In honor of the current hit film in the “Boston Working Class Ennui” genre going to its streaming service, Amazon just announced they are giving everyone in the eponymous town free Amazon Prime. That’s swell of them, eh?
Whatever. Also: fuck you Amazon.
You see, if you don’t know, the film is not about Manchester-by-the-Sea. MBTS or just “Manchester” as we used to call it before they changed their name as not to be confused with the working-class New Hampshire city of the same name. The film is about Gloucester. My town. It was shot in Gloucester, the vibe is Gloucester and all the issues depicted are straight-up Gloucester.
“I’m sorry sir but town ordinances plainly state lobster traps are only to be used as decorative coffee table bases and must be made of wood.”
in Manchester, our neighbor, you’re going to find less of the “picking fights with cops” sort of thing there and more of the, “people suing each other because someone’s gardener cut the branch of an historic apple tree that was leaning over into their yard”- type conflicts. It’s a wealthy town. Wealthy-as-balls, actually, 8th highest income in one of the richest states in the country.
But, you know, they get free Amazon Prime because of the name. Amazon- who are automating warehouses and killing local retail, is giving free shit to rich people who didn’t even ask for it.
That’s your late-stage capitalism, right there.
I’m not sure why this bothers me so much, but it fucking does. Here in Gloucester this week an abandoned fish pier collapsed into the harbor, which tells you everything you need to know about our core industry in the post-cod era. We’re burying a beloved veteran/cop who left behind four kids. We’re struggling to keep fire stations open, fund schools, care for the elderly and manage our opiate addiction problem. We do this with a lot of heart, tears, fighting, too much pride and never enough money.
But we do it. We do it all. We make it work.
We do it to make sure fewer people end up like the characters depicted in fucking Manchester-by-the-Sea, yet another film made so some studio can make yet another buck on the whole “Bawston” thing, with our constrained social hierarchy and our comical accents. What do you suppose, there are another 30 films in the can depicting a young, troubled, too-smart-for-his-own-good Bay State resident for whom the grip of his past is choking off his ability to live and love in the present? Maybe 40?
Why is it liberals are losing the working class again? I forget.
You know what, never mind. You can keep Prime, Amazon. And Casey Affleck’s SNL “vanilla nut tap” jokes and all that “Uncle Sullying” we locals do. Go give hot stone massages in the bistros to Man-BTSers or whatever the fuck you want to do. I’m glad for the jobs the film industry here provides, I’m thankful that unlike a lot of towns hit hard by the realities of the 21st century, we’ve got economic opportunities due to our proximity to Boston/Cambridge others don’t. I’m even glad for the town of Manchester-by-the-Sea which contains many fine people and provides tons of work for Gloucester contractors adding yoga rooms and wine cellars to houses built by puritans in the 17th century.
But once, for the love of “Gawd”, can you fuckers just go make a movie about Connecticut?
Today, with the passing of time we thought we could finally get the full story of the infamous Bowling Green Massacre documented properly for the public, fresh off Kellyanne Conway’s assertion that the real media glossed over this tragic event. Well, your Gloucester Clam isn’t just any media source – we’re renegades out to get to the truth behind the Bowling Green Massacre. We contacted the principals and arranged interviews with as many of the people involved as possible. Most agreed to participate. The following is a transcript of the conversations we had.
Dustin Henderson, Endicott commuter student: “So me and Chad (Balazzo, also a student) came home after we got wings at the Dog [The Dogbar restaurant] and it was just total chaos.”
Chad: “Duuuuude.”
Dustin: “There were, like, 20 people in our apartment because fackin Tim (Kelly, their third roommate) had scored some really amazing bud. And he was having a party and he hadn’t even texted us to tell us. Not cool!”
Tim: “Dude, I figured they’d get back soon enough, it was great weed but I knew they really wanted to go out for wings.”
Dustin: “”So I went into my room because it was really too loud with all the people in the living room. I was watching TV and Aqua Teen was going to come on next, and it was one of the MC Pee Pants episodes, so I wanted to be ready for it. I grabbed the bowl and opened the ceramic turtle I keep on top of my dresser, and… NOTHING.”
Chad: “Duuuuuude.”
Dustin: “I totally had weed in there. Fuck.”
Cody (Peters, a “acquaintance” of Tim Kelly): “So I was wandering around the apartment and the door was open, right? I saw this badass ceramic turtle, and picked it up to give it a look – it had some of the weed in it! So since the bowl was being passed around the other side of the room and never got to me hardly, I rolled one out for my side. I mean, sure nobody was sitting there but me so I smoked it solo, but shit happens, right?”
Dustin: “That was really good bud from Kentucky, too, and they just massacred it. How the fuck am I gonna score more of that?
At this point in the evening, Mo (Mohammed) Nadar (American-born), a friend of Dustin’s from Montserrat College of Art arrived with the plan of picking up Dustin and going to the Rhumbline.
Mo: “I don’t know, the Rhumbline is so, like, authentic, you know? No airs and shit? Not like the way Cabot Street in Beverly has gotten all pretentious. So I figured they were keeping things real over the bridge and I’d grab Dustin because he, like, lives right down the street from the Rhumb. And he usually has a stash in that turtle of his.”
Dustin: “Mo’s a solid dude, but he never has his own weed. Says it’s a religious thing. I think he’s, like, Iraqian?”
By this time the lack of weed was coming to a head. Lacking any more to smoke, attention turned quickly to the raging munchies that the partygoers all had.
Aimee (Grant), a survivor: “I saw someone with some hummus.”
She had assumed that Mo’s vaguely Middle Eastern appearance meant he had brought food with him.
Tim: “Aimee looked at Dustin’s friend Mo and said “Guys, he’s got hummus – he’s like, totally Arab!”
With this pronouncement, several partygoers surged towards the entrance where Mo was. In the melee, an Xbox was trampled and killed.
Xbox (this was recorded from Dustin’s Xbox Live account): “SYSTEM FAULT”
Already in motion, when the crowd realized that there was no hummus:
Aimee: “So I was wrong, he didn’t have hummus. My bad?”
Someone made the decision to go down the street for more food. People were trampled along with the Xbox.
Savannah Lolapalooza, Rockport High senior: : “By then the dust was setltling. Dustin had a thousand yard stare and was clearly covered in some kind of orange powder, which we later realized was hot Fritos.”
artist’s reenactment
Kyle (Marsh): “So it was like, loud, but it could have just been a truck backing up? You know? Like one of those beepers they have when they back up. But like a really, really loud one. So you couldn’t even hear anything else. And my friend Kendon is like, ‘Dude, get out of the way’ and I’m like, ‘What?’ and he’s like, “That truck is backing up and you need to move,” so I like moved but it was not in, you know, like the right direction because the truck was going to like, curve when it backed up because there was this post it had to get around and Kendon is still like, “Dude, get OUT of the way,” but now I’m like listening to the beeping and the guy is yelling at me, but I don’t think he’s yelling in English. Maybe it’s, like Mexican or, I don’t know, maybe Korean or something. Anyway, I’m standing there…”
(at this point in the interview Mr. Marsh was distracted by a nip bottle on the ground and went to stare at it for the next half-hour)
Dustin: “So with all the food gone and no more green to be had, we said ‘fuck it’, got in the car, and went back up to Cape Ann Lanes to go bowling.”
Chad: “Dude kicked my ass. It was a massacre.”
We asked for comment from Frederick Douglass, but he’d died more than a century before.
WASHINGTON, DC—On Sunday President Donald Trump signaled his desire to continue flouting the world’s lists, whether they be secular or sacred, hallowed or utterly trivial.
Installed in the White House for just over a week, the Trump administration has already managed to breach most of the Bill of Rights.
“With his executive order on immigration, the President finished laying waste to the First Amendment,” said White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer. “That’s not to say it was easy.”
According to Spicer, President Trump had planned on simply lumping “a bunch of terroristy countries” into his 90-day ban. However, the White House legal team noted that more explicit religious discrimination might be required to, as Spicer put it, “take a truly hot dump on the Establishment Clause.”
“So we decided to add that part about Syrian Christian refugees being cool,” said Jared Kushner, the President’s son-in-law and senior advisor.
Steve Bannon, Senior Counselor to the President, had begun the White House’s assault on the First Amendment earlier in the week. On Wednesday Bannon told a New York Times reporter that “the media should keep its mouth shut,” presumably after the newspaper had printed his words alongside the one photo that didn’t make him look like every town’s Peeping Tom.
[Not this photo, obviously]
“Tell you what,” said Bannon, who was appointed to the National Security Council on Saturday. “Compared to the First, the Eighth Amendment was a snap.”
“As a candidate, Trump was already on the record supporting torture,” Bannon explained. “He just needed to casually espouse the government’s use of cruel and unusual punishment while in office.”
Bannon was referring to Trump’s joint press conference with U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May on Friday, when he offered this word salad-cum-policy announcement: “I happen to feel that [torture] does work, I’ve been open about that for a long period of time, but I am going with our leaders and we are going to win with or without.”
According to Kushner, after signing the immigration order, President Trump found himself casting about for additional freedoms to trample.
“Dad got a little carried away,” Kushner said. “He was asking, ‘What’s #2 about again?’ At that point, Wayne popped in from his executive lounge in the Roosevelt Room.” Kushner seemed to be referring to Wayne LaPierre, President of the National Rifle Association.
Bannon elaborated: “Ol’ Wayne shouldered the Remington he was cleaning.”
“Scared the piss out of Pops for a second,” Kushner said. “But we all had a good laugh about it when he realized his mistake.”
It was at this point that Bannon suggested other noteworthy legal frameworks. “Nobody’s really paid attention to the Code of Hammurabi for millennia,” he said. “Seemed like low hanging fruit.”
“It’s not our style to go soft on the whole ‘eye for an eye’ thing,” Spicer said.
So, according to Bannon, President Trump instead opted to violate Hammurabi’s 127th Law, which governs the treatment of faithless wives. Both Bannon and Kushner declined to elaborate.
[Had the Babylonians been serious, they would have carved it into 24K gold]
“The Ten Commandments were next,” Kushner said. “But Dad got bored after ticking off the one about graven images.”
“Naturally, a nude bust of Vladimir,” said Spicer, rolling his eyes.
“If I recall, it was Ivanka who thought of the Buzzfeed lists,” Kushner said.
“Stroke of genius—the president hates those guys,” Bannon said, alluding to the website’s publication of unverified reports describing lewd acts in Russian hotels.
“We just started scrolling through odd-numbered lists,” Kushner said. “You probably saw Dad’s tweet repudiating ‘17 Photos That Prove Cats Are Just Adorable Assholes.’”
Spicer shook his head. “They’re even more misleading than the Park Service’s shots of the Inauguration.”
[Perhaps thinking the right to assemble had already been revoked]
Bannon described a break the group took to receive a phone call from Kim Jong-Un, the Supreme Leader of North Korea. “He wanted to congratulate President Trump on his progress,” said Bannon, adding that Chairman Kim jokingly described the rapid dismantling of American freedoms as “beginner’s luck.”
“He was particularly impressed by the detention of immigrants with valid Green Cards at U.S. airports,” said Bannon. “Apparently, it took Kim more than a month to suspend habeas corpus.”
Kim ended the call by exhorting President Trump to “pace himself.”
“Between the swift erosion of a great democracy and Dad’s even more outrageous hairdo, it’s understandable that Kim’s jealous,” said Kushner. “There’s a new guy in town.”
[President Trump exhibiting his complete indifference to America’s founding list]
It’s 4am in a place I don’t understand. I assume you are as well. It’s raw here, and as someone who’s endured a fair share of tragedy in my life, the only thing I’m sure of at this point is this awful feeling won’t last. Humans are resilient as fuck, especially when pressed, and in the end all of us will scar over, readjust and move on.
So, right now, at our most raw and unguarded, let’s make good use of this.
We’re in undiscovered country. I honestly believe even Trump didn’t know this would happen. In some weird way, he’s stuck here with the rest of us, like some crazy Stockholm situation where the hostage takers and the hostages find common ground in their insane shared reality.
What matters, the only thing that matters from this point on, is character.
Ask yourself: Are you a good person? Am I? Honestly, I can say, “Not as good as I want to be.” And, more to the point, “Not as good as I’m going to need to be.” I’m going to have to get better. So are we all. Times like these are going to call on us all to sacrifice, to put aside pettiness and quick-hit satisfaction. It’s going to be a long four years. And even beyond, who knows? Certainly the damage will linger for generations, the election alone was destructive enough.
Here’s what I know we’re going to need to do:
Defend democracy Part of that will be accepting this outcome. People voted. This is what they wanted. It’s a democracy. If we ever want this undone, we need to accept it was a fair result.
Protect the vulnerable If you’re like me you probably assumed the progress of time meant incrementally more rights and protections for everyone. Nope- there are leaps backward. We’re going to need to circle around those whom this decision directly threatens.
Build bridges And in some cases, re-build. There is no room for grudges, accusations or recriminations. Bubbles need to go. Again, what matter is character, not team. Good people of any persuasion are not going to let folks get hurt unless they themselves feel threatened. Find those good people. Remind them they are good.
Old guard, step aside The system is not working, it has catastrophically failed. Time to start handing stuff over to the next generation.
Hold accountable From here on, everyone is on notice. The question from 11/9/2016 going forward will be: Which direction did you take? Those that choose the wrong path will bear that mark for the rest of their lives.
Will you indulge me in one favor before we get out there and try and put this thing back together?
From here on out I believe we have to be careful about what we put in our brains. I feel like we’ve been feeding ourselves on a steady diet of anti-heroes, “gritty re-boots” and dark takes for years now, from The Sopranos to The Wire, to Breaking Bad to increasingly bleak Batman movies taking place in a universe where it’s apparently always nighttime and raining. We don’t need that shit anymore- start feeding yourself some optimism. Watch some Star Trek, some LOTR, read some Dickens. Re-read the Harry Potter series. Start retraining your consciousness that the good guys win after they’ve been tested. That’s the script you’re going to be reading from for the next few years. Get a handle on it.
“It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end… because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing… this shadow. Even darkness must pass.”
Here at the Gloucester Clam, we’re voting YES on Question 4. It’s a no-brainer to us, even if we’re not ourselves users (or are we? who knows). The pros by far and away outweigh the cons, and it means an end to irrational fear over a drug that is overall safe for adults to use, and has a ton of benefits. So to clam-dig ourselves further into why we’re GUNG HO FOR WEED YO, here’s some good reasons why.
One of the main pro-legalization talking points revolves around the benefits of bringing the marijuana industry itself – the entire supply chain- above-board. Bringing it from the streets to downtown businesses by voting yes on four accomplishes several things that aren’t in place with the current quasi-legal status of pot in Massachusetts.
we feel you otto
First, the industrialization makes it safer. Some of the opinion pieces on Question 4 have denigrated it as too focused on making the industry attractive to big business interests. While the question isn’t worded perfectly and we’d all like to see local shops entering the market instead of conglomerates, making pot an industry isn’t a bad thing on the whole – and we can make further changes to the laws down the line. The alcohol industry, for instance, is closely regulated, and the ABV is noted on your can of good ol’ Amuricabeer. You know what you’re getting, how strong it is, and that’s not only safe for you (or some dumb teenager drinking Alize in back of 7/11), but for the people around you. Driving cars. Because you’re not drinking moonshine anymore, you’re expecting the company selling you a product to sell you a safe one. It’s not a gamble.
It’s not like you can overdose and die of too much weed, but the difference between Indica and Sativa mean that if you’re just going to Joe Weedguy who lives in his mom’s basement selling ditch weed, you don’t know what you’re getting and you could either fall asleep or spend the whole day polishing your N64 cartridges. You’re taking the word of someone who posts memes on Facebook about how the Clintons are totally responsible for killing like twelve people.
When it’s legal, and you follow the source from your local shop to the distributor, there’s a chain of responsibility there. Correct labeling, intended dosage – these are important for all humans. It’s incredibly rare, but pot you get off the street can also be laced with uncool stuff. Again, incredibly rare. But pot smokers deserve better than this chance. They’re our friends, neighbors, kids, parents, and doctors.
Secondly, legalization and regulation also means that gang involvement and criminal activity surrounding weed dealing will lessen greatly. Of course, it won’t be extinct. I’m not going to blow pot smoke up your ass. But take this article from the Independent Journal Review that reports a 10% DECREASE in the statewide violent crime rate, and 13% drop in the murder rate. A study in the journal Psychology and Addictive Behaviors found that couples who smoked were less likely to engage in domestic violence. And in Colorado, the estimated legal vs illegal pot sales is, astonishingly, 90% to 10%. Legalizing it absolutely worked to destabilize the underground drug market. Full goddamn stop.
The important thing to realize is that money that used to go to violent drug dealing rings now is going elsewhere. Even if most of the Joe Weedguys in our community are actually decent people, sometimes with regular families and lives, the supply chain in many cases is traced back to violent drug cartels, which are estimated to lose billions by the WA and CO legalization.
So now big swaths of cartel money goes to taxes – the third huge benefit of legalization. Taxing marijuana, as Colorado has done, has been successful in bringing in new tax revenue that would have otherwise been borne by all taxpayers. In 2015, the industry (medical and recreational) brought in nearly $1 billion (FRIGGIN BILLION), and $135 million was collected in taxes – with $35 million of that total earmarked for school construction projects. In Washington State, lawmakers had estimated about $36 million would be raised from taxing weed in 2014, the first year that licensed shops opened up. It turns out they underestimated. They brought in $70 million.
Fourth – legalization brings jobs. Maybe Joe Weedguy will be out of a job (let’s face it, most weedguys I know of actually work real jobs anyway), but new, actually tax-paying, jobs will be created. Like, in the case of Colorado, 18,000 IN ONE YEAR. ONE YEAR.
So what’s the downside? Are the fears rational?
I’ve heard some folks, parents especially, voice their reasons for their “no” vote. I understand those reasons, but I don’t agree. Some are misinformed or don’t understand the nuance of the issue, others are just naive.
“I don’t want my kids to have access to it or think it’s normal.” Your kids already have access to it. Don’t delude yourself on that front. Every kid in every town in America will have access to pot in their high school years. This study shows that 80% of 12th graders, as well as 40% of 8th graders, reported marijuana is easily available to them. Sorry to poke holes in this logic, but facts are facts, whether we want to acknowledge them or not. Funny, these same parents have no problem whatsoever with beer ads during football games. Huh.
your kid already, basically
And as far as thinking its normal? Cat’s out of the bag on that as well. It’s not that legalizing weed for consenting, informed adults is what has normalized it – it’s that the inroads into medical marijuana helping patients (it stops constant seizures in kids in some cases), a huge policy shift across multiple states, and media actually reporting on how gee golly it doesn’t kill anyone after all that has normalized it. Sorry, parents. When I was a teenager it was pretty normal and we quickly realized DARE had overblown (pun intended) the dangers of pot, and it was a pretty big letdown.
the worst side effect of weed usage is making cringeworthy facebook posts.
And In the case of Colorado, where marijuana has been legal since 2009, legalizing it not only didn’t lead to the hand-wringing “let’s think about the children who will start smoking now that it’s legal and easy to get,” the opposite happened.
“In 2015, 21 percent of Colorado youths had used marijuana in the past 30 days. That rate is slightly lower than the national average and down slightly from the 25 percent who used marijuana in 2009, before legalization. The survey was based on a random sample of 17,000 middle and high school students in Colorado.”
17,000 is a pretty big sample size, and that matters. Legalization opponents had been harping on a Federal survey that showed use by teenagers had remained flat, and that Colorado’s teen usage was a bit above the national average. But that survey only involved 400 teens, and wasn’t nearly as accurate as the larger-scale study.
The reduction is good to hear. Pot isn’t safe for teenagers long-term (which is why the legal age to procure and smoke would be 21), and it was a reasonable argument that legalization might lead to more teenagers with access to pot and therefore, more smoking. But, it’s looking more and more like that isn’t happening, at all, in any state where it’s currently legal. A study in the medical journal Lancet shows similar findings. And again, pot isn’t safe for teenagers, but it won’t kill them, like underage drinking can. In a heartbeat, I’d tell my kids that smoking pot is a much better alternative to drinking, and if they’re at a party where they feel pressured to try one or the other, I’d rather they smoke so they don’t end up dead of alcohol poisoning.
The anti-legalization folks recently put out this amazingly bad reefer-madness style ad, complete with absolutely false assertions (pot that looks like fucking candy will not be sold in windowsills you dumpsters, and it will still be illegal to smoke on the street, for god’s sakes you bags of ham). This is how ridiculous they look trying to scare the bejebus out of the middle-aged suburban mom voting bloc, but it works.
There are other, non “but my children” reasons against legalization, as well. Some people think there will be increased instances of driving while high, and this is absolutely something to consider. But, again, this is illegal already. Drunk driving is a much more deadly occurrence. Driving while high isn’t as unsafe as drunk driving, but still, no one’s saying it’s ok. But, I have faith that our law enforcement can deal with this problem since they won’t be busting kids for having 1.1 ounce on them now, or spending days staking out teen pot dealers.
What the anti-question 4 folks don’t bring up is that pot is safe, far safer than drinking, and helps a lot of responsible adults feel relaxed, blow off stress, and enjoy themselves. It’s not just dumb kids, it’s folks from all walks of life – lawyers, doctors, EMTs, Rick Steeves on PBS, construction workers, and more, who are able to enjoy it occasionally and responsibly, and they deserve to have the right to purchase pot legally and consume it in their own home.
Or they’re motherfucking astronauts.
So let’s do it. Let’s make some tax money, reduce gang activity, and stop incarcerating and ruining the lives of mainly People of Color for being in possession of weed at the same damn time. Let’s admit we’ve been wrong for a long time in this and finally make it right instead of clinging to notoriously flawed arguments.
About The Clam
The Gloucester Clam is a collaboration of geniuses, nerds, and misfits (anonymous and named) that aims to cover the entertainment needs of Gloucester and beyond with snark, wit, and questionable journalism skills.
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