Articles
Saturday and Sunday: Mattoon Street Arts Festival in Springfield
Your Move, Pedestrians The longest-running arts festival in the Valley returns with 100 exhibitors, food vendors, and strolling musicians — all of it family-friendly and, when you stop to take a look up and down this beautiful Victorian street, really darn pretty....
Dance: Take the Plunge with Legible Bod(ies)
Diving Belles If The Legible Bod(ies) take a little while to come into their own, it won’t be from lack of ambition. The new Valley-based artist collective makes dance performances “for stage, film, screen, or anywhere people will sit still long enough to watch,” and...
Gallery Spotlight: Becker’s Wordless Journeys
Don’t Use Your WordsAaron Becker’s lush, cinematic illustrations aren’t just accompaniment for written stories — in his wordless Journey trilogy of children’s books, these images capture the details of setting, character, rhythm, and plot all at once. Becker, a native...
At Amherst Cinema: An actor dives into a reporter’s death
There’s a famous scene in Network, Sidney Lumet’s 1976 film about the state of the television industry, in which veteran newsman Howard Beale (Peter Finch), bitter about his impending dismissal in the face of declining ratings, announces to his audience that instead...
Basemental: Streaming music service Spotify is a bust for local artists
Spotty Results I learned some shocking things about Spotify recently. The average employee rakes in $166,000 a year, and the highest executive compensation has increased over 300 percent since 2014, reaching as much as $18.9 million. Despite that, Spotify has never...
Back Talk: Nuts to Safe Spaces, Decriminalize DMT
Facebook Here are some comments in response to an expert from “Between the Lines: In Defense of Safe Spaces,” we posted on our Facebook page with the quote: “It’s a blessing to be somewhere — even if it’s just for an hour — where women can talk about rape culture...
CHART Water Hogs: Some towns use far more water than others
With 75 percent of Western Massachusetts experiencing drought conditions, it’s beyond time to take water restriction and conservation seriously. As of press time, 16 Pioneer Valley communities are experiencing residential water use restrictions — the strictest being...
The V-Spot: Consent, It’s Not Just for Students
Thankfully, consent is becoming a big topic on college campuses. However, most conversations about consent overfocus on the damaging outcomes of the failure to ask for consent rather than engaging students in learning the benefits of ongoing conversations about...
Staff picks: Get out there and hang with the Dude
Retrofaire 2016 Open Air Market • Saturday Fan of vintage fashion, jewelry, hard-to-find music gear, vinyl records and live jazz? The Northampton Arts Council presents the third annual RETROFAIRE, held in the space between Thornes Marketplace and the Northampton...
Between the Lines: Democracy Stalled? Send in the Clowns
On Aug. 21, before a month-long hiatus for HBO’s Last Week Tonight, host John Oliver spent five minutes highlighting the similarities between Donald Trump, a “racist voodoo doll made of discarded cat hair,” and the protagonist of a 1996 children’s book called The Kid...
Scene Here: Keep Moving, construction on Pleasant Street in Northampton
From six directions, cars attempt to drive through the intersection at Conz and Pleasant streets in Northampton. It’s 88 degrees and the dirt kicked up by heavy machinery sticks to sweat, giving everyone a dirty looking tan. The Route 5 entryway to Paradise City is...
The Beerhunter: Worcester’s Downtown Breweries
Three Cheers for the Woo The local craft beer movement has taken off in every nook and cranny of Massachusetts, and Worcester is no exception. That shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, since the city is the second largest in New England, and it sits along pretty much...
Review: Not My Mother’s Kitchen, a cookbook by Rob Chirico
In the world of food, there is nothing more contentious than “traditional” Italian cooking — everyone with an ounce of olive oil in their veins thinks their family recipes are Old World classics. This is, in part, because Italian nonni rarely write down how to prepare...
From Our Readers: Nuts to safe spaces, decriminalize DMT, and artists struggle everywhere
FacebookHere are some comments in response to an expert from “Between the Lines: In Defense of Safe Spaces,” we posted on Facebook: “It’s a blessing to be somewhere — even if it’s just for an hour — where women can talk about rape culture without someone yelling about...
Astrology: It’s essential that Pisces feel at least 33 percent happier
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Two seven-year-old girls showed me three tricks I could use to avoid taking myself too seriously and getting too attached to my dignity. I’m offering these tricks to you just in time for the letting-go phase of your astrological cycle....
News of the Weird: Outstanding in Their Fields
The recently concluded Olympics included a few of the more obscure athletic endeavors — such as dressage for horses and steeplechase for humans — but U.S. colleges compete in even less-heralded “sports,” such as wood chopping, rock climbing, fishing, and broomball....
The Seth Show Returns Tuesday
Seth in the City Billy Flynn sings his smarmy way through Chicago with the promise of razzle dazzle. “Give ’em an act with lots of flash in it,” he croons, “and the reaction will be passionate.” The Seth Show, by contrast, pulls no theatrics. Seth Lepore is up...
Save the Last Dance: Struggles with Main Street Rent Highlight Northampton’s Lack of Space
Downtown Northampton’s biggest — and possibly last — public performing arts space is a real beauty: a 4,000 square foot, high-ceilinged room where local Freemasons used to hold community gatherings over a century ago. Completed in 1898, it takes up much of the fourth...
Welcome to the Valley! Now What? Where to go for (almost) anything
You’ve checked into your dorm and met your roommate, scoped out the campus and located the halls where you’ll have your first classes. It’s time to get off campus and explore this new place called the Pioneer Valley where you’ll likely be spending the next four years...
The Lush Garden: Cocktail Recipes
A guide to summer cocktails from the garden It’s hard to imagine a better way to top off an afternoon in the garden than by settling into a lawn chair with a refreshing summer cocktail and admiring your work. Even better if you can actually harvest a few ingredients...
Friday to Sunday: Stone Soul Festival in Springfield
Food and Family, A Stone’s Throw Away Community is everything at the Stone Soul Festival in Springfield, a celebration that began in 1989 as a Mason Square neighborhood picnic. Since then, it’s evolved into a three-day event that its organizers claim is New England’s...
All Things Pig: Friday and Saturday Block Party in Springfield
Pork it Over Don’t sit around and do nothing on Labor Day weekend — give your stomach (and heart, and arteries) some love to labor over. The Student Prince hosts a two-day pig roast and barbecue with pig-inspired food, bacon-infused drinks, games, and live...
Cinemadope: A Queen and Her Kings
A musician’s life is never easy. I’m not talking about those of us who pick up the guitar now and then, or even the many who, long after it becomes clear that they will likely not move beyond the coffee house or bar circuit, still pack up the Volvo to head out for a...
College Survival Guide: Dump the rhetoric, get the facts, and VOTE this election
Editor’s Note: Welcome to Lip Bomb, the new Advocate feature that brings opinion pieces written by area college students that touch on the topics that move them most: higher education, politics, culture, campus life, arts and entertainment. We’re kicking things off...
College Survival Guide: 15 tips about sharing a bathroom with 50 people
If you’re getting ready to start at a college this year — especially if it’s a four-year school that requires you to live in a dorm — odds are you’re about to get your first taste of semi-communal living. Dorm life means sharing a relatively tight space with several...
College Survival Guide: Cafeteria Fusion Cuisine
Though most dining commons food comes as pre-made cuisine, already distinctly seasoned, there’s no reason students can’t still mix things up when the norm gets old. I headed into Worcester Dining Commons at the University of Massachusetts Amherst to ask students about...
Everton Blender: Roots Reggae at MASS MoCA
Roots Reggae Returns Everton Blender was one of the most prominent reggae musicians and producers in Jamaica in the ’90s, and his smooth tenor, up-tempo arrangements, and spiritually uplifting themes still resonate in 2016 at the crossroads of roots reggae and...
Karen Gaudette’s Scratchboard Folktales
Scratching the Surface Greenfield artist and educator Karen Gaudette was trained as a printmaker, but she has always loved to draw. Scratchboard, it turns out, provides the perfect meeting point. For 20 years now, Gaudette has used the technique to achieve fine-line...
Sports Drinks: The Hype Over Hydration
If you caught much of the Rio Olympics this summer, you may have noticed a blitz of sports beverage commercials featuring Olympic athletes like boxer Shakur Stevenson swilling fluorescent blue Powerade, or Usain Bolt and Serena Williams pushing Gatorade. Aside from a...
The V-Spot: Help! My Boyfriend Hates My Vagina
Hi Yana,I’m a straight 20-something lady and have been with my boyfriend for two years. We have a great sex life and we’re totally in love! He doesn’t seem to have much of an interest in my vagina — and my vagina, in my mind, is kinda the main thing...
CLICK It: Is College Worth It? Depends on Your Values
In the Valley, where you can’t throw a hacky sack without hitting a campus, September means back to college. Keep scrolling down for infographs.The value of a college degree can be debated — among people who have earned them, more than 80 percent say it was a great...
Scene Here: Slippery Slope
It’s human nature to want to see just how far an idea can be pushed. Take Slide the City for instance, the 1,000-foot slip-and-slide that transformed Appleton Street into a lazy river for the Celebrate Holyoke festival this past weekend. It’s easy to imagine...
Between the Lines: In Defense of Safe Spaces
The University of Chicago may have sent one of the most bizarre and shady freshmen welcome letters I’ve ever seen, when they mailed the missives to the class of 2020 last week.The main thrust of the letter isn’t to welcome but to put freshmen on notice that the...
Backtalk: No to GMOs, Right to Roam, and Hot Takes on Pearl Street Nightclub
Avoid GMOs; go organic Farmers have increased their pesticide use on GMO crops three-fold compared to standard conventional use; that’s enough reason to avoid GMOs (“Vermont’s Short-Lived GMO Experiment” Aug. 11-17, 2016). Most GMOs (genetically modified organisms)...
News of the Weird: Virtual Fandom
The phenomenal Japanese singer Hatsune Miku — 100 million YouTube hits — is coming off of a sold-out, 10-city North American concert tour with high-energy audiences — blocks-long lines to get in; raucous crowd participation; hefty souvenir sales — except that “she”...
Third Eye Roaming: Body on the Brain, Path to Peace Begins with Yoga at Pioneer Valley Shambalah
Mindfulness, or the practice of being completely aware of everything happening in the present moment, can serve as the path to a peaceful world. That person in your life attacking you? Perhaps it is because they are threatened by you. That man who sexually harasses...
Blaise’s Bad Movie Guide: ‘Call Me Bwana’ crash-lands
Let’s take a trip in the Wayback Machine to the early 1960s. The British company Eon Productions has just been accorded the honor of producing a series of films based on the Ian Fleming James Bond novels, starting with Dr. No. But there’s a catch. The contract says...
The Pour Man: Grand Cru Challenge Accepted; Lucky Us
In the early 1970s when I was first widening my wine experience beyond the California jugs and the Portuguese roses, I discovered a French wine in a 2-liter plastic bottle. It cost about $1.50. It wasn’t very good. It had lots of strange residue in the bottom of the...
Nightcrawler: VIP, Yeah, You Know Me
He is certainly a scene fixture, clocking more than his share of road miles and hours packed in vans. But let’s face it: the guy’s named after a luxury vehicle, not to mention immensely talented. So why wouldn’t a talent buyer tap the Valley’s...
Rock, With a Twist: 17 Acts Play Transperformance Fest on Tuesday
Out Standing in Their Fields For 26 years now, the Advocate has awarded high marks to all of those Valley musicians willing to pack their muscle, humor, skill, and silly costume pieces out into the beautiful, grassy Look Park every year for Transperformance, the...
Cinemadope: These New Kid Flicks Aren’t Just For Kids
No Kidding One of the great myths of cinema is that kids movies are for kids. Sure, they might be a bit more brightly colored than most, or hit most of their punch lines a little more on the nose, but never forget that these films are made by grown-ups. Peel back that...
Basemental: Talking Rock and Net Neutrality with Candace Clement
We Buffer, We Suffer Candace Clement has been a been a member of the Northampton band Bunny’s A Swine for eight years. On songs like “Greetings from the Bottom,” her Strat intertwines with Emerson Stevens’ 3-string guitar contraption like a ball of twine, which gets...
The V-Spot: My Sexual ‘A’ is Not a Scarlet Letter
Dear Yana,I was recently discussing your column with some new friends I met through Pioneer Valley Aces, a local group of individuals who identify as aromantic and/or asexual. I wasn’t the only one of us who appreciated your witty way of reassuring those who...
Nightcrawler: Eric Gaffney Plays Free Saturday Show in Florence
Seba-(no)-dough Show Eric Gaffney says sayonara to summer with free Florence show Sebadoh co-founder Eric Gaffney rounds out the Acoustic Saturday Summer Series at JJ’s Tavern in Florence this Saturday, Aug. 27. “I recorded two full-length records in a six...
Amourasaurus Roars Again!
The Valley’s cheeriest new festival doubles in size for its second year The hip cats that comprise Lake Street Dive must be halfway through their nine lives by now. Since the four members met at Boston’s New England Conservatory of Music in 2004, their sound has...
Amourasaurus II: The Line-Up
CHRISTINA COURTIN Saturday, 3:00 – 3:40 The Brooklyn-based Courtin may not be the only Juilliard-trained classical violinist and composer on hand this weekend, but she is definitely the most colorful, bending genres as exuberantly as she can switch between...
RPM Fest Invades Greenfield Friday and Saturday
Shake the Trees The woods of Western Mass promise to be rather loud this weekend for RPM Fest, which brings three days of rock, punk, and metal to Greenfield. As usual, this will be a totally awesome time: vendors, games, raffles, BYOB camping, and live sets by Lich...
Play Date! Double Dog Shows in West Springfield This Weekend
Well-Groomed Do our canine companions understand what they’re playing for and whom they’re up against at dog shows? Hard to say. But surely they sense that all of the training, baths, treats, and commands imparted by adrenaline-scented humans mark a special occasion....
Valley Advocate Staff picks – Get out there!
CT HorrorFest • Saturday My favorite time of the year is around the corner, and all these marvelous Halloween events keep popping up. This Saturday, feast your eyes upon some of horror’s finest. Meet and greet with the “Godfather of the Dead” George A. Romero. The...
Nightmare on Pearl Street: 100-plus Temperatures and Lack of Water at Northampton Club Draw Hundreds of Complaints
It was so hot and humid inside Pearl Street Nightclub during a metal show earlier this month that the ceiling was beading up with condensation and raining sweat onto the crowd.The sweltering experience spurred nearly 200 people to voice outrage on social media, and...
Scene Here: Mountain Park Funk
The old familiar smell of hundreds of people’s body odors mingles with the dust kicking up under our feet and the marijuana smoke hanging low in the air to form that perfect outdoor concert aroma at Mountain Park in Holyoke Saturday.Turkuaz, each member head to toe in...
O, Cannabis! It Could be Worse, healthier ways to consume weed
At a concert — years ago — I was dancing in the front row when the familiar aroma of bright piney buds wafted by. It didn’t take long to find the source; a friendly gorilla finger was passing down the line. A sweaty dude in the neon pink knit cap exhaled a big...
News of the Weird: New World Order
India has supposedly outlawed the “baby-tossing” religious test popular among Hindus and Muslims in rural villages in Maharashtra and Karnataka states, but a July New York Times report suggested that parents were still allowing surrogates to drop their...
Stagestruck: Last of the Summer Wine
The Valley’s summer theaters have folded their figurative tents, but looking west, the season isn’t quite over. Out toward the Berkshires, five troupes are still up and running through this weekend and beyond. Chester Theatre Company’s season closer is The...
Between the Lines: Can Citizens’ Review Cure Ballot Voters’ Blind Spots?
In the American legal system, we trust citizens on juries to decide matters of life and death. But before jurors exercise that power, they put in the time, sitting through testimony and debating the merits of a case. Few jurors complain. Justice demands they sift...
Backtalk: Irate over Iraq, Going Green, and Cat Burglars
We’re Back, Iraq Recent headlines announcing more U.S. troops to Iraq made me feel like the character in Bill Murray’s movie Groundhog Day, and with good reason … The politicians in Washington have been duped into believing that more violence will solve the problem...
Dr. Eric Avery’s Courageous AIDS Artwork
Positivity As an artist, physician, and gay man, Dr. Eric Avery found himself at the epicenter of the AIDS public health crisis beginning in the early 1980s. At first, Avery focused on his personal experience with the disease. Over the next three decades, his artwork...
Banter in the Berkshires: “The Two Gentlemen of Verona”
“You, minion, are too saucy!” The Two Gentlemen of Verona is widely believed to be Shakespeare’s first play. It’s also one of his best. The core elements are simple: two men, one woman, and the antics that result from being struck by Cupid’s arrow. Shakespeare...
Hitchcock Brewing: Whately Hop Farmers Jump into the Craft Beer Game
The key ingredient: locally sourced, out back With beer lovers thirsty for experimental and fresh brews, a region that supports local agriculture, and a back-to-the-craft-beer movement sweeping New England, now is the perfect time to open a brewery in Western...E-Edition
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