Opening tonight: "Lord Hobo"

This replaces the overpriced B-Side Lounge. From the looks of it, this place could be even MORE pretentious!

Lord Hobo
92 Hampshire Street
Cambridge


Click here to see the menu.

Friend them on Facebook.

VejNaturals moves from Malden to Davis Square

And you thought Friday the 13th was UNLUCKY? Not when you get this kind of news.

According to VejNaturals.com, Oak Grove's only vegan Restaurant will be shuttering its (teeny, tiny) doors in Malden and reopening in DAVIS SQUARE IN SOMERVILLE COME DECEMBER!

* Pause as all of Vegetarian Somerville rejoices *


I'm not afraid to be their first customer.


Read more about their menu offerings here, where you can find my own review (from a past journalistic life) as well as two other critics' thoughts.


Find out even more at their Facebook page!

The kiss of death

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is planning today to endorse US Representative Michael E. Capuano, a key coup in a race against Martha Coakley, who is seeking to become the first female US senator from Massachusetts.

Pelosi, the first female speaker of the House, will formally endorse Capuano at the Omni Parker House in downtown Boston.

“Mike’s proven record of accomplishment in the House is clear evidence that he will be an outstanding advocate for the people of Massachusetts in the tradition of the late Senator Kennedy,” Pelosi said in a statement.

The endorsement in some ways is to be expected -- Capuano is an influential member of Pelosi’s leadership team, and is the only congressional member in the race. But it also provides a key boost in a campaign where Coakley has energized women and has criticized a health care plan that Pelosi helped engineer.

"Mike Capuano not only cast a courageous vote for this historic legislation, but was a constructive force in improving this bill and moving it to the Senate," Pelosi said. "Mike Capuano has a proven record of standing up for progressive values and what he believes is right. I am proud to endorse Mike Capuano for US Senate."

Capuano and Coakley squabbled earlier this week over whether health care reform should include a provision that limits coverage of abortions. Capuano said he had to vote for a legislation that included the abortion restriction in order to keep health care alive. Coakley and Capuano have both said they would vote against a final package if that amendment is not removed.

Coakley has been endorsed by most of the politically active women in Massachusetts, including Senate President Therese Murray.

Video of the Day

I'm sorry but this is super cute.

Side note, this guy just played....wait for it....the NATICK HIGH SCHOOL auditorium.

Sean Kingston | MTV MUSIC

Last Brigham's in Boston closes

The worst part? It's down the street from my office and I've never been. Then again, I've seen them drop off one by one over the years, and it's sad no matter which location closes. Natick, Somerville, Boston...




Read more in today's Globe.

Video Profile: Dressed for Success

Follow one local college student as she embarks on a career fair with help from "Dress For Success," which offers unemployed women free makeovers and job interview attire as they re-enter the work force. Clients are referred from a variety of sources, and many are getting their first job after going through rehab, serving a prison sentence or escaping an abusive partner. I've donated several outgrown suits to Dress for Success and can't recommend them highly enough.



Visit www.dressforsucess.org to learn more.

This looks super delicious

Lentil Bolognese

Watch as Kinzie constructs the meatless version of an Italian classic. The longer the flavors are allowed to mingle together over heat, the more delicious the sauce becomes. This recipe comes from Kinzie of To Cheese or Not to Cheese?

Boston Globe: Afghanistan's forgotten class

By Ellen Goodman

After 9/11, when we went after Al Qaeda and the Taliban who had hosted these terrorists, many saw collateral virtue in the liberation of Afghan women. Indeed, President Bush played this moral card in his 2002 State of the Union speech when he declared to thunderous applause: “Today women are free, and are part of Afghanistan’s new government.’’

Mission accomplished. Many women shed their burqas, opened schools, entered Parliament. Equal rights were written into the constitution. But slowly, as America turned to the disastrous misadventure in Iraq, Afghan women’s freedoms were casually traded in like chits for power.

Now again, we’re focusing on this beleaguered country and its sham leader. The discussion is cast in military terms - more troops, less troops. Yet I keep thinking about the women who are once again pushed to the outskirts of the conversation, as if they were an add-on rather than a central factor. If we abandon the country, or even the countryside, don’t we abandon those girls who have gone to school even when risking acid thrown in their eyes? If we prop up the deeply corrupt government of President Hamid Karzai, are we just supporting warlord fundamentalists instead of Taliban fundamentalists?

The options are so chilling that even Afghan women’s groups are divided. RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, wants us out. WAW, the Women for Afghan Women, “deeply regrets having a position in favor of maintaining, even increasing troops’’ rather than “abandoning 15 million women and children to madmen.’’

American women seem equally torn. Feminist Majority Foundation, which championed Afghan women long before it was popular, has stopped short of asking for more troops. Ellie Smeal’s anger at American funding of warlords is matched by the fear that if we back out, it will create “terrible human suffering,’’ the return of the prison state.

We shouldn’t be surprised we have come to this pass. It happened on our watch. We barely noticed when Karzai signed a law that would have, among other things, allowed Shi’ite men to withhold food from wives who refused sex. It didn’t take a rigged election to show a shallow respect for democracy. If by democracy, that is, you include half the population that is female.

Today, one-third of Afghan students are girls. Women now get health care once denied them. Is that enough?

Afghan women are not the “add-on,’’ the incidentals in this process. Women are civil society. We’ve learned all over the world that the only way to develop a stable society and economy is with the education and inclusion of women. There is no democracy without women.