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by Dave Eisenstadter | Jan 15, 2020 | Articles, Between the Lines, Featured, News
In a spectacular example of closing the door after the horse has already run off, the city of Springfield now has a new program to collect data on problem gambling, also known as compulsive gambling — nearly a year and a half after the MGM Springfield Casino has...
by Advocate Staff | Jan 15, 2020 | Articles, Bizarro Briefs, Featured, News
Immigration policies make vultures puke It’s not clear if they’re making a statement about the Trump administration’s immigration policies. But whatever the reason, a large group of vultures has been getting the drop, so to speak, on a U.S. Customs and Border...
by Monte Belmonte | Jan 14, 2020 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Monte Belmonte Wines
I wake up very early every morning and one of the first things I do is check my phone for New York Times push notifications to make sure Donald Trump hasn’t destroyed the world. As of my writing this, he hasn’t. But not for lack of trying. I got a push notification...
by Jack Brown | Jan 14, 2020 | Articles, Arts, Cinemadope, Columns, Featured
Ask most Americans when slavery ended, and you’ll likely hear something about the Civil War and Abe Lincoln. Ask them about the rest of the world, and you may be met by a blank stare. But the truth is that it continues on in our modern era, and that many of us,...
by Chris Rohmann | Jan 14, 2020 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
With all the talk of “witch hunts” flying around these days, it probably wasn’t quite a coincidence that two shows I saw recently in Berkeley, Calif., are on that very topic. Not the trumped-up political kind of witch hunt, though, but real ones born of historical...
by Advocate Staff | Jan 13, 2020 | Articles, Featured, Podcast
A co-sponsor of the ROE Act, aimed at expanding abortion rights in Massachusetts, Northampton state Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa talks about the legislation, what it does, and how likely it might be to pass during this session. Sabadosa was one of the people who spoke to...
by Yana Tallon-Hicks | Jan 13, 2020 | Articles, Columns, Featured, The V-Spot
Yana, I’ve recently come to terms with the fact that I don’t want to be in my marriage anymore. One reason is that I’m going through a period of intense awakening — I’m connecting more deeply to my emotions and my body while also healing from childhood trauma. Part of...
by Rob Brezsny | Jan 13, 2020 | Articles, Astrology, Featured
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Comedian John Cleese has an insight I hope you’ll consider. He says, “It’s easier to do trivial things that are urgent than it is to do important things that are not urgent. It’s also easier to do little things we know we can do than to...
by Chris Goudreau | Jan 10, 2020 | Articles, Featured, Music
Steve Rodgers is a singer-songwriter who plays Americana and indie folk with a dash of rock ‘n’ roll. Check out his full Advocate Sessions performance in the video below. Interview with Steve Rodgers:
by Our Readers | Jan 10, 2020 | Articles, Featured, Letters from our Readers
Clarifications about ranked-choice voting In response to “Ranked-Choice Voting gaining speed in Mass,” published December 19-25, 2019. Thanks for your recent article about ranked choice voting (RCV). It’ll be a very important topic in Massachusetts in 2020, so it’s...
by Advocate Staff | Jan 10, 2020 | Articles, Featured, Staff Picks
Bodies in Motion Festival 2020 in Northampton // THURSDAY-SUNDAY For the second January in a row, the Bodies in Motion Festival brings a wide range of dance performances, workshops, residencies, and other artistic events to Northampton’s Community Arts Center at 33...
by Advocate Staff | Jan 9, 2020 | Articles, Featured, Podcast
Valley Advocate editor Dave Eisenstadter and Hits 94.3 host Trumpy talk about the week’s weird news in a podcast version of the Valley Advocate’s Bizarro Briefs section. Hear about a man biting a dog while on meth, a new CVS-receipt-based scarf, and a mystery nonhuman...
by Hunter Styles | Jan 9, 2020 | Articles, Columns, Featured, The Beerhunter
Across America, the craft beer scene is fizzing with activity. Food and drink options have expanded at taprooms, many of which are finding ways of attracting a daytime crowd by showcasing new skills like coffee roasting. Craft maltsters are starting to get the...
by Jennifer Levesque | Jan 9, 2020 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Music, Valley Show Girl
The first full moon of the new decade — the Wolf Moon — will start to howl at approximately 2:21 p.m. on Friday, January 10. Just so happens it’s also my birthday, maybe you’ll hear me howling at her from a distance wearing a crystal crown to welcome my 36th year on...
by Luis Fieldman | Jan 8, 2020 | Articles, Featured, News
As the constitutional right to an abortion is threatened in various states and in the country as a whole, the Massachusetts Legislature may soon consider an expansion of abortion rights in the state. Massachusetts lacks a program to financially support individuals who...
by Jack Brown | Jan 8, 2020 | Articles, Cinemadope, Columns, Featured
Like most everyone with kids these days, I tried my best to capture a bit of the holiday magic this season. Photos, videos, the occasional audio recording — moments to share with far flung family who wouldn’t get to see Christmas morning, and memories to share with my...
by Advocate Staff | Jan 8, 2020 | Articles, Bizarro Briefs, Featured, News
Man bites dog … while naked and high on meth A man in Florida is facing several charges after he allegedly punched a deputy and then bit the ear of a K-9. He did it while he was buck naked, too, and apparently high on meth. According to police in Columbia County,...
by Dave Eisenstadter | Jan 7, 2020 | Articles, Between the Lines, Featured, News
“The moment we all feared is likely upon us. An unstable President in way over his head, panicking, with all his experienced advisers having quit, and only the sycophantic amateurs remaining. Assassinating foreign leaders, announcing plans to bomb civilians. A...
by Luis Fieldman | Jan 7, 2020 | Articles, Featured, News
In the early hours of Friday, January 3, a group of protesters — some from the Pioneer Valley — blocked a train carrying 10,000 tons of coal by erecting a three-tiered scaffold on tracks in the town of Harvard. They blocked the train for over nine hours after...
by Chris Rohmann | Jan 7, 2020 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
You’d think things would slow down after the hectic holidays, but no. The Cratchits are still picking at the Christmas leftovers and the Sugar Plum Fairy has barely taken off her toe shoes, when January blows onstage full of New Year promise. This month I’m looking...
by Advocate Staff | Jan 6, 2020 | Articles, Featured, Podcast
Chris Goudreau recently wrote an Advocate cover story on the possibility that ranked-choice voting could be adopted in Massachusetts for the 2022 elections. He talks about both state and local efforts to pass the voting system. Listen here: You can hear more of the...
by Yana Tallon-Hicks | Jan 6, 2020 | Articles, Columns, Featured, The V-Spot
Note: In this column, we talk about gender-exotifying porn. Hi There, I have a major problem and don’t know how to proceed here. I’ve been married for 15 years and the last 10 have been sexless. To be clear, I’m the woman and he’s the man who chooses not to have sex....
by Rob Brezsny | Jan 6, 2020 | Articles, Astrology, Featured
ARIES (March 21-April 19): When comedian John Cleese was 61, his mother died. She was 101. Cleese testifies, “Just towards the end, as she began to run out of energy, she did actually stop trying to tell me what to do most of the time.” I bet you’ll experience a...
by Luis Fieldman | Jan 3, 2020 | Articles, Featured, Wellness
Members of the Spanish-speaking group Cuidadores Unidos meet once a month to discuss the challenges of being caregivers to family members or friends with a dementia-related disease. At the Holyoke Senior Center, members of Cuidadores Unidos are able to share their...
by Monte Belmonte | Jan 3, 2020 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Monte Belmonte Wines
Northampton’s soon-to-be-sworn in Ward 1 Councilor also happens to be one of the biggest players in wine in Massachusetts, and I meet with him for lunch over wine at Northampton’s Filo’s Greek Taverna. It’s BYOB. He doesn’t let me pay. Ethics-schmethics. Michael...
by Connolly Ryan | Jan 3, 2020 | Articles, Arts, Featured
First Snow, Best Snow By Connolly Ryan You remember the first time it snowed on your world? To your little body and giant eyes, the snowflakes looked like extraterrestrial Ferris-wheels and gyroscopic carousels spinning ever so slowly and quickly at the...
by Advocate Staff | Jan 2, 2020 | Articles, Bizarro Briefs, Featured, News, Podcast
Valley Advocate editor Dave Eisenstadter and Hits 94.3 host Trumpy talk about the week’s weird news in a podcast version of the Valley Advocate’s Bizarro Briefs section. Hear about being your own farm in a dystopian future, generous burglars, and the danger of...
by Advocate Staff | Jan 2, 2020 | Articles, Featured, Staff Picks
Ray Mason at Bread Euphoria // SATURDAY Kick off the New Year with one of the Valley’s best-seasoned singer-songwriters — Ray Mason — along with his iconic Silvertone guitar. Mason has been performing in the western Massachusetts music scene for decades and this...
by Jack Brown | Jan 2, 2020 | Articles, Cinemadope, Columns, Featured
Fans of the horror genre, and specifically the subset of films that have come out of Asia, will recall the mid-2000s as a heady time. With the success of the 2002 Gore Verbinski film The Ring — a remake of the 1998 Japanese film Ring, in which watching a cursed...
by Dave Eisenstadter | Jan 2, 2020 | Articles, Between the Lines, Featured, News
If there’s one good thing the Trump presidency has brought us, it’s the annual Women’s March. Begun as a response to Trump defeating Hillary Clinton, the first woman to earn a major party nomination in the United States, the march attracted nearly half a million...
by Steve Pfarrer | Dec 31, 2019 | Articles, Featured, Music, News
When he looks back on more than two decades of forging connections with musicians in Senegal, playing with them both there and in the United States, longtime Valley percussionist Tony Vacca laughs, shakes his head in wonder, and summarizes the situation like this:...
by Advocate Staff | Dec 31, 2019 | Articles, Bizarro Briefs, Featured, News
Become your own chia pet … TO SURVIVE Climate change is a scary concept and is driving people to extreme lifestyles, but it was left to a Californian landscape architect to offer us the self-sustaining vest — essentially a wearable farm that can be watered using...
by Chris Goudreau | Dec 30, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Music, The CDs You Gave Me
Music lovers in the Pioneer Valley were blessed by a plethora of great local music this year, whether that was the hauntingly beautiful folk rock of Philip B. Price’s new solo record “Bone Almanac” or what I named as one of the best local albums of the year —...
by Yana Tallon-Hicks | Dec 30, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, The V-Spot
Hi Yana! I’ve been practicing polyamory for three years. Right now I have two serious partners. Both of them have sex with other people occasionally, but not with any regularity. My jealousy isn’t nonexistent, but it’s manageable. My big problem is that once my...
by Rob Brezsny | Dec 30, 2019 | Articles, Astrology, Featured
ARIES (March 21-April 19): “We are all hostages of the joy of which we deprive ourselves,’ wrote poet Odysseus Elytis. Isn’t that an astounding idea? That we refuse to allow ourselves to experience some of the bliss and pleasure we could easily have; and that we are...
by Advocate Staff | Dec 27, 2019 | Articles, Featured, Staff Picks
Moon Hooch at Hawks & Reed // FRIDAY Moon Hooch makes a big sound with just a few instruments. The band is made up of a drummer and two saxophonists, and when my friend described them to me a few years back, I thought, how much can you do with that arrangement?...
by Advocate Staff | Dec 26, 2019 | Articles, Featured, News
It’s time again for the annual Advocate tradition of giving halos to the good and horns to the bad. The year 2019 closed out the decade with some highs, with local activists going down to the border and speaking out on climate issues, residents in Longmeadow saying no...
by Advocate Staff | Dec 26, 2019 | Articles, Featured, News
Frances Crowe At 100 years old before she passed away this year, Frances Crowe was already a legend in activism not just in the Pioneer Valley, but the world. She’d been arrested numerous times over the decades, putting her body on the line for causes such as working...
by Advocate Staff | Dec 24, 2019 | Articles, Featured, Podcast
Valley Advocate editor Dave Eisenstadter and Hits 94.3 host Trumpy talk about the week’s weird news in a podcast version of the Valley Advocate’s Bizarro Briefs section. Hear about a burglar’s Christmas surprise, a bald eagle vs. an octopus, and the...
by Advocate Staff | Dec 24, 2019 | Articles, Bizarro Briefs, Featured
In the Socks of Fox If you ever watch the Fox network and think — are these guys on something? — turns out some of them likely are. A reporter for Fox Business was busted last week at a Manhattan courthouse with a crack pipe in his sock. The man was ticketed and...
by Jennifer Levesque | Dec 24, 2019 | Articles, Clueless Parent, Columns, Featured
“He’ll eventually grow out of it, you have to give it some time,” my son’s pediatrician told his father and me at his physical when he was maybe about 5 years old. When my son transitioned from diapers to pull-ups at bedtime, it seemed that we would never transition...
by Jennifer Levesque | Dec 24, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Music, Valley Show Girl
Editor’s note: Advocate Associate Editor Chris Goudreau is a member of Leafies. The opening track to debut album Off Off Off Broadway from The Leafies You Gave Me tells a tale of a man who tends to the elephants and their dirty business at the circus. It is spoken...
by Yana Tallon-Hicks | Dec 23, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, The V-Spot
Hi Yana, Often when speaking of sexual comfort and consent, people focus on the stages of intimacy that involve contact with the areas of our bodies we normally keep clothed. Kissing and intimate touch are viewed more often as foreplay and I seldom encounter guides to...
by Jack Brown | Dec 23, 2019 | Articles, Cinemadope, Columns, Featured
Back in the Blockbuster era of movie consumption it was hard not to think of movies in terms of genre first: walk into one of those big box shrines to moviemaking and you couldn’t take a step without first charting a course by the signs hanging from the ceiling....
by Rob Brezsny | Dec 23, 2019 | Articles, Astrology, Featured
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Nazi Germany invaded and occupied Denmark during World War II. In 1943, Hitler ordered all Danish Jews to be arrested — a first step in his plan to send them to concentration camps. But the Danish resistance movement leapt into action and...
by Advocate Staff | Dec 20, 2019 | Articles, Featured, Music, Valley Advocate Sessions
Brown Bones performs soulful and intimate urban folk with poignant lyrics and heartfelt melodies. Check out the group’s full performance in the video below. Interview with Brown Bones:
by From Our Readers | Dec 20, 2019 | Articles, Featured, Letters from our Readers
Put the Ha back in Hanukah As the holiday season rolls around we have to brace ourselves for the seasonal secular humanist assault on one of our nation’s most sacred holidays. However you spell it, I’m talking about the “war” on Hanukah. Chanukah has turned into yet...
by Advocate Staff | Dec 19, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Music, Staff Picks
Books, music and a birthday at Federal St. Books // SATURDAY There are few better things to celebrate than the re-opening of a bookstore, and such a celebration comes to us this weekend when Federal St. Books has its grand reopening under the ownership of Hillary...
by Jack Brown | Dec 19, 2019 | Articles, Cinemadope, Columns, Featured
You may or may not have heard, but this thing called Christmas is happening on Wednesday. Turns out it’s kind of a big deal, and while a lot of the movie-going crowd will be busy elsewhere on the 25th, local cinemas are getting in the spirit in the days leading up to...
by Chris Goudreau | Dec 18, 2019 | Articles, Featured, News
Starting in 2022, Massachusetts voters might be able to vote for their second favorite, third, fourth, and last-pick choice for political office, if voters across the state approve a proposed ballot question next year to adopt ranked-choice voting. In Amherst, which...
by Dave Eisenstadter | Dec 18, 2019 | Articles, Between the Lines, Featured, News
This week a disgusting lawsuit — that tried to censor a Palestinian human rights panel that in part dealt with how Palestinian voices are censored — was dropped. Three anonymous students at the University of Massachusetts Amherst tried to stop the May event, titled...
by Chris Goudreau | Dec 18, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Featured
Northampton’s annual First Night will ring in the new decade with 12 hours of performances from local musicians and bands, theater ensembles, comedy troupes, alongside salsa dancing, yo-yo tricks, and fireworks on New Year’s Eve the downtown portion of the city. The...
by Advocate Staff | Dec 17, 2019 | Articles, Featured, Podcast
Eric Talbot, of Easthampton, was an artist drawing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for more than 30 years. Now he works at Oxbow Tattoo as a tattoo artist. He (along with his tattoo mentor, Tyler Chaney) speaks with editor Dave Eisenstadter about the transition and...
by Monte Belmonte | Dec 17, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Monte Belmonte Wines
We are entering into the year 2020. That year sounds fake. Like a future I never imagined myself seeing. Where is my jetpack? Where is my visiphone? Oh, I have that? Nice! 2020 is, of course, an election year. If you are anything like me, you will be doing a lot of...
by Advocate Staff | Dec 17, 2019 | Articles, Bizarro Briefs, Featured, News
Someone on the Naughty List It’s unfortunately a scene that is not completely uncommon. On a train heading from Manhattan to Long Island this past Saturday, two men began arguing until it culminated into a physical altercation. One man, allegedly drunk, shouted...
by Chris Rohmann | Dec 17, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
Every year in this column I make an equity survey of area theaters – not Equity the actors’ union, but the representation of women and people of color. And every year the outlook, once deeply depressing, gets a little better. Of the 45 full productions I saw this year...
by Yana Tallon-Hicks | Dec 16, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, The V-Spot
Dear Yana, I’ve been dating my current partner for almost two years now and our relationship has been great with the exception of our dwindling to now nonexistent sex life. It was amazing for the first six months until he starting having some health problems. His sex...
by Rob Brezsny | Dec 16, 2019 | Articles, Astrology, Featured
ARIES (March 21-April 19): The English word “hubris” means prideful, exaggerated self-assurance. In the HBO TV series Rome, the ancient Roman politician and general Mark Antony says to his boss Julius Caesar, “I’m glad you’re so confident. Some would call it hubris.”...
by Chris Rohmann | Dec 14, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
The past, as they say, is prologue. We look back to ground our present and see ahead more clearly. And in these murky times, that’s more necessary than ever. At least, that’s the impression I drew from the sheer number of shows I saw this year that have their roots in...
by Advocate Staff | Dec 13, 2019 | Articles, Featured, Podcast
A performance artist eats a $120,000 banana, and then another performance artist writes “Epstien (sic) didn’t kill himself” in lipstick on the wall where the banana used to be. Those stories are among this week’s weird news stories discussed by...
