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Creating and ending a show space on your own terms / by Liz Pelly
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Last weekend, I moved out of Boston, but more significantly, I moved out of Dreamhaus, a third-floor apartment in Allston where I’d been throwing living room shows and hosting meetings, workshops, and other sorts of happenings with my roommates and friends for two years. On my most recent count, our three-bedroom place was home to twelve different roommates, not including the countless traveling bands, tired show attendees, and curious wanderers who often fell
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asleep here. Over the course of two years, our tiny home became a makeshift meeting place for various collectives and classes. Last summer, Permanent Wave Boston held discussions on intersectionality & DIY on the living room floor. In the winter, Chris Lee used the kitchen table to teach a Corvid College course on “theories of astrology.” Faye and I sat at that table on April 30th until midnight, when we hit “publish” on the first issue of The Media. The place was
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essentially a hostel for touring bands; I made a lot of new friends at my kitchen table between the hours of 3AM and 10AM. But most importantly, our living room was frequently used as a venue where our roommates and friends could book shows on our own terms, free of the age restrictions and expensive room costs of traditional venues, where no one was turned away for lack of funds. We probably hosted about 50 shows over two years, and the experience was mind-bending. . . .
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MEAN CREEK, "YOUNG AND WILD"
Making friends is hard, saying goodbye is even harder / by Casey Herz
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Leaving is hard
We’ve had a lot of questions thrown our way lately. Is the site a lot of work? Are donations still coming in? Are you making a print version? You look tired, are you sick? Mostly, people want to know what The Media is going to be like now that we’re not in Boston anymore.
We left Boston last weekend and it was weird and confusing and we both cried a lot in public places but it was the right move for us. We’d been in Boston for five or six years each, and while we will forever love it there, it is time for new adventures. Faye is back in DC at the moment, and moving to L.A. next month. Liz is traveling this fall (hi Europe) but will eventually land in New York.
When we launched this site, we were to an extent trying to fill the void left by the demise of The Phoenix. We knew Boston needed to have more alternative and progressive voices. But as support and excitement has poured in from all over the country (all over the world, really), it’s been pretty obvious that more publications like The Media are desired by readers, writers, artists, radicals, feminists everywhere. With that, our contributors have started coming from all over the place. Without even really trying, The Media has grown out of the confines of Boston. And without even really trying, we did too.
Going forward, The Media intends to stay connected with its Boston roots, to stay engaged with our readers and writers there, but will shift to take on a more decentralized scope. As you may have noticed, our monthly Boston calendar is gone; instead, we will now have a monthly calendar curated and designed by guest contributors from different cities, serving as event guides as well as alternative travel guides. If you want to share what’s rad about your town with The Media through a monthly hand-made calendar, email us!
Even though we might be removed from one specific geographical community, it’s important to us to stay tuned to art, activism, and social issues at a local, grassroots level. It’s an interesting prospect for us: can the spirit of an alternative weekly newspaper be applied to a decentralized publication? We really hope so.
While every issue of The Media will always be free and accessible to all online, we’re working on ways to continue making the site more sustainable. We are still 100% committed to remaining advertisement free. This fall we’ll be launching an online store to sell pins, patches, postcards, and t-shirts – all of the proceeds . . .
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WEEKLIES
For Moving On
I'm tired of hearing "Baby, I'ma Do Right".
by Hanna Negami
Full House life lessons.
by Pandora Christ
Your aging beauty is compensating wildly for life's lies and disappointments.
by Sally Hedberg
Minneapolis is a neat city.
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