my blog meow has moved to http://johnryangallagher.tumblr.com/ and i do this weird thing where i write letters to celebrities: http://fanletters.tumblr.com/ i'd love it if you wouldn't mind saving those to your favorites.

love, J.R.

p.s. wear a rubbah.

fifty things that i love about newburyport (parts one through ten)
by john ryan gallagher

the devil's den is a limestone quarry that's like a cave. it's way out in the woods of newbury and took me years to find. it's now quite overgrown, but at one time it was a tourist attraction (see postcard below) on the old boston/newburyport turnpike. there's a long history of kids going there to do bad things. it hosts a variety of interesting devil/motley crue graffiti and is part of ould newbury's satan trifecta: the devil's den, the devil's basin, and the devil's pulpit. there was even a sign for the devil's pulpit, but i think it was wiped out in the great windstorm of '10. good luck finding this place.


abraham's bagels on liberty street has the second best bagels in the world. (the first goes to terrace bagels in park slope, brooklyn. the new york times even calls terrace the best bagel in nyc.) abe's bagels take me over the rainbow. i especially love to grab one en route to post 13 (see reason #9).

jumping off indian rock into the merrimack river proves to be both awesome and also dangerous. it is strictly prohibited. i did it once naked. the next morning i woke up with someone else's boxer shorts on. damn. another time i did it and got caught in a dangerous current. these kids made a human chain to save me. later that day one of the girls we were with put a live baby mouse in her mouth.

ice skating on the mall is picturesque. the mall (pronounced MAL), however, is notorious for being a spot that encourages people to do bad things (are you sensing a pattern here?). on three different occasions groups of teens broke into the same tomb (the pierce tomb) in the adjacent cemetery. what's weird is that each group of vandals had no previous knowledge of the similar activity. each time (the 1920's, the 1980's, and the '00's) the groups dressed in garments of the deceased. on the last occasion ('05), one of the hoodlums posed for a cell phone picture with one of the skulls. a rumor states that all of the secret underground tunnels in the city lead to the mall. there's a haunted jailhouse nearby as well. the now defunct kelley school used the mall as their gymnasium. don't let anyone tell you differently. kickball was invented there. i went to the kelley school and it was amazing. in the first grade we all got to make pins. i made mine say, 'i love dorchester'. my teacher, artist christine johnson, raised a serious eyebrow to that one.

supposedly captain kidd buried treasure on plum island. details and accounts of this vary and may inevitably prove to be false. if i had to guess, i'd say it's buried somewhere around the highest location of sandy point. there's a secret mini tower there that not too many people know about. i've always dreamt about finding this treasure.

ever since i was a dumb little boy, i've enjoyed walking down to the grog in snowstorms and having a grog burger. it's very cozy in there during blizzards. i can also attest to contributing some serious delinquency here. one of the things i love about the grog is that they immortalize the former town drunk, duncan chase. he died in 1980. he used to say, 'i'm a cool cool cat' (it's literally his epitaph) and then he'd meow. kinda like me. he used to sweep the floor of the grog for beer. i would have done that. he was a nuisance and everyone seemed to dislike him, but as soon as he died, they missed him. it's funny how life works that way. i wonder if people will do the same for larry the weeper when he bites the berry. he goes to every wake in town, hence the title, 'the weeper'.

the brand new rail trail takes you from the train depot to the gillis bridge. my friends and i have always called it the dobie gillis bridge. it's actually named after some guy named bossy gillis who was mayor in town seven times. i'm so happy the city has created this excellent recreational spot. the trail continues on the other side of the dobie gillis bridge but as of right now, you have to cross route one to proceed. good luck with that.

we say 'yeat' to pretty much everything. it's our own word and we are proud of it. it can be a positive expression when you see one of your bros, or it can be negative when someone irritates you. seen on bumper stickers, t shirts, and echoed through the schools and barrooms, the word supposedly originated from the civil war, but who knows. it even found its way into urbandictionary.com. yeat.

post 13, salisbury beach (aka beacon street) is where we all go to the beach in the summer. you'd think we'd all go to plum island (as it's about six minutes closer), but post 13 has free parking and less of an undertow. in the winter i dream about this place. if the weather is nice as you are reading this, then i am probably there. lots of pretty girls and waves and party times.

the thirsty whale is my favorite bar in town. it is one of the few yuppie free zones left. every time i go there 'season of wither' by aerosmith comes on. wtf? way back in the day this place was a gay bar. as a kid i was scared to walk by 'the whale'. rightfully so - those were different times. i was probably more afraid to walk by jake's cafe which, sadly, is gone. they had their last call in '99. that place had a pornographic disney mural on the wall. can i get another wtf?

click this for more on the pierce tomb: http://bit.ly/cfxxRK
special thanks to patrica gallagher, meg manion silliker, bluelime photo, www.nbptma.com, and www.boudillion.com, and you for reading. ten more things coming next week.

fifty things i love about newburyport (parts 11-20)
by john ryan gallagher

for more than two hundred years lord timothy dexter has been our town’s premier crazy-fxcker. a bit of a neanderthal, dexter moved to newburyport as a young man and began a trade as leather dresser. he married a wealthy widow and convinced her to buy him that big house on high street. for someone without any sort of formal schooling, he had outrageous luck in financial gambles and investments. perhaps someone from the future went back in time and gave him some of these ideas. he dabbled in coal, mollasses, and even traded stray cats, all fruitful endeavors. because of his dumb successes and general stupidity, almost everyone in town hated him - even his family. dexter hated them back, particularly his wife, whom he told people had died. when they reported to him that they had seen her alive, he told them that what they had seen was her ghost. he decorated his yard with peculiar statues, and when he was fifty, he wrote a book A Pickle for the Knowing Ones or Plain Truth in a Homespun Dress. he delivered this gem without any punctuation or spelling corrections. eventually the book became very popular and on a subsequent edition he included an extra page with all the eliminated punctuation. he told readers they could ‘peper and solt it as they plese’. then he faked his own death with intentions of appearing as a ghost, but when his wife didn’t cry at his funeral, he blew his cover and freaked out on her. we’ve spent close to two hundred years honoring this loveable numbnuts and i like that about this town.

i don’t know why hodgies has the largest ice creams in the world, but i always enjoy taking friends from out of town there and conning them into getting a size small. for some reason i like to pronounce the place ‘ho-gees’. it’s always great to take a ride over there, but i’m more a fan of graham’s ice cream on state street. on your way to hodgies is the one of the most difficult mini golf courses in the world. jurassic mini golf in salisbury has been recognized by many publications and television programs for just this. we usually play for money when we go. lately i’ve been having gelato downtown and taking it over to the boardwalk and looking out onto the river/harbor. it’s weird how the view never gets old. i could never get tired of looking out there.

atkinson common is a great place to cause trouble. it has an eerie and seductive air to it at night. there’s a beautiful tower in the middle that’s been closed since i can remember. at one point my friends and i were set to bribe a city official for the key to the tower’s gate, but somehow the plan never materialized. we’re still on the ground looking up, resenting the place and the city for not letting us in. one time my friend tom and i drank two cases of beer in atkinson playing some strange version of frisbee golf that we made up. we were too lazy to learn the real rules. when i was a kid i saw a fellow classmate swim in the man-made pond in the park. we all saw his weird human skin tale when he did this.

old town hill is haunted. a psychic told me so. one time matt and i had a fire up there, and i guess we didn’t extinguish it properly because a friend of ours from the newbury fire department had to go and put it out the next morning. he had to hike up there during a heat wave with a hundred pound water pack on his back. we were in big trouble! we didn’t see any ghosts that night, but our friend was pissed and somehow knew it was us. i can’t tell you how he knew.

port taxi has gotta be responsible for saving thousands of lives. one time they told me i couldn’t bring my dog in the cab, so i lied and said i was blind and that it was a seeing eye dog. i think that was the night i lost my mother’s car and upon waking up the next morning had no idea where it was. that was probably one of the top ten angriest times she’s been with me. when i was in high school i had to take that cab a lot and one night these two bastards got in at the neptunes (they were en route to jake’s) and totally lost their shit and fought one another in the back seat. i was real scared. we’ve put so many of our friends in those things in all forms of inebriation, and the port taxi always smiles and gets them home safe and sound.

high rock is a spot on the salisbury side of the merrimack where you can jump from a high distance into the river. it’s pretty much only accesible by boat, but on low tide you can walk out there from behind cinema 95. i’ve never trekked out that way but everyone says it’s real ‘sketch’. a few summers ago kids were partying on high rock, and they turned on this kid and pushed him into a fire and then surrounded the pit so that the victim couldn’t get out. people party pretty hard around here. be careful if you go.

everyone knows that the best place to sled in town is march’s hill. if you go to the very top of the hill (by the water tower), there’s a chute called ‘chinatown’ that is a sheer drop off down onto the old train bed. you really earn your wings if you can sled chinatown. the traditional section of march’s hill sledding is scary enough as it is. i still get a kick out of going by on snow days and seeing all the kids flying down. we usually go at night now. one time dylan and i went with sam, and she bumped her head and acted like she was concussed. in the summertime march’s used to be a party spot, but the cops caught on real fast.

the summer of 2003 was magnificent because they opened up all the beaches on plum island. it was amazing. girls were going topless, there were enormous parties, and it was like ibiza in massachusetts. let me explain a few things to you real quick if you aren’t from newburyport: this place is home to so many different types of beautiful bird species. i like them. one of these said species is the piping plover. there’s like six actual plovers that live on the reservation at plum island. they close four miles of our beaches year round for these birds. look, i promise you that i’m a tree hugging liberal until the day i die, but i can’t say as though i don’t resent these mf’n birds sometimes. once i was at post 13, and i swear a flock of them flew there just to taunt my friends and me. the moral of the story is that plum island’s beaches rule and that summer of ‘03 ruled, and i’d love to have another one like it. even the weather cooperated that summer.

one of my favorite days of the year is old fashioned sunday. for a few years i’ve been working on a pair of shoes that i’m going to submit to the dirty sneaker contest. i hope i win. i should… these things are nasty. one of the things i like the most about old fashioned sunday is that you get to see people swim in the mall. even if you paid me in the hundreds, and with lobsters and strippers, i still wouldn’t put a toe in that water. i think we might have paid this neighborhood kid named skeletor to swim out to the middle once. the muster takes place here as well on old fashioned sunday and naturally i root for the neps.

one of the things i love about newburyport is that though many things in town have changed, so much has stayed the same. i love hearing the guy say, ‘hahbuh taws, now boardin’. the harbor tour is great. what’s even better is the huge statue the guy has in front of ‘not your average joe’s’. it’s a chainsaw wood carving that is attached to hundreds of pounds of cement so that people don’t steal it again. presumably, the first one was taken and thrown into the river. i had a friend once take a pile of mushrooms and claim they didn’t work. he then proceeded to walk three miles home to his house in the north end from the joppa flats. when he got to the (original) statue, he realized the mushrooms did, in fact, work because the wooden man began talking to him. a few days later when that first statue disappeared and everyone wondered who and why anyone would steal it, my friend quietly said to me, ‘nobody stole that thing. it probably just walked away’. harbor tours replaced the statue, however, someone came along and painted the face black.

click dis to read 1-10: http://bit.ly/18SpfJ (above) photo credit: meg manion silliker thank you for reading! ten more coming next week.

fifty things that i love about newburyport (pts 21-30)
by john ryan gallagher

the ’old highway’ used to host enormous keggers when we were in high school. to find the party spot you had to walk down the abandoned lanes from hale street (parallel to I-95) until you saw a gigantic graffiti penis which pointed you in the direction of the festivities. within a few hours the cops would come and everyone would run. it was all good fun. now there’s a sweet trail which takes you to the old highway from storey ave. it’s cool there. other famous party spots in newburyport included ‘the (mosely) pines’, cherry hill, march’s hill, and our favorite, ‘the dam’, the site of my first ever drunk.

the garrison inn is haunted. billy joel slept there. william lloyd garrison was one of the pioneers for ending slavery. his controversial newspaper ‘the abolitionist’ was significant. the inn is named in his honor along with the square in which it is situated. there are two or three ghosts that supposedly occupy the basement. read more: http://bit.ly/9D6ztu

there’s some good pizza in newburyport. as much as i hate big business and chain restaurants, papa ginos has my favorite. the upper crust now comes in at a close second. in reality the two are like apples and oranges. honorable mentions go to nick’s, the pizza factory, leo’s, park lunch, and famous. i can’t not mention beach pizza in salisbury, which i may love even more than some members of my family. i prefer tripoli’s over christie’s. it has a sweeter sauce. i have to get it with extra cheese and i prefer a corner piece. i knew these guys that used to do this thing called ‘the four corners’. they’d get four from christies, then four from tripoli’s, and then four from the other two pizza joints across the boulevard. i don’t know how these guys ate that much pizza without their asses falling off.

taking a loved one or a prospective play partner to the gates of hell often serves as an appetizing aphrodisiac. something about being scared makes people horny. this legendary haunted spot scares the shit out of people. maudsley state park can be extremely creepy at times. i’ve heard all sorts of tales about satanic stuff in maudsley. supposedly if you look at the trails from the sky, they mark out some weird devil symbols. the most terrifying thing that ever happened to me in maudsley was the time our pedophile computer teacher followed me and some friends around on our bikes. he didn’t get us, but the three of us were shitting bricks.


for me the tannery has always seemed like ground zero for the arts in newburyport: dance, art, music, theater studios, bakeries, massage parlors, and one of the finest mom and pop bookstores in the country (jabberwocky). i saw greg moss naked there once. he wrote a terrific play about newburyport. his dad has a knack for communicating and understanding his students more than any other educator i have encountered. you really got the impression that he listened and learned from his pupils. pa and son moss are two good guys who i’ve been fortunate to learn from.

my favorite place for lunch in town is the carryout cafe. they make me this roast beef wrap that has some sort of cheese in it that zens me the fxck out. the carryout is in the same lot as the former italian restaurant, labadinis. i heard that some guy got shot in the nuts in that parking lot in the ‘70’s. damn.

our friend mickey kept getting banned from michael’s harborside for entire summers because he would jump off the deck into the river below. he’d walk up the steps the following year, and they’d look at him and say, ‘don’t do it again’. he’d smile and act as though he wasn’t going to, and then a few hours later you’d hear a huge splash followed by applause. he didn’t need the place. i thought that shit was so cool. i might do it this summer.

in the spring there’s a place you can (illegally) swim at the end of curzon mill road. i don’t know if it’s an old wives’ tale or not, but supposedly there’s a snapping turtle in that water that is the size of a volkswagon. he eats toes and and ears. i like him.

surfcasting at night on the point is one of the best things about newburyport. you can build a fire and hang with your bros and swim and stay up all night. i watched a meteor shower there in ‘03 on cliquot champagne (among other things). the sky was majestic. it was like star wars. plum island shore has to be one of the best places in the world to watch the sun rise. i always say it’s one of the few things in life you can always count on. i’ve never caught anything fishing out there, and i’ve been out there on countless occasions. who knows? maybe there aren’t even any fish in those waters. who cares? always be wary of the tide and keep your wits while you are there.

one of the things that we’re great at in newburyport is inventing colorful/alternate names for points of interest and businesses. some examples include ‘tendercrap’ for tendercrop farm, the barf coral for the beef coral (which is now the courtyard, but everyone still calls it the barf coral), the twat lot for the tot lot, loser’s circle for the winner’s circle, etc. i won’t even tell you what we call lunt and kelleys hardware.

(above) photo by the lovely amelia gromley. thanks to josh pritchard, pgal3, jim sonia, etc. part four coming in two weeks! click dis: http://bit.ly/18SpfJ to read parts I and II.

ten things that i love about newburyport (pts 31-40)
by john ryan gallagher

the other night i went out on a boat with my bros in pursuit of a great white shark spotted at the mouth of the merrimack river. we did not see the beast, but we did claim five lobsters from the captain of the sea brown's traps. they tasted delicious as we ate them in the rain on the public dock. ray the razor showed up and wouldn't leave us alone. he was drinking a coors light wrapped in tinfoil. i told the captain that i'd built a deck with the razor, and that it was the most fucked up day of my life. the captain told me that he could understand because he'd spent three minutes talking to the guy, and those were three of the weirdest minutes of his life. it was hard to shake the razor. after that we went and played darts, and i broke the board at the thirsty whale. i break everything. then we took the boat to the strip club kittens. the management said that no one had ever done that. it was really hard to do, and it's only possible during a very high tide and with a very determined mind. we saw roddy there and we'd just seen him downtown. he thought i was yanking his chain when i told him we had ridden a boat there. then the mc at the club announced what we'd done. honestly, i hadn't been that proud of myself in a long time. sad. this goth/hot topic kinda stripper did this thing where she'd bend over and make her butthole reappear and then disappear. we had to go in a matter of minutes to beat the tide. it was the least amount of money i've ever dropped in a titty bar visit. then we jumped off high rock in our underwear. it wasn't nearly as homo erotic as it sounds. i was afraid of the eels and/or the jellyfish that have been inhabiting our river. we made it to last call at the whale just in the nick of time. linc kept striking out with girls because his tired vibe was turning them off. he passed out on the boat only minutes later as we cruised back to the marina. i sniped a picture and put it on the internet. the true hero of this tale is the city of newburyport for making all of this possible in only a small span of hours. i don't think there's another place on earth where you could have all of these unique adventures. it was a night reminiscent of both 'stand by me' and 'the hangover'. it was remarkable.

people everywhere love to complain. new englanders have a gracious knack for this pastime. luckily newburyport gives you plenty of things to complain about: the fxckin' greenheads, the tourists, yuppies, the guy that looks like jesus who wins all the damn road races, traffic, driving in west newbury, yankme homecoming, the bridge is up, etc. without these things we'd lose a part of communal spirit.

last week our city lost one of our more intriguing residents, frances dalton. fran was born frank but made the crossover to womanhood in the latter part of his life. as a kid i would see her at breakfast in kathy anne's and also enjoy her work featured on the restaurant walls. fran was a talented photographer and artist. she had an enormous heart and gave to those in need. it was fran that spearheaded the campaign to have duncan chase's body back to newburyport and to have a tombstone erected (see #6 for more info on chase). what i've enjoyed reading the most about this honorary citizen, is the way in which this humble city accepted her. it makes me proud to live in a place that honors and accepts diversity.

sloshing through maudsley state park on a pair of cross country skis is cool, sober fun but doesn''t necessarily demand you be so. i love when the snow hangs out on the tree branches and it feels like you're gliding through a painting.


west newbury has a lot of great backroads to tool around on. we call them the 'bakey roads' because they are often utilized for blazing green grass with your amigos. crane neck street connects to forest street in byfield but just barely. we went all the way through one night IN THE WINTER in this girl's mother's nissan xtera. we were literally driving through the parker river. i don't recommend attempting this in anything but an atv or submarine even. that crane neck wildlife area is 'the shit', but getting stuck in the mud or flood would be more like being in shit than anything else. not to mention you're in the middle of nowhere and i doubt cell phones work out there. it's probably as remote a spot you can find in all of the merrmiack valley. i think i asked someone what goes on out there before i'd ever been, and i think 'rape' was the response i got.

only in a backwardass place like newburyport would we name our northern section of town 'the south end' and vice versa. the so. end is awesome, and i like how close the houses are to one another. i'm also fond of the hordes of cats that roam the neighborhood streets at night, fighting and fucking. i like walking through around suppertime and smelling what everyone is cooking. i like looking inside the windows and seeing what people are watching on television. the south end is definitely the sexiest neighborhood in town.

pigeons in market square give the city an urban flare. many call them rats with wings. i don't. i consider them to be an integral part of our city. how come you never see pigeons in the middle of the woods or say, up in the white mountains? what is it about pigeons that lures the crazies? is it one of those things where they identify with these pests? how great was that nutter that used to ride around on his tricycle and feed those fxckers. i wonder what ever happened to him. i bet he's feeding them popcorn in heaven... drooling and farting on himself.

fireworks night is by far the biggest annual party the town throws. on the morning of that saturday, you can literally walk downtown and feel the excitement in the air. i like this feeling. one of my true regrets in life was missing the laser show they put on in place of the fireworks during the earlier part of the last decade. from what i'm told, it was a total shitshow and buzz kill. i don't even mind the throngs of kids that gather downtown on this night, and any other night during yankee homecoming. it's their town too, and without anything to do, what else better than to congregate, spit, and rap with one another about how bored you are, while dressed like a douche.

my father always described his hometown of melrose as a little acre of heaven that god sent down from the sky. if there's anything around here that's been sent down from heaven, i think it's the homefries at the marshview cafe in salisbury. during high school the marshview served as our school cafeteria. we ate there every day, and i don't think we once ever tipped our always smiling waitress dawn. she is the bees knees. whenever i go in there now, i always make sure to tip double in a last ditch effort to safe face.

i'm going to tell you about kent's island, and you're probably going to scratch your head and say, 'where the hell is kent's island'? it's off hay street in newbury and it's a pretty neat spot. like everything else over there, it's quite overgrown now. there's a section of dark forest that will make you feel like you're in robin hood. there's also a cool bubbling spring. pulitzer prize winning author john marquand (known mostly for the popular spy franchise mr. moto) built a sprawling mansion on this property in the 1930's. the place went to shit when he died and people literally raged in the abandoned house for decades. click dis wiki to read more: http://bit.ly/dDhC1P the house was torn down in 1989 after a large boring dispute. similar to maudsley the place has the feel of a secret garden you are meandering through. it's creepy. whenever i explore over there, i get so excited i feel like i have to make a bm. i also get kinda horny. i like how it is separated from the land by the little river. the train tracks run through the eastern portion of the island. one time i was there while mad at a close friend of mine. i broadly carved his first and last name in big letters on the aluminum bridge.

fran dalton, rest in peace.

fifty things that i love about newburyport (parts 41-50)
by john ryan gallagher

my friends and i used to drive the long way home just so that we could go up boner drive. actually the street is really doner drive, but honorable citizens have long since been altering the capitol D with a simple line through the middle. i wonder how many signs the city has gone through? wouldn't the planners have seen this coming? did they do this intentionally? four blocks east of doner drive is coffin court, which is a dead end. lol. the residents of this neighborhood tired of people taking pictures of this ironic blunder and had the 'dead end' sign changed to 'not a thru street'. what a bunch of pussies.

this girl once told me that when she walked down high street, she could tell which houses were haunted by the energy that came off them. she said some of the places had some really scary stuff radiating from them. she did a lot of acid. this always stuck with me. high street has to be one of the most beautiful streets in the country: palaces with widow walks, an enormous brick high school, parks, churches, graveyards. high street is a must-see on any trip to town. the annual yankee homecoming parade travels down this street in its entirety every summer. once as a kid all these disney characters stopped and pulled the heads off their costumes right next to me, only to guzzle beers and smoke butts. as a dumb little boy, i was traumatized.

there's a semi-secret trail in maudsley that takes you down a steep incline and through a maze of rhododendrons, over two narrow foot bridges, and beneath various rare jungle plants, trees, and flowers. as a kid i felt like when i walked through this trail that i was in an indiana jones movie. i did it the other day on my way to indian rock, and it still felt that way.

at present, there's only three and a half homeless guys in newburyport that i know of. two of these dudes have banded together and can often be seen walking through town. they are really nice cats, and i've yet to see them act a fool or cause a problem. i urge you to consider them in your hearts if you happen to pass them by. the other homeless man is seemingly harmless as well - just not as friendly or appreciative of generosity. i refer to him as 'larry of arabia' because he wears so many clothes and shit over his head.

fowles on state street has the only neon sign in newburyport. it is certainly downtown's anchor. no one has ever given me a straight answer as to when the store officially opened. at one time i belive it was situated on the other side of the street. it's funny; i worked there for a number of years (on the northern side) but remember very little. i'm pretty sure it's over a hundred and fifty years old, which is a true testament to its lasting power. i can't imagine newburyport being without it or long-time day manager ruth sullivan. i love that woman.

my mother's backyard is prettier than a park. it has a hammock, gardens, cool trees, flowers, and abutts a very deep pond. in the winter you can ice skate or sled down her steep hill. one year we had an enormous ski jump set up. in the summer it's like national geographic and you can watch all sorts of cool birds stop by, feed baby ducks and weird cooter turtles, or maybe see a deer, fox, river otter, or any of the other creatures that happen on her property. my friend josh, a world traveler, told me that my mother's deck was his favorite spot in the world to pull a beer on. i'd have to agree with him. my mother has no idea the amount of debauchery that has taken place at her address, and let's hope she never finds out.

every now and then i just get this primal urge to whash it up and play keno, shoot pool (while blasting kid rock on the jukebox), and watch sports on 77 different t.v.'s. thankfully the winner's circle is just a trip over the bridge. this place really has it all. it's also affordable and the food's not bad.

people claim the mall is a spot that lures individuals in to do bad things. i have some experience with the mall and misbehavior, but i attest to this moreso at the oak hill cemetery. what a beautiful spot! it seems strange to say this about a graveyard, but this isn't your average burial ground. it was one of the first floral garden cemeteries in our country. it's a beautiful place to view wildlife, take pictures, roast a bone, walk your dog, or make out. you can cut through to the top of march's hill in the back. a great time to go is in the fall when the leaves are changing. it's also fun in the winter. i feel fortunate to have taken the 'tiptoe through the tombstones' tour with todd woodworth some years back.

i love coming over the chain bridge (the oldest suspension bridge in the country) after being away for a few days or weeks and seeing the newburyport sign. as corny as it seems, it warms my soul to come home to this little berg.

yeat.


final note: it has been great fun writing about my hometown. i would like to thank www.nbptma.com, www.newburyport-today.com, kathy downey, my moms, amos duncan (for reminding me about coffin court), and everyone that read this. the great amount of feedback and response was well appreciated. enjoy the rest of your summer.

if you can find it in your heart, please consider donating to ic-haiti: http://www.ic-haiti.org/ i will be traveling to haiti next month.

best coast
by john ryan gallagher

there's something magical about best coast. maybe that's because there's something magical about singer/songwriter bethany cosentino. her sincere pop gems have been stealing the hearts of all those that lie in their wake. after a string of solid and exciting 7" singles, the band is finally ready to release their eagerly awaited debut this july. i had a chance to chat with bethany this afternoon. i like her.

i have a feral cat named olliecat. what's your cat's name?

snacks.

oh right. i think i actually knew that from a youtube joint that i saw. that's because he likes to eat little snacks, right?

yea.

does he like skittles?

i've never tried to give him skittles.

not yet.

(chuckles: shakes head) not yet.

is that him on the cover of 'crazy for you'?

yes. he's a huge part of my life. i got him around the same time that best coast started playing shows and our releases started coming out. he kinda came into my life at the same time as this band. two really important things that happened to me last year and he is one of them. he is like my son.

what were some of the clubs where you started playing your first shows?

we played our first show at a place called echo curio, which is this really awesome all ages/diy art and music space in echo park.

we like that.

then we started playing a bunch of shows around LA in smaller venues. most of them were little art gallery spaces. we played at a place called synchronicity gallery, which is a really cool place and i'm actually going to a show there later tonight.

is that an all ages venue as well?

yes. we started off playing only the very small all ages places like the smell. i still always want to play places like the smell and echo curio just because i love them as venues and i think it's really important to make sure that people of all ages can get into your shows. now we play bigger places like echo and echo plex. it's always fun to play shows in LA because we're from here. i think people get really pumped that they're seeing an LA band, but not only just an LA band, but an LA band that talks about being an LA band all the time. we have a lot of LA pride. people get really into that.

are you a lakers fan?

i am a lakers fan.

i'm a celtics fan so we're in trouble.

the lakers are doing so bad. it's embarrassing.

it's funny that we've talked so much about the all ages stuff because when i first started hearing your singles, instantly it reminded me of olympia, and calvin johnson and k records. did that musical community have an impact on your evolution or when you were growing up and starting to write songs?

not so much on the music that i make or made, but i definitely loved mirah and beat happening and calvin's stuff.

when i first heard you it sounded like you could have been one of their sisters.

that's cool. beat happening is a band that i used to listen to a lot. if we're touring or flying somewhere i'll listen to some of their songs. i think there probably is a little bit of an influence - just because their songs are really simple and bouncy. that's sorta like the same idea as best coast.

i know that you like hip hop music a lot. what do you consider to be the quintessential hip hop lps of all time?

oh wow. wu tang's 36 chambers, obviously, is a totally huge influencial record. i also love ghostface fishscale, i think that's such a good record. tribe called quest love movement. lots of old school stuff. i'm a big tupac fan. i'm really into west coast hip hop but right now i'm just really into drake. i'm obsessed with drake.

me too.

he's just so good. each song that he puts out is just so good and what he says in his songs actually means something. it's really cool.

i know, and he's like the first rapper to be able to sing and rap well.

he's so talented and i love everything that he's doing. i also love nikki minaj and a lot of the young money stuff. nikki is rad because she's like this totally empowered female in this crew of all dudes.

you're seemingly into early sixties music as well. that sorta phil spector, dirty dancing, eddie and the cruisers type shit. who are some of your favorite artists from that era?

i love the obvious ones like the ronnettes and the shangri las and i also really love lesely gore. she was her own artist. she wasn't in a group or anything. i love the crystals, and the treasures - basically all of that stuff. everything that spector touched '58-'69. back to mono - that collection is the best thing ever. that music makes me very happy and makes me feel good. i don't want to listen to music that bums me out.

same here. if smog comes on, i'm gonna cry.

exactly. sometimes you want to listen a sad thing or whatever - but if i'm already bummed out i'm not gonna listen to bum out music.

what was the first movie you saw in the theater?

hmmm. i'm not really sure. the first movie that i really remember seeing was selena in the theater with my mom and my dad. i'd seen movies in the theater before that - but that's really the first movie that i remember going to see. i loved selena when i was growing up. when she got killed it was the first time i felt sad about a celebrity dying. i still think that movie is really good and i think it's the best thing that j lo has done in her life.

i like 'out of site'.

i've never seen that.

put it on your netflix cue. it's pretty good.

sho'.

if you were stranded on a desert island and could only bring three dvds with you, which ones would you bring?

i would bring season seven of sienfield. season one of friends - i'm a big friends fan. then i'd probably bring annie hall or manhattan or some classic woody allen movie. those movies are the best. i've seen them all a million times and i watch them now and they still make me laugh.

did you ever get into peter bogdanovich movies like 'paper moon' or 'what's up doc?'

(enthusiastically) i love 'what's up doc?' striesand in that movie is just the best thing ever.

what are some of the bands that you love playing with and still get to play with?

dunes. they're actually playing that show tonight that i'm going to. they're so good. we've played with them a couple of times. i love watching them play. her music is awesome. my friend's band abe vigoada is amazing and they have a new record coming out in september. they're doing awesome things right now and i'm really excited for them. it's funny when you realize that every single one of your friends or everyone that you hang out with makes music or plays in a band - that's cool because everybody can kind of relate to one another. my friends are in a band called no age and a bunch of my friends play basement shows. there's definitely a bunch of awesome stuff going on in LA right now.

absolutely. i really like your record so much and i really like you.

well thank you.

have a really fun night tonight. be good and say hi to snacks for me.

will do.


'crazy for you' is available for pre-order starting today, tuesday, june 15th (www.mexicansummer.com). the album comes out on july 27th and i promise it is going to be one of the best records of your summer.