Leisure
This hiking club’s first rule? No diet talk: The Body Liberation Outdoor Club is coming to the Valley
By MELISSA KAREN SANCES For the Advocate The founder of the Body Liberation Outdoor Club saw “The Fat Babe Pool Party” in “Shrill,” the Hulu series about a heavy woman’s journey to embracing her body, and felt like she was in a dream. In the fourth episode of Season...
Music in the sky: Summit House Sunset Concert Series returns to its 173-year-old home
By PAIGE HANSON For the Advocate For the first time in two years, The Friends of Mount Holyoke Range have returned the Summit House Sunset Concert Series to its namesake, Skinner State Park’s historic Summit House. The Summit House, which sits at a 935-foot elevation...
Mixtape: Bucket list concerts: Big names on tour this summer
By Jennifer Levesque For the Valley Advocate Everyone should have a bucket list of concerts they want to go to before, ya know, the end — artists you’ve been in love with since you can remember, or just for the ‘Wow, I can’t believe I saw them’ factor. If live...
‘O’ is for Oman: Northampton man completes mission of traveling the alphabet of countries
By JAMES PENTLAND Staff Writer More than 60 years after he crossed his first foreign border, Gerard Simonette this month completed a mission of sorts: He checked off the last remaining letter of the alphabet of countries he has visited with a trip to Oman. Simonette,...
Is Northampton still lesbian mecca? Why we must keep queer spaces alive in Northampton
By KATE LAUGHLIN and GRACE XU For the Advocate Walking into the Majestic Saloon in Northampton feels like a breath of fresh, albeit heavily perfumed, air. The pink and purple lighting with a constant loop of popular drag queens Trixie and Katya on the TV signals that...
Take a day trip to a modernist paradise: The Frelinghuysen Morris Home & Studio in Lenox provides a splendid view of two groundbreaking artistic lives
By DON STEWART For the Advocate A short drive from downtown Lenox, you travel past ornamental wrought iron gates and enter into the former Gilded Age estate of “Brookhurst.” You’re first greeted by a voluptuous two-and-a-half-ton reclining female figure sculpted by...
Stream Queen: All Breasts Are the Best
Some documentaries exist to tackle big-picture issues, while others hone in on life’s finer details. The Breast Archives, by local director Meagan Murphy, attempts both tasks at once, as the film delves into the world of feminist body politics vis-a-vis the breasts....
Get Out With Staff Picks: Hang Out With Master Beaders, or Hit Up ShenaNiFest
200 Master Beaders, 1 Project — ALL WEEKEND This weekend maser beadwork artist Darcy Rosner and beaders from SweetBananberry will be at Three Sisters Sanctuary in Goshen adding another whimsical art installation to the outside gallery. They’ll be assembling a...
Pioneer Valley Roller Derby Open To More Than Just Fierce Females
In its heyday in the 1970s and ‘80s, roller derby was known for fierce females, fishnets, spiked hair and names like “Iron Maven.” After a lull in the ‘90s, roller derby was resurrected in the early 2000s as an all-female, athletic sport. But in the Pioneer Valley,...
Introducing the Quaffle to a New Generation: UMass Quidditch Team Starts Summer Camp
The Harry Potter books and films have inspired many real world spillovers, including real-life wizarding schools and online quizzes that determine your magical house. But among the more surprisingly widespread are the leagues that have sprouted up to play the magical...
Long Live the Staycation! Why Leave Western Mass?
Hanging around the house is something we all do, but usually in an unfocused, squished-between-chores-and-obligations sort of way. But when you stay home for vacation, your dwelling can become a sanctuary, free from the day-to-day grind. If you can’t afford to get out...
What Are Those Flowering Trees/Bushes I Drive By Every Day?
The bloom is on the branch and spring has sprung. And even in my short commute to work, I pass about a dozen varieties of flowering trees and bushes. It occurred to me that I haven’t the slightest idea what most of them are called. So I took out my phone and...
The V-Spot: My Sex Drive’s Back But My BF’s Isn’t
Writer’s note: This column mentions depression and suicidality. When me and my BF first got together about a year and a half ago, we were having the best sex of our lives! Then I decided with the help of my therapist that I needed to be medicated due to suicidal...
Spring Arts Preview: Top Valley Events (April-June 2017)
Tweet Puppets for the People From its founding in New York’s Lower East Side in 1963 to its decades-long residence in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, Bread & Puppet Theater remains one of the country’s most inventive and internationally recognized performing...
Third Eye Roaming: Yoga for cancer survivors: Calming the battle within
Mary Kennedy of Northfield says she could barely move her neck before she began taking yoga with Pam Roberts at the YMCA in Greenfield about six years ago.Kennedy, a breast cancer survivor living with torticollis, a painfully twisted neck, says yoga has at times saved...
The V-Spot: When it Comes to Self-Lovin’ What’s Better: Lube or Lotion?
I recently saw a guy friend masturbating with lotion instead of lube and was wondering if lube would be a better alternative for him. If so, could you explain why? — A Little Help for My Masturbating Friends One of my favorite conversations to strike up with my...
Nightcrawler: Going Gentle Into That Good Night
After more than two decades delivering the music news in print, Nightcrawler moves online Editor’s Note: Scene stalwart Gary Carra’s Nightcrawler column has long been a fixture at the Valley Advocate — a history that goes back, as he explains here, to the bygone era...
After Orlando: Short Plays Pay Respects on Friday night
Reflecting on a Tragedy The night of June 12, 2016, news of a horrific shooting unfolding in an Orlando gay nightclub sent shockwaves around the world, leaving collective heartbreak in its wake for the 49 lives cut cruelly short that fateful night. The pain cut...
Cinemadope: Is Spielberg Corny?
There are times when I look back on my youth and shake my head at my younger self. Mostly, it’s when I think about the dreck that was on in the after-school hours on the local UHF stations: sugar-cereal cartoons that were a 12-year-old’s forbidden fruit. It is with a...
Blaise’s Bad Movie Guide: When Brad Pitt Was the Pits
Recently, I visited the William Cullen Bryant Homestead in Cummington where my sister and her family helped to lavishly decorate the rooms with Yuletide trimmings. Yet my mind was not on sugarplums. Instead, it was on the movie I knew I was going to review for this...
A Mid-winter Night’s Read
This weekend, Shakespeare & Company presents a Winter Studio Festival of Plays, five diverse readings as interpreted by five local directors. Works range from classics by playwrights like Anton Chekhov to established contemporaries like Sam Shepard and emerging...
Jammin’ for Justice
Jammin’ for Justice The nonprofit Watermelon Wednesdays has been providing musical education and holding concerts for the past 17 years. This Wednesday, the group is putting on In It Together, a fundraiser for community, diversity, and social justice to benefit...
Artists of a Feather
The Hosmer Gallery at the Forbes Library is hosting exhibitions this month from three talented local artists. Janice Doppler blends a love of ornithology and wood carving to create stunningly lifelike sculptures of a myriad of bird species, while Patricia Dorr Parker...
Halos & Horns: Our 2016 List of Who’s Been Good or Bad… or Worse
How Does This Work? Who on earth do we think we are, doling out judgement left and right? Find out here. The List HALOS // The People of East Longmeadow — For creating a seven-member Town Council in the wake of a coup on the now-defunct three-member Board of...
Cinemadope: Wild Things
Director Garth Jennings has had an interesting, if short, career. Coming out of the gate with an adaptation of the Douglas Adams cult classic The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in 2005, his first big film grossed many millions, starred people like Zooey Deschanel...
Winter Arts Preview: Top Valley Events (Jan-Mar 2017)
A Spirited DebateOne of two things will happen to you when confronted with the bold and brassy acts of clairvoyance that Rebecca Anne LoCicero whips up onstage. One will be a sense of reluctant amazement. The other will be a deep, head-shaking skepticism. LoCicero has...
Cinemadope: All Together Now
Whatever your thoughts are about the outcome of last month’s election, it seems fair to say that a Trump presidency will be less welcoming of — if not downright hostile to — many of the world’s cultures. As a film writer, that leaves me feeling both deflated (will...
Third Eye Roaming: Only the Yoga Should be Hot
Studio owner Audrey Blaisdell says she fell for the yoga behind Bikram, not the “cultish belief system.” It became necessary to draw the line, she says, about a year ago. Prospective students came to fear the authoritarian reputation and mistrust the brand...
The Pour Man: Cheap Chianti for Sophisticated Adults
My first recollection of Chianti, as it is for many people, was the iconic straw-wrapped bottle, not the wine. Occasionally, an unopened bottle would show up at our house, usually a gift from a friend coming to dinner, and by the end of the adult evening, it would be...
Electrifying the Vinyl: Electric Eye Records in Florence is a vinyl lover’s go-to destination
That slight scratching sound the needle makes when you gently place it on the record. The brief static that comes through the speakers before the music hits. Then: bam! Just like magic, music emerges from my vintage suitcase record player, sounding like nothing else....
O, Cannabis!: Getting the Best Deal on Medical Marijuana
If you get up real close to the New England Treatment Access medical marijuana dispensary in Northampton, you can smell the earthy aroma of cannabis through the brick walls. Established in 2015, NETA’s Conz Street dispensary is, so far, the only medical Mary Jane shop...
The Pour Man: Wines With Turkey
Finding a wine that goes with every course of the Thanksgiving dinner can be a bit dodgy because the meal is a hodgepodge of dishes with distinctive flavors. Viognier, Cava, Pinot Noir and Cotes du Rhone have been my favorites in the past, but this year I’m trying a...
Springfield’s own Macy’s Day parade
The Cat, Back Out of the Bag How did huge inflatable balloons become such a cherished part of Thanksgiving week? Don’t wait on us for a clear answer — we’re still trying to suss out what bunnies and plastic grass have to do with the resurrection of Jesus — but...
If You Brew It, They Will Come: Tree House Brewing in Monson attracts international recognition
It isn’t hard to pick Dean Rohan out of a crowd. He’s the tall guy with glasses in the muck boots and ratty work pants. And he’s wearing a red T-shirt with his own face on it that reads “I’m with Dean.” Today, he’s overseeing the arrival of a tanker truck filled with...
Beerhunter: Hartford Beer Fans, Take Heart
In the two years since I took on the role of Valley beer reporter, I’ve tried to keep things local whenever possible. Aside from an international sojourn or two — like when I tried a mug of saliva-fermented ‘chicha’ corn beer in Peru last year — I’ve generally been...
Cinemadope: Continental Divide
Strike up a conversation about foreign film with most American film buffs, and the discussion will almost certainly travel East, over the Atlantic, on a European course. Those buffs with enough wind in them might even reach the Middle East and parts of Asia, but few...
Cocktail of the Month Club: A Piney October Surprise
“Riding the Pine” Brought to you by Lincoln Allen, bar manager at The Alvah Stone in Montague. Ingredients: 1 ½ Ounces St. George Terroir Gin 1 ounce Zirbenz Pine Liqueur ½ ounce yellow chartreuse ¾ ounce lemon juice Lemon peel garnish To Make: • Mix in...
Top 12 Halloween Events in the Valley This Weekend
Calling All Hallows Admit it: we’re a happy Valley because we’re all a bunch of freaks. And Halloween seems to be the time of year we most like to let those flags fly. The night is a dark, blank canvas for creative expression and demonic possession. That’s why it...
Now Haunted: The Springfield Museums
Day Screaming Ghosts are scary. Zombies are scary. Being surrounded by too many kids in Disney princess costumes is scary. If you’d rather run into any of these frightening folks in the daytime rather than in the late night hours, check out the Springfield...
Best of 2016 Readers’ Poll Winners (Now a Board Game!)
Game by Kristin Palpini, Kyle Olsen, Jennifer Levesque, and Hunter Styles In celebration of the Annual Manual — a condensed version of the Advocate’s yearly Best of the Valley Readers’ Poll — we’ve created a board game featuring some of the Best Of...
One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer: George Thorogood and the Destroyers take the Big E
If anyone can lay claim to writing the neo American classic drinking songbook, it’s George Thorogood and The Destroyers. The band’s hits include “I Drink Alone,” “If You Don’t Start Drinkin’,” “Bad to the Bone” (that’s pronounced “B-b-b-b-bad to the Bone”), “Move it...
This Weekend in Greenfield: Blues, Brews, and BBQ
Here’s the Beef It’s hard to believe that Greenfield’s Riverside Blues, Brews, and BBQ Festival is already in its sixth season. We’ve barely finished the heaping pile of brisket on our plate from last year. But it shouldn’t be too hard for us to get back into the...
Nightcrawler: The Big E … DM
Any calendar will tell you Sept. 22, is the official date of the fall equinox — which is fine, for those astronomically-correct types. But this year, I prefer to think of the solstice as happening on Oct. 2 when the Big E in West Springfield hosts an EDM concert...
Astrology: Love warriors and love worriers
ARIES (March 21-April 19): What’s the difference between a love warrior and a love worrier? Love warriors work diligently to keep enhancing their empathy, compassion, and emotional intelligence. Love worriers fret so much about not getting the love they want...
Fractured Together: The Art of Lyle Kleinhans
Lyle Kleinhans focuses his work on abstract representations of people that highlight the conflicts, questions, and confidences behind their exteriors. Jagged and strict lines are offset by wildly brooding color that sucks the viewer in and haunts them long after....
I Love a Parade: UMass Homecoming
This weekend UMass is celebrating Homecoming with a bunch of events: our top pick is the Homecoming Parade leading up to the clash between UMass and Tulane at McGuirk Stadium in Amherst Saturday at 3:30 p.m. The parade starts at 10:30 p.m. and will feature...
Local Book Reviews: The Wobblies in Their Heyday and Finding Wonders: Three Girls Who Changed Science
The Wobblies in Their Heyday: The Rise and Destruction of the Indistrial Workers of the World During the WWI Era, by Eric Thomas ChesterLevellers Press, levellerspress.comIn the early 20th century, when unions in the United States were fighting pitched battles with...
Cocktail of the Month Club: Cranberry Cinnamon Whiskey Sour at Osteria Vespa, Amherst
September marks the end of the summer and evenings are starting to bring with them a subtle autumn chill. Chase it away with this month’s cocktail, a cranberry-cinnamon whiskey sour that’s sure to warm you up, brought to you by Josh Draghe, head bartender at Osteria...
Basemental: Our Club Runneth Over
This Friday night, Sept. 23, there are at least six shows I want to attend. It wouldn’t be surprising if some touring band squeezes in a last-minute basement show. There are other bars and venues, too — Ben Folds is playing the Calvin, for one — and maybe a festival...
Learning Falconry with Chris Davis
Call of the wild At the edge of a shady green grove in Hadley, light streams through the forest canopy in thin shafts. It speckles the grassy floor below, where three large birds of prey sit awkwardly, tethered with thin leather straps to their short wooden perches....
Pour Man: Finally, A Sweet Wine That Delights
When someone suggested that I try MAN Family Wines’ Chenin Blanc, my first reaction was that I don’t like sweet wines. Although Chenin Blanc grapes are often used to make excellent sweet wines in France and elsewhere, I was assured I’d find this South African offering...
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...
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...
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...
Staff Picks: Get out there!
TITANIS Farewell Show in Florence – Friday Springfield’s ambient, heavy doomers TITANIS are bidding farewell? Insert sad face here. Make sure to check them out before you can’t. It’s worth it. Also that night, rockers A Moment To Riot, Nim and...
Nightcrawler: Rock the Boot
Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Thomas Delmer “Artimus” Pyle comes to the Valley this Saturday, Aug. 20. He’ll be performing with his Artimus Pyle Band and their “ultimate tribute to Ronnie Van Zandt’s Lynyrd Skynyrd” as part of the Rock The Boot Music Fest,...
Show Us Your Tattoo: Josh Charland
About seven years ago, I was tattooed by Bravo at Vipers Nest II in West Springfield. The past 20 years, technology and computers have always been a passion of mine. I’m an IT [information technology] consultant and learned a tremendous amount of knowledge from...
4,500 Square Feet of Eden Blooms in Holyoke: A mega farm on a mini lot
In the middle of an ordinary residential neighborhood in Holyoke lies a hidden Garden of Eden, where pollinating insects buzz from flower to flower and nearly everything is edible. Despite appearances, this place was no act of divine creation. The garden was born of...
Free Will Astrology: White feathers and forbidden fruit, July 28- Aug. 3, 2016
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Free your body. Don’t ruminate and agonize about it. FREE YOUR BODY! Be brave and forceful. Do it simply and easily. Free your gorgeously imperfect, wildly intelligent body. Allow it to be itself in all of its glory. Tell it...E-Edition
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