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by Advocate Staff | Dec 6, 2024 | Featured, Food + Booze, Food Booze and Beyond, Uncategorized
By NAOMI SCULLY-BRISTOL For the Advocate Walking into the Baker’s Pin, you are greeted by cheerful decor, beautiful colorful pots and an array of cooking gadgets. It is a home cook’s paradise with everything you could possibly need, from Le Creuset pots to artisan...
by Advocate Staff | Dec 5, 2024 | Arts, Featured, Film, Music, Stage, Uncategorized
By CAROLYN BROWN Staff Writer It’s been 40 years since the band NRBQ played at Sunderland’s The Rusty Nail on New Year’s Eve, but a devoted fan and friend of the band kept the night alive with his concert footage. Later this month, the Academy of Music will screen...
by Advocate Staff | Dec 5, 2024 | Arts, Featured, Review, Uncategorized
By DON STEWART For the Advocate She’s the first woman, and the first Canadian, to present a solo exhibit of her work at the Library of Congress, and two of her paintings can be found at Washington’s National Portrait Gallery. You’d recognize Anita Kunz’s often...
by Advocate Staff | Dec 5, 2024 | Featured, Music, Uncategorized
By CAROLYN BROWN Staff Writer Thousands of University of Massachusetts Amherst students have learned from percussion instructor Thom Hannum, whose 40-year career at the college included a tenure as the assistant director, then associate director, of the Minuteman...
by Melissa Karen Sances | Oct 24, 2024 | Featured, Uncategorized
By Melissa Karen Sances For the Valley Advocate “And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” — Friedrich Nietzsche I have never liked ghost stories. But when I heard about Half-Hanged Mary of Hadley, I was spellbound. Not that long ago, and...
by Advocate Staff | Oct 24, 2024 | Featured, Uncategorized
By Domenic Poli For the Valley Advocate If there’s something strange, in your neighborhood … it could have a perfectly mundane explanation. A peculiar scratching on a roof might be interpreted as a haunting spirit yearning to be left alone in their home, and an...
by Jarice Hanson | Oct 24, 2024 | Arts, Featured, Stage, Theater Matters, Uncategorized
By Jarice Hanson For the Valley Advocate Tom Hanks knows a thing or two about good stories Tom Hanks is often quoted as having said: “The best stories are always about loneliness.” After seeing the 2024 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, “Primary Trust” at Barrington Stage...
by Monte Belmonte | Oct 24, 2024 | Featured, Food + Booze, Food Booze and Beyond, Monte Belmonte Wines, Monte Belmonte Wines, Uncategorized
By Monte Belmonte For the Valley Advocate In the last edition of the Valley Advocate, I created for you a brief wine glossary designed for non-wine people. The last column went from A-L: “ABV” to “legs.” Then I ran out of column space. If you are reading this...
by Advocate Staff | Oct 18, 2024 | Arts, Featured, Music, Stage, Uncategorized
By CAROLYN BROWN Staff Writer The Northampton organization Whole Children, which serves people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, will celebrate its 20th anniversary with indie rock band Yo La Tengo at 33 Hawley on Wednesday, Oct. 23, at 6:30 p.m. At...
by Jennifer Levesque | Oct 18, 2024 | Arts, Featured, Film, Uncategorized
By JENNIFER LEVESQUE For the Advocate It’s always spooky season when you have a love for horror movies, scary stories and a curiosity of anything dark and morbid. And fall accentuates that spooky feeling for everyone. Finding a new horror series or collection of...
by Advocate Staff | Oct 18, 2024 | Featured, Leisure, News, Uncategorized
By CAROLYN BROWN Staff Writer An arcade near Boston will soon have a new location in Northampton. Hometown Arcade will open its third location in the basement of Thornes Marketplace this November, replacing what used to be Acme Surplus, though the exact opening date...
by Melissa Karen Sances | Oct 11, 2024 | Featured, Uncategorized, Wellness
By MELISSA KAREN SANCES For the Advocate As the sun sets over the Hidden Temple in Florence, 14 adults in their comfiest pajamas sprawl on a generous bed of quilts. Outside on this crisp October Saturday, the foliage is just starting to turn, its pops of color...
by Advocate Staff | Oct 11, 2024 | Arts, Featured, Stage, Uncategorized
By CAROLYN BROWN Staff Writer Valley Players, a local volunteer theater group formed earlier this year, will perform their first full production in Amherst this weekend and next. The show, “Constellations,” by playwright Nick Payne, will be at Munson Memorial Library...
by Advocate Staff | Sep 27, 2024 | Arts, Featured, Music, Stage, Uncategorized
By CAROLYN BROWN Staff Writer After more than two decades at Smith College, a beloved music professor will say goodbye to Northampton with a farewell concert at the Iron Horse next week. Professor Steve Waksman, who has taught at Smith for 23 years, will complete his...
by Advocate Staff | Sep 27, 2024 | Arts, Featured, Film, Uncategorized
By CAROLYN BROWN Staff Writer Francis Ford Coppola’s latest movie — his first in over a decade — is a passion project he’s been working on for 40 years. Even more exciting? An actress from Northampton is in it. Caroline Bloom will make her most prestigious screen...
by Advocate Staff | Sep 13, 2024 | Arts, Featured, Music, Stage, Uncategorized
By CAROLYN BROWN Staff Writer In a year of international strife, the Northampton Jazz Festival is aiming to bring people together with music that transcends borders. The Northampton Jazz Festival, which will return for its 12th year on Sept. 27 and 28, is celebrating...
by Melissa Karen Sances | Aug 30, 2024 | Arts, Featured, Food + Booze, Food Booze and Beyond, Uncategorized
By Melissa Karen Sances For the Valley Advocate To Coco Bustin, the body is a beautiful vessel. She first came to appreciate it in figure drawing classes at Tufts University, where she met every curve and contour with wonder. Nudity, she realized, was an artistic...
by Jennifer Levesque | Aug 30, 2024 | Arts, Featured, Mixtape, Music, Review, Uncategorized
By Jennifer Levesque For the Valley Advocate Michael Brady is a psychotherapist and songwriter based out of the Berkshires. His debut release, “Second Skin,” is a concept album written about fictional case studies Brady has concocted from inspirations from his...
by Monte Belmonte | Aug 30, 2024 | Featured, Food + Booze, Food Booze and Beyond, Monte Belmonte Wines, Uncategorized
By Monte Belmonte For the Valley Advocate While dining out with my lovely wife the other day, it occurred to me that I use a lot of extraordinarily snobby adjectives that are incomprehensible to the lay drinker. Then it occurred to me: maybe a wine glossary would be...
by Jarice Hanson | Aug 30, 2024 | Featured, Stage, Theater Matters, Uncategorized
By Jarice Hanson For the Valley Advocate This summer three outstanding shows in the Berkshires demonstrate that the performativity of gender has broken free from traditional gender-based casting in some places. In this edition of Theater Matters, we explore how some...
by Advocate Staff | Aug 9, 2024 | Featured, Uncategorized
By ELISE LINSCOTT For the Advocate ‘The first thing I felt was cancer … she said ‘I was tired and there was no way back,’ which is pretty common for cancer,” South Hadley-based psychic medium and fiction writer Lisa Lanno said to a room of about 50 people one recent...
by Advocate Staff | Aug 9, 2024 | Arts, Featured, Film, Music, Uncategorized
By SCOTT MERZBACH Staff Writer A documentary profiling Swing-era clarinetist Artie Shaw, a musical comedy featuring 1960s-pop band The Monkees and one of African cinema’s first musicals are among this year’s selections in an annual summer celebration of music culture...
by Advocate Staff | Aug 5, 2024 | Featured, Food + Booze, Food Booze and Beyond, Uncategorized
By CHRIS LARABEE Staff Writer With 3,100 miles and the Atlantic Ocean between them, what could Easthampton and Dundee, a city of approximately 148,000 people in Scotland, possibly have in common? Well, if you really do some digging, you might unearth a Gem of a...
by Advocate Staff | Aug 5, 2024 | Arts, Featured, Music, Stage, Uncategorized
By PAIGE HANSON For the Advocate Earlier this week, the University of Massachusetts Amherst Fine Arts Center announced its lineup of performances for its 2024-2025 season, which includes quite a few notable offerings, including “a one-time Grateful Dead keyboardist,...
by Advocate Staff | Jul 19, 2024 | Featured, Food + Booze, Food Booze and Beyond, Music, Uncategorized
By ALEXA LEWIS Staff Writer Going out with friends can be challenging when clashing tastes in food make it impossible to choose a restaurant. But for Abandoned Building Brewery in Easthampton, the solution to this predicament is simple, and it comes rolling in on four...
by Advocate Staff | Jul 12, 2024 | Arts, Featured, Uncategorized
By EMILEE KLEIN Staff Writer When Webs opened their doors on May 16, the first day of the store’s annual tent sale, store manager Angela Cheek watched as a rush of people flowed through the doors for three whole continuous minutes on a Thursday morning. Within an...
by Melissa Karen Sances | Jul 12, 2024 | Featured, Get Out With Staff Picks, Leisure, Uncategorized, Wellness
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...
by Advocate Staff | Jul 12, 2024 | Arts, Featured, Leisure, Music, News, Stage, Uncategorized
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...
by Melissa Karen Sances | Jun 28, 2024 | Featured, Staff Picks, Uncategorized
By Melissa Karen Sances For the Valley Advocate “You know what goes on behind closed doors in a polyamorous household?” Fox asks, and I lean in closer. We’re on the phone and he is 800 miles away, so I am leaning toward — nothing. I am on the precipice of something, I...
by Jarice Hanson | Jun 28, 2024 | Arts, Featured, Review, Stage, Theater Matters, Uncategorized
By Jarice Hanson For the Valley Advocate The stories that make up what we see in theater are just one aspect of what makes live entertainment so compelling, but the way those stories are told has much to do with whether the play continues to make you think even after...
by Robin Goldstein | Jun 28, 2024 | Cannabis!, Featured, Food Booze and Beyond, O Cannabis!, Uncategorized
By Robin Goldstein For the Valley Advocate When voters vote to legalize weed, their intent is to legalize weed. And yet, in states across America, devils lurk in the details of how weed is regulated. Some of these devils have turned out to be so monstrous that they...
by Jennifer Levesque | Jun 28, 2024 | Arts, Featured, Leisure, Mixtape, Music, Stage, Uncategorized
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...
by Monte Belmonte | Jun 28, 2024 | Featured, Food + Booze, Food Booze and Beyond, Monte Belmonte Wines, Monte Belmonte Wines, Uncategorized
By Monte Belmonte For the Valley Advocate As a self-proclaimed wine snob, I admit that it is shameful that I have never been to any “wine country,” in any country, anywhere. Since grapes can grow in virtually every country, meaning wine could be made in virtually...
by Advocate Staff | May 24, 2024 | Arts, Featured, Music, Staff Picks, Uncategorized
By STEVE PFARRER Staff Writer If you go to a milonga, or social dance, to do tango dancing in Buenos Aires, you’ll likely be doing it to live music. In western Massachusetts? No so much. Now, though, Western Mass Tango, which has hosted tango lessons and dances in the...
by Advocate Staff | May 24, 2024 | Arts, Featured, Music, Review, Stage, Uncategorized
By STEVE PFARRER Staff Writer When Chris Smither found his live gigs shut down during the worst months of COVID-19, he figured it might at least be a good opportunity to write some new songs — something the veteran folk/blues singer and guitarist admits is not the...
by Advocate Staff | Apr 30, 2024 | Arts, Featured, Music, News, Staff Picks, Stage, Uncategorized
By STEVE PFARRER Staff Writer In late March, the fabled Iron Horse Music Hall, slated to reopen in mid May, was still a pretty raw construction site. Boards, pipes, boxes, and other materials were piled on the floors, along the walls, and on tables. Extension cords to...
by Melissa Karen Sances | Apr 30, 2024 | Featured, Staff Picks, Uncategorized, Wellness
By Melissa Karen Sances For the Valley Advocate “Emily’s mission in life is to teach women to live with confidence and joy inside their bodies.” This sentence mesmerized me. It’s an assured statement about a complicated topic: body image and sexuality, and...
by Jennifer Levesque | Apr 30, 2024 | Arts, Columns, Featured, Mixtape, Music, Uncategorized
By Jennifer Levesque For the Valley Advocate Hero and the Horror, “Old Ghosts” Western Mass’ Hero and the Horror recently released their first full length album, which was highly anticipated by the local music scene. The band had a handful of shows recently leading up...
by Monte Belmonte | Apr 30, 2024 | Columns, Featured, Food + Booze, Food Booze and Beyond, Monte Belmonte Wines, Monte Belmonte Wines, Uncategorized
By Monte Belmonte For the Valley Advocate The Bridge of Flowers may be closed to tourists this year but I can think of another great reason to visit Shelburne Falls — bowling! But this is a wine column. So, I’ll start again. The Bridge of Flowers may be closed to...
by Robin Goldstein | Apr 30, 2024 | Columns, Featured, Food Booze and Beyond, Uncategorized
By Robin Goldstein For the Valley Advocate As an economist studying the weed industry, I end up in a lot of policy discussions with people who do not believe that weed should be legal. Their points are often fair, well reasoned, thought-provoking, and deserve to be...
by Jarice Hanson | Apr 30, 2024 | Arts, Columns, Featured, Stage, Theater Matters, Uncategorized
By Jarice Hanson For the Valley Advocate In this next year, theater goers from Hartford to the Berkshires are going to have more entertainment choices than they’ve had in many years because attracting new audiences has become an art in itself. Older, more established...
by Advocate Staff | Apr 19, 2024 | Arts, Featured, Music, Stage, Uncategorized
By STEVE PFARRER Staff Writer Not so long ago, there was a general lament sometimes heard among Valley musicians: “There aren’t enough places to play around here.” That might have been true for professional players who wanted to be paid — and maybe, despite the...
by Advocate Staff | Mar 15, 2024 | Featured, Uncategorized
By STEVE PFARRER Staff Writer When Peter Sokolowski started work as an editor at Merriam-Webster 30 years ago, about 80 people worked at the venerable dictionary company in Springfield, including about 45 editors. But based on how quiet the offices were, it might have...
by Advocate Staff | Mar 7, 2024 | Articles, Featured, Food Booze and Beyond, Staff Picks, Uncategorized, Wellness
By Bob Flaherty For the Valley Advocate A gamechanger, they call it. A chance to face the challenges of your life head on. To free your mind, unencumbered by old negative patterns. Empowering your life. Re-setting your brain. Though it’s been around for decades,...
by Jarice Hanson | Mar 7, 2024 | Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Theater Matters, Uncategorized
By Jarice Hanson For the Valley Advocate World premieres are challenging pieces of theater in every sense. For many theaters and theater companies, it’s safer to produce an “old chestnut”— a show that has a proven track record with audiences, or a show that is...
by Monte Belmonte | Mar 7, 2024 | Columns, Featured, Food + Booze, Food Booze and Beyond, Monte Belmonte Wines, Monte Belmonte Wines, Uncategorized
By Monte Belmonte For the Valley Advocate Aging wine is a lost art. It’s lost on me and I’m a self-described wine snob. I have exactly two bottles of wine in my “wine cellar.” It’s actually not a cellar at all. It’s a room off of my living room where I keep my tools...
by Robin Goldstein | Mar 7, 2024 | Featured, Food + Booze, Food Booze and Beyond, Uncategorized
By Robin Goldstein For the Valley Advocate The weed world is always full of buzz, and lately you might have heard everyone buzzing about terpenes. Should you care? The answer is complicated and non-obvious. To explain, I must start from the beginning of the story, in...
by Jennifer Levesque | Mar 7, 2024 | Arts, Featured, Mixtape, Music, Uncategorized
By Jennifer Levesque For the Valley Advocate Local musician Chris Croteau took a musical hiatus to focus on parenthood, but is now back with an album that is worth the wait. Released in November of last year, “Mesmir” is Croteau’s comeback. The 16-track album has...
by Advocate Staff | Feb 23, 2024 | Featured, Uncategorized
By HANNAH BEVIS For the Advocate Every Sunday morning from November to early February, dozens of people rolled up to Easthampton Mountain View school to play basketball. Games started at 10 a.m., but players always showed up early to shoot around and warm up (some...
by Robin Goldstein | Feb 23, 2024 | Featured, Food + Booze, Food Booze and Beyond, Staff Picks, Uncategorized
By AZAI DUGGER and ROBIN GOLDSTEIN For the Advocate Note from Robin Goldstein: For this column, I asked my 9-year-old nephew and co-author Azai Dugger to choose his favorite restaurants and briefly describe each one — the same task as I undertook for my last Gazette...
by Robin Goldstein | Feb 9, 2024 | Featured, Food + Booze, Food Booze and Beyond, Staff Picks, Uncategorized
By ROBIN GOLDSTEIN For the Advocate If I were writing the Pioneer Valley chapter of a travel guide to New England, this would be its section for “dinner with table service.” I list restaurants first that I feel are most essential to the local dining scene, the ones we...
by Advocate Staff | Feb 9, 2024 | Featured, Leisure, Uncategorized
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,...
by Advocate Staff | Feb 2, 2024 | Arts, Featured, Uncategorized
By DON STEWART For the Advocate There are those who see winter not as a season but as a siege. They tire of shoveling white glittering fractals from their driveways and see snow as the unnecessary freezing of water. If you’re among those who don’t consider the frozen...
by Advocate Staff | Feb 2, 2024 | Arts, Featured, Music, Uncategorized
By STEVE PFARRER Staff Writer Back in the 1980s, Jack Frisch, then in his early twenties, got bitten pretty hard by the jazz bug, taking the ferry from his home in Staten Island, New York, over to Manhattan with some friends and haunting record shops. His interest had...
by Advocate Staff | Jan 26, 2024 | Arts, Featured, Food + Booze, Food Booze and Beyond, Music, Staff Picks, Uncategorized
By STEVE PFARRER Staff Writer When John Piskor opened his Cajun-style restaurant, Gombo Nola Kitchen & Oyster Bar, in Northampton last year, he said he eventually wanted it to turn it into something akin to a New Orleans cafe, where people come out for a drink and...
by Advocate Staff | Jan 26, 2024 | Articles, Careers & Education, Featured, Film, Staff Picks, Uncategorized, Wellness
By STEVE PFARRER Staff Writer Dr. Khama Ennis had come a long way in her medical career. Until 2022, the Amherst resident had spent about two decades in emergency medicine, including a number of years as chief of emergency medicine at Cooley Dickinson Hospital in...
by Advocate Staff | Jan 26, 2024 | Arts, Featured, Stage, Uncategorized
By STEVE PFARRER Staff Writer Looking for some talented older actors who can play a wide range of roles? Who have decades of experience in theater, film and television? Raye Birk and Candace Barrett Birk are at your service. The Florence couple, relatively new...
by Advocate Staff | Jan 19, 2024 | Arts, Featured, Staff Picks, Stage, Uncategorized
By STEVE PFARRER Staff Writer Ever since the November 2022 elections, politicians in over a dozen Republican-controlled states have seemed to compete with each other in attacking parts of the LGBTQ community: banning or restricting gender-affirming medical care for...
by Advocate Staff | Jan 12, 2024 | Featured, Food + Booze, Leisure, Uncategorized
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...
by Advocate Staff | Jan 8, 2024 | Arts, Featured, News, Uncategorized
By STEVE PFARRER Staff Writer It’s been a long run — but the finish line is now in view. The Northampton Community Arts Trust building, largely or partly shuttered for most of this year, is poised to reopen, as work to make the final improvements in the...