This Just In

Laurels for a Boston media vet

ADAM REILLY — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 21:29:25 GMT

Breaking down barriers
Congrats to Boston University journalism professor Caryl Rivers, who’ll receive the Society of Professional Journalists’ Helen Thomas Award for Lifetime Achievement.

The art of being homeless

IAN SANDS — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 21:28:05 GMT

Street photography
Jake Anderson was a high-school sophomore from Lexington, walking down a Boston street, when a man rattling change in a cup asked for help.

A legal setback for Charlie

HARVEY SILVERGLATE — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 20:21:55 GMT

Freedom Watch
Free speech has won in the struggle between the MBTA and three MIT undergrads who claim to have uncovered flaws in the T’s electronic fare-collection system.

Free speech has won in the struggle between the MBTA and three MIT undergrads who claim to have uncovered flaws in the T’s electronic fare-collection system. At a follow-up hearing on Tuesday, Federal District Judge George O’Toole, who earlier had continued an emergency 10-day temporary restraining order prohibiting the students from disclosing their findings, reversed course and denied the MBTA’s request for a preliminary injunction.

Tuesday’s hearing was Round Three in the T’s legal struggle to silence the students.

A quick recap: on August 9, Judge Douglas Woodlock issued a temporary restraining order, one day before Zack Anderson, R.J. Ryan, and Alessandro Chiesa were scheduled to deliver their insights on re-programming Charlie Cards (thus implying free rides — at least for select geeks) to the DEFCON hackers’ convention in Las Vegas. O’Toole continued the order at an interim hearing, held August 14, but promised to resolve the question on August 19, after further study. At that most recent hearing, O’Toole recognized the MBTA’s flawed arguments and refused the injunction.

How, until Tuesday, it was deemed lawful to prohibit speech when the only thing at stake was the MBTA’s possible loss of revenue, has left First Amendment advocates scratching their heads. The Supreme Court ruled in 1931 that speech could be enjoined in advance of its being spoken or published only in the “exceptional cases” where, if the speech were allowed, there would be irreparable, dire consequences. The example given was the so-called troop-ship scenario, where “a government might prevent actual obstruction of its recruiting service or the publication of the sailing dates of transports or the number and location of troops” in time of war.

Over the years, other high-court decisions echoed this high standard for “prior restraint of speech.” In 1969, the court ruled that a speech advocating violence could not be prohibited in advance unless it involved “advocacy [that] is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.” (That case involved a KKK rally where speakers suggested violence against blacks and Jews.) And in 1971, there was the mother of all subsequent-prior-restraint decisions: the Supreme Court allowed the New York Times and the Washington Post to publish the Pentagon Papers, a leaked classified report detailing US involvement in the Vietnam War, despite government claims that national security would be irrevocably compromised. Publication even of those controversial documents was not deemed to fit the “troop-ship exception” (though post-publication criminal prosecution was left open).

Terror 'toonist

CLIF GARBODEN — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 20:29:00 GMT

Dept. of gallows humor
Earlier this month, syndicated cartoonist Matt Bors found a new fan in none other than Salim Hamdan, the man tried and convicted for once having been Osama Bin Laden’s driver.

Club-to-theater update

JIM SULLIVAN — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 17:20:19 GMT

Venue shifts
“If you take the biggest 100 names in comedy, you’ll see 90 of them here in the next couple of years.”

Funny fundraiser

JONATHAN SEITZ — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 17:11:38 GMT

Hip cash for Kansas rep
The term “Internet famous” brings a few things to mind.

THIS IS THE INTERNET Facing steep odds against an entrenched incumbent, Kansas state
representative candidate Sean Tevis took to the Web and raised nearly $100,000 through a
comic strip mashing “xkcd” and 300.

The term “Internet famous” brings a few things to mind: nerdy guys caught doing nerdy things, vitriol-fueled bloggers typing away in their basements, Tila Tequila — in other words, people who are more infamous than famous, and usually pretty broke.

If he does nothing else this summer, Sean Tevis should change that stereotype. The 39-year-old information architect from Olathe, Kansas, became an Internet celebrity this July when he put up a comic strip soliciting donations for his state-rep campaign. Within two weeks, he had raised close to $100,000.

What kind of comic could inspire such widespread generosity? Well, it’s done in the style of the popular Web strip “xkcd,” features a verbal Rick Roll (check Wikipedia if you’re not in the loop), and contains a lot of references to the movie 300. (See for yourself at seantevis.com/kansas/3000/running-for-office-xkcd-style.)

Call it Revenge of the Nerds for a new age.

Tevis, a first-time Democratic candidate, was just trying to raise $26,000 to run a competitive campaign against Sunflower State incumbent Arlen Siegfreid. He figured that he could probably find 3000 people who agreed with him that would be willing to donate $8.34, but he reached that goal within two days. In fact, as of his July 28 campaign contribution filings — the most recent figures available — Tevis had collected the relatively astronomical sum of $96,512.76, to fight an opponent who has raised roughly a sixth of that amount.

According to his filings, $70,000 of his donations were less than $50, but plenty gave more than that. Most of the biggest spenders appeared to be, like Tevis, employed in the technology sector, including a couple of them here in Massachusetts.

“It wasn’t so much his positions . . . but more of the fact that he was a computer geek who decided to get up and actually inflict some change in his surroundings,” wrote John Resig, a computer programmer from Somerville, in an e-mail. He found out about Tevis through the news-aggregating Web site reddit.com, and donated $120.88 to the campaign.

Tevis, who was not available to comment for this article, has been pushing a progressive agenda, calling for reform of the schools in Kansas — perhaps saying goodbye to the Flying Spaghetti Monster — and bringing more transparency to the government. Even with a war chest like his, fighting against an entrenched incumbent is never easy, and Tevis faces an uphill battle. Still, his fans are hopeful.

McCain has a double standard on Viagra and birth control

MARY ANN SORRENTINO — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 20:32:07 GMT

Sexual politics
McCain backed legislation allowing Medicaid to cover Viagra for men, while forbidding the federal health-insurance program for the poor from covering birth control pills for women.

Eight is enough

MIKE MILIARD — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 19:54:05 GMT

Olympians to watch
Sometimes we’d rather root for the unknowns, the underdogs, and the uniques than the professional jerks who are only competing to sweeten their endorsement deals.

The 2004 United States Olympic basketball team featured such high-priced NBA pros as Tim Duncan and Allen Iverson — but barely limped to a bronze medal by beating Lithuania. The vaunted ’08 squad, meanwhile — featuring Kobe Bryant (who couldn’t play in ’04 thanks to his since-dismissed rape trial) and LeBron James — looks like it might be poised to suffer a similar indignity: they recently only eked a win against an Australian team that had its best guy resting on the bench.

Beijing 2008: Special issue: China, Tibet, and the Olympics

Then there’s the Jamaican bobsled team, who, in the 1988 Calgary Winter Games, didn't even finish a run to officially qualify — the only team out of 26 nations to DQ. They became the darlings of the Games, and their story was made into a Disney flick starring John Candy. (Er, you win some, you lose some.)

Point being, sometimes we’d rather root for the unknowns, the underdogs, and the uniques than the professional jerks who are only competing to sweeten their endorsement deals. Here, then, in honor of China’s love for the auspicious number eight (the Beijing games are to kick off this Friday, August 8, 2008, at 8:08:08 pm), are eight athletes from around the world you may or may not have heard of.

MA LIN, CHINA, TABLE TENNIS
“Boring, dry, and extremely effective,” Ma’s official bio describes his style of play. Uh, whatever happened to “Swifter, Higher, Stronger?” No matter. Ma, who joined the Chinese national team 14 years ago (at age 14), is a ruthless competitor. He “isn’t trying to please a crowd,” he’s just gunning for a win. We still think we could beat him at beer pong after a few keg cups of Milwaukee’s Best.

LUMINIŢA DINU, ROMANIA, HANDBALL
Dinu, whose name means “little light,” is a blindingly popular figure in Romanian handball. Indeed, she’s considered the greatest goalkeeper in that country’s history. But don’t take our word for it — consider the following news account: “Două dintre componentele de bază ale echipei naţionale de handbal feminin a României, portarul Luminiţa Huţupan Dinu şi pivotul Ionela Gâlcă Stanca, nu au fost convocate în lotul tricolorelor pentru returul cu Islanda, din barajul de calificare la Campionatul European 2008.” (We’re assuming you speak Romanian.)

For the dogs

MEGAN V. BELL — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 18:29:08 GMT

Greyhounds to have their day
In June, seven greyhounds suffered broken legs within a six-day period at Massachusetts’s two racetracks.

Interview: WFNX's Sandbox Morning Show talks to Brian Adams of the MSPCA.

In June, seven greyhounds suffered broken legs within a six-day period at Massachusetts’s two racetracks — the Wonderland Greyhound Park in Revere and Raynham Park in Raynham — bringing the total number of greyhound injuries at the two parks to 832 dogs since 2002. On Election Day, voters will get the chance to stop this disturbing trend by banning greyhound racing in Massachusetts. The bill — the Greyhound Protection Act, or Question 3 on the November ballot — is sponsored by the Humane Society of the United States, the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (MSPCA), and greyhound-protection group GREY2K USA.

Broken legs account for 80 percent of dogs’ injuries while racing; dislocation, head injury, cardiac arrest, paralysis, and seizure during racing have also occurred within the past six years at Wonderland and Raynham. Hundreds of dogs are needed to maintain full racing cards at year-round tracks, as each dog only runs a handful of times any given month. But while the dogs might not be racing all the time, their free time is hardly relaxing. The greyhounds are kept in kennels for about 20 hours a day, with barely enough room to stand and turn around. They are fed 4D-grade meat, deemed unfit for humans. If you’re thinking it’s the same type of meat found in some dog foods, you’d be right, but this meat is served raw, leading to greater risk of pathogens such as salmonella. In spite of New England weather, Raynham’s track remains open all winter; Wonderland has operated a half-year seasonal schedule since 2005, but both tracks race dogs in all temperatures and weather conditions.

Wonderland and Raynham do offer greyhound-adoption programs, but the MSPCA’s Brian Adams warns that, though the dogs may manage to find a good home, previous psychological damage can make proper care difficult. “Plenty are timid or aggressive due to their past,” says Adams. “You may not be aware of the greyhound breaking its leg, but the damage has been done.”

Fans of the sport argue that eliminating greyhound racing will eliminate jobs, which is why the proposed ban will phase out racing over the course of a year instead of calling for its immediate halt (under the plan, all racing in the state would be prohibited starting January 1, 2010). And the Committee to Protect Dogs (CPD) has vowed that, if the bill passes, they will assist workers with relocation as well as help to relocate the dogs.

Phone free or die!

SCOTT LIEBER — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 21:04:21 GMT

McCain’s telemarketing team invades Boston
Though the upcoming presidential election may be tight, at least one thing is certain: John McCain has zero chance of winning Massachusetts.

The deadly cost of ‘honor killings’

MARY ANN SORRENTINO — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 17:57:37 GMT

Human rights
The United Nations Population Fund estimates that 5000 "honor killings" occur worldwide each year, though they are vastly underreported.

On New Year’s Day 2008, in Lewisville Texas, teenage sisters Sarah and Amina Said were shot to death in a taxi — allegedly by their Egyptian Muslim father, a taxi driver who was charged with the murders and who remains at large.

The reported motive? The girls had dated non-Muslim boys.

A month earlier, across the border in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, 16-year-old Aqsa Parvez was strangled to death by her Pakistani father, for refusing to wear the hijab or head scarf. She was also “guilty” of changing into Western clothes once she got to school.

On July 6, Sandeela Kanwal, 25, was strangled to death in Atlanta, allegedly by her father. Two months earlier, Kamwal had fled her groom in an unhappy arranged marriage and she wanted to divorce. Father and daughter had not spoken since.

These four women were victims of so-called “honor killings,” which are not sanctioned by Islam’s holy book, the Koran, but tolerated and criminally overlooked in many Muslim countries. The United Nations Population Fund estimates that 5000 such killings occur worldwide each year, though they are vastly underreported.

These crimes reflect a view in extremist Islam of women as disposable objects. They expose a frightening and repulsive subtext of Americans apparently unwilling or unable to leave barbaric practices behind in the “old country.”

While many American Muslims are working to build bridges with non-Muslim neighbors, “honor killings” feed a national distrust of Islam, still simmering since 9/11.

Though Islamic religious law does not sanction the killing of women in cases such as these, it breeds misogyny too extreme to respect logic, reason, and compassion, forbidding women to drive cars or to speak to a male stranger without severe punishment.

When primitive patriarchal dominance subjects intelligent, educated, and reasonable women to the whims of sometimes-uneducated, -unreasonable and -fanatical males, the consequences can be criminal. The women, at their peril, will rebel, and the men will react in the extreme.

Ironically, in fanatic Islamic circles, the murdered victim is disgraced as the one who brought shame to the family, while the male murderer is defended as the injured party.

A history of physical and/or sexual abuse in such cases is not uncommon. And though Mrs. Said fled to another state with her daughters, her husband’s fixation — the Dallas Morning News reported on his belief that Western culture “was corrupting the chastity of his daughters” — made murder more likely than a successful escape. Generally, mothers and siblings in these instances do not go to authorities, or file charges at any point.

Give the drummer some

MIKE MILIARD — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 17:36:51 GMT

Fundraiser for Vicente Lebron
A couple weeks ago, the Phoenix brought you the sad and disturbing tale of Vicente Lebron.

Ricochet ruling

KIM LIAO — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 18:17:42 GMT

Supreme Court makes Mass gun laws target for debate
Good news, Bostonians: you can own guns! The bad news: so can your weird neighbor.

Good news, Bostonians: you can own guns! The bad news: so can your weird neighbor. This past Thursday, the US Supreme Court affirmed an individual’s right to bear arms, independent of “a well-regulated militia” (that oh-so-finicky and much-disputed prefatory clause). According to the 5-4 majority, guns can be owned and used for “for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.”

Though the decision was roundly criticized by many liberals, several Boston-area heavyweights on both sides of the gun-ownership debate who spoke with the Phoenix found little reason to fear its effect on the state.

“I’m relieved that the court endorsed this right,” says John Rosenthal, founder of Stop Handgun Violence. “Now the NRA can’t continue to use the fear of a gun ban to elect extremist leaders. It takes the bogeyman off the table.”

At the other end of the spectrum, Jim Wallace, executive director of Gun Owners’ Action League (GOAL), speculates that this decision could affect Massachusetts’s gun laws, known to be some of the most comprehensive in the nation since the 1998 passage of the state’s Gun Control Act.

“All of our [gun] laws are under the premise that there isn’t an individual right,” says Wallace. “Now the burden of proof is with the government, to show the need for restrictions or denials [of a gun license].”

So, will the state’s current restrictions on gun licensing be challenged in light of the Supreme Court’s ruling, as many have suggested?

Unlikely, says Angus McQuilken, one-time chief of staff for former state senator Cheryl Jacques of Needham, because “none of these restrictions prohibit the ownership of guns. Massachusetts has the strongest and most effective gun laws in the country. . . . We are an example for the rest of the country of how reasonable gun laws work to reduce violence.”

“The gun ownership system in Massachusetts works fairly well,” adds Darius Arbabi, an NRA educator who teaches gun safety. “If we need to have restrictions, for the most part we have sensible ones.”

Wallace, however, takes a more militant stance, deeming the Gun Control Act “a disaster — an absolute disaster.” “As far as I’m concerned,” he says, “it’s an aberration that lawful citizens have to register their guns, when owning a gun is a right.”

According to the New England Journal of Medicine, a gun in the home “increases the risk of homicide by 40 to 170 percent and the risk of suicide by 90 to 460 percent.”

Naked in the public square

HARVEY SILVERGLATE AND JAMES TIERNEY — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 21:29:03 GMT

Freedom Watch
In the finest Puritan tradition, Middlesex District Attorney Gerald Leone is crusading to save Harvard Square from the shock and awe of the nude human form.

In the finest Puritan tradition, Middlesex District Attorney Gerald Leone is crusading to save Harvard Square from the shock and awe of the nude human form. The next act of this absurd political-theater production will return to Cambridge District Court this Friday, at considerable expense to taxpayers.

Most of the street performers in the Square are innocuous, but some can be edgy. On June 25, 2005, street performer and political activist Ria Ora danced naked in the Pit. It wasn’t gratuitous nudity; she purported to be denouncing the commercialization of Christmas on the half-year anniversary of that holiday.

But Ora’s nude dancing apparently offended an employee of the Out of Town News kiosk, who called the cops. The officers arrested Ora and persuaded the Cambridge District Court clerk to issue a complaint against her for “open and gross lewdness.”

Judge Severlin Singleton III dismissed the charges the first time around, reasoning that the lewdness law as written is “[a] blanket prohibition against public nudity” that unconstitutionally “proscribes expressive conduct protected by the First Amendment.” When the DA appealed, the Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) reversed Singleton’s decision. That appellate ruling not only prolongs the case against Ora, it makes it harder for adventurous street performers to express themselves.

According to the SJC, the lewdness law may be invoked only if two conditions co-exist: the “lewdness” (in the Ora case, nudity) is “imposed on an unsuspecting or unwilling audience,” and “the display of nudity [is] intentional, done in a manner to produce alarm or shock, and actually [produces] alarm or shock.”

Almost all street-performance art, including art that is conceivably offensive to some audience member, is by its nature “imposed on an unsuspecting or unwilling audience.” But why should we single out Ora’s performance — given the Square’s off-beat atmosphere — as being particularly alarming or shocking, and leave it unprotected under the First Amendment?

The SJC has given the DA another chance to fit the facts into a narrowed reading of the law, but successful prosecution still seems unlikely. Many forms of expression, after all, “produce alarm or shock” — including nudity in such familiar contexts as movies — but are nonetheless protected.

In one famous example, a young anti-war protester, Paul Cohen, was convicted in 1968 for wearing a jacket emblazoned with FUCK THE DRAFT inside the Los Angeles Courthouse. The US Supreme Court threw out his conviction in Cohen v. California, in part because the justices recognized that his use of “fuck,” shocking though it may be to an involuntary audience, was integral to his forceful political message. As Justice John Marshall Harlan observed in Cohen, perceptions of offense are always subjective; indeed, “one man’s vulgarity is another’s lyric.”

George Carlin

SARA FAITH ALTERMAN — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 21:08:46 GMT

1937–2008
Among scads of other, more important achievements, George Carlin deserves full credit for my comfort with and penchant for salty language.

We're number 48!

MIKE MILIARD — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 20:21:12 GMT

Mass drivers really do suck
Massholes have no business being behind the wheel.

One of these days, people will smarten up and stop funding studies that only confirm what everyone already knows. Until then, we have the new GMAC Insurance National Drivers Test, which offers irrefutable proof that Massholes have no business being behind the wheel. As if we needed any.

The numbers don’t lie. In a survey of 5524 licensed drivers from the 50 states and Washington, DC, Massachusetts motorists ranked a woeful 48th in basic driving knowledge. Perhaps the only surprise is that New Yorkers, New Jerseyites, and District of Columbians scored worse than we did.

On a written test — 20 questions lifted directly from state DMV exams — Bay Staters had an average score of 75 percent. (At least a 70 is required to pass.) Worse, more than 24 percent flunked outright.

The Northeast as a whole scored worst, on balance, with the lowest average test score (76 percent) and the highest average failure rate (nearly 20 percent). Meanwhile, those goody-two-shoes Midwesterners got the best grades, with a failure rate of just 11 percent. And, as much as I hate to say it, ladies, 20 percent of you failed, versus 13 percent of men.

There you have it. Nationwide, perhaps 33 million licensed Americans — more than 16 percent of drivers on the road — are unfit to take to the streets. And here in Boston, we’re doing our damnedest to keep those statistics up. Of course, far more endemic than the drivers who don’t know the rules of the road here are the ones who know them and choose to flout them.

Our streets are narrow; our signs either confounding or nonexistent. We interpret speed limits as mere suggestions. We see yellows lights like a bull sees a matador’s red cape. We lean on the horn mere milliseconds after lights turn green. We have no use whatsoever for turn signals. We swerve suddenly and unpredictably. We pay scant attention to lane divisions. We do not yield when merging onto the highway. We pass on the right. We drive on the shoulder. We tailgate to intimidate, and stop short to exact revenge.

From our rotaries to the infamous “Boston Left Turn,” our streets are object lessons in controlled chaos. Why? Richard Trachtman, co-author, with Ira Gershkoff, of The Boston Driver’s Handbook: Wild in the Streets (Da Capo), says it does indeed all go back to those meandering colonial cow-paths. “It starts out with the layout of the city,” he says. “Those narrow, curving streets. There’s kind of a disorganization that attaches itself to the whole thing.”

Ghost of future past

BRETT MICHEL — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 17:19:03 GMT

Keir Dullea, gone tomorrow
When film actor Keir Dullea turned up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo as the father of Angelina Jolie’s character in Robert De Niro’s The Good Shepherd , I was not only surprised to see him again onscreen, but amazed that he wasn’t dead.

Phoenix.com wins at AAN conference

CLIF GARBODEN — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 20:37:25 GMT

A line drive triple in Philly
ThePhoenix.com Web site won first place at the annual Association of Alternative Newsweeklies conference.

ReJoyce!

NEELY STEINBERG — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 17:24:19 GMT

Love in Bloom at BC
Trust Boston’s socially conscious Catholic academics to connect the dots between James Joyce’s once-banned 1922 mega-novel Ulysses and (among other things) gay marriage.

JOYCE DOES JOYCE: Arts critic Joyce Kulhawik (right) with Bloomsday actors in period costume and Celtic Sojourn’s Brian O’Donovan (left).

Trust Boston’s socially conscious Catholic academics to connect the dots between James Joyce’s once-banned 1922 mega-novel Ulysses and (among other things) gay marriage. And they’re doing it right on time. June 16 is Bloomsday, the date assigned to Joycean hero Leopold Bloom’s ramble of personal discovery.

In Dublin, the book's setting, the Joyce celebration lasts a full week (or more) and involves retracing the peripatetic salesman's 1904 route, episode by episode, landmark to landmark, with lots of stop-offs for readings, plays, lectures, souvenirs, and Guinness. The Bloomsday tradition, though, is international. On June 16, there will no doubt be people in Ulan Bator shooting off Roman candles in honor of temptress Gerty MacDowell.

Here in Boston, we’ve been celebrating the occasion for years with everything from lecture series to pub crawls. In 2007, the New Center for Arts and Culture (NCAC), an organization dedicated to exploring Jewish life and the interconnectedness of all cultures, partnered with the Office of the Provost at Boston College to address the mixed marriage theme of Ulysses with a program that focused on the relationships between Boston's Jewish and Irish communities. (Leopold Bloom was half Jewish but embraced the pope so he could embrace, and marry, the life-affirming Irish-Catholic lass Marion "Molly" Tweed.) The event was so successful that they're doing it again, this year hosted by recently pastured WBZ-TV arts-and-entertainment critic Joyce Kulhawik.

Dan Neuman, NCAC's president and executive director, sees (James) Joyce's work as a powerful springboard for exploration of important local and universal topics. The theme for 2008 is "Love Across Boundaries," which means basically mixed romantic pairings, but apparently includes same-sex unions. (Don't ask; it makes a kind of sense until you think it through.) The night's lineup will feature readings from Joyce by costumed actors and well-known Boston personalities, including WGBH-FM's Celtic Sojourn host Brian O'Donovan, Robin Young of WBUR-FM's Here and Now, and WCVB-TV's Ted Reinstein (Chronicle). The program will also feature a discussion with three prominent Boston couples whose love extends across various boundaries — one Greek-Irish, one Hindu-Jewish, and a third whose partners are gay.

Marjorie Howes, co-editor of Semicolonial Joyce, will be on hand to speak about the many aspects of love in the novel, particularly the relationship between Leopold and Molly Bloom.

Unappealing zoning

IAN SANDS — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 16:22:03 GMT

No live/work lofts for Lowell
“That’s where I want to live,” says Maxine Farkas, a painter at Western Avenue Studios (WAS), artists’ workspaces housed in two buildings — the A-Mill and the so-called main building — on an old mill complex in an industrial section of Lowell.

LIZ SMITH, who currently works on the industrial site, thinks the artists can handle the challenges.

“That’s where I want to live,” says Maxine Farkas, a painter at Western Avenue Studios (WAS), artists’ workspaces housed in two buildings — the A-Mill and the so-called main building — on an old mill complex in an industrial section of Lowell. She’s pointing toward the far end of a sea of open space interrupted only by some columns and a ladder. This is the first floor of a portion of the complex the artists are not using called the G-Mill, which Farkas says hasn’t seen a tenant in “2.5, going on 3 years.” WAS wants to fill the G-Mill with live/work lofts for 48 artists.

Unfortunately for Farkas, she won’t be moving in anytime soon. Back in January, the Lowell Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA) denied WAS a special permit for the lofts. (An updated proposal was filed this past month and is on its way to the Lowell Planning Board for a June 16 hearing; the ZBA would still need to approve a special permit for the project to move forward.) The rationale for that decision largely had to do with conflicts the board presumed would arise over traffic and noise between the would-be resident artists and the industrial/commercial tenants located in the surrounding area. One of the board members also mentioned that the area was too dirty, smelly, and noisy for creating art.

Naturally, those artists who work from the complex —there are currently 160 in the A-Mill and the main building — took offense.

“We’re already here living with this. I don’t know if they’ve ever visited,” says Liz Smith, a crafter of handmades selling under the name “Made in Lowell”. Smith, who has graciously agreed to be my tour guide for the afternoon, needles felts as she talks in her studio on the third floor of the A-Mill. “I understand the challenges of living in an area like this, but I think people as intrepid and open-minded as artists can handle it.”

To Smith’s left are her wares — a basket of handmade beads, gorgeous decorative eggs with intricate patterns, felt and rope bracelets. I notice a few paintings hanging on a wall. She tells me they’re not for sale. “That’s the art I do for myself.”