by Amanda Drane | Jun 9, 2015 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Music, News
At the Waterfront Tavern in Holyoke, a rap battle between Hoodie Cruger, who is black, and Petey Mitch, who is white, turns racist. “I got rap sheets to rival my rap sheets,” spits Petey. “For your life, somewhere someway, had to pay two cents a day. That’s not what I...
by Kristin Palpini | Jun 10, 2015 | Articles, Blogs, Featured, News, The Uncanny Valley
For more than a decade, the island at the corner of Hampton Street and Route 5 in Holyoke has borne the word “Quota” — spelled out in flowers in the warm weather and black plastic edging in the cold. On my ride home from work down Route 5 south, I often wondered...
by Amanda Drane | Jun 2, 2015 | Articles, Featured, Food + Booze, Leisure, News
As if the stationary restaurant business weren’t tumultuous enough with its high overhead costs, perishable products, and unpredictable customers, food truck owners kick it up a degree by taking it to the streets and exposing themselves — and their kitchens — to the...
by James Heflin | May 27, 2015 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Music
Early 20th-century Modernist literature, at its worst, is uninviting and impenetrable. Take the work of Ezra Pound — at one extreme is his beautiful and accessible imagist poem “In A Station of the Metro”: The apparition of these faces in the crowd; petals on a wet,...
by Amanda Drane | May 27, 2015 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Food + Booze, Madame Barfly
The fact that Coco and the Cellar Bar’s best-selling cocktail is their ginger margarita is a testament to why people pack this place: simple delights. This tasty cocktail is exactly what you’d expect it to be. Spicy fresh ginger is added to the classic margarita trio...
