Columns
by Monte Belmonte | Jun 6, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Food Booze and Beyond, Monte Belmonte Wines
“This one’s good, what’s it called again?” “White wine.” “Freakin’ LOVE it.” Netflix and chill? Great. Netflix and wine and chill? Even better. Wine Country on Netflix and wine and chill? It makes for a nice evening. You may get a good laugh watching Wine Country, but...
by Hunter Styles | Jun 5, 2019 | Articles, Featured, Food Booze and Beyond, News, The Beerhunter
In the Advocate’s monthly craft beer column The Beerhunter, I keep my finger on the pulse of local craft beer business. The column began in 2014. From day one, I had plenty of little dramas and lucky breaks to cover, from small-business zoning woes to creative...
by Karima Rizk | Jun 4, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Food Booze and Beyond, O Cannabis!
On May 20, three adults collapsed in a Cape Cod restaurant after trying edibles for the first time and apparently took a relatively high dose. One woman fainted and her two companions were soon lying semi-conscious on the ground. While the unfortunate incident is not...
by Will Meyer | Jun 4, 2019 | Articles, Basemental, Columns, Featured, Music
Imagine it’s the year 2020 and you get invited by a friend to a local house show. The catch: you don’t know who the performers will be and you don’t know where it will be located until the day of the show. You must apply in advance to even purchase a ticket and then...
by Chris Rohmann | Jun 4, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
In a season studded with world premieres (five at Williamstown Theatre Festival alone and three at Barrington Stage Company, for example), I’m equally struck by some of the revivals coming up in the Valley and Berkshires this summer. I don’t mean chestnuts from the...
by Yana Tallon-Hicks | Jun 3, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Food Booze and Beyond, The V-Spot
Hello! You’ve probably heard this question before, but how do you approach the topic of group sex with people who you think might be down? I have had a few scenarios happen organically, and been approached myself, but I’m scared of seeming like a creep (for example, a...
by Jack Brown | Jun 3, 2019 | Articles, Cinemadope, Columns, Featured
The Bing Arts Center building, down on Sumner Avenue in Springfield’s Forest Park neighborhood, has had its share of ups and downs over the years. It started life as Kossaboom’s Service Station a century ago, and filled tanks for a few decades before a reconfiguration...
by Jennifer Levesque | May 31, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Music, Valley Show Girl
Festival season is among us! The Valley is chock full of them all summer long and into fall. There is a new one, however, that has hopes of becoming a bi-annual festival in Downtown Northampton, The STRONG and Pleasant Music Festival. Carla Racine, the woman behind...
by Chris Rohmann | May 30, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
I missed The Flamingo Kid when the Garry Marshall movie came out in 1984, but I recently caught up with it. It’s a coming-of-age story that takes place in the summer of 1963, the era of Marshall’s TV series Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley. Although it was...
by Jennifer Levesque | May 29, 2019 | Articles, Clueless Parent, Columns, Featured
Since childhood, any time I had heard “Alice,” I’d immediately go to Wonderland. The thought of curious Alice in her babydoll dress, black Mary Jane shoes, and matching headband falling into a rabbit hole sent happiness vibes straight to my brain. The memory of...
by Yana Tallon-Hicks | May 28, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Food Booze and Beyond, The V-Spot
Dear Yana, My past two relationships have both been non-monogamous. In both, I felt open (even excited) to communicate about my other hookups and sweeties with my more settled partners. I always made clear with my settled partners my need for transparency in regards...
by Jack Brown | May 28, 2019 | Articles, Cinemadope, Columns, Featured, Film
It was a scene straight out of a paranoid thriller: 1961, a Paris airport, the KGB circling ever closer around a famous Russian, bent on closing the net around their prey. A waiting plane destined for Moscow. At the last moment, a dash for freedom — with the help of...
by Chris Rohmann | May 28, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
I’m looking at my summer theater calendar and counting over 60 productions due up over the next three lively months in the Valley and beyond. Some dozen world premieres, along with even more regional premieres, stand alongside classics from Ibsen to Albee, not to...
by Chris Rohmann | May 26, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
Two plays now on Broadway for limited runs, a world classic and a world premiere, revolve around fractured families whose dynastic dreams turn sour. One involves the ambitious daughters of an English king, the other the ambitious wife of a former U.S. president....
by Will Meyer | May 24, 2019 | Articles, Basemental, Columns, Featured, Music
As the weather warms up and the sun comes out, musicians flock to Main Street, opening their cases to busk. I have lived many downtown Northampton lives — as a busker, in food service, as a journalist for The Shoestring reporting on Northampton politics, to name a...
by Lisa Spear | May 21, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, O Cannabis!
Patrick Baker, 29, works as a desktop support contractor for a health insurance company in a skyscraper in Springfield. During his lunch break, he slips away, heads down the stairwell straight for an empty closet on an empty floor. Still wearing his buttoned down...
by Chris Rohmann | May 21, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
There’s usually a bit of a lull between the end of one theater season and the start of the next – the spring pause before the summer rush. But the pause keeps getting briefer and the seasons are starting to overlap. Take this week, when three Berkshire theaters open...
by Yana Tallon-Hicks | May 20, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Food Booze and Beyond, The V-Spot
Yana, I’m a trans male and my partner is non-binary. While I identify as asexual, I love pleasuring my partner so much! But I don’t let them touch me. I want to but I’m so self conscious about not having “male anatomy” (gender/sex am I right?) that them touching me...
by Jack Brown | May 20, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Cinemadope, Columns, Featured, Film
All of us have our seasonal touchstones. As New Englanders, especially, we seem to have a compulsion to carve up our years (maple season, mud season, mosquito season) and mark the moment that one quarter melts into another. For many, the spring-to-summer transition...
by Jennifer Levesque | May 14, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Music, Valley Show Girl
Western Mass’s Weege and The Wondertwins turn it to 11 on the jazzometer and when listening to them, they send you to the nearest time machine. You emerge in a time where jazz was all around you and the speakeasy lounges were a dime a dozen. Do I Seem Weird Lately? is...
by Monte Belmonte | May 14, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Food Booze and Beyond, Monte Belmonte Wines
“This is super important, Monte. You can do something. Having this knowledge that you do. Knowing both the word and knowing what you know about wine. You can do something to help this word along.” So was the charge of The Word Nerd, Emily Brewster, my resident...
by Yana Tallon-Hicks | May 13, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Food Booze and Beyond, The V-Spot
Yana, My partner of a year and I live together and emotionally I’m so content! However, our intimacy has hit a wall. For a while, we enjoyed our pleasure-based fun and our communication was on point! I didn’t think much about the fact that he didn’t seem interested in...
by Jack Brown | May 13, 2019 | Articles, Cinemadope, Columns, Featured, Film
Pride Day celebrations were just winding down in Northampton as I sat down to get to work on this column. Now in its 38th year, the event is still a powerful reminder of both the power of community and the necessity of equality and representation. But while the parade...
by Will Meyer | May 10, 2019 | Articles, Basemental, Columns, Featured, Music
Before prisons became the inevitable institutions they are today, believe it or not, they were introduced as a reform; a humane alternative to torture or death. In 1790, English common law condemned those guilty of “petty treason” to the punishment of being burned...
by Hunter Styles | May 7, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Food + Booze, Food Booze and Beyond, The Beerhunter
Since I started this column in 2014, it hasn’t gotten any easier to keep up with the craft beer news pouring out of the Valley (not that I’m complaining). I try to go straight to the source by touring breweries, chilling in taprooms, and talking with local brewers....
by Jack Brown | May 7, 2019 | Articles, Cinemadope, Columns, Featured
When Gilda Radner was in her heyday as a cast member on Saturday Night Live, I was still too young to know her hilarity first-hand; SNL was past my bedtime. But when she passed away in May of 1989, I was in high school. That was a Saturday, and I can still recall the...
by Blaise Majkowski | May 7, 2019 | Articles, Blaise's Bad Movie Guide, Columns, Featured, Film
On its opening weekend, Avengers: Endgame took in a staggering $1.2 billion. I’ve seen it and now I am caught up in the frenzy. I even scoured the area McDonald’s and got 12 of the 24 avengers happy meal toys. The clerks there cringe when I come strolling through the...
by Chris Rohmann | May 6, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
Two revisioned classics, a brand-new political drama, and some audience favorites are on tap in the Amherst Cinema’s series of broadcasts from the London stage via National Theatre Live. First up, this Saturday and again on the 14th, is Shakespeare’s most lyrical...
by Yana Tallon-Hicks | May 6, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, The V-Spot
Content note: This column talks about substance use, sobriety, and sexual abuse. Hi there! I’m in a pickle about my sexual experience and identity. I’m curious what you know about the ways sex drive and desire may change for people in recovery and/or for people who...
by Chris Rohmann | May 1, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
When the twin towers crumpled on September 11, 2001, American airspace was closed for fear of further attacks and all U.S.-bound flights were diverted to other airports. One of these was Gander International, i n Newfoundland, where 38 airliners landed, carrying...
by Jennifer Levesque | Apr 30, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Music, Valley Show Girl
The last time Deer Tick had a headlining show in the Valley, it was canceled the day of because guitarist/singer John McCauley was too sick to perform. Wahhh! I was set to cover the show so I told myself the next time they had a headlining show here, I was going to...
by Monte Belmonte | Apr 30, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Monte Belmonte Wines
Everything I know about wine I learned from my mother. Not my biological mother. Her relationship to wine consists of one wine cooler a year and White Zinfandel at family gatherings. Everything I know about wine I learned from my Wine Mother. And as we approach...
by Chris Rohmann | Apr 29, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
Jules Verne’s 1873 novel/travelogue, Around the World in 80 Days, is best remembered these days from its movie versions, including Disney’s in 2004 and the Oscar-winning three-hour blockbuster from 1956, both of them teeming with exotic multitudes and spectacular...
by Yana Tallon-Hicks | Apr 29, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Food Booze and Beyond, The V-Spot
Hi Yana, I’m a virgin and I’m in college. Being in college seems to come with a hookup culture and an expectation to be having sex which isn’t the case for everybody. I find myself either lying or being very quiet during conversations about sex with people I’m not...
by Jack Brown | Apr 29, 2019 | Articles, Cinemadope, Columns, Featured, Film
Much has been written, by better minds than mine, about the human penchant for horror. That impulse to indulge in our most deeply seated human fears and frailties is behind both traffic jams at accident scenes and modern gods-and-monsters tales about the undead (or...
by Chris Rohmann | Apr 25, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
Anne Undeland, the playwright and star of Lady Randy, says she wanted to find a 19th-century woman to build a one-person show around. “It soon became clear that if I wanted name recognition, I had to find a woman who was associated with a famous man. Dammit!” She...
by Will Meyer | Apr 25, 2019 | Articles, Basemental, Columns, Featured, Music
Recently, on a Saturday morning, I was lying in bed trying to muster the will to get up when a man dressed in all black, who seemed vaguely familiar, started poking around — letting himself into my room unannounced — and generally scoping out my personal dwelling...
by Katie Gartner | Apr 23, 2019 | Articles, Clueless Parent, Columns, Featured
After his evening bath, my 2-year-old son entered the living room with a delighted smile on his face. My husband trailed cheerfully behind him, having successfully accessed our son’s figurative reset button. A bath is one of the few things that can put our child in an...
by Chris Rohmann | Apr 22, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
I often write in these pages about theater at the Five Colleges, all of which have robust degree programs and busy production seasons. But I don’t pay as much attention to the Valley’s other academic theaters as they deserve, and I’m going to partially correct that...
by Yana Tallon-Hicks | Apr 22, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, The V-Spot
Hi Yana!! I’m 19 years old and I recently ended my first really serious relationship that lasted about a year. A big reason we ended it is that I felt a little restless and wanted to explore an open relationship. I did a lot of research and we both felt comfortable...
by Jack Brown | Apr 22, 2019 | Articles, Cinemadope, Columns, Featured
There were always a lot of women in my family. When I think back to my childhood, to family cookouts and graduations, to birthdays and funerals, it is always the aunts and grandmothers that rule my remembered roosts. They made sure everyone was fed, slipped the...
by Chris Rohmann | Apr 21, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
These are precarious days, observes Peter Schumann, founder and director of Bread & Puppet Theater. The social order, the democratic contract and the earth itself are tottering from unprecedented stresses. Bread & Puppet’s Diagonal Life: Theory and Praxis,...
by Chris Rohmann | Apr 17, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
It’s the Bard’s birthday next week, and three shows on area stages are celebrating it. (Shakespeare’s actual birthdate is unknown, but it was sometime around April 23, 1564, and since he died on April 23, 1616, that symmetry has become traditional.) This weekend and...
by Karima Rizk | Apr 16, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Food Booze and Beyond, O Cannabis!
The legalization of adult-use cannabis in Massachusetts has ushered in a brave new world for adult past times, including a first for many of us — the opportunity to legally grow cannabis outdoors. Massachusetts state law allows for adults to cultivate up to six plants...
by Jennifer Levesque | Apr 16, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Music, Valley Show Girl
A little bit country, a little bit psychedelic rock and a lot of heart and soul. Valley supergroup Opal Canyon debut their album Beauty and Loss this month. Valley veteran musicians Debra DeMuth, Dave Houghton, Ray Mason, Bob Hennessy, and Jason Smith joined forces to...
by Yana Tallon-Hicks | Apr 15, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Food Booze and Beyond, The V-Spot
Dear Yana, My new reciprocated crush is terrified of and obsessed with sex. He hasn’t had many good experiences, and I’m excited to potentially be a part of his new, positive experiences. But I’m also nervous and feel a lot of pressure to navigate his sexual trauma....
by Jack Brown | Apr 15, 2019 | Articles, Cinemadope, Columns, Featured, Film
Spring in the Pioneer Valley always brings with it the sweet reminder of how lucky we are to be surrounded by so many working farms. Drive down just about any road that leads into or out of one of our bigger towns, and you’re sure to coast by a few coolers with “Fresh...
by Will Meyer | Apr 12, 2019 | Articles, Basemental, Columns, Featured, Music
The Flywheel celebrates its 20th birthday this month. In 1999, the Flywheel launched in a former cabinet shop in Easthampton — hosting shows and rousing rabble. The thought that the all-volunteer collective show space would enter a second decade, let alone a third,...
by Chris Rohmann | Apr 10, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
Two plays coming to area campuses this week and next have starkly different, but equally pessimistic takes on life and death. Death of a Salesman, at Springfield College, finds tragedy in an ordinary life, while The Tattooed Man Tells All, at Smith College, draws...
by Hunter Styles | Apr 9, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, The Beerhunter
Billy had an innocent question, but he should have known what to expect when he posted in a local craft beer Facebook group in December. “My buddy is gluten free,” he wrote. “Need some good beers for him.” A few group members responded in good faith. More than a few...
by Blaise Majkowski | Apr 9, 2019 | Articles, Blaise's Bad Movie Guide, Columns, Featured, Review
Flashback: Ten years ago, the morning after Christmas. True story. I am on the john at my sisters house when a car barreling down the road hits a utility pole, frying every appliance in the house, including a TV/DVD combo I just received as a present. The car then...
by Chris Rohmann | Apr 9, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
There’s a new theater company in the Valley, with a kick-ass name and no less a purpose than helping to “undo established hierarchical structures and their attendant damage.” It’s called Strident Theatre, and its vociferous founder is actor/director/playwright Susanna...
by Yana Tallon-Hicks | Apr 8, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Food Booze and Beyond, The V-Spot
Hi Yana! I’ll just dive right in — it’s come to my attention my boyfriend has Grindr on his phone. He was talking to multiple people, sending scandalous pictures, and making plans to have sex. We’ve talked about this and he says it’ll never happen again and he’s...
by Jack Brown | Apr 8, 2019 | Articles, Cinemadope, Columns, Featured
The tropes of the American Western have had a surprisingly wide influence. Its heady mix of self-sufficiency and violence, often presented as a necessary but natural manifestation of a hero’s morality, has spread like seeping blood into nearly every kind of popular...
by Chris Rohmann | Apr 5, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
My brother is the world’s biggest P.G. Wodehouse fan. Well, maybe not the biggest — he’s got legions of competitors for that title — but big enough to have come up from his home in New Jersey to accompany me to the American premiere of a new Wodehouse-derived play....
by Monte Belmonte | Apr 5, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Monte Belmonte Wines
Amy McMahan, co-owner of Mesa Verde in Greenfield, is one of the most intellectually curious people I know. And her curiosity guides her passion for wine. The last time I wrote about Mesa Amy in this column, it was when she showed up to my house with four bottles of...
by Chris Rohmann | Apr 4, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
In 1994, Stacy Klein moved her adventurous company, Double Edge Theatre, from Boston to a former dairy farm in rural Ashfield, and started milking the Muse. A quarter-century later, the 100-acre spread is home to a resident company of artists and a hub of visceral,...
by Jennifer Levesque | Apr 2, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Music, Valley Show Girl
Eu·pho·ri·a – noun; a feeling or state of intense excitement and happiness. Westfield’s soulful rock quartet, The Screaming Hearts, are in the process of uniquely releasing a collection of songs that will eventually be compiled into an album. Conducting,...
by Jack Brown | Apr 2, 2019 | Articles, Cinemadope, Columns, Featured
Genre films are a bit like the snack food of the cinematic universe. Something of a guilty pleasure, often consumed late at night, and each with its own diehard fans. These are the films that almost never seek to be all things to all people, but instead deliver an...
by Chris Rohmann | Apr 1, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
Two of the Five Colleges’ season-ending productions, both by award-winning women playwrights, hark back to moments in recent history that continue to reverberate. One takes place in a remote backwater, the other in the industrial heartland, but they share themes of...
