A hot afternoon recording session in the community garden, catching up on the rent control question, the limits of ballot questions as a tool, and on the eve of this great nation’s 250th birthday, a taking of pause, putting our patriotic and totally respected right to criticize the government on the shelf for a moment—to consider how blessed we are to live here, in the free world that America maintains with its highly effective air force and navy at no social expense to the imperial core, and not somewhere repressive and/or authoritarian. Plus, Worcester’s coolest invention by a mile.

Also I edited the audio in the passenger seat of Katie’s car so… our usually pristine—some are saying This American Life-level, if not better—production fidelity is probably a bit lacking. I can’t tell myself because highways it turns out are pretty loud.

Please support this outlet! As all of our revenue comes from readers and/or listeners it is literally up to you to make sure we still exist. Today’s the last day to take me up on the 50 percent deal I’ve been running for the six year anniversary!

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Some links from the discussion

My piece on the rent control ballot question from yesterday

Meet the Sir Vival, the safest car that never was

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Ok I’m actually on vacation now, unlike when I said that yesterday.

A literal garden variety show this week. Dispensing hard won wisdom and totally accurate and good advice for competitively growing potatoes for the Tuber tourney from a park bench in the new Green Hill Park Community Garden, where Chris has a lovely plot and so do The Noes. And wouldn’t you Noe it (sorry) they make a surprise appearance early in the show! (Don’t worry, Matt and Gabby, we cut out all the stuff about a certain ongoing local drama).

The first 10 minutes or so were pure field audio, off the built-in mics of my trusty little Sony Dictaphone, walking around the lovely little garden patches, up there on the top of the hill next to the municipal golf course we have for some reason, that at one point was probably sold as something that would pay for itself and/or usher in a Renaissance, and now does neither. A grand Worcester tradition.

Subscriptions are down and it’s freaking me out! Please subscribe! Running a half off for a year deal until July 1 to celebrate the six-year anniversary!

And don’t forget about the little party we’re throwing Saturday at Steel and Wire! Would love to see a lot of your smiling faces.

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Here’s the twice-edited Bergman sick own discussed at the top…

Burnin Down The House tickets are live! We interviewed John Keogh about this on Episode 59Is there a childcare center opening up at the old Riviera strip club?

Outro: Rodney Crowell - “East Houston Blues”

The summer doldrums kicking in, Chris and I do what we do best: chip away at the boring old rocks of local government in our fair city, hunting for rich veins of silver and gold. We find it in Toomey’s narcissism and lack of institutional memory, in a cross reading of city hall bologna and Thomas Pynchon’s “Vineland” (1990), and how the Galleria never closed so much as spread out around the foundations of downtown, an invasive root network that is by now intractable as it continues its slow work, pulling the thing down into some ruin it can one day swallow.

ADU or ADA clip

Bergman doing the Bergmanian Switcheroo

Weather Star 4000

Worcester or Providence Reddit post

Mark your calendars folks: Saturday, June 20 at Steel & Wire, celebrating the first SIX years of Worcester Sucks! Free and fun good time!! See you there.

And as always please consider supporting this outlet! Subscriptions are a little down right now and it’s a source of anxiety to be quite honest because I’m prone to enter the End Is Nigh Mindset. Nighmaxxing if you will.

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dAnd help us spread the word!

Outro: Warren Zevon “Down In The Mall”

Intro: Bill Shaner 6.2.26

As mentioned quickly in the editor’s note at the start and at length at the end of the program, head to the page “John Cashman Needs A Liver” if you are someone who’s in the position to donate a liver to save a life, or if you know someone who might be, or if you know someone who knows someone who might be. The widest net possible will yield the best results. Please share any way you can.

Again that’s “John Cashman Needs A Liver.”

As far as the show’s concerned: a loose round up of the activities engaged in by our fair city’s collection of gross little guys. We go over Joe Petty’s op-ed, the Sturbridge man who runs the public market trying to run for Mary Keefe’s State Rep seat despite not living in the district in a very proveable way, Ray Mariano’s little baby brain, his childlike wonder, his rose-colored glasses, the ongoing insult to the profession it remains that the Telegram lets him “write” a “column” while they have “no other actual columnist.”

Local journalism is a hell of a way to try and earn a living, and we’ve got a rare thing going here where we get to do it exactly how we please to the best of our ability. I’ll stress again that is rare. And it’s all due to the people who chip in a few bucks a month to make it happen.

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“A Sturbridge resident is trying to run for a Worcester state rep seat”

Ray Mariano: “Things I Miss Most In Today’s Politics”

FIFA may f**k up the US World Cup for fans in even more ways than we could’ve imagined. Will Worcester even have our scheduled viewing parties?

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It was an amazing night at Hunchback Gallery on Friday, the one-year mark of the Eureka Street ICE raid that put a mother in various federal detention centers for months, ripping a family apart in the process, as well as two other mothers through nine months of court proceedings on the sort of b******t charges that police departments get to file against anyone perceived to have slighted them. Here’s a pic of the crowd at Hunchback Gallery that Chris took.

This two hour recording has been left unedited for content (while heavily edited for sound quality, due to the band practicing on the floor below us, hence the delay in getting it up) because we feel it’s worth it to have the entire thing preserved. It is, as Etel put it in a text shortly after we all packed up and left, the first oral history of this event—one I feel will be looked back on as one of the most significant hinge points in the city’s history.

Through the course of the show, we move loosely from past to present, starting with a pre-written local political context, up to what people can and should be doing now, as the deportation machine becomes more streamlined, more efficient, more eerily quiet.

From ticket sales, we raised $450 for LUCE’s direct support fund in Worcester, which has a specific name that is escaping me right now, but can be found here if you’d like to make a direct donation yourself. The “big check” discussed in the episode is currently being commissioned! Updates to come. Thank you to everyone who purchased a ticket, especially those who bought the extra generous tier, which ended up being almost half.

For a first live show, it went better than we could have hoped. That’s not to say it went perfect and the flubs and hiccups are left in the tape so that the next time we do a live show, you can marvel at how much better we got at it.

Have an idea for the next Outdoor Cats event? Drop it in the comments.

And please consider a paid subscription. Outdoor Cats episodes getting put up on a weekly basis is one thing, but this live event? There is no conceivable way I could have booked this event, promoted it, ripped apart my recording desk, schlepped it all to an art gallery, rebuilt it for the purposes of recording and a live mix, ran sound for the event, ran the event, did the podcast, packed up my recording desk, brought it home, rebuilt it, mixed and mastered the recording of the event, which took several days in this case, then wrote this post… there’s no conceivable way any of that happens if this newsletter does not support at least one full time position. So, given our only source of revenue is reader contributions, the question becomes whether you, the reader and/or listener, appreciate having this outlet in your city? Is that appreciation worth the equivalent of a beer a month to you?

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Something to think about! I can promise you I’ll keep doing this with gusto so long as I’m able. The event was a ton of work, but it was soul restoring in a way I didn’t know how much I needed. I know I’m not the only one.

If you feel the same, share this episode far and wide! That helps too!

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Intro music by Bill Shaner 5.10.26

Outro music: Orgone “Lay Your Life Down”

There and back again, exploring the psychology of the Kate Toomeys of the city, of which there are hundreds if not thousands and their grip on power is sure as the day is long. Then from there to the heart of all this city’s darkness. Folks we’re just taking it all in!

Don’t forget to grab your tickets for Friday Friday Friday first Outdoor Cats Live show! It’s going to be a very good and hopefully soul restoring series of conversations. And we want to hear from you as well! Call into our new tip line—508-205-9520—with any thoughts or observations you have on how Eureka Street went down and what it says about the city. Or send us a voice memo at [email protected]

See you there! So excited.

Some relevant links for the discussion…

Kate Toomey’s equity argument

When a Correction Becomes An Accusation

My story on sex ed from 2019 with the Mary Mullaney quote

Former School Committee member Mary Mullaney, one of the key figures involved, is among those with both political influence and a moral opposition to comprehensive sex education. In an email to Binienda last September, Mullaney diagnosed what she saw as the real problem with what she called “urban kids.”

“Five years from now the situation will be the same or worse because what is lacking here is strong families, good moral upbringing, fathers in homes, faith in a higher power. We put bandaids on huge problems and feel good that we are ‘trying,’” Mullaney wrote to Binienda. “You know better than anyone in Worcester — because you are the REAL thing when it comes to urban kids — that these children are spiritually and psychologically impoverished, neglected, abused. They need love, guidance, support, alternatives to the crap they see around them. Condoms will not save their souls. I am not sure if they will even help their bodies as they are too young to use them well, but I know for sure that condoms will not heal their soul or solve the loneliness in their hearts.”

Mummies in MA

As always please consider throwing us a couple bucks so we can put in the massive amount of time and energy recording and producing a podcast and editing a newsletter’s worth of contributors and coming up with a weekly column that’s good and worth reading and booking and promoting a live show and etc etc etc. None of that happens if this newsletter can’t fund the one full time position it currently does!!

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Help us spread the word, especially if you’re one of the readers / listeners from outside the city! Be our little evangelists in your hopefully better community.

Also if that’s you say hey. Love hearing from “out of towners” and why they read or listen.

Outro: Oh for no particular reason, definitely not because it’s related in a million ways to the “we’re governed by stupidest, racist, most colonialist, and most self-assured people you went to high school with, who peaked in said high school” vibe of this episode, here’s “Liar’s Tale” by KNEECAP, whose new album dropped on May Day. “Do they not understand who we are/ You were popular way back when/ people did whatever they want/ nobody stood in their way/ Ats colonial cringe/ now we’re lookin back paid/ We want everything back/ The six counties/ And the artifacts/ we’ll be takin all that/ Look mate, the paddies are back/ And your kingdom’s finished/ And that’s a fact”

Intro by Bill Shaner 5.3.26

We have a major announcement: First Outdoor Cats live show coming Friday May 8 at Hunchback Gallery and since space is limited the event is ticketed and you can get tickets here!!

Look at this awesome flyer the lovely Katie Nowicki whipped up for us!

As the title suggests we’ll be looking back on a year of fallout after the ICE raid on Eureka Street that opened a new chapter in local politics—one where the bad guys started being a little more honest, let’s say. But we’ll save all that for the event! There’s a stacked bill coming together as we speak. Do not sleep on getting tickets as I imagine this will fill out pretty fast. Ticket link one more time.

In today’s show we cover a wide range of topics in no particular order: Big day for the correspondents. ICE has been back. Joe Petty’s flim-flam on rent control. Look out for the whippit squirrel at Big YAs always please consider supporting this outlet so we can keep doing all the cool stuff we do! It is not, unfortunately, free to make. It takes a lot of time and in the present circumstances time is money.

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...and give us a shout out to a friend who might like it that helps a lot!

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Intro by Bill Shaner 4.26.26

Outro: “Early Morning” by Takumi Yoneyama off “Relaxation Music For Your Computer Life” (1997)

Catching up on our little police city-state hiding in plain sight: the annual salary reveal, Fresolo does townie direct action, Dive Bar to Cop Bar via a Brady Lister turned entrepreneur from Framingham who definitely didn’t get caught doing a Scarface. We’d never baselessly allege something like that…

Outdoor Cats comes to you because of the readers and listeners who support this outlet!

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Note from Chris: Wow holy goddamn our latency was really bad. You’re going to hear Bill and I step on each other extensively, and it’s not because we’re interrupter jerks, it’s actually because we were having a several second delay in hearing each other. We blame the government. Porch session is nearly here and we’ll be recording in-person together more soon.

Note from Bill: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Some links…

Curtis Sliwa was here and we missed it. Curtis Sliwa quotes from final mayoral debate

Fresolo Townie Direct Action Footage

Wages report

List of 500 highest-paid Worcester employees includes zero teachers. Why?

Eyes on public safety at Union Station: Police outline presence, stats

Cop bar to open at Dive Bar

Literal outdoor cat gives no f***s about borders

—Outro: Brooklyn Funk Essentials “Bust The Bust Stop”

—Intro by Bill Shaner 4.17.26

—This podcast is now available on all the major podcast players: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Overcast, Pocket Casts (idk what that is) and you can add it to any other sort of player with this RSS link.

We spend most of the show going over the massive reductions in staffing and services at Community Health Link, asking why the agencies comprising our social safety net are allowed to act like weird little hedge funds. You can follow along here as we read through the email sent to CHL staffers by its president Gordon Benson.

Worcester Sucks is the only outlet to report on this pretty sure so we can call this podcast episode “breaking news” officially, which is cool I guess.

The other topic we were planning to cover, but nixed, was the recent “day in court” for the state police officers charged in connection with the boxing ring death of Enrique Delgado Garcia. It ended up working out that Welcome To Hell World ran a piece of mine on the matter today: “The Presumption of Innocence.” So while we don’t cover it here, I do over there. You should go read it I think it’s good. Here’s a quick taste (more follow up on it in my next written post.)

Among the recruits, there was one especially experienced fighter. Enrique Delgado Garcia was not an especially experienced fighter. Ahead of “boxing day,” each of the recruits were matched roughly on size and ability. A large and physically fit guy was paired with the experienced fighter. On Thursday, Sept. 12, the day of the match, this large and physically fit guy wimped out.

Instead of saying, “OK, no one is equipped to fight this guy, sorry bud you are too scary” the training staff instead asked for volunteers. Enrique Delgado Garcia was apparently the only recruit to step forward. So he entered the ring with concussion-like symptoms to face a fighter so scary the second scariest guy had said no thanks.

Once in the ring Delgado Garcia was under the supervision of a referee who was not trained nor certified to be a referee, but was rather a micro celebrity in the SPAM community: one Charlie Murray, president of the State Police boxing team.

Also tomorrow I’ll be on Beacon Hill all day advocating alongside local journalists from around the state for a proposed local journalism legislative package put together by Free Press, a great advocacy organization for the sort of local news we do here (not the nazi site The Free Press). We’re pushing for something like the New Jersey Civic Information Consortium that Free Press started down there recently. It’s pretty neat. So come say hi if you’re going to be “on the hill” tomorrow.

And as always you can start or continue to support real deal alternative local journalism in your community right here and right now with a paid subscription or tip!

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Some links from the discussion today…

Iran Lego AI Propaganda

E sports at the Aud hype articlePoop ship update

Live feed of the Artemis II mission

“We’re goin’ back to the f****n’ moon, that’s why”

Gregg clip

French documentary on moon landing - Operation Lune

Intro: Riff on “Pink Moon” by Bill Shaner 4.7.26Outro: “Contact” by Daft Punk

The esteemed Mr. John Keough joins us to discuss a forthcoming documentary he’s producing alongside director Tommy Dyer called “Burnin’ Down The House.” Set for a May 21 premier, then a full theatrical release shortly thereafter, the feature length documentary examines the sorry state of firehouses in three Massachusetts towns, asking “what the f**k?” (paraphrasing). While listeners of this show are more likely to know Keough as the scrappy This Week In Worcester reporter breaking stories left and right—the substance of our last talk on here, Episode 18: Dog-Bite Ratios (ft. Tom Marino and John Keough—he’s also the president of the Hollywoot Film Group, where he “does movies” and other related things I half understand. Follow the film’s Instagram for updates as release day approaches.

Chris has more to say on the substance of the talk down below, but first I come to you hat and hand asking for a small amount of your hard earned money so that Chris and I and everyone else at Worcester Sucks can keep doing all the local journalism we do. Paid subscriptions are best, second best are tips, third best is merch orders.

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And if you like what you hear help us spread the word! Send it to a friend, post about it, go up to the person pumping gas on the other side of the gas pump and grab the phone out of their center console and type it into the address bar of their web browser—whatever you have to do, you do it. And yes that is financial advice.

Chris here: A thing we talk around a lot in this is the dynamic of firefighters and the communities they serve vs. police and the communities they serve. I wanted to say two things: First, firefighters put their turnout gear just as fast for a fire in the poorest neighborhood as they do the wealthiest one. In fact, they maybe do it faster for the poorest one. People say fire doesn’t discriminate, but that’s not entirely true. Fire discriminates in insidious ways- It discriminates in your landlord not noticing or caring that your boiler or wiring are pretty janky, because your landlord doesn’t have to live there. It discriminates in how dense your housing situation is, and how fire suppressed it is to the standards of that density. It discriminates in who lives in housing units that aren’t even legally habitable units, as we saw on Gage Street. It discriminates in how adaptive to escaping a fire your housing is if you’re disabled and/or have mobility issues. It discriminates in how fucked you are if you survive a fire and have to deal with the financial ruin that a fire inevitably causes. Etc. The theme of this one for me is I could go on but I won’t. Second, I have this weird lived experience where I have been on the scene of hundreds of fires, first as a firefighter, next as a Disaster Services volunteer for the Red Cross, and finally as just what is known as a “buff”, or a person who loves watching and documenting a fire department at work. If you know what you’re doing, you can get very, very close to the scene of most working fires. Don’t put yourself in a dangerous position and don’t impede the firefighting operations, and you can get close enough to feel the heat and have your eyes burn with the smoke. UDizzy1969, who comes up in the episode, has nearly all-access videos from almost every fire of consequence in Worcester for years. One of our unsung heroes tbh. Back when I was learning about how to navigate a fire scene as a “non-combatant”, I remarked to a photographer who was a retired firefighter about how close they let us get. He said “Firefighters do a job to be proud of, and they are very proud of what they do”. I never forgot that. Who wouldn’t be happy about being documented doing the “public safety” job they do when it’s rescuing people and putting out fires and pulling people out of wrecked cars and all of that. I’ll leave it to you to compare and contrast that to another division of alleged “public safety”, and how transparent they are about letting random people document their work.

Last Call FoundationIAFF (the main firefighter’s union) calls for a federal investigation into fire apparatus price-fixingMA, NY Firefighters File Lawsuit Over PFAS In Firefighting PPEIf you want to get pumped up by watching another amazing firefighting documentary, here’s “Burn” (2012) in it’s entirety. “Burnin’ Down The House” documentary on Instagram, and Facebook

Intro by Bill Shaner 3.30.26Outro: “Burnin’ Down The House”, cover by Bonnie Raittv