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Electrifying the Vinyl: Electric Eye Records in Florence is a vinyl lover’s...
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...
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News of the Weird: The Future of Travel
Australian aviator David Mayman has promised investors that his personal jet packs will hit the market by mid-2017, though early adopters will pay about $250,000 for one, to fly a person at up to 60...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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Back Talk: Hampshire College Brings Back the Flag
Forced to Fly a Flag? Editor’s Note: This letter is in response to Hampshire College’s recent decision to stop flying the American flag on campus. Shortly after receiving this letter, threats made...
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News of the Weird: Even Baking Soda is Dangerous
Almost all law enforcement agencies in America use the Scott Reagent field test when they discover powder that looks like cocaine, but the several agencies that have actually conducted tests for false...
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Free Will Astrology: Jan. 5 – 11, 2017
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Light, electricity, and magnetism are different expressions of a single phenomenon. Scottish scientist and mathematician James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879) was the first to...
View ArticleBasemental: 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...
View ArticleI 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...
View ArticleThe V-Spot: SOS! I’m Spaced Out During Sex
Yana, I need your expertise! I’m a 19-year-old guy in a hetero relationship. I was pleasuring my partner last night and I realized I stopped being present and could not become present again. She picked...
View ArticleAstrology: 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...
View ArticleBacktalk: Immigration celebration, saving water, and love for old lesbians
Celebrate Immigration I think the people of Northampton and the whole Pioneer Valley should take the lead and turn the arrival of refugees to our area into a celebration. Our country’s founding...
View ArticleScene Here: The Force … Is Getting Sleepy
More than 100 people stake out a plot of land at Pulaski Park in Northampton on this crisp Wednesday night for an outdoor screening of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. At the event kicking off this year’s...
View ArticleScene Here: Rent Rally
Several dozen protesters gathered this past Friday at Mason Square in Springfield, chanting What Do We Want? Affordable Housing! When Do We Want It? Now! and carrying signs down State Street — through...
View ArticleDeported from a Sanctuary?
The debate over immigration reform isn’t new, but it’s taken center stage in the 2016 presidential campaign. Republican candidate Donald Trump has made it a central part of his campaign and recently...
View ArticleMillion Dollar Quartet: Four legendary musicians, one fateful day
It sounds like the beginning of a joke: So, Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis walk into a recording studio …. But in December of 1956, this foursome just happened to all be...
View ArticleNightcrawler: 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...
View ArticleOne Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer: George Thorogood and the Destroyers take...
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...
View ArticleNews of the Weird: Frontiers of Science
Large kidney stones typically mean eye-watering pain and sudden urinary blockage until the stone “passes” (often requiring expensive sound-wave treatment to break up a large stone). Michigan State...
View ArticleDown to Earth: A Vote for Clinton is a Vote for the Environment
Our natural environment needs us now, and the stakes have never been so stark. I’ve been frustrated this election season at how little attention the environment has gotten. In the first presidential...
View ArticleBad Seeds: Will legal recreational weed lead to more stoned students?
Rachel Desmond had her first smoke when she was 16. For the next six years, marijuana was a big part of her life. “It was easy to get,” she says, sitting outside of the Frost Building at Holyoke...
View ArticleStagestruck: It’s Not Othello, But … — Two musicals from different worlds...
In Othello in the Seraglio, Shakespeare’s Moor finds an ironic mirror. Not the proud Venetian general, but a proud eunuch in the harem of the Ottoman sultan. Subtitled “The Tragedy of Sümbül the Black...
View ArticleFree Will Astrology, Oct. 20-26, 2016
ARIES (March 21-April 19): In the 1980s, two performance artists did a project entitled A Year Tied Together at the Waist. For 12 months, Linda Montano and Tehching Hsieh were never farther than eight...
View ArticleNews of the Weird: Extreme Hobbies
John Weigel and Olaf Danielson are engaged in a frenzied battle of “extreme birdwatching,” each hoping to close out 2016 as the new North American champ of the American Birding Association, and a...
View ArticleGasoline Alley: Joe Sibilia’s dedication to Springfield fuels new business...
On an unseasonably warm day in late September, Joe Sibilia is roaming the Gasoline Alley mill building complex on Albany Street in Springfield. The 59-year-old is wearing a pair of loose fitting yoga...
View ArticleBest 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...
View ArticleFree Will Astrology, Oct. 27-Nov. 2, 2016
ARIES (March 21-April 19): I invite you to fantasize about what your four great-grandmothers and four great-grandfathers may have been doing on Nov. 1, 1930. What? You have no idea how to begin? You...
View ArticleBetween the Lines: Are the Elections Rigged?
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has spent the last several months asserting that the Nov. 8 election will be rigged against him. He doesn’t have any evidence to support this claim —...
View ArticleNews of the Weird: Pot for Pets
As nine states next month ask voters to approve some form of legalization of marijuana, a “new customer base” for the product — pets — was highlighted in an October New York Times report. Dogs and cats...
View ArticleCocktail 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...
View ArticleThe Last Unicorn: The Platinum Pony Will Not Reopen
It’s official: Easthampton’s Platinum Pony has taken its last ride. The business’ former owner Kristen Davis announced that the bar, which closed its 30 Cottage St. location last fall following a...
View ArticleCinemadope: 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...
View ArticleBlaise’s Bad Movie Guide: Someone should have said oh-no to ‘Omoo’
The old adage “you can’t tell a book by its cover” still rings true. However, does this advice apply to movies and their titles? Let’s partake in a little quiz and see if you can guess the film’s plot...
View ArticleBeerhunter: 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...
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Stagestruck: And the Berkie Goes to …
New York has its Tonys and Obies, Boston its Nortons, and now the Berkshire region has its own rewards for outstanding work in theater — the Berkshire Theatre Awards. Twelve professional companies in...
View ArticleFree Will Astrology: Nov. 17 – 23, 2016
ARIES (March 21-April 19): There is a 97 percent chance that you will not engage in the following activities within the next 30 days: naked skydiving, tight-rope walking between two skyscrapers,...
View ArticleNightcrawler: Kiss and Time
Can you rock and roll all night and still be home for the 11 o’clock news? The Crawler did — just a couple of Saturdays ago at Mohegan Sun. KISS may be known for their outlandish make-up, ghoulish...
View ArticleNews of the Weird: Can’t Possibly Be True
Kids as young as 6 who live on a cliff top in China’s Atule’er village in Sichuan province will no longer have to use flexible vine-based ladders to climb down and up the 2,600-foot descent from their...
View ArticleScene Here: Atop Long Mountain
Room to Breathe What pairs well with local beer and wine this week? My opinion: some peace and quiet. It’s not always appreciated, or sought out. But after a nightmare of an election season — full of...
View ArticleIf You Brew It, They Will Come: Tree House Brewing in Monson attracts...
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...
View ArticleNews of the Weird: The Nanny State
New York City officially began licensing professional fire eaters earlier this year, and classes have sprung up to teach the art so that the city’s Fire Department Explosives Unit can test for...
View ArticleBetween the Lines: One Nation Under Trump?
Hillary Clinton voters: It’s time to get on with it. Donald Trump is our next president, whether we like it or not, and the great American experiment in democracy is going to continue. Please, stop...
View ArticleWhat’s in an “All Local” Beer, Anyway?
From the Valley, Born and Brewed The crafty little explosion of local breweries up and down the Valley over the last 20 years has become a point of pride for neighbors and travelers alike. But as local...
View ArticleAt Beerology, Homebrewers Can Go Local, Too
At Home with the Brew Local beer ingredients abound, but commercial brewers aren’t the only ones who can get their hands on them. Fun and creative brewing starts at home, too — and many in the Valley...
View ArticleThe 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...
View ArticleNerding Out: Fungus Passion
Dianna Smith walked to her third floor office at her home in Leeds to sort a collection of dried fungi. The specimens were picked during a workshop on identifying native fungi she teaches through her...
View ArticleSweep it Under the River: Berkshire County’s Battle with GE Over the...
Decades later and General Electric still hasn’t remedied its contamination of the Housatonic. Woods Pond in Lenox is the picture of quaint backwoods New England: the kind of place leaf-peepers flock...
View ArticleO, 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...
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Stagestruck: Closing the Gender Gap
Every year I take note of the plays I’ve seen that are written and/or directed by women, and those that revolve around a woman (or women). For me, these are key indicators of progress in achieving...
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