The Tech Issue 2017
Ambition and Algorithms at Localvore; Uber’s Speedy Rise in Burlington; Vermont’s Hotbed of Health Tech; Plugging Into Soundtoys
Seriously: The Technological Sage; Toys for Tones
In this episode, Bryan asks a customer service rep from the future about tech in Vermont and invites record producer Dr. Horace Wallace to demonstrate a few Soundtoys plug-ins. Starring Caitlin Bayer as “Customer Service Representative Sage” and Urian Hackney as “Dr. Horace Wallace.” CREDITS Written by: Bryan Parmelee, Caitlin Bayer and Urian Hackney Filmed…
The Parmelee Post: Avid Locavore Begins Preparing List of Justifications for Shopping at Target
Like most Vermonters, Vera Lokalai remembers exactly where she was the moment she found out that Target was planning to open a store in South Burlington in October 2018. “I was in a CarShare Vermont car, on my way to pick up some Vermont-made soaps when the news came over the radio,” Lokalai recalled. “I…
Memoriam: Stephen Andersen
1960-2016 My Soulmate, My Husband, My Friend I love you in a place where there’s no space or time I love you for my life, ’cause you’re a friend of mine And when my life is over, remember when we were together We were alone, and I was singin’ my song for you —”A Song…
![Myra Flynn’s Wedding Concert [SIV508]](https://i0.wp.com/www.sevendaysvt.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/episode508-scaled.webp?resize=1200%2C900&ssl=1)
Myra Flynn’s Wedding Concert [SIV508]
10/13/17: Vermont raised singer, songwriter Myra Flynn had a busy weekend. Friday night she hosted a Wedding Concert at Shelburne Vineyard while also releasing her wine, Flynn, a collaboration with the vineyard. The next day, she married Phil Wills, also a former Vermonter, in a small ceremony. Both artists are based in Los Angeles but…
Letters to the Editor (10/18/17)
Who’s Accountable? The City of Burlington should use the collective impact approach to address issues associated with mentally ill homeless people in downtown Burlington [“Burlington Cops Call Out Repeat Offenders in News Releases,” October 11]. Mayor Miro Weinberger and Police Chief Brandon del Pozo have been very effective at using the collective impact model to…
Movie Review: Time-Loop Horror Comedy ‘Happy Death Day’ Gives Viewers Déjà Vu
This horror-comedy from director Christopher Landon (Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse) has a few good laughs, but the best one is at its own expense. Toward the end of the film, a young movie buff (Israel Broussard) asks the sorority-girl heroine (Jessica Rothe) whether the time loop she’s been stuck in doesn’t remind her…
Highway to Hardwick: Driver Leads Vermont Cops on Slow-Speed Chase
A driver led cops on a slow-speed chase over the weekend that spanned 59 miles, according to Vermont State Police. It began around 11:30 p.m. Saturday on Interstate 91 in Fairlee and ended at a home in Hardwick. That’s where police took into custody 22-year-old Kaitlin Davis, who was charged with attempting to elude, driving…
New Deal: Burlington-Based Localvore Aims to Be the Anti-Yelp
The creators of Localvore Today started their company five years ago with a simple goal: become a local version of deal-of-the-day services like Groupon. From a tiny art studio on Burlington’s Pine Street, the three-person shop dispatched daily emails selling vouchers for reduced-price dining at Vermont restaurants, which then split the coupon revenue with Localvore.…
Album Review: Sleeping In, ‘let you in’
(Self-released, digital download) A few weeks ago, I was flipping through one of those books that go directly from the new-release rack to the bargain table outside. Before deciding The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck negated its own existence, I found a sort of affirming passage. It was something along these lines: Optimists…
Burlington’s Soundtoys Corners the Creative Audio Market
What do Beyoncé, Adele, Clean Bandit, Twenty One Pilots, Glass Animals and Yeasayer all have in common? Aside from being leaders in cutting-edge pop, R&B and indie music, they’re each users of Soundtoys plug-ins — or at least their engineers and producers are. Behind-the-scenes heavy hitters Josh Gudwin (Fifth Harmony, Carly Rae Jepsen), Ariel Borujow (Nicki…
Electric Vehicles Are All the Buzz in Vermont
Todd Lockwood’s Tesla sailed smoothly and soundlessly, gliding like a ghost along a winding South Burlington back road. The sleek white all-electric sedan crested a small rise, hugging the curve as it picked up speed. Just ahead, a Toyota Corolla chugged along the two-lane blacktop at the 40 mph speed limit or even a little…
Uber Has Sped to the Top of Burlington’s Ride-for-Hire Heap
Eric Bingham guided his Toyota Prius through Burlington’s New North End Monday morning and explained how he launched a second career. The engineer took a buyout from GlobalFoundries in late 2015. Five months later, he was sick of sitting in front of the TV and missed making money, he said. He bought a used hybrid…
Vermont Reads Author Jacqueline Woodson on ‘Brown Girl Dreaming’
Jacqueline Woodson’s Brown Girl Dreaming is the 2017 pick for Vermont Reads, a program of the Vermont Humanities Council now in its 15th year. The lyrical memoir-in-verse of a young girl becoming a writer has received numerous awards, including a National Book Award and a Newbery Honor Award. Woodson’s personal story unfolds within the wider…
Cash In: Sanders Leads Pack in Fundraising
Thinking about running against Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in 2018? If so, consider this. According to his latest campaign finance report, submitted to the Federal Election Commission last weekend, his senatorial campaign fund has an astounding $5.86 million in cash on hand. It would be virtually impossible to spend that much money in Vermont, even…
Officials Explore Use of Secure Blockchain Technology
Say you go to your town’s general store and buy some Vermont maple syrup. You slide the cash across the counter and take your syrup, and the merchant records the transaction on a paper ledger. Now, imagine that the merchant then makes hundreds of copies of that paper and delivers it via courier to every…
Stolen Glory: Trolls Doctor Vermont Photog’s Shot of Veteran
In June 2016, Burlington photographer Monica Donovan was hired to take photos of a Spartan Race, one of those epic outdoor endurance contests for the maniacally fit. This one was held in Pittsfield, the birthplace of the Spartan events. And it was a special kind of race: The Agoge is a 60-hour marathon endurance test,…
Album Review: My Mother’s Moustache, ‘Down From the Door’
(Self-released, CD, digital download) Joe Sabourin, the front man, guitarist and singer-songwriter of the eclectic folk-rock band My Mother’s Moustache, is a recent Burlington transplant. The former Bostonian moved to Vermont in 2016 and quickly insinuated himself into a few local projects. He’s a new addition to the Celtic punk band the CopOuts and plays…
How Vermont Became a Hotbed for Health Tech Companies
When Matt Berg arrived last week for his first day of membership in the Vermont Center for Emerging Technologies, he assumed that the co-working space in downtown Burlington was just a convenient spot to make conference calls, check his email and grab a cup of coffee. Unbeknownst to him, the Burlington newcomer, who’d just relocated…
The Tech Issue — 2017
George W. Bush was president on Wednesday, January 23, 2008, the day Seven Days published its first Tech Biz Issue. It was timed to coincide with that Saturday’s first Vermont Tech Jam. The head of the executive branch isn’t the only thing that’s changed in the intervening years. A decade ago, smartphones with apps and…
Art Review: Molly Bosley and Athena Petra Tasiopoulos, SPA
Molly Bosley and Athena Petra Tasiopoulos resurrect old materials and archaic techniques to bring life to their respective work in two exhibits at Studio Place Arts in Barre. Cut-paper techniques, which have been used in cultures around the globe from as early as the Han dynasty in fourth-century China, are central to Bosley’s work in…
Ask Athena: Am I Breaking Too Many Hearts Looking for ‘the One’?
Dear Athena Approaching 30, I feel no urgency to settle down. But I really want a long-term relationship that stimulates me in every way and stays exciting. I have dated so many really great guys for three to eight months and then broken it off because I know that they’re not who I want to…
Hackie: Gumshoe
When Ted Wilkerson called me to book a ride, I sensed he was a man with a big presence; I could feel his energy coming through the phone. Meeting him at the airport, I was not surprised that his physical form perfectly matched his voice. Ted was a big, barrel-chested man with tousled salt-and-pepper hair,…
Vermont International Film Fest Brings Issues to the Screen
Politically and environmentally speaking, 2016 and 2017 have been real doozies. Anyone desperate for some sort of artful meditation on the world’s sundry crises can find plenty of fact-based fare at the upcoming Vermont International Film Festival. And for those who prefer to check out, well, movies always provide a little escapism, right? VTIFF, produced…
Theater Review: ‘Sense & Sensibility,’ Lost Nation Theater
Jane Austen supplies the characters, playwright Kate Hamill gooses the plot with modern irony, and Lost Nation Theater hands 12 actors lush Regency costumes to fill some 20 roles in the fast-paced Sense & Sensibility. The adaptation preserves some of the romance but focuses on social satire, taking sweet potshots at a parade of caricatures…
Eat This Week, October 18 to 24, 2017: Something’s Fishy
Drink beer from Foam Brewers, listen to tunes from Bardela and sample chowders made exclusively with Vermont seafood. Then watch judges choose their favorites and award cash prizes to the winners. Folks who make soup with wild-caught fish and use other Vermont ingredients get bonuses in the competition. Want to enter? Register in advance, bring…
A Coding Academy Prepares to Launch in Burlington
Baby-faced Ben Boas and Alex Horner, both 25, get carded at bars, and Horner admits that he grew his slim mustache in part to look older. But the two say they have sufficient experience to know that the Burlington tech market is ready for a web development boot camp. Boas and Horner plan to launch…
Longtime Locavore Chef Jack Pickett Keeps It Real
On a hot afternoon in late September, guests at von Trapp Brewing Bierhall Restaurant drank refreshing lagers at outdoor tables with mountain views. Inside, they sat at a long U-shaped bar in sight of a wood-fired Parrilla grill on which sausages sizzled. In each spot, flights of beer in golden and amber hues paired well…
Fifty Years, 13,450 Students and 5,000 Interviews: UVM’s Garrison Nelson Calls It a Career
When former Vermont governor Howard Dean ran for president in 2004, national media turned to University of Vermont political science professor Garrison Nelson for insight. “I think he is an arrogant, ill-tempered schmo who does not play well with others,” Nelson told the Houston Chronicle. Many of the same political reporters came back 12 years…
Soundbites: Her, Too; Security Deposit
Following the recent, extensive media coverage of the allegations of sexual assault, harassment and discrimination leveled at film producer and all-around garbage person Harvey Weinstein — as well as former Real Estate guitarist Matt Mondanile, experimental producer the Gaslamp Killer and singer-songwriter Alex Calder — my social media feeds have been full of women posting the…
Quick Lit Book Review: ‘The Names of Dead Girls’ by Eric Rickstad
With his 2014 best seller The Silent Girls, Bennington County’s Eric Rickstad established himself as an author of rural mystery-thrillers that are anything but cozy. Set in the fictionalized Northeast Kingdom town of Canaan, the novel opened with an explosion of gruesome violence and closed on a cliffhanger designed to fuel its readers’ nightmares. 2015…
Movie Review: Swedish Film ‘The Square’ Brilliantly Dissects Modern Mores
Ruben Östlund’s latest suggests the Swedish writer-director’s gifts include an ability to see the future. It premiered at the Cannes festival this May and includes the following line, spoken by a journalist (Elisabeth Moss) to the film’s central character, a Stockholm art museum curator (Claes Bang): “You’re interested in using your position,” Moss asserts, “which…
‘Dawson City’ Doc Tells Bizarre Story of Lost Films
The story would sound far-fetched if a Hollywood screenwriter devised it: In 1978, a construction crew excavating in the Yukon town of Dawson City uncovered 533 reels of film from the silent-cinema era. The hoard of newsreels and dramatic features had accumulated in the basement of the town library, under the supervision of the Canadian…
Free Will Astrology (10/18/17)
LIBRA: (Sept. 23-Oct. 22) A woman I know, Caeli La, was thinking about relocating from Denver to Brooklyn. She journeyed across country and visited a prime neighborhood in her potential new headquarters. Here’s what she reported on her Facebook page: “In the last three days, I’ve seen three different men on separate occasions wearing sundresses.…
Restaurant Review: Diners Beat a Path to Honey Road in Burlington
Dukkah. Freekeh. Markouk. Urfa. The words sound singsongy when said aloud, like a child’s counting rhyme in a language one doesn’t speak. All can be found in the glossary included in the menu at Burlington’s Honey Road. Dukkah is a spice blend. Freekeh is smoked wheat. Markouk is a kind of bread. Urfa is a…
Shelburne’s Village Wine and Coffee to Expand
Village Wine and Coffee will more than double in size when owner Kevin Clayton expands into the space adjoining the café at 5288 Shelburne Road in Shelburne. Clayton said he’s drawing up plans to take over the quarters left vacant last spring by the closure of antique shop Michelle Holland Interiors (aka Patina Antiques &…
Shacksbury Cider Opens Tasting Room, Collaborates With Momofuku
“It feels like Shacksbury is kind of having a moment,” said Alex Consalvo, director of sales and marketing at the Vermont cidery. On October 28, the business will celebrate the grand opening of its new tasting room at 11 Main Street in Vergennes with food, live music and plenty to drink. Also in the works…
Roving Bakery the Nomadic Oven Is For Sale
When she was 22, three months after finishing a degree at the University of Vermont, Meg Brickner bought herself a baking business. Jen Rose Smith was selling a roving bakery called the Nomadic Oven, complete with recipes for treats such as her decadent pastry-cream-and-fruit-filled Gâteau Basque and best-selling whoopee pies. Now Brickner is ready to…
