text:
All week leading up to the much-anticipated Fortress Festival, the weekend weather forecast became increasingly ominous, prompting many to post on social media concerns that the entire Saturday lineup would have to be canceled or postponed. It was undoubtedly a rocky start for the fledgling fest, a first-of-its-kind venture co-founded by Alec Jhangiani and Ramtin Nikzad (who both left positions at the Lone Star Film Festival) in collaboration with the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and booking agency Margin Walker that took place in the Cultural District last weekend.
Organizers eventually decided to push the first set back from 3 to 5 p.m., effectively bumping from the lineup dance machine Ronnie Heart, one of just three Fort Worth acts on the bill. That decision turned out to be premature, as storms never materialized in the area (communities to the east weren't so lucky), although a brisk wind and cloudy skies kept temps low.
By Saturday night, the temperatures had dipped into the 50s, but the crowd of thousands at the main stage was thoroughly warmed up after a trippy set by Los Angeles electro-wizard Flying Lotus. By the time co-headliner and acclaimed rap duo Run the Jewels performed, the throng was at full throat. After overcoming some early sound issues, co-frontman El-P declared, "Right now we're [starting] a mission to make this night a mother-fucking blockbuster."
The hour-long set, heavy on selections from the duo's latest release, Run the Jewels 3, flew by, even with a break in the middle for El-P to test out some new, NSFW slam poetry.
Are there kinks to be worked out? Certainly. The trek between the main stage at the Will Rogers Memorial Center and the second stage at the Modern took upwards of 15 minutes (the festival did have Funkytown Pedicab on hand to help out), making it nearly impossible not to miss large swaths of performers' sets. If you planned to see Joy Division co-founder Peter Hook play all the hits ("Transmission, "Love Will Tear Us Apart") and co-headliner Purity Ring, you'd better have packed your sneakers. Other mild inconveniences, like having to finish your drink before leaving one stage for another, were easy to overlook.
The Modern stage felt more than a little isolated at times. It didn't help that about 15 feet of water separated the bands from the audience, invoking a feeling of detachment that the artists seemed to notice.
"How is it over there on the dark side of the moon?," asked Wolf Parade singer/keyboardist Spencer Krug during the Canadian indie band's rollicking set, one of the weekend's best. And when guitarist/singer Dan Boeckner called on fans to "walk on water," he probably didn't expect 30 or so of them — perhaps spurred on by the band's decade-long absence from performing in Texas — to wade toward the stage in a sort of slow-motion, aquatic mosh pit that was the emotional highlight of the festival. Security let the revelers stay to the end of the Krug-led anthem "I'll Believe in Anything" before sending them back toward land.
Also, possibly due to the concerns over the wind gusts Sunday, the Modern stage lacked the overhead structure it had had on Saturday, which would have kept the wind from affecting the sound. Without it, neo-yacht rockers Whitney and Canadian indie kids Alvvays seemed thrown off, and both complained about sound issues throughout their sets, though the audience could hear them just fine.
Still, by the time indie electronic music darlings Purity Ring closed out the festival with a spectacular electric light-choreographed performance late Sunday, the wind had died down and all the hiccups seemed forgotten. If the exuberance of the fans walking back to their cars was any indication, Fortress proved it would be a welcome mainstay on the Fort's ever-growing social calendar. Let's hope other musicians of the world took notice.


text:
Hello readers.
It is, once again, that time of year where a lot of beer bloggers submit their nominations for the Golden Pints. I'm not going to pretend and say I think it's all below me. I just can't be bothered to go back over my year and put that much effort into thinking. It's an attitude that has had an effect on the blog over the course of the year. There have been a number of posts that have been written, and then just sat there, not being posted, I may refer to some of those occasions in this post.
Going back to the subject of Golden Pints, I was pleasantly surprised by Hobgoblin Gold when I tried it this year (the second and third bottles confirmed it was a beer I'd be fine drinking again). Whilst I love Hobgoblin (the beer, not the marketing), I've often struggled with some of Wychwood's other beers. I ended up pouring most of a bottle of Bah Humbug down the sink yesterday for example.
This year's Friday Pint theme was supposed to be local beers. Living as I do now, in Slough, my choice of breweries was somewhat less than it was when I lived in Chiswick. That being said though, I did manage to visit Windsor and Eton, Binghams in Twyford and Rebellion in Marlow.
Of those three, it is only Rebellion that I wouldn't rush to return to. Bingham Brewery produce a wonderful range of stouts (my personal favourite being the Vanilla Stout), and Windsor and Eton win through being closest, and also producing Conqueror Black IPA.
Meanwhile, closer to my hometown of Southampton, two breweries were preparing to move to new locations.
Vibrant Forest had been operating out of their location on Jacobs Gutter Lane near Totton for a few years. Their rise in popularity amongst their customers meant they needed to move to a new location and expand. The brewery is now based on an industrial estate just outside of Lymington, and has a small shop and bar. It's open to the public on Fridays between 12pm and 6pm, and Saturdays between 11am and 3pm.
Dancing Man Brewery also found themselves wanting to expand to meet the demand of their customers. The start of the year saw opponents to the plans to convert The Wool House into a brewpub and restaurant submit a petition to the city council, which was responded to in support of the brewery.
2014 was a year of many delays for the Wool House project, a factor which head brewer Aidan Lavin believes has led to better decisions being made, which will ultimately result in a better experience for people once the Wool House opens next year.
(A more indepth look at The Wool House and the road to it will be appearing in the run up to opening).
Even closer to home, my brother got married back in May, and I messed up the beer I brewed by sticking too many high alpha hops in too early, resulting in a beer too bitter for even my tastes.
I didn't get as much chance to do much homebrewing this year. My Nelson Sauvin based sour is now bottled, and I have a beer on the go at the moment, in which I have used everything up. Hopefully it will turn out fine.
As for next year, I've got a wedding to save for, along with all the other costs that go with it. As such I'll be spending a lot less money on beer (I'll also have less time, what with all the overtime I'll be trying to do). All this is perfectly fine though, as I have two shelves worth of beer (and still a couple of boxes) I need to drink most of before I leave.
Given that the majority of it is beers that should have aged well, next year is going to be a treat.
I'll be back soon with more writing. Until then though, have a great weekend.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
This article originally appeared on Boston Band Crush ).
Salem's Doomriders is playing Monday, with Keelhaul at Great Scott, it's gonna be an insane night METAL! Details:
Great Scott
Monday, 08/03
Phantom Glue
18+, 9pm, $10 adv. / $12 door
Keelhaul video:
ARVE Error: id and provider shortcodes attributes are mandatory for old shortcodes. It is recommended to switch to new shortcodes that need only url


text:
What Else Does That New York Times Poll Tell Us About Chicago?
You may have heard: Chicagoans are dissatisfied with the direction of our city. We dig deeper into the data.
A few days ago the New York Times teamed with the Kaiser Family Foundation to do a rather in-depth polling of Chicagoans about the state of our city. The lede sums up the not-entirely-surprising results:
The people of Chicago are deeply riven by race, class and neighborhood, distrustful of the police, fearful of the growing rate of violent crime and united chiefly in their disapproval of the mayor's performance and their conviction that the city is headed down the wrong track.
So I was curious: what lurks in the details of the poll? First, I was curious how well their sample reflects demographic trends. The results suggest it reflects them pretty well. For instance, they asked how long the respondents had lived in Chicago, and the data's pretty striking.
The age demographics of white respondents seem to reflect the era of white flight and the surge into the central city of recent years; of Hispanic respondents, a swell of immigration that recently tapered off; of black respondents, the disappearance of in-migration in the most recent generation. None of which is surprising, it's just interesting and encouraging to see the sample mirror broader trends.
How about where those people live? That, too, mirrors broader trends. They asked the respondents whether their neighbors were the same race, and the results pick up on the city's general segregation and its nuances.
"Latinos are clustered in community areas on the northwest and southwest sides, the census estimates show, but these neighborhoods aren't nearly as segregated as the city's African-American neighborhoods," Steve Bogira writes. "Latinos are a buffer group, often living with whites or African-Americans." Black neighborhoods, generally speaking, don't gentrify, meaning they're also more likely to remain segregated. And in the NYT/Kaiser polling, black respondents are an enormous outlier in "all the same race," while Hispanic respondents are an outlier in "all of a different race."
And it's hard to talk about segregation without talking economic opportunity. Here's what respondents looked like by race and family income. The buckets are different sizes—some are $10K increments, some are $15K increments, and the first and last increments are larger—so that skews things a bit, but the patterns are stark.
It's also hard to talk about segregation without talking housing. Respondents were asked if they felt certain things happened to them because of their race or ethnic background. Black respondents were outliers in both housing and job discrimination.
Employment figures fall along similar lines.
One of the more interesting approaches the pollsters took was asking respondents how many degrees of separation they were from the victim of a gun crime in the past three years. Had they themselves been a victim? If not, then who do you know who has? The possible answers go out in concentric circles.
And those concentric circles varied by race. The circle is smallest for black respondents; wider for Hispanic respondents; widest for white respondents.
What should we do about it? Respondents were asked if certain things played a major or minor role in the city's crime rate. A substantial majority of respondents of all races said that "lack of educational opportunities," "lack of good jobs," and "lack of family structure" played a "major role." A bare majority of Hispanic respondents (54 percent) and black respondents (52 percent) said that "lack of police presence" played a major role, compared to just 37 percent of whites.
So the pollsters followed up—if you said more than one thing played a major role, what played the biggest role? Here's what they heard.
The number one response, unfortunately, is the one government has the least control over—lack of family structure. Black respondents divided their votes pretty evenly, and were the only group of respondents to break 10 percent on the answer "all equally."
They're also the group most likely to say that Chicago is headed in the wrong direction: 85 percent, compared to 75 percent for Hispanics and 72 percent for whites. It's a tall order for the current mayor, or whoever wants to challenge him. It's even taller because of who's the most likely to be registered to vote. Of the three groups, only black respondents broke 90 percent.
Can the Center Hold? Lightfoot Sure Hopes So.
2 months ago
The Laquan McDonald Shooting, In Focus
1 year ago
Rahm Emanuel: The Exit Interview
1 year ago
What Rahm Leaves Behind
1 year ago
Submit your comment
Comments are moderated. We review them in an effort to remove foul language, commercial messages, abuse, and irrelevancies.


text: Fused, domed irregular shaped glass pebbles with no sharp corners. Made from clear glass with colour applied to the flat bottom surface. Sizes vary from 0.5cm long to 2.5cm long. Typical thickness 5mm. 100g is between 55 & 70 pebbles. Can be cut with either tile nippers or wheeled tile cutters.