CultureJunkie

Barry McGee

Over the years, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston has hosted shows by different graffiti artists, most notably Shepard Fairey and Os Gemeos. Their latest exhibit in this genre is from San Francisco-based Barry McGee, who got his start in the late 80's under the tag name "Twist."

Last Friday night I attended the Opening Night reception for McGee's new show, which included a cocktail party in the ICA lobby (a beautiful space overlooking the Boston Harbor) followed by a talk with the artist and a 20 year survey of his work.

The talk was bizarre - McGee is painfully shy and was visibly uncomfortable being in the spotlight. He repeatedly asked for the lights to be turned down (taking the focus off of him) and encouraged audience members to talk so that he wouldn't have to. I found this so interesting because his work is very bold, infused with bright colors, hard lines, and a fair amount of social commentary/activism. But I guess the man prefers to stay in the shadows, letting his paint cans do the talking.

McGee admits that now that he's 46 and a father he has lost interest in tagging, but continues to bring urban installations into art spaces and galleries. From the ICA write up:

"At once humorous, political, and difficult (especially for those who see private property as an inalienable right), his art underscores the complexities of life in early twenty-first-century America, a country in the midst of wars, a financial crisis, unemployment, class stratification, and the ever-cheerful exhortation to keep consuming."

He's decidedly anti-consumerism and anti-establishment, remarking,

“If I live in an urban center — in a city — with constant advertising, I feel like I have every right to partake also. I don’t feel like it should be limited to corporations that can buy ad space. I just always assume that anything written on the wall was the authentic thing to me. The real voice.”

The market value of his work rose considerably after it was included in the 2001 Venice Biennale, a major contemporary art show in Italy. Today, much of his San Francisco street art has been stolen (although I did hear in his recent NPR interview that some work can still be found in and around Boston). And he just created a new [sanctioned] piece on the back of the House of Blues building while he was in town last week.

Unlike other cities that are known for their graffiti - areas of Buenos Aires, Old San Juan, San Francisco, and Venice Beach come to mind - Boston doesn't have much elaborate street art. Just last month, local artist Cyrille Conan was hired to paint a 14'x17' mural on the old Boston Herald building in the South End, but it was purely to drive publicity of a new mixed-use housing and commercial complex (dubbed The Ink Block) that is going up there. The Herald building - along with Conan's work - was demolished just a few weeks later (but not before I captured the shot below).

The best-kept graffiti secret in the city might be at my office. We have several walls that were painted years ago by some local teens who got caught tagging and were sentenced to community service - which included coming in to our space and putting their talent to good use. Take a look:

Here is the photo set from McGee's exhibit, which is at the ICA through September 2nd.

Where Hash Rules

You all know how I love a good meal, and a good bit of Boston history, so I was delighted to find a marriage of the two in George Cuddy's book, Where Hash Rules. It's the story of Charlie's Sandwich Shoppe, a landmark in Boston's South End since 1927.

Simultaneously a rich historical account of a city block, and a love letter to the people who made history there, the book is full of personal anecdotes,  newspaper clippings, photos, recipes and blog posts that tell the story of the Manjourides family and their restaurant over the course of 85 years.

In that time, Charlie's has borne witness to a wildly diverse neighborhood that has played host to criminals and celebrities alike. Prostitutes and mobsters, politicians, performers and athletes – everyone from Sammy Davis Jr, Duke Ellington, Joe Lewis and Whitey Bulger, to Tom Brady, Nomar Garciaparra, Robert Urich and Al Gore - have dined at this 32-seat shop. It's cash-only, and offers communal tables, both telling attributes of the no-frills, genial experience you are likely to have there.

In its early days, Charlie's was the only restaurant in town that would serve African Americans. The Pullman Porters  -  men hired by George Pullman to work on the railroads as porters on sleeping cars  - established their Boston headquarters above the restaurant and admitted original owner Charlie Poulos as the only non-black member so he could play cards and shoot pool with them.

In the years since, all sorts of characters have crossed the threshold, including Cookie the bookie, Chapman the peeper, Richard the storyteller, and Biggie the bulldog. They've all contributed to Charlie's vibrant history.

But central to the story are the four beloved proprietors and siblings, Arthur, Marie, Fontaine, and Chris, who have been slinging hash – and stories – for decades.  Their immigrant father Christi was Charlie Poulos' first employee, starting out as a line cook and then through some shrewd business dealings becoming a partner in 1946.  This family's story, their hard work and dedication to the business as well as their community, has all the tenets of the American Dream.

Though I’ve yet to visit Charlie’s in person (despite living here for nearly 20 years…the shame!), I feel like I know them all. And like the author, I feel slighted that I missed out on so many of the memories.

And what of the food? Charlie's consistently gets rave reviews for its great meals at great prices, and it won the prestigious James Beard Award in 2005. I am dying to try the cranberry pancakes and the raspberry griddle cakes. And of course, the famous turkey hash.

You can purchase Where Hash Rules (ebook) at Amazon or Barnes & Noble, read more about it on Boston.com and Bon Appetit, and stay up-to-date with restaurant happenings via their Facebook page.

And perhaps I'll see you at one of their communal tables one day soon.

D-Day and the Ghost Army

Time to take a break from chronicling my personal battle to remember one of great historical importance. Today is the 68th anniversary of D-Day, the World War II invasion of Normandy, France, by the Allied forces.

I had the opportunity to tour the beaches of Normandy back in on the 59th anniversary, June 6, 2003. It's a remarkable and moving experience, even if you're not a history or WWII buff. And whenever I think of that trip - as I did today when I heard reference to the anniversary on WBUR - I think of our chance encounter with a group of British vets who were part of the 6th Airborne Division. These guys were the paratroopers who glided in to secure area bridges in order to limit German counter-attacks during the invasion.

We were driving home to our place in Honfleur, when we randomly came across Pegasus Bridge, where 181 men from the 6th Airborne Division/7th Parachute Battalion glided in on the night of June 5, 1944. We stopped to check it out and were enchanted to find a group of those very men celebrating the anniversary over beers. They were so delightful - and so eager to share their experiences - that we ended up visiting with them for hours, even following them back to their inn to share dinner and a homemade bottle of Calvados. They were full of life and remarkable stories, like how they reunited at the bridge every year since the War, and in the early years they would get drunk and dig up old grenades that they had buried upon landing. When the War ended in Europe, some of them went on to fight the Japanese in Burma. These were incredibly tough guys. And the bridge was actually named in their honor - it was originally called Caen Canal bridge but later renamed after the Pegasus emblem that adorned their uniforms.

Here I am with Wolfie (top) and Jim (bottom). I'm sad to say that after exchanging Christmas cards for a couple of years, we lost touch.

But turning back to WBUR - today they interviewed Lexington filmmaker Rick Beyer, who is working on a documentary about the Ghost Army of World War II, a top secret group of men who used "trickery and artistry" to fool the enemy. It's absolutely fascinating - many of them were artists who would later become famous (e.g., fashion designer Bill Blass, photographer Art Kane <- this is an awesome site, btw), and they used inflatable tanks and sound effects, among other tactics, to fool the enemy in Normandy. It was a group of 1000 men who would set up camp on the front lines, making it appear as if they were a group of tens of thousands. The interview is worth a listen, or you can get the full backstory on the documentary at GhostArmy.org where Beyer is soliciting donations to help fund its completion (Rick: if you read this, you should consider setting up a Kickstarter campaign!). And if you want to see more, the Ghost Army exhibition is on display through the month of June at the Beverly Historical Society.

Fisherman's Wharf

After visiting Lombard Street we walked down the hill to Fisherman's Wharf, a rather tacky waterfront area reminiscent if the streets surrounding Niagara Falls: lots of t-shirt & souvenir shops, wax museums, and bad food. But we did discover the World Famous Bushman, a homeless man that has been scaring passersby since 1980. He started out dressing up as a robot but found there were too many of those, so now crouches down behind some eucalyptus branches which he shakes at people as they past. He cajoles tips out of them afterward and is reported to have made $60k in a good year! That's him in the last shot.

Return to Writing

So. It's been a long time since I published a truly thoughtful post.

You see, I've become a victim of "snack culture," the modern phenomenon of consuming and transmitting short bursts of information - a Twitter post here, a Facebook update there - instead of composing longer-form, more thoughtful content here on my blog. I've been blogging (micro-blogging), but not writing.

It's not that I don't have the thoughts - I continue to gather thousands of bookmarks and downloads that would inform tons of posts - I just don't seem to make the time to write anymore.

I do, however, continue to consume long-form content. Reading beyond the Tweet, or beyond the headline, is incredibly important to me professionally, and incredibly rewarding to me personally. My Mom taught me to love books at a very young age ("If you have a book, you'll always have a friend") and it is my love of books that brought me back to the notion that I should return to writing. Here's how:

I recently finished reading The Paris Wife, Paula McLain's fantastic novel about Ernest Hemingway's first wife, Hadley, and the time they spent together in Europe while he was writing The Sun Also Rises. It is romantic and tragic and I absolutely loved it. The mythic Hemingway, hanging out with pals Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ezra Pound - the Lost Generation riding through Jazz Age Paris on a wave of absinthe and words. It makes you want to grab your Moleskine (traditional or modern) and sneak away to a cafe for the day.

About the same time, I had two friends publish books that are next on my reading list: Jane Roper's Eden Lake and Alethea Black's I Knew You'd Be Lovely. Both did readings at the fabulous Newtonville Books, which I was introduced to thanks to this authors series. What a fabulous independent bookstore - from the books themselves, to the events, and the oh-so-cool autograph wall (Jane and Alethea, plus Gary Schteyngart and Dave Eggers among others). Also new to the wall that night was Lynne Griffin, who shared a moving passage from her novel Sea Escape, based on actual love letters written from her late father to her mother (and also now on my reading list). All very inspiring.

And then I had a wonderful conversation with Alethea, a friend I hadn't seen in years. We talked about her writing, my travels, and our lives in general - in NYC and Boston, respectively. Such interesting stories exist in the day-to-day! Sometimes you don't realize it until you slow down and take time to reflect. Or write.

So I'm back at it. For now anyway. And while I plan to stick to blogging...who knows? Maybe one day you'll see my autograph on the wall at Newtonville Books :)

 

 

Phipps Street Burying Ground

Today, the Charlestown Preservation Society led a guided tour and clean up of the Phipps Street Burying Ground at the corner of Phipps and Lawrence Streets in Charlestown.  Begun in the 1630s, it is one of five 17th century burying grounds in Boston, and the oldest real estate in Charlestown (as the rest of the town burned to the ground during the Battle of Bunker Hill).

The cemetery's irregular layout was allegedly intended to correspond to a map of the town; until the mid-1800s, this area was actually waterfront property along the Charles River (see Peter Tufts' Plan of Charlestown Peninsula) but today is bordered by Bunker Hill Community College and Mishawum Park apartments.

Historian Carol Bratley explained that the stones are grouped in rectangular family plots, rather than neat rows. Many of them were carved by the Lamson family of stonecarvers, whose work is found all over New England.

She also explained the designs that prevailed in different centuries: graves of the 1600s featured death's heads - stylized skulls with wings and cross bones. Winged cherubs didn't appear until the 1700s, and then the willow (a classic symbol of mourning) and urn (where Imperial Romans stored the ashes of deceased) appeared in 1800s. Here are a couple of beautifully sculpted and remarkably preserved examples:

There are memorials to numerous historical figures in the cemetery, including John Harvard, who died in 1638 and left half his estate and entire 300-book library to a new college in Cambridge. Harvard's original grave marker has disappeared, but Harvard College erected a granide obelisk here in 1828 to commemmorate him.

And of course George Bunker and family, of the eponymous Bunker Hill (whose marker, sadly, has been vandalized by "Clyde's Crew").

But probably most interesting to me were the graves of Nathaniel Austin and family, Middlesex County Sheriff and owner of the stone house in which I now live:

There were grand groupings of headstones like those of the very large Frothingham family, and somber, multi-person plots like this one, which under all the children's names reads:

Our lives is ever on the wing

And death is ever nigh

The moment when our life begins

We all begin to die

There are only two markers for men of color here, tucked under a tree at the far edge of the grounds, which was customary for the time (as was denoting the color of their skin, right on the headstone):

Note the inscriptions in these close-ups of the two to the left of the tree, above:

While the city and the Preservation Society work hard to keep Phipps St. Burying Ground clean and preserved, past problems with loitering and vandalism have forced them to now keep the gates locked and only opened upon request.

See the full photo set on Flickr.

 

Gene Simmons and Other Star Sightings

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, La Concha Resort has hosted its share of celebrities. JLo and Marc Anthony (we just missed them!), Enrique Inglesias, and Zoe Saldana to name a few. So who did we see while staying there last week?

Members of the rock band, KISS. Remember them? Those face-painted, flamboyantly dressed, hard rocking guys who were all the rage in the late 70s?  I can still picture the band poster on my brother's bedroom wall.

Well, 30 years later, they are still at it. Currently on their Hottest Show on Earth tour, they performed at the Coliseo de Puerto Rico last Saturday night, and you guessed it - they stayed at La Concha Resort.

While we only glimpsed the full band once - sans costumes on their way through the lobby to get into a limousine before the big show, bassist Gene Simmons hung out at the lobby bar all weekend.

 

Apparently, there were sightings of Gene's pal Danny Bonaduce as well, which makes me think they may have done some filming for the upcoming season of Gene Simmons Family Jewels.

Here's a shot of the KISS concert posters in San Juan:

 

And I'm sure Gene would be thrilled to learn that he's been added to my Star Sightings Flickr set.

Party on.

Previously:

• La Concha Resort, Puerto Rico

Infinite Family

In a recent email from VolunteerMatch (a match-making service for volunteers and people who need their help), I learned of a remarkable organization called Infinite Family, which uses the Internet to connect adults and families with parentless children in southern Africa.

In the wake of the AIDS epidemic, thousands of African children are orphaned every year, leaving the ratio of children to adults in many areas at 12:1. Infinite Family has made it easy for people to become virtual mentors to these kids, using video conferencing, email, and a secure Internet platform to span the physical distance.

The VolunteerMatch newsletter tells the store of the Benedict family from Pennsylvania, who discovered Infinite Family's Video Mentor program and now regularly connects with an orphaned teenager at a computer lab in sub-Saharan Africa. Not only does this youth get much-needed attention and guidance from the adult parents of the family, but she also enjoys camaraderie (and help with homework!) from the Benedict children. And they, of course, get the chance to learn about a very different culture and make a life-long friend.

What a fantastic way to use technology.

Think you want to be a virtual mentor? Check out the Infinite Family page on VolunteerMatch. Mentors must be 21+ years old, have a high-speed Internet connection, and be approved through an application process. Once approved, they undergo an online training program to help understand the culture, the technology, and the children.

To learn more, visit the Infinite Family website and Youtube channel, or follow them on Twitter.

Pawley's Island

Pawley's Island sits between the Atlantic Ocean and the Waccamaw River in South Carolina. It is one of the oldest resort areas on the East Coast, and I had the good fortune to spend five sunny days there over Columbus Day weekend while attending a friend's wedding.

Unlike Myrtle Beach, its honky-tonk neighbor to the north, Pawley's prides itself on being quaint and "shabby chic." Less than 200 people live on the 3-mile stretch of land, but vacation homes abound. We stayed at this fabulous spot, with the ocean (complete with frolicking dolphins) out our back door:

 
...and this picturesque view of the river (with lots of egrets and fishing literally jumping out of the water) out front:

Gorgeous!

Highlights of the weekend included walking the expansive beach and taking in the wild life,biking along the shore, shopping at the legendary Hammock Shops (yes, the hammock was created here 120 years ago) and antique shops of historic Georgetown,

and dining on fabulous southern fare at Roz's Rice Mill Cafe (get the hot chicken salad on a croissant), Frank's Outback, and Hog Heaven BBQ.

But of course the real highlight of the trip was seeing our friends Anna & Jeremy tie the knot, and they did so at the beautiful Brookgreen Gardens and sculpture park (wish I could've explored more of this place).

 
Here's the full photoset:

Join me at the Helping Hands Festivale

You're invited to an exciting evening of food, music, and art!

It's the Helping Hands Festivale, taking place on Saturday, November 6th at the WGBH Studios in Boston. 

Buy your tickets and join us for:

• Delectable food from Boston area restaurants including The Catered Affair, Ruth's Chris Steakhouse, Cafeteria, Mistral, Moo, L'Andana, Sorellina, and Teatro
• Signature Grey Goose cocktails and tasty wines
• Musical performances on two stages
• Work from a variety of local artists available for purchase
• A viewing of the short film, And Then a Monkey

A portion of the proceeds will support the Monkey Helper Training and Placement Program at Helping Hands, a national nonprofit serving people with mobility-impairments by providing highly trained monkeys to assist with daily activities.

It's a wonderful organization, and the Festivale promises to be a great night.

Buy your tickets and/or sponsor the event on the Helping Hands web site, and please help us spread the word on Facebook.

I hope to see you there!