeing it in different places.
>> GOOD TIME. RATED R. OPENING FRI 8.25 AT AMC BOSTON COMMONS, COOLIDGE CORNER THEATRE, KENDALL SQUARE CINEMA, REGAL FENWAY, AND SOMERVILLE THEATRE, “PLUS SUBURBS.” >> HEAVEN KNOWS WHAT. RATED R. CURRENTLY AVAILABLE TO STREAM ON NETFLIX AND CAN BE RENTED VIA OTHER VOD OUTLETS.
>> STRAIGHT HUSTLE. ALONG WITH MANY OTHER SHORT FILMS BY THE SAFDIE BROTHERS, CAN BE STREAMED VIA FANDOR.COM OR VIMEO.
ARTS EVENTS
MEL BROOKS’ YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN
[North Shore Music Theatre, 62 Dunham Rd., Beverly. Through 8.27. nsmt.org]
20
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DIGBOSTON.COM
FREE OUTDOOR SHAKESPEARE JULIUS CAESAR
[Praxis Stage, various locations in Cambridge. Through 8.27. facebook. com/praxisstage]
VIBRANT & TIMELY EXHIBITION NARI WARD: SUN SPLASHED
[ICA Boston, 25 Harbor Shore Dr., Boston. Through 9.4. icaboston.org]
IMMERSIVE SYNTH-POP MUSICAL BURN ALL NIGHT
[OBERON, 2 Arrow St., Cambridge. Through 9.8. americanrepertorytheater.org]
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ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT
21
SAVAGE LOVE
DON’T FUCK NAZIS
WHAT'S FOR BREAKFAST BY PATT KELLEY WHATS4BREAKFAST.COM
BY DAN SAVAGE @FAKEDANSAVAGE | MAIL@SAVAGELOVE.NET I’m a woman in my early 30s having sex with a guy in his early 20s. The sex is more than casual, and we really care about each other. My concern is this guy has some alt-right sympathies that reveal themselves in our political discussions. He’s a Trump guy, but hesitates to admit it because he knows I’m anti-Trump. He gets his news from hard-right publications, and his sister and brother-in-law are Holocaust deniers. This concerns and confuses me because he’s such a sweet guy and, honestly, so goddamn good in bed. I can’t reconcile these two sides of him, but I also can’t help trying to enlighten him a little bit. One of his best features is his open-mindedness. He’s read books and watched documentaries I’ve recommended. I feel a responsibility to this young, confused, and frankly nottoo-bright person who’s surrounded by bad influences, but sometimes his ignorance is aggravating. I can also sense that he’s beginning to feel a little judged, which can only make things worse. I keep thinking of your Campsite Rule, and I wonder at what point does one give up throwing logic and articles at someone who thought Hillary Clinton ran a child sex ring out of a pizza parlor? Conflicted Lover Don’t fuck Nazis. If someone you just met tells you they’re a Nazi, don’t fuck that Nazi. If you’re already fucking someone and they reveal themselves to be a Nazi, stop fucking that Nazi. If someone tells you they’re a Nazi and you fuck that Nazi anyway and keep fucking that Nazi because they’re good at sex (for a Nazi), your effort to “gently guide” that Nazi away from being a Nazi doesn’t make it okay for you to fuck that Nazi. Okay, okay: This guy might not be a Nazi at all— although it sure as fuck sounds like his family is, and they probably have more influence over him than you do. It’s possible this young, confused, and not-too-bright boy is merely a Trump-supporting conspiracy theorist and maybe I’m still too upset about Charlottesville to be impartial. Or, hey, maybe this guy is already a Nazi and hasn’t revealed the full extent of his odious political beliefs to you, CL, because the sex is good and he’s hoping to fuck the Nazi into you before you can fuck the Nazi out of him. Finally, good people don’t worry about making Nazis “feel judged.” Nazis should be judged—à la Judgment at Nuremberg, an old film with a feel-good ending that’s worth watching right about now. Another thing good people don’t do? They don’t fuck Nazis.
On the Lovecast, women in gay bars—we have a problem:: savagelovecast.com.
THE STRANGERER BY PAT FALCO ILLFALCO.COM
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OUR VALUED CUSTOMERS BY TIM CHAMBERLAIN OURVC.NET
TO VANQUISH MODERN GIANTS, YOU NEED MORE THAN A SLINGSHOT*
*You need independent media binjonline.org | @binjreports NEWS TO US
FEATURE
DEPT. OF COMMERCE
ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT
23