New Bedford Guide Your Guide to New Bedford and South Coast, MA
Here’s the news you don’t get in mainstream media. Remember, you heard it here first.
In conjunction with and protest of the 100th Feast of the Blessed Sacrament, a group called Vegetables Are Food! will hold its 1st Annual Madeira Fast this coming August.
In an online, low carbon footprint press conference, organizer Solange Greenbriar stated, “We did a study that shows that if you ate Madeira Feast food every day for six months, it would be really, really gross, plus you’d probably at least have some skin problems. We feel that a healthy alternative festival is needed to show the other side of the dietary story.”
The Madeira Fast will offer baked kale chips, barbecued pulled spaghetti squash sandwiches, solar-cooked soy cakes dusted with honey flakes and vegan sausages on 23-grain bread. And organic, locally-made hot sauce. Lots of it, too. “We expect the hot sauce to be very popular,” said Greenbriar. “It’ll probably add a little, you know, flavor to the food.”
Also on tap at the Madeira Fast will be over 150 handcrafted beers, a delightful California Pinot Noir and kale-pomegranate-mango smoothies.
Entertainment includes the world/roots/rap/rock music of The Earthy Earth Band, The One Gig Jazz Ensemble (a group of extremely talented young musicians who have decided to stay in school, get jobs and eventually move to Marion) and ReikiCize!, an audience participation, holistic dance troupe.
On March 20th, The X-Treemly Underground Gallery will open its inaugural exhibit entitled, “X-Treemly New Works: Art From the Last Half Hour or So.” Curator, Chairman of the Board of Directors and chief lookout Elias Jones stated at an impromptu press conference, “We hope to have all media represented, but so far, it looks like mostly spray paint. We’ll see how it goes. I don’t really care. But there are enough shows of so-called new works – we want to exhibit art that is so new that it hasn’t even been created yet. We’re a cutting-edge collaborative. We’ve got attitude, spontaneity and, in some cases, arrest records.”
Asked the location of the new gallery, Elias said, “Right now, we’re in the basement of an old mill, but if they find us, we’ll have to move. We’re asking people to come in to the exhibit quietly, preferable at night.”
The New Bedford Wood Siding Preservation Committee has announced a walking tour called “A Walking Tour of Houses with Wood Siding,” on Sunday, April 6 at 1:00 PM. Committee spokesperson Kia Skoda stated, at a small press conference outside her home in Padanaram, “We’ve identified more than two dozen houses in New Bedford that still have wooden clapboards or shingles.
But it won’t always be that way. We need to raise awareness, yes. We need to preserve this siding while we still have some. But we want to have fun, too. And that’s what the tour is really all about.”
Participants are encouraged to bring cameras, “even if they’re not Nikons,” Skoda said.
Firm plans are afoot to finally ease traffic concerns on the New Bedford-Fairhaven Bridge. A spokesperson for the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, citing anonymity, made a brief conference call last week, claiming, “The Department has determined that most of the traffic on the bridge is New Bedford residents going to the Fairhaven Walmart. That said, or being said, or having been said, the solution is obvious – we just knock the down the Walmart. The state can take it by immanent domain, or eminent domain, or whatever it is that we do, and replace it with a new courthouse.”
“It’s a perfect location,” said the spokesperson, who identified himself only as Dave at Transportation. “There’s ample parking, good highway access and besides, it’s right across the street from The Pasta House.”
When asked if a courthouse in Fairhaven would only exacerbate the bridge traffic problem, Dave responded, “We’d have to study that. Right now, we just don’t have the data. So any decision is probably a few years off, anyway. But it remains a top priority at the state level.”
“There’s also some talk in Boston that the TV networks are getting tired of the Zakim Bridge,” he said, “and there is the possibility that it will be dismantled and brought to Pope’s Island. Fall River has expressed interest in the bridge, but only if it’s slated to come to New Bedford. So we’ll have to study that.”
That’s it for now. I’ll continue to follow these and other stories. Oh – a couple of things I’m working on – rumors of a reality show called Ruth and Emily – Love It or List It and tips on how to avoid accidentally entering Dartmouth.
