Monday, April 25, 2011

Writing

The writing on the wall. The new mural on Joe's.
Photo by J. Griecci 

The West End News
Alley Crawl - Joe's Smokeshop Mural
January 2010
By Caroline Losneck


For those of you who like to snoop around Portland’s alleys and one-way streets, there is new-ish destination on Avon Street to tag to your to-do list. The mural - on the eastern wall of Joe’s Smoke Shop at 665 Congress Street - is the outcome of a unique collaboration between Portland artists Jeff Griecci and Ryan Adams, and the owners of Joe’s Smoke Shop (brothers Mike, Stephen, and David Discatio). Among other things, the new mural is a historical snapshot of Portland, as it looked when Joe Discatio first purchased the building on August 12, 1945.


Joe Discatio, now 96 years old, still owns the building, although he hasn’t had the opportunity to see the new look of the building just yet. The mural’s black and white skyline runs the length of the Joe's building, and graffiti-inspired art is splashed over the top. The overall look is a unique mishmash of styles ranging from trompe-l’oeil and graffiti, with a dose of broken window theory thrown in. According to Griecci and Adams, the owners of Joe's were tired of continually paining over the endless stream of tags on the sides of their building, and when they were told that a graffiti-inspired piece might help thwart taggers, they were receptive.

The owners of Joe’s Smoke Shop commissioned the project, and the final design is a collaboration
between the artists and the owners. Looking at the mural is like gazing back in time on the Congress
Street of the past, when it used to have more houses, buildings, and the St. Steven’s Church - before the “urban renewal” program cleared these structures out to create more parking lots and concrete. The mural is a much-welcomed infusion of life to an area that has seen some growth (such as the new building in the former USM dorms at 645 Congress Street, Local Sprouts, Princess Nail & Salon, Green Hand Books, Coast City Comics, and Boda) but also its fair share of vacant spaces and buildings (such as the brick building across the street from Joe’s owned by Roxanne Quimby, and spaces left by the closure of Evangeline and Cunningham Books in Longfellow Square in 2010.)

Artist Jeff Griecci grew up in Massachusetts and has lived in Portland since 2007, when he
enrolled in the media studies department at USM. He has a number of films  and projects already under his belt, including six short films. His most recent project, A Bell in the Yard, is a short horror film set in the mid-1800’s that was made for Portland’s Damnationland project. The mural is Griecci’s first commissioned work in Portland. He became interested in the trompe l’oeil style (French for ‘deceive the eye’, a technique that creates an optical illusion that objects are in three dimensions) while he was on a trip to Italy. He decided to incorporate some elements of the style into the mural.

Ryan Adams was born and raised in Portland, and his work can been seen throughout the city, in the form of commissioned murals, including a 50- foot by 10-foot mural inside Binga’s Stadium,
the front signage of Binga’s, the murals at Nosh Kitchen Bar, the Novare Res outdoor deck, and a
large mural at Bruno’s Restaurant & Tavern on Allen Avenue.

If you are looking for a good reason to visit Joe’s Smoke Shop (and who's not?), or the Longfellow Square area in general, now is your chance. It’s likely that the mural will look even cooler when the drifting snow starts to pile up underneath and creates an urban-style natural framing of the piece. Then again, it’ll look great when the snow melts, too.

For more information about Ryan Adams' work, visit www. flicker.com/photos/radams207
For more information about Jeff Griecci’s work, visit http://vimeo.com/mintfilms

To read Losneck's entire interview with artists Jeff Griecci and Ryan Adams, visit The West End News.



Bayside's newest addition.
The West End News                                               
On the Trail of the Bayside Trail
August 2010
By Caroline Losneck

The newly opened Bayside Trail is Portland, Maine's own version of New York City’s Highline.  

The freshly paved foot/bicycle/mixed-use path starts near the Eastern Prom Trail and weaves through the rapidly shifting Bayside Neighborhood, from the Eastern Prom to Elm Street.  From the Trail, you can hear the clanks of cars being repaired in the AAA Garage on Marginal Way, the faint roar of I-295 traffic, and the claws, jaws and crush of metal from Schnitzer Northeast, one of the city’s last metal yard hold-outs.  In the distance, E Perry Iron & Metal Co. has been operating for over a hundred years, and it continues to crush scrap metals, despite the encroaching good-intentioned Bayside Trail and City of Portland efforts to re-locate it.

The City first purchased the 13.2-acre former railroad property that runs from the Eastern Prom to Deering Oaks in 2005, with the vision of eventually connecting the two parks with a trail that  provides safe and easy access to Portland’s neighborhoods and pocket parks.

In it’s current incarnation, the Bayside Trail has lights, bike racks, and beautiful stone work with a circular cobblestone–esque walkway and stone wall, and is clearly on it’s way to becoming the premier connective link through Portland. For now, it is possible to travel the length of the first part of the trail and feel like you are straddling the line between the Bayside neighborhood’s urban/industrial past and it’s greener pasture future.  Future plans include public art, benches, and pocket parks along the Trail.

Most importantly, the Bayside Trail is free and you can even stop off the path and recycle any cardboard, plastic metal, or paper you might be toting around at the City’s Silver Bullet Recycling area or perhaps catch a soccer game at the nearby Fox Field.  (Better yet, stop in for a taco from the food vendor who pops up during some of the soccer tournaments.)

The Bayside Trail is a project of Portland Trails, the Trust for Public Land, Bayside Neighborhood Association, and the East Bayside Neighborhood Organization.

For more information about the Bayside Trail, visit Portland Trails at http://www.trails.org/.










GhettoBlaster : Music, Film, Culture
Veronika Scott & Detroit's Empowerment Plan
Summer 2011 
By Caroline Losneck




Issue #28



Many of us have seen the haunting images of Detroit’s abandoned cityscape: dilapidated Victorian homes, burnt-out warehouses, collapsing roofs, forested-over factories. An antidote to this constant “ruin-porn” emerging from the Motor City is The Empowerment Plan, an ambitious community-based design strategy led by Veronika Scott, a twenty-one year old junior design student at the College for Creative Studies.




The Empowerment Plan began with an idea to create coats that double as sleeping bags and to work with Detroit’s homeless population. The coats are made from Tyvek (a home building material), wool or synthetic cloth, and PVC and plastic tubing. Scott envisioned the coats, called Elements S(urvival) Coats, to be designed for Detroit’s homeless population, particularly for those who - for whatever reasons - don’t utilize the traditional shelter system.

At first, Scott designed a prototype coat in her bedroom, a process that took her eighty hours of work just to complete one coat. Then work-cloth- ing company Carhartt stepped in and offered as- sistance. “I didn’t know how to produce hundreds of coats or sew,” says Scott. She knew she needed to learn how to make coats faster with the help of industrial machines. “I flew to Kentucky, where we re-built the coat. With Carhartt, one coat is made in three hours, instead of my eighty hours. And while I was down there, we finished twenty-five coats and made a training video,” she adds. After that, she packed up the twenty-five finished coats and took them back to Detroit.

In many ways, designing and producing the Ele- ments S coats turned out to be easier than getting them to the people who need them most in Detroit. Scott knew that there were people in Detroit whom she wanted to reach with the coats, but didn’t have the history or trust established with those communities yet. Her solution was to seek out a local organization with established ties to the homeless community of Detroit. “The exciting news is that the distribution of the coats didn’t take so long because I joined up with the non-profit Cass Community Social Services,” she says. “Cass has been so helpful and they are the ones with the good reputation. They know the Detroit homeless community more than anyone else. They have twenty years of experience doing this work.”  











Partnered with Cass, Scott has been able to dis tribute the initial twenty-five coats to people in Detroit. She worked with a program within Cass called PATH, “...where two individuals go out three to five days a week into what is called the ‘unreachable community,’” Scott explains. “These are the people who don’t want to come into the shelter system, for various reasons. The PATH workers go out and distribute socks, basic infor- mation and other things that people might need. So, this is the community that the coat is for. I am trying to create a level of trust with this commu- nity, and to get a rapport going so that people feel comfortable." 

Despite the time and energy that goes into The Empowerment Plan, Scott continues taking classes and studying like a typical student, which has proven to be more challenging with the ensuing media storm her story has generated. She’s clear that her time is stretched and says, “Multi-tasking has become my life! Lately, all of my time, twenty-four seven, is scheduled. School does suffer at times, but I am making a decision to work on something bigger.” In addition to support from Carhartt and Cass Community Services, The College for Cre- ative Studies has been a big help to Scott. “School is really proud and doing a lot to support the project. It’s weird to be studying in the middle of all this, but I’m basically going by my gut, and getting a lot of help from lots of people. I have no business background, so I’ve been talking to everyone I can get my hands on to get advice. There’s always so much I want to learn, and I still want to go to grad school after this. Creative people like to keep being challenged.”


She plans to get as many coats as she can back after the winter season so that she and he team can study them and make improvements to their design. “When they were distributed by Cass Community Services, the workers were able to get some basic information from the people who received them, like where they sleep, their first name and a photo, so that when summer comes around, the coats will be traded in for new ones, or bought back,” says Scott. “The idea is to learn from the first coats. We have to learn what needs to change to better the coat for those who need them.” Scott also plans to become a non-profit, get her website up and do so some fundraising. And of course, Scott and her employees will continue to “stockpile new coats through the summer.” For now, continues to work with Cass Community Services and The Empowerment Plan is now housed in a warehouse which they provided for the project. She has also been able to hire two women who were residents of Cass Community Services and she plans to hire someone else later this year.


She is also clear on the importance of maintaining stable employment and paychecks for her workers. Her business model is to continue to hire and train people from the shelter system. “These are careers. This has to work. I am training people a skill that hopefully will last them a while. We have longer-term goals, too, but they are in the conceptual stage. Ultimately, the goal is to make this as sustainable a business as possible.”



Photo Brittany Thompson
Despite Detroit’s recent attention as a new urban frontier, Scott insists that the focus be on the project, not on her. “A lot of people in Detroit are doing great work and have great projects. But I want the emphasis to be on the project, not on me. I am at my happiest when I’m with the women. That’s why my blog is so out-of-date. Rather than feeding this fire of craziness, I am out doing stuff. It’s fantastic that the project is getting noticed but I am happier doing this stuff than answering all the calls!”














































































Issue #26
GhettoBlaster : Music, Film, Culture
Film Reviews
Winter 2011 
By Caroline Losneck
Tiny Furniture (IFC Films 2010)  
Directed by Lena Dunham



I went into the movie prepared not to like it. I thought it might be another over-hyped mumblecore, or a privileged liberal arts college grad's well-funded project. But . . . NO! Tiny Furniture is thoughtful and smart, and there are plenty of good reasons that it was the winner of the best narrative feature at the SXSW Film Festival.

Lena Dunham used a tiny camera, the Canon 7D, an HD SLR still/video camera (one of the first feature films to utilize this new technology) and cast herself, her mom (the internationally recognized artist Laurie Simmons), and her sister. She shot much of the film in her family home in Tribeca.


Dunham's character, Aura, is a clever twist on herself. Aura finishes college with a degree in film theory and has nothing to do, so she returns to her artist family's semi-privileged NYC to sleepily sort through her life. While there, she guzzles bottles of her mom’s (stolen) wine, fights with her high-achieving younger sister, gets a shit job, and has bleak sex. The dialogue is fresh and funny, without a drop of over-earnestness. I admit to being tricked into thinking that the unconfident and very much lost Aura was Dunham, but it turns out to be one of Dunham's brilliant cinematic tricks, and it works. Lena Dunham is a young talent worth keeping an eye on.


Phil Ochs: There But for Fortune (2011 First Run Features)
Directed by Kenneth Bowser
It’s hard to make a 96-minute movie about an important person and do them justice. Aspects of the person’s life will inevitably, within the filmmaking process, be deleted, highlighted, assigned more or less importance, or simply be dulled down. While none of these are big problems in the new documentary about the life of the influential political singer Phil Ochs, the film still suffers from a lack of oomph.


Not that Ochs’ life lacked vigor or gusto. In fact, Ochs was as driven in his musical career as he was in his political beliefs. He expressed a love for music throughout his childhood, but it wasn’t until his roommate at Ohio State University (the longtime activist/folksinger Jim Glover) introduced him to the music of Pete Seeger, The Weavers and leftist politics that Ochs changed course and began his tireless devotion to creating the anthems of the resistance movement.

The film relies on interviews from the many friends Ochs made along the way, including Joan Baez, Abbie Hoffman, Peter Yarrow, Christopher Hitchens and other members of the “who’s who” of radical activists and artists from the 1960’s. They all agree that Ochs was not just determined, precise, and passionate, but also that he sincerely believed that people should be treated equally.

Despite his music’s poignant role as the voice for the anti-war and segregation movements, the film manages never to play any Ochs song in its entirety. Although the footage of Ochs is compelling, and the moments including his ex-wife (Alice Skinner) and daughter are touching, the film never adequately captures the arch of Ochs’ complex and fiercely dedicated life.

In order to make Phil Ochs come alive again, start by listening to his music, and see the movie later.

Issue #25
The Rwandan Candidate
An Interview with Filmmaker Gilbert Ndahayo
Summer 2010
By Caroline Losneck

As part of the Maine African Film Festival in Portland, Maine, GhettoBlaster’s (GB) Caroline Losneck was able to catch up with Rwandan filmmaker, Gilbert Ndahayo, who was there in support of two of his films: Scars of My Days (2006) and the documentary Rwanda: Beyond the Deadly Pit (2010).

Rwanda: Beyond the Deadly Pit was filmed over a period of three years and it had a world premier at the 2010 Pan African Film & Arts Festival in Los Angeles, where it was nominated for Best Feature Documentary. The film is the story of the killings of Ndahayo’s parents during the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, and the post-genocide realities in Rwanda. Ndahayo is the first Rwandan genocide survivor to have made a film about his experience. The short fictional film, Scars of My Days tells the story of two young men who leave their rural village to go live in Kigali, the capital and largest city in Rwanda.

Ndahayo is currently a MFA candidate in the Film Division at Columbia University and is working on four new short films: A Day in the Life, a story about a genocide survivor and a Holocaust survivor living together in New York City (which he plans to screen in early 2011); Why Me, Why Sarah?, about a couple that is navigating their way through life and their relationship; Jojo Must Die (currently in post-production), a fictionalized version of Romeo and Juliet set in the first decade of post-genocide Rwanda, about social life between the former antagonistic groups Hutus and Tutsis (without machetes on screen) and the tensions that are caused by the stress of post-genocide life and ethnicity; and Mother Rwanda, a new film in development.

Ndahayo on set.
Photo by G. Ndahayo


GB: If someone had told you when you were a young man growing up in Rwanda that you would someday be a filmmaker living in NYC, what would you have said to them? 

GN: (Laughs) Well, my mother wanted me to be a doctor or economist because African storytellers or filmmakers or artists don’t earn a lot of money in Africa. They die poor and unsung, unheard. My mother wouldn’t want me to die poor. I was forced to explore storytelling in cinema because something horrible has happened to me. I have been waiting for thirteen years to find an appropriate way to express how my parents were killed. In November 2005, I discovered cinema and I enjoy the process of making films. In no way would I have known that I would be in the United States and making films!

GB: How do you take a story that is so specific to a particular time and place and still allow for it to be something that people relate to?
GN: That’s a really good question. I am only interested in journeys of human realities that we don’t see on television, especially the dramas. Scars of My Days is about friendship, HIV/AIDS and urban migration. The main characters are two young people who leave the village and go to the city not knowing anything about being there and being confronted by the realities of being in a new place. I follow one of the friends as he struggles for his life. It’s a kind of adventure. In the first act, we discover their lives in a traditional African village where the idle youth play football and speak of their dreams; the second act of the film, they are separated by their different dreams. And then ultimately in the third act, the friends are connected back to each other.
GB: Do you relate to a certain character in the film, or place yourself in a certain character?
GN: I was born in a traditional village in the south part of Rwanda. My father was always absent because he was at school, studying law. When he came home after almost four years, we moved to the capital city. There was this specific moment in Scars of My Days when you see the two villagers arriving in the city, looking at the beauty. They are confused but they like that kind of lifestyle. I relate to this specific moment when I was in a truck looking up at the traffic lights, the nightlights, the tall buildings and following people’s movement. People wear shoes! In the village, there is no electricity. People don’t put on shoes. It is that specific moment that I can relate to in the film, of course with some more drama.
GB: What about your other film screening this week (Rwanda: Beyond the Deadly Pit)?
GN: As a survivor of genocide, I have a moral responsibility to the dead and to give time to remember the departed ones. Rwanda: Beyond the Deadly Pit is basically my contribution to the world because these are the moments that my country lived. They are the moments that I lived. My grandparents, my parents, and my young sister were killed in the genocide. Fifty-two members of my extended family were killed in the genocide and their families perished 16 years ago in broad daylight. Our neighbors showed up with machetes and proceeded to kill them. At that moment, sixteen years ago, I was a young boy. I can’t tell that I understood why we were being killed. Still today, I am struggling to overcome those kinds of realities. In the same way, there are people in the world who want to understand what is going on beyond their small gates and their small apartments and these are the people who I care about reaching with my films.
GB: What is your approach to story or narrative?
GN: With Rwanda: Beyond the Deadly Pit, I wanted to make a film that tells the reality that has not been told from inside, from somebody that survived the genocide. So, my first question before I started the film was “What can the world outside of us learn from us?” Beyond that, in my films I try to address questions like “how did I survive?” and “how did I move on?” I didn’t have a style, but I had a story and the story dictated my style. Hollywood tends to be interested in showing films that are entertaining to people and allow the filmmaker to make more money…which is a good thing for them. I think that African films are much more interested in reconciling people and events rather than punishing historical events or people. I’m sure American audiences are pretty much tired of the bad guys going to jail and the good guys who are rewarded and made heroes. So there is this space that exists today for people who want to see something different or tell something different and real.
GB: Even without these resolutions in your films and real life, are you hopeful? Are you optimistic?
GN: I am – that’s why I am here in Portland, at the Maine African Film Festival! And a month ago I was in Los Angeles showing the world premier of my film. There is a hope and a there is a space for everybody that has a story to tell. Being African or American doesn’t matter if what you have is a story to tell and allow us to show what you are coming up with on the screen. 


GB: Are you well known in Rwanda? Do people recognize you there?
GN: (Laughs) I have a nickname in Rwanda. I am named after Denzel Washington because I have been an actor in two movies in the leading roles. My own films have also been shown around the country and in the villages. We actually have a festival in Rwanda called Hillywood and it’s not named after Hollywood. It is a concept of showing films in the hills of Rwanda where the films have been shot. There are not many TV sets in Rwanda. We have one TV station, which shows much of what BBC and CNN broadcast over and over. Hillywood brings a new culture, a new way of telling, seeing and hearing stories to the country. Rwandans like my films and I’m happy that my contribution to the new society, to the new Rwanda is known and acknowledged. 


GB: Is there anything else you would like to mention?
GN: I’d like to recommend festivals and events like the Maine African Film Festival, which gives African filmmakers space to show their films. There are so many people here in America who have not heard about Africa, that do not know anything about Africa, or the genocide in Rwanda. What can people outside of Africa learn from inside Africa? Being here gives me the opportunity to tell a story from a Rwandan or an African perspective and from my own perspective, rather than the usual Hollywood story or the flash news on CNN or BBC. And this is who we are. We are storytellers, either Africans or Europeans or Americans. 



Garage With a View
July 2010 - Cool Summer Hotspots Issue
By Caroline Losneck and Zachary Barowitz



photo/Zachary Barowitz
Photo/Zack Barowitz


Parking garages may be a blight on the urban landscape, but many have breathtaking views of that landscape from their rooftop decks. High above the hustle of the streets, you and your date can sip vino, nibble stinky cheese, and admire Portland from the unique perspectives these perches provide.





We visited over a dozen downtown Portland garages this summer to evaluate their vistas, and have chosen the top five to share with you here.
Especially in summer, beware overprotective mother gulls who dive-bomb and scream at humans in defense of their gray-feathered offspring. And in the opinion of some nosy security guards, your innocent sightseeing expedition can look a lot like loitering or, worse, criminal trespass. To avoid invoking the ire of the parking-powers-that-be, we recommend you adopt a strict carry-in/carry-out policy. If things get hairy, you might consider just driving there and paying to park up top.
—By  Zachary Barowitz and Caroline Losneck
The U.S. Custom House, as seen from Custom House Garage. photo/Zachary Barowitz
The U.S. Custom House, as seen from Custom House Garage. photo/Zachary Barowitz
1. Custom House Garage
25 Pearl St.
Take the vertiginous glass-walled elevator to the eighth floor. This is the best place to watch as a six-story hotel/condo/brewpub complex rises from the site of the old Jordan’s Meats hot dog factory in the months ahead. The developers had initially asked the city for permission to create fewer parking spaces for the pub (rumored to be Sebago Brewing Company’s new Old Port location) than zoning requires — fewer, in this case, being no parking whatsoever. But last month they submitted new plans calling for (you guessed it!) another parking garage.
This observation deck also offers sweeping views of Portland Harbor, the Old Port, and church steeples rising from the base of Munjoy Hill all the way to the West End.
We chose this structure over the new and nearby Ocean Gateway Garage on Fore Street because, despite the OGG’s spectacular vistas of Casco Bay and historic Eastern Cemetery, it’s just too damn depressing.
The fenced-in parcel overgrown with weeds between that garage and India Street was supposed to be an office building and retail shops before the Great Recession. Another fenced-in wasteland of weeds and gravel sits across Fore Street marking the grave of a different development that died. Beyond that, you look upon acres of prime waterfront real estate dedicated to: surface parking.
Looking south from the Public Market Garage. photo/Zachary Barowitz
Looking south from the Public Market Garage. photo/Zachary Barowitz
2. The Public Market Garage
315 Cumberland Ave. (entrance on Preble Street)
This garage was built in the late 1990s in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to make the Portland Public Market accessible to auto-addicted, off-peninsula shoppers. Plagued by mismanagement and vendor unrest, the public market closed four years ago and is now the private domain of a credit card processing company. There’s space set aside in the remodeled office building for a public café, but as of yet no entrepreneur has been foolish enough to open another café in a part of town already filthy with ’em.
From this great garage roof, with the iconic Time and Temperature building at your back, you can survey the industrial wasteland of Bayside, the homeless and hungry lined up at the Preble Street Resource Center, and the death-defying on- and off-ramps of I-295. Also a plum spot for sunsets.
Watching the Sea Dogs from Maine Med's garage. photo/Zachary Barowitz
Watching the Sea Dogs from Maine Med's garage. photo/Zachary Barowitz
3. Maine Medical Center Gilman Street Garage
Corner of Gilman and Congress Street
The top of Maine Med’s massive concrete behemoth offers outstanding views of Mount Washington, Hadlock Field, the Fore River, Deering Oaks, and the shopping strip along St. John Street. The fencing erected to discourage suicide jumpers obscures the scenery somewhat and is a bit of a bummer in general, but the melodious voice of the garage’s talking elevators will brighten your day.
A word to the wise: the crack Maine Med security force diligently patrols this garage and will ask you to leave if you’re not visiting a patient or conducting legitimate hospital business. Borrow a cane, a sling, or feign a pregnancy as your cover.
4. Temple Street Garage
11 Temple St.
The observation deck atop the Temple Street Garage offers nice views up Free and Spring streets. This peaceful plateau would be our choice to start the first green garage rooftop garden in town. While other Portland garages inspire midnight raves or rooftop movies, the Temple Street Garage roof is a quiet space more conducive to yoga or perhaps some guerilla sunbathing.
Alien generators behind the Fore Street garage. photo/Zachary Barowitz
Alien generators behind the Fore Street garage. photo/Zachary Barowitz
5. Fore Street Parking Garage
427 Fore St.
A relatively small structure (just two levels), the Fore Street Garage provides unique perspectives on the tops and backs of buildings you don’t see while strolling below. You can gaze upon the mysterious and beautiful machinery locked behind a fence on Center Street and spy the old Movies on Exchange Street sign in the alley behind 10 Exchange. And at night you can watch the drunken parade down Fore Street from a safe, anonymous distance.