Apr 15-21, 2015
Readers Clear the Haze Over Vermont’s Cannabis Culture; CEOs Talk Legal Weed; The Fagbug Visits Johnson; Taste Test: Istanbul Kebab House
Cover Story
Vermont Marijuana Users Come Out of the Cannabis Closet in Survey
It’s no secret that many folks in the Green Mountain State enjoy their green bud. But we’ve only recently learned just how much. Last year, Vermonters consumed a shit-ton of weed — an estimated 15 to 25 metric tons, according to the RAND Corporation. That nonprofit think tank was commissioned in 2014 by the Vermont…
Gasoline Scheme: Sorrell’s Suit Could Bring Loot to Donors
When Attorney General Bill Sorrell filed suit against 29 oil and gas companies last June, he cast himself as a crusader against those who would pollute Vermont’s groundwater. For years, he alleged in Vermont Superior Court, the refiners blended methyl tertiary-butyl ether (MTBE) into the gasoline they sold in the state, despite knowing the “unprecedented”…
![HSCC’s Planet Cat aCATemy Awards [SIV395]](https://i0.wp.com/www.sevendaysvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/episode395.webp?resize=1200%2C900&ssl=1)
HSCC’s Planet Cat aCATemy Awards [SIV395]
4/12/15: The 2nd Annual Planet Cat aCATemy Awards were held Sunday afternoon at the Majestic 10 Cinemas in Williston. This fundraiser for the Humane Society of Chittenden County raised about $9,000 and gave cat lovers a chance to enjoy locally made feline videos and memes. Music: UVM Hit Paws Co-ed A Cappella Group This episode…
Bouffez Montréal: Korean Fried Chicken on the Rise
Over the past decade, Vermont’s food landscape has seen a gustatory revolution. Menus tout local ingredients aplenty, and global cuisine is on the rise: Within a few weeks Burlington will be host to not one but three Himalayan restaurants, for example. Even so, there are times when diners crave something we can’t find locally. And…
Can Suburban South Burlington Build a Real Downtown?
A swath of woods in the center of South Burlington could soon give way to something novel for the sprawling suburb: a real downtown. After 30 years of discussion, momentum is building around a proposal to develop a hub along the east side of Dorset Street, where people would live, stroll and shop. Plans are…
Quiz: How Well Do You Know Vermont Marijuana Users?
The prospect of Vermont becoming the first state on the East Coast to legalize marijuana for recreational use is so close, Seven Days stoners can almost smell it. We’ve pored over more than 2,000 responses to our 2015 Weeders Survey to find out who’s getting high, what they’re smoking (and vaping, dabbing and eating), how…
Why Funding for Vermont’s Anti-Tobacco Efforts Is Going Up in Smoke
In 1998, Attorney General Bill Sorrell announced that he and his counterparts in 45 other states had reached a landmark deal with cigarette companies. The states had sued to recover the cost of providing health care to smokers. Under the agreement, Vermont would receive between $24 million and $30 million every year in perpetuity. Since…
Farmhouse Group Expands Beyond Commissary
“I wouldn’t say we’re closing,” says Farmhouse Group owner Jed Davis of Winooski’s Guild Commissary. Call it what you will, but the facility that began supplying the group’s restaurants in 2013 is slowly leaving that role behind. One reason for the commissary’s decline is the long-awaited opening of LaPlatte River Angus Farm’s processing facility: About…
Art Review: Mary Admasian, Vermont Supreme Court Gallery
Natural and man-made elements conspire to create a beautiful, dark vision in Mary Admasian’s new exhibition “Boundaries, Balance and Confinement: Navigating the Limits of Nature and Society” at the Vermont Supreme Court Gallery. The Montpelier artist infuses every one of her mixed-media constructions with provocations, enlightening the viewer with titles and descriptions. But she also…
Betty’s Beer Fest Spotlights Women Brewers
Hey, girls, there’s a new beer fest coming to town. Scheduled for Friday and Saturday, May 8 and 9, at Waitsfield’s Big Picture Theater & Café, Betty’s Beer Fest seeks to bring women into the conversation in a big way. Moretown-based Megan Schultz of Meg’s Events says she organized the new event in hopes of…
Cherchez la Femme
It was a Saturday night, and the previous day had been the first day of spring, for what it was worth — which wasn’t much. Here’s an open secret: Vermonters actually enjoy complaining about the weather, and this winter has provided plenty of fodder. Arriving over a weekend of freezing temperatures and snow squalls, the…
Van Phan Billiards Owner Calls the Shots
Van Phan carefully places two pool balls on a table in a South Burlington billiards hall. The arrangement would make it tricky for anyone to knock the ball into a side pocket. It takes her a few tries, but she nails it as the ball slams authoritatively into the hole. Phan plays like a boss…
Entrepreneurial Dream Team Sets Sights on Marijuana
When Will Raap was building Gardener’s Supply into a successful business three decades ago, he met regularly with a few other young Vermont entrepreneurs. They traded tips and talked about how to balance money and mission. Alan Newman, who worked for Raap and went on to found Magic Hat Brewing, was among them. So was…
Letters to the Editor (4/15/15)
Clear Boundaries I want to offer a point of correction to Ethan de Seife’s assertion that “the jurisdictional relationship between Cambridge and Jeffersonville is anything but clear, even to locals” [“Tempest in a Silo,” April 1]. It may not be clear to all locals, but it is clear. Jeffersonville, like Cambridge Village, is an incorporated…
Phil Yates & the Affiliates, No Need to Beg
(Almost Halloween Time Records, digital download, vinyl) The 1990s are hot right now, and Phil Yates is into it. Beginning with the title of the Burlington songwriter’s latest album, No Need to Beg, which recalls the Cranberries’ 1994 hit No Need to Argue, ’90s alternative rock references abound. On his second full-length album with his…
I’m Trans and Nervous About Getting Intimate
Dear Athena, I am a 30-year-old trans woman, and I’m finally at the point in my transition where things are getting better in every aspect of my life. I met this guy who is totally supportive, loving and kind and doesn’t mind taking things slow — the whole package. He has been with trans women…
Dan Johnson and the Expert Sidemen, Mercury 85
(Self-released, CD, digital download) Leaving behind New York’s Hudson Valley and burrowing in a cabin in Jericho, folk singer Dan Johnson ruminated on, then wrote and recorded, his third album, Mercury 85. A follow-up to his 2013 full-band effort with the Expert Sidemen, Bound for Abiquiu, the new album is spare and honest — it’s…
Four More Local Albums You (Probably) Haven’t Heard
No Humans Allowed, Yesterday, Tomorrow and You (Self-released, digital download) No Humans Allowed are a mercurial hip-hop duo consisting of Boston-based rapper Louis Mackey and Burlington word-slinger Thirtyseven — the latter of whom also goes by Wombaticus Rex and, in his day-to-day life, Justin Boland. (Disclosure: He occasionally writes for Seven Days.) In 2011, NHA…
Danny Collins
Imagine a filmmaker discovering that a folk singer once received a letter from John Lennon 34 years after it was sent, getting the rights to several of the ex-Beatle’s songs, and then having the nerve to revise the story, letter and songs in the service of a feel-good formula fest. Actually, you don’t have to.…
Soundbites: WTF is Going on With Grace Potter & the Nocturnals?
After Midnight? Last week, Grace Potter announced that she’ll release a solo record this summer, titled Midnight. In support of that record, she’ll also embark on a solo tour, sans the Nocturnals, the group that has been the singer’s backing band for more than a decade. The solo dates listed on her newly redesigned website,…
Woman in Gold
Given that the vast majority of multiplex movies pander to young moviegoers, is it unsporting to point out that Woman in Gold panders to their grandparents? Maybe, but I’m still going to. Director Simon Curtis (My Week With Marilyn) and first-time writer Alexi Kaye Campbell were blessed with a magnetic star — Helen Mirren —…
Erin Davies’ Artful Fagbug Crusade
Eight years ago in Albany, N.Y., Erin Davies walked to her car to find it had been vandalized. Red spray-paint letters announced on the hood “u r gay,” and the driver’s side window screamed “fag” — responses, it seemed, to the rainbow sticker affixed to the car. Initially shocked but undaunted, Davies decided to turn…
News Quirks (4/15/15)
Curses, Foiled Again Cass Alder, 22, bought table napkins made with images of $100 bills on them, then cut out the images, glued them onto paper and tried passing one of the bogus bills at a convenience store. The clerk refused to accept it. Alder exited the store but left the bill behind. It was…
In Brief: Governor’s Gallery, Vermont Creative Network, Poet Laureate
The Governor’s Gallery is back! Where has it been? Well, on the fifth floor of the Pavilion Building, right outside Gov. Peter Shumlin’s office, just as it’s been for more than 40 years. But the space has been art-free and unavailable to the public since an unfortunate security incident back in November 2014. That’s when…
Free Will Astrology (4/15/15)
ARIES (March 21-April 19): The California Gold Rush hit its peak between 1849 and 1855. Three hundred thousand adventurers flocked to America’s West Coast in search of gold. In the early days, gold nuggets were lying around on the ground in plain sight, or relatively easy to find in gravel beds at the bottom of…
Book Review: A Slant of Light by Jeffrey Lent
Early in Jeffrey Lent’s new historical novel, A Slant of Light, a teenage hired hand named Harlan turns to a powerful lawyer who’s questioning him and says, “You know how people, when they think they’re more clever, will let on when they’re trying to hide something?” The lawyer, the de facto leader of a Shaker-like…
Obituary: THELMA H. (STODDERT) GODDETTE, 1917-2015, Colchester
Thelma H. Goddette, 98 passed away peacefully on Monday, April 13, 2015 surrounded by her family and close friends. Thelma was born in Burlington on March 26, 1917, the daughter of Rose A. Barlow and Lyle E. Stoddert. She graduated from Cathedral High school in 1935, and began working at the old Chase Woolen Mill…
Taste Test: Istanbul Kebab House
About three years ago, Vural, Hasan and Jackie Oktay opened Istanbul Kebab House at the base of an apartment complex in Essex. In a subsequent review published in this newspaper, food writer Alice Levitt praised Vural Oktay’s nuanced knowledge of his native Turkish cuisine and devotion to excellent service. However, she also observed that the…
Asiana Noodle Shop Owner to Open Sushi Stop
Rumors of Asiana Noodle Shop’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. Panic started among pan-Asian food lovers when an April 10 Burlington Free Press article stated that owner Sandy Kong would close her Church Street restaurant to open A Cuisine, a new restaurant in the Burlington Town Center. “I’m not closing!” Kong tells Seven Days, adding…
