Catharsis meets comedy: ‘Customers From Hell’ show will premiere at the Shea Theater on Sunday, June 15
By CAROLYN BROWN Staff Writer Most people who have worked retail and food service jobs have dealt with customers who were rude, annoying, or just plain strange. A new comedy TV series written and filmed in the Pioneer Valley wants to answer the question: what if those...
A league of their own: Division Q, a new basketball league created by and for queer players, hopes to grow after successful first season
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...
Best Bites: Ordering off the kid’s menu: 9-year-old budding food critic shares his top 15 places to eat
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...
Best Bites: Where to eat dinner right now: The top 35 Valley spots for dinner and what you should order
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...
‘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,...
Rare views into an earlier age: Clark Art Institute exhibits some 80 original images in paper and photographs
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...
In time for downbeat: Jazz record designer Jack Frisch hosts new show on Valley Free Radio to ‘get the music out there’
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...
‘Creole love call’: Gombo launches new music series starting Feb. 2 with jazz reedman Evan Arntzen
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...
‘You don’t look like a doctor’: Documentary film looks at the biases and challenges Black women physicians face
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...
Staying in the game: Veteran actors and teachers Raye and Candace Birk are still involved with theater after decades of performance
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...
A song for the ages: Easthampton Theater Company presents ‘Torch Song,’ an iconic work of queer theater
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...
Sessions
Check out our most recent performances in the playlist below, or click here to dig into interviews and related material!No Results Found
The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.
JJ Slater on the Valley Advocate Sessions Stage
This week’s Advocate Sessions performer is singer-songwriter JJ Slater, who writes original music that blends together folk-rock and psychedelic pop with jazzy chord progressions.
V-Spot: My BF’s Been Sexting Other Women
Hi Yana, I was recently informed by someone that my boyfriend has been sexually texting another girl for several months, as well as had an active profile on dating site Plenty of Fish. When confronted, it took a few days but he did admit the truth to me. I am...
STAFF PICKS: Haunted Evenings, Electronic/Art Rock, and Ukulele’s
Halloween-inspired cocktails and drinks, yummy food available from The Bistro at Gateway City Arts, and of course live music by jazzy indie rock duo, The Greys.
No Results Found
The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.
Cinemadope: Toon in — animation for the late-night crowd
Unspooling at 9:45 — the late start alone should give you a sense that these aren’t Looney Tunes











