Charles Pierce puts the Boston Phoenix to bed for the last time:
What’s the prayer of thanksgiving for a hundred days of fellowship, drunk on words, all of us, as though there were nothing more beyond the next word, the next sentence, the next paragraph locked into place? Please say that the muse is something beyond the balance sheet, something beyond technology. Tell me that she’s alive the way she once was when you’d feel her on your shoulder as one word slammed into the other, and the story got itself told, and you came to the end and realized, with wonderment and awe, that the story existed out beyond you, and that it had chosen you, and you were its vehicle, and the grinning muse had the last laugh after all.
An early photo of Stephen Mindlich, publisher of the Phoenix
“I can state with certainty that this is the single most difficult communication
I’ve ever had to deliver…”
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March 16, 2013 at 8:01 am
Ralph
Oh no! Had no idea the Phoenix was about to disappear! An icon of the counterculture we thought would change the world–how sad.
March 16, 2013 at 1:36 pm
lazarusdodge
It probably did change the world in some ways…have to admit it was quite a run.
My wife also remembers the paper – she lived in the North End while teaching at Northeastern…
March 16, 2013 at 1:39 pm
Ralph
I went to Boston to be a singer after Peace Corps in 1972. Lived first in Dorchester (what a nightmare!) and then Allston. The Phoenix was a big part of the scene. I associate it with a very special time in my life.
March 16, 2013 at 3:28 pm
lazarusdodge
The Brunette was there ’73-’76. First right next door to you in Brighton then later to the North End. She may have been out there cheering you on…
It’s a city that has changed dramatically since then…what hasn’t?
March 27, 2013 at 11:24 am
Nan
The article brought tears to my eyes. Though I haven’t read it in decades, it was a big part of my college life in Boston. Funny the things we take for granted. Things we think will just be there forever, but aren’t. I think the counterculture did change the world in many ways. We left Boston the very year the ‘Brunette’ came.
Oh, I just came upon a blog I think you’d like, though it may make you sad/angry too.
http://vanishingnewyork.blogspot.com/
March 27, 2013 at 12:23 pm
lazarusdodge
In a sense they are there forever, Nan. Just the fact that we can recall where we were and who we were at the time gives them ageless properties. Heck, I remember the alternative weeklies I read here in New York – The Village Voice, Soho Weekly News, East Village Other, etc. They are embodied in so many memories that I still keep whole.
By the way, Vanishing New York is a daily read for me. Not so much angry as heartbreaking to read about the changes in the neighborhoods that I hold so close to my heart. There’s another one I’ve been reading, more photography based: http://www.onemorefoldedsunset.com/ It’s more about Brooklyn than The City. But still lots of memories to see.
The one thing we can depend on is change. Then again, I consider it a personal responsibility to document it…
- Jeff