The Third Decade

Old Fashioned Roxbury Apple Festival

Just want to pass on information about this event happening tomorrow.

Eat, drink, and be merry at a free apple-themed festival evoking the spirit of a country fair. Take part in interactive cooking classes, enjoy drumming, and drink fresh cider from an old-fashioned cider press. Participate in a variety of workshops, including one by the Garden Girl on how to prepare your garden for the winter.

Bring the kids for an environmental scavenger hunt, face painting, henna tattoos, and a tour of Paige Academy that includes live chickens and a garden. Fresh chili, cornbread, and assorted baked goods will also be for sale. A live jazz band will will also perform. This event will run rain or shine.

*Workshops/Tours*
1:30-2:00 Tour of main building
2:15-3:00 Garden Girl's workshop (Umoja room)
3:15-4:00 Cooking class with Chef Nadine Nelson (Umoja room kitchen)
3:30-3:45 Tour of animals

*Please note that Paige Academy requires the removal of shoes INSIDE the facility. Please wear a comfortable pair of socks for indoor events.

Co-presented by Discover Roxbury, Earthworks, Epicurean Studio, Garden Girl, and Paige Academy. Live jazz band courtesy of Wally's Jazz Cafe.

Saturday, November 7, 1pm-4pm
Paige Academy, 28 Highland Ave, Roxbury
MBTA: Roxbury Crossing

ArtROX! at the MFA

 It's been a full week since the end of Roxbury Open Studios ended and I've finally looked at the photos I took during the October 2nd ArtROX! opening reception at the Museum of Fine Arts. It was a labor of love getting that together, but having a the event come together successfully was a beautiful thing. Local artists participating in Roxbury Open Studios (including me) had their work displayed in the second floor rotunda as part of a juried viewing and we interacted with MFA and ROS patrons during a night featuring music and food. It was a great experience and one I hope we can repeat next year.

I'll also give credit where it's due. My involvement in bringing ArtROX! to the MFA comes as a direct result of being a part of the initiative which I roundly criticized a year ago. Turns out the museum is serious about engaging communities of color and diversifying its programming and audiences. With another year left in my tenure on that committee, I hope to continue building connections between the museum and the communities around it.

It's on and poppin' this Saturday

On Saturday, all eyes will be on Roxbury. In addition to the annual Boston Carnival on Warren Street, Senator Kennedy's funeral takes place (at a time to be announced) on Mission Hill. I guess we can expect traffic to be out of control that day. Take the T if you can.

And keep your fingers crossed that the hurricane doesn't head this way too!

Under the Roxbury Sun dinner

Although it's Restaurant Week, I'd like to suggest an alternative for those willing to try something even more unique. Discover Roxbury's upcoming Thursday event promises to be an affair to remember. Local chef, Nadine Nelson, will serve up a fabulous, fresh, five-course al fresco dinner under the setting sun at the Garden Girl's sustainable urban Roxbury farm. During Thursday’s soiree, participants will have the opportunity to tour the farm, hear from Patti herself, and enjoy a five-course dinner created from its harvest. The $50 menu is available on Discover Roxbury's website.

Space is limited. Reservations are required and can be made online or by calling 617-427-1006.

Neighborhoods

After my critique of the Improper's Best of Boston list, which noted the publication's lack of geographic and ethnic diversity, it was a pleasant surprise to see Roxbury's Merengue restaurant prominently featured on page 7 at the beginning of the Imperatives section. It's also encouraging to see that the accompanying article does a great job at highlighting the restaurant, the owners, and their passion for the community. The article could have easily been one of those "diamond-in-the-rough" pieces of crap that often gets foisted onto some neighborhoods; thankfully this one didn't go there.

But is this the Neighborhoods issue? Maybe my expectations of the Improper are unusually high, but I was expecting this issue to feature something about all of Boston's neighborhoods...or as many as possible. Instead they dedicate four pages to a scavenger hunt done on a Bustonian through downtown and South Boston. Could they have played it any safer? At least the Best of Boston list involved some type of competition. This article feels like a report on something college freshmen do during new student orientation.

Maybe we need to bring in Bill Clinton to promote Boston's other neighborhoods. If he can do it in Harlem, why not here? Of course, we can thank the folks over at El Planeta for their recently released Lo Mejor list. Although it's derived from a particular cultural/linguistic perspective, the list is refreshing in its recommendations.

Then again, maybe it's me. If Stuff can come up with a "pictorial journey through the bloodstream of Boston" that considers this to be "Boston," maybe I need to rethink my relationship to the city (or its media).

Tea at the Shirley-Eustis House

Despite the misty and rainy weather yesterday, Discover Roxbury's first afternoon tea at the Shirley-Eustis House was fantastic. Everyone was dressed elegantly, with ladies in their hats, and Chef Nadine Nelson presented a creative array of food items that included a refreshing berry-infused drink, chocolate chip and berry muffins, blueberry bundt cake, roasted turkey breast finger sandwiches with an herb-strawberry cream cheese spread, beef satay with chipotle sauce, and berry trifle with whipped cream made fresh at the table, among other things. By the time the event ended, everyone left with wide smiles on their faces and many made it a point to say that they would return with friends if another tea was offered. Needless to say, we're thinking of offering another in the auturn. Stay tuned.

Note: 3D works for Discover Roxbury.

Yo, Improper Bostonian! Is that really all you found?

Normally I enjoy the Improper Bostonian and look forward to reading what's new and interesting around town. I also generally think they put together one of the better Best of Boston lists, better even than Boston Magazine's. This year's edition of the Improper's Boston's Best list, however, was seriously lacking in geographic and ethnic diversity. Couldn't they find anything else going on in Chinatown, JP, Dorchester, and the South End other than restaurants and bars? Each of those neighborhoods has large concentrations of Latinos and Asians, but you'd hardly know it by their choice of categories and the winners. And what of Roxbury, Mattapan, and East Boston? As far as I can tell, those neighborhoods weren't even included or considered as the panel did its survey.

I'm not begrudging the winners for their placement in the magazine. Boston has many, many exceptional restaurants, bars, arts venues, and entertainment options. But, even if I were to concede that not a single establishment in the "outer" neighborhoods was able to compete on a citywide basis, wouldn't there at least be some way to acknowledge that there are quality options in all of the neighborhoods? Given that some of the categories are neighborhood bars and neighborhood restaurants, where are the entries from East Boston, Roxbury, and Mattapan?

Just using Roxbury as an example, Merengue, Haley House, The Savant Project, and Ashur would have been some of the eateries that could've been judged for best neighborhood restaurant. Brigham Circle also has enough bars to give the reviewers something for the neighborhood bar category. Considering how overlooked Roxbury is most of the time anyway, I wouldn't be surprised if the panel found tons to consider for the best-kept secret category, too. How many of them know about the Shirley-Eustis House or the Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists?

Again, this isn't to say that the winners don't deserve their spots in the sunshine. But this collection of recommendations doesn't even begin to cover the full breadth of diversity that exists in Boston. I suspect that the choice of categories is one of the underlying reasons, as well as the need to satisfy advertisers. Still, how would this list look if it included additional categories like best soul food, Dominican food, African-American history tour, Latin music & dance venue, Asian cultural resource (the magazine only mentions food), Caribbean festival, neighborhood tour (most neighborhoods including Chinatown, JP, Roxbury, and Dorchester have them), and neighborhood arts venue?

I'm hoping that their August 12th Neighborhoods issue will be more inclusive, although I believe that I'm going to be disappointed again. I sent a letter to the editor last week and followed up with a voice message encouraging him to include Roxbury in the neighborhoods issue. Both messages referred to the Roxbury Cultural Network, which I hope he will use as a resource. Let's see if he sends someone out to do some legwork. With the Roxbury Film Festival, Discover Roxbury's high tea at the Shirley-Eustis House, and Berklee's Jazz at the Fort coming up, there are a variety of options on the table for the Improper to learn something new about one of the "outer" neighborhoods and add it to their body of knowledge.

For those of you who would also like to contact the editor to encourage him to expand the magazine's horizons, contact Andrew Rimas at andrew@improper.com or 617-859-1400. Please leave positive messages and constructive criticism that reflects the true quality and character of our communities.

Full disclosure: The Third Decade works at Discover Roxbury, a member of the Roxbury Cultural Network.

Michael Jackson

Rest in peace.

The Color Purple: Recommended

If you're in the Boston area and haven't bought tickets for The Color Purple yet, buy them soon. I had the good fortune of seeing the show last night for the opening and have the feeling that any remaining tickets will be snatched up soon.

Despite the heavy storyline, the musical is full of life, light, and humor; I didn't expect to laugh and be moved as much as I was. The entire cast was great and presented solid singing, dancing, and acting, although the woman who plays Sophie stole the show. A good deal of the crowd quoted her line "hell no" during intermission and on the way out of the theater. She also received some of the loudest applause at the curtain call. Celie, of course, was good, too. The actress convincingly played Celie from childhood to middle age, and through all phases of innocence, struggle, and rediscovery. Overall, though, the whole cast was fantastic.

So, go see The Color Purple. You won't be disappointed.

the opposite of guerrilla

The gay high holidays (a.k.a. Pride Week) are now upon us. Last Friday, some friends and I went out to the Guerrilla Queer Bar at Felt to check it out. None of us had been to one before, but based on the name and the event's reputation, we thought it would be an interesting experience. The basic premise is that the organizers choose a bar at the last minute (without telling the bar), tell a whole bunch of gay people and their friends to show up, and then the regular and new clientele mix and get to know each other. Or something like that.

So we went with a feeling of "adventure." When we arrived, however, it was anything but "guerrilla." The club prepared a special cover charge for that night and, after walking around for a while, I saw that the mens and womens bathrooms had been redesignated as "gender neutral." There was also little obvious sign that the usual non-gay crowd was there. Eventually a patron who had gone to a half dozen other similar events explained that the clubs are now given a heads-up before the events so that they can have enough staff on hand to serve the influx of a few hundred people. Suddenly it all made sense. Still, you'd think the organizers would make that clear to participants. I'm not saying that the night wasn't fun, but it was the opposite of guerrilla.