Author: admin

In an effort to broaden our literary horizons beyond fart jokes and yelling at the TV, we have brought on board the Gloucester Clam’s own Poet Laureate, Amanda Cook.

Poem for the Brad Delp Graffiti on Route 1
By Amanda Cook, formerly known as Amanda Porter.

I get sad when I see
The graffiti for Brad Delp
has been painted
over.
Then I remember
the Mole Man graffiti
and that was painted over
too.

Frank from Gloucester

By Amanda Cook, formerly known as Amanda Porter.

I usually see
Frank from Gloucester
on the bench
by Pallazola’s
but one time
I saw him
at the Bakery
at Market Basket.
I said
“Hi Frank”
and he looked at me
weird
‘cuz he doesn’t know me.

Poem for WFNX
By Amanda Cook, formerly known as Amanda Porter.
I don’t know how
to change the stations
on my car radio.
So when WFNX
started playing
all that
night club shit
I was like
whatever
and I let it be.
Then the other day
they started playing
country
and calling themselves
The Bull.
I’m going to have to
sell my car.

Last week, I had posted about Barcade’s first-ever Brewery Takeover, in which they brought a truckload of vintage arcade games up our way to Cape Ann Brewery just for Friday night.

While overall it seemed like adding a few of the more recognizable games could have knocked the event out of the park, the Brewery was a perfect setting for videogameapalooza, since it’s spacious, already has a foosball table, and has plenty of wall space.

Speed Buggy!

Among one of the first games I tried out was Speed Buggy, which I don’t think I’ve ever played before, and I sucked buckets of ass at it. I couldn’t get the hang of trying to jump over stuff, and I bashed into about twenty 8-bit obstacles before the game ended. It was kind of fun to play the early prototype of all those awful loud Dave and Buster type car-driving games. Now the next time I see one I can roll my eyes, finger my handlebar moustache, and say “Man, you haven’t lived until you’ve played Speed Buggy. I was into arcade driving games before they were cool.”

Another notable game was Swimmer. I had never played Swimmer, nor even heard of it (It came out before I was born, when dinosaurs roamed the earth). It was kind of like Frogger, except your dude was in the water, had to avoid logs and weird bugs, and got extra bonus points for eating fruit along the way. I’m not sure it’s such a great idea to eat bananas floating on top of a river with bugs in it, but I guess I’m too picky with my food sources.

Fun Fact: Babies are naturally good at NBA Jam.

NBA Jam was another popular offering of the evening, but since playing would have involved kicking an adorable baby off the machine, I skipped it. I remember it as one of the more entertaining games of my youth – dude, four people can play one game? Unreal. Next you’ll tell me you can get internet on phones.

Ironic use of black and white filter, naturally.

Pitfighter is not my cup of booze, so I skipped that one. Ms. Pacman is more my style – literally, since another of my side projects is making Pacman jewelry on Etsy that no one buys (That was an incredibly shameless plug, and I apologize). However, my secret is that I also really suck at Ms. Pacman.  Just ungodly awful. Like I can kinda get through one screen of dot-eating before I get eaten by friggin’ Inky or Blinky and it’s game over. So I played that one early, before anyone got in line behind me and judged my shitty gameplay.

The night’s entertainment also offered up Rampage World Tour (a super fun game from the mid-90’s where you pretty much destroy the world as a giant reptile), as well as heavyweights such as Tapper and Centipede.

Barcade was a one-time thing (although it’s likely they’ll put a location in Boston in the next 5 years – I vote Allston), but these are the kinds of things this city should continue to seek out. We need things that draw 21 to 35 year olds to Gloucester and let the spend their discretionary income.  I’ve seen the hordes of BU kids come up on weekends – it’s my job, after all, and I’ve marketed to ’em – and they love to hit up bars as part of their visit.

Heck, honestly, the Brewery should just invest some money in vintage arcade games and pinball machines. Get a skeeball machine, and people’s kids will drop quarters in it like pink polka dotted panties dropping at a One Direction concert. The adults will blow their money on Galaga and Duck Hunt. The Brewery is already right on the harborwalk, a few arcade games would be a natural next step to making us a trendy place to go.

See? I’m a business genius.

Around this time of year we sometimes get cranky. Every non-work moment is taken up with some kind of community activity. There are end of season picnics, there are playoff games in effing Byfield which is apparently a place or something, the inbox fills up with invites complete with requests to bring a nut and gluten free dessert. It always seems like there are ten more things happening every day than we’d previously heard about. “We’re going to the end-of-season flaming hula hoop demonstration set to the music of Brahms. It’s in someplace called ‘Arkham’ and I volunteered you for the oboe solo, so you’ll need to learn how to play one. Also we have to carve an eagle out of yak ghee.”

It’s pot luck. Can you bring this?

This year has been particularly insane and has culminated with your clameditor down in NY at a somewhat massive close-family Jewish/Hindu wedding. It’s been no small undertaking and last night we were in a post-driving/overtaxed/culture shock haze at the Sangeet, which is sort of like a rehearsal dinner, but with elaborate dancing and food so spicy the caterer can’t drive over major bridges without special permits. After a few hours of this were ready to crawl back out to the minivan and curl up into fetal position when we got to chatting with a lovely older Indian couple who’d flown here from Sri Lanka to be at the wedding. They asked about Gloucester where we and the bride’s family are from and we sort of rambly described it through the lens of the seven beers we drank in an attempt to get our intestinal tract back out of the plasma state it had entered because of the shrimp curry.

This IS medium spicy, sir.

“You seem to have a very strong community there,” she said which was sort of shocking because I thought I’d been talking about harbors and the fishing industry and such.

She then related an Indian fable we’d never heard about a man who was sick of people so he went up into the Himalayas. There he lived, alone mediating until one day a lost kitten wandered into his hut. He was welcome for the company, but the kitten needed milk so he had to get a cow. Then the cow needed grass so he had to build a farm. The farm needed keeping so he got a wife and they had children who needed teaching and you can see where this goes. Because of his cat he’d founded a village.

It was the Himalayas so we assume this was the cat, right?

OK, neat. Didn’t think about it much till this morning when we got a note on social media  reminding everyone that now that school is out some kids have lost their only sense of stability. For some its the only decent meal and healthy social interaction they get all day. No one is sending them to camps, signing them up for summer soccer or Spindrift. Nobody is packing sandwiches to take them to the beach. This person reminded us to keep an eye out for kids who need extra support during the summer. This was not a social worker, by the way. It was just another Gloucester mom who cares.

It reminded us that there are a lot of lost kittens out there. And it further reminded us that it’s sort of all or nothing when you live in a community like ours. We thought back to the guy-in-the-hut story. What wisdom was that dude really going to get out in the mountains thinking about stuff all up in his own head? His real wisdom was more likely to come fixing the cow fence for the five thousandth time, stepping in crap, cursing the sky and then looking down to find the kitten rubbing up against his leg.

In the end, we are who we are in our relationships to others.

Oh shit, is that my phone buzzing? Always right when you’ve almost reached moksha..

Anyway, Namastov or Mazelte or whatever to all.

Annnd we’re back yet again to finish up the quarterfinals of The Clam’s Tournament of Shitty Parking Lots! Our last few teams involve commerce and churches. Let’s get down to business and find out whose prayers are answered in today’s battle! Our Lady of Good Voyage vs Temple Ahavat Achim

Our Lady of Good Voyage

Our Lady of Good Voyage isn’t the worst lot in town, by far. But what makes this one unique is the veritable obstacle course contained therein. To start, there’s two different levels of parking, one a few feet higher than the other, and both have individual tiny exits flanked by fencing. The spaces are angled oddly requiring a 5 point turn to accurately park. The aisles are mirror-scrapingly narrow, and the lot appears to only cover 10% of the parish’s parking needs. The whole lot sits on a blind curve, so you will face the angry spectre of death every time you try to turn left, partially because parishioners have parked halfway on the sidewalk on both sides of the street and you can’t see a thing.

Temple Ahavat Achim (made Jim take this one)

As a creative twist, the parking at Cape Ann’s only Temple is terrible more for what it’s not than what it is. What it’s not is a functional parking lot, it’s really just a few spaces mostly reserved for older folks leaving everyone else to wander in the desert of the parking situation that is downtown. What makes this lot truly magic on the terrible court are the random people who think that it’s totes fine to park there and go use the Y. Picture this: People are trying to get in for a funeral service before sundown on Friday and 87 year old uncle Joe who’s just flown in from Ft. Meyers can’t park his rental because there are three nonmember minivans parked side by side taking up all the spots. Further imagine that once the driver realizes her car has been towed that she starts yelling at congregants as they emerge. Put her in pajamas and flip flops. Got it? Good.

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Family Dollar vs. Gloucester Crossing

Family Dollar

This lot is like one of those Super Mario levels where you have to dodge the fire-flowers on top and bottom. People will back up quickly on either side of the lot, honk, get out of the car, and gesticulate wildly at the other driver, and you’re just trying to get across the lot to get to McDonalds before they stop serving McMuffins for the day. People don’t understand geometry and will park at a 30 degree angle from the lines. Semi-trucks are often rumbling through on deliveries and will suddenly stop and block the way. Oh look, a train. Guess you’re never leaving.

Gloucester Crossing

For fuck’s sake, the stupid fake rotary? Whose idea was that? Maim that person. It’s too small, no one understands how to yield before throwing themselves into the circle of pain, and it’s like oddly partially fake cobblestone for some reason.

Other amazing features of this gigantic mega crap-lot include idiots who drive diagonally through rows of spaces without looking, people who try to drive through the lot at 88mph (probably to get back to 1985 when beer was cheaper) and the random islands that make dead ends of whichever way you assumed was the damn exit. There’s a stupid four way stop that no one can correctly maneuver, and you probably just took 128 the wrong way not paying attention because the kids are rifling through the Basket bags looking for the ripple chips.

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We’re back for another day of our tournament to crown the shittiest parking lot in Gloucester! Day 1 and Day 2 are still open for voting, so cast that shit before it’s too late.  Today we pit school vs school and restaurant vs restaurant. WHO WILL WIN? WHO WILL BE CRUSHED LIKE A BUG? Let’s find out.

Pathways for Children vs East Gloucester School

Pathways for Children

Pathways for Children is amazing. I’ll just get that right out of the way. They are a dedicated bunch of people doing great things for our kids. The parking lot, however, is a freakin’ zoo. It’s so bad, they need a retired police officer to direct traffic every morning. It’s chaos. There are not nearly enough spaces dedicated to pick up and drop off, so you’re forced to walk really far in sleet, hail, whatever, with multiple kids, while the person who got there at 6 am and didn’t move all day parked right next to the door. Awesome.

This lot also boasts key features such as intensely small spots to ensure maximum door dentage, people who live-park where buses go, and people who live-park where handicapped spaces are.  And the PACE workers who control a small subset of the parking lot will literally fucking cut you if you even pull into one of their spaces for two seconds to unload a parent and child and continue on to circle. Last year sometime, a woman working at PACE leaned out the window and yelled to me that I was beneath her and stupid for doing this – because I’m poor, I can’t read apparently (I have a fucking business degree). There were six other empty PACE spaces next to me, by the way.

East Gloucester School (I made Jim Dowd cover this one)

Remember the movie 300? Remember how the Spartans broke the backs of the invading Persians by funneling them into the ‘hot gates’ of Thermopylae, a geological feature rendering their superior numbers meaningless against the defending Greeks? Remember how awesome those dudes abs were? EGS is like that, but replace “Persians” with “anyone trying to get the fuck in there” and “abs” with “not abs”. But the principle remains the same. Everything funnels all at once into a singular narrow gap and there is no getting back out: busses, cars, ill-timed delivery trucks, and giant bejeweled glistening bald men on slave-borne parade floats are all stranded at one end while the relentless waves of humanity crash against its walls.  At least Leonidas and his men got to die. EGS has to do it every day. Additional note: EGS is home to the world’s only curved crosswalk. Take that, sanity!

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Causeway vs Destino’s

Causeway

The Causeway lot is maddening solely due to the restaurant’s popularity. While I’m happy that they do well and serve the largest plates of pasta and seafood known to man or beast, this means that the limited parking they have to offer is not enough to quench the hungry parking hordes. People park their cars on top of other, weaker cars. It’s like parking at the mall on Christmas Eve, but busier. If you wanted to just run into the liquor store, it was a teeth-gritting experience. I once toyed with the idea of getting takeout from there, until a more level-headed person talked me down from that ledge. Getting in and out of the lot means trying to back up at 1mph into traffic coming downhill at roughly 95 mph.

Destino’s

What sets Destino’s apart from the competition, aside from having a never-ending macaroni salad bar (and BY GOD is it delicious and addictive), is their decision to leave their small parking lot without any real distinct parking lines. Up is down! Down is up! I could park diagonally in the center of the lot and not be in the wrong! This means nothing but drama and confusion, because who knows who was the first person to park like butt and leave a gap of .7 cars between theirs and the next, but it’s the song that never ends. It’s probably been a chain reaction of not parking right that spans back to 1964. Getting in and out of the lot is also heart-pounding – try not to back into the HVAC unit of the apartments behind it, and then turn left onto Prospect. I sense a theme where the crappiest lots involve pulling out of parking spaces into traffic that’s going way too fucking fast.

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