Monthly Archives: April 2022

Whitey You Dog

The name Whitey belonged to one man in Boston for the last fifty years. Whitey Bulger, arch-criminal out of South Boston, had lived in the Old Colony, America’s first housing project. His first arrest for larceny predated my birth by nine years. He sold heroin in the projects. He killed friends, family, and Mafia. The […]

Winter’s Rainbow

My baby brother died on AIDS in 1995. My mother succumbed to cancer in 1996. I mourned their passing with a circumnavigation of the globe. Every holy site on the route was my destination; Luang Prabang, Zhongdian, Lhasa, Benares et al. My soul was washed by the waters of the holiest rivers in the world, […]

FREEBIRD INDEED by Peter Nolan Smith

Throughout 1994 the doctors at Boston’s Beth Israel spoke about turning the corner on AIDS and in January my youngest brother had made enough of a comeback for me to contemplate taking a West Coast job offer. “We’re opening a Milk Bar in Beverly Hills.” The original club in New York had been a success […]

# 4 Nude / Kurt Kauper

The most famous photo of Bobby Orr was of his scoring the winning goal in the 1970 Stanley Cup Championship against the St. Louis Blues. The immortal moment has also been immortalized in a statue gracing the entrance to the TD Garden in Boston, however an artist friend had told me about the painter Kurt […]

FOR BETTER OR REALLY WORSE by Peter Nolan Smith

Six Aprils ago Nick and I were drinking beer in Buffalo Bar to celebrate Beermas. It was a holiday for every day of the year. We never go to go-gos, since disco music wasn’t conducive to meaningless conversations. The DJ was spinning an insipid boy band tune, which was the perfect background music for our […]