The Phoenix - The Best 2005

Arts & Entertainment

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Readers' Picks

Editors' Picks

READERS' PICKS - ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT Cont'd.
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First-run movie house
The scale of Loews Boston Common assists in prepping your brain for Hollywood-style excess - it's huge and loud and a repeat choice as the place to watch the latest blockbusters. Wink at the giant concession-stand chocolate bar, scrunch down in the stadium-style seats with your popcorn and Milk Duds, and begin suspending your disbelief. That the Kendall Square Cinema often takes this category shows that a first-run house doesn't have to cater to familiar Hollywood fare. The Kendall focuses its bookings on the slightly left of center (consistent with its People's Republic of Cambridge locale), and it's where our readers flock for indie and foreign films, and lower-budget productions.

Gay bar
Club Café in the South End is the queen of Boston's gay-bar scene and it slays the competition in this category every year. It's got South End style, class and sass, and a healthy dose of flirt. A meat market it's not; the martinis are pro, and VJs screen all manner of camp on the screens.

The closing of ManRay left a lot of not-so-straight folks in corsets, leather, and lace with no place to play. Thankfully, Toast Lounge has adopted two ManRay nights. And the upscale dungeon-esque décor couldn't be more appropriate. Wednesdays are "Crypt," goth and industrial, and Saturdays are "Heroes," retro-electro, new-wave, and punk, both with ManRay's CJ Chris Ewen. And that's not even mentioning Dyke Night on Fridays.

Gay night
Thursday night at Embassy is "The Glamorous Life," billed as the only gay and lesbian hip-hop night in the city, and we'd be hard-pressed to prove them wrong. DJs Afrodite and Esthera keep the party moving. Music starts at 10 pm, and ladies and gentlemen are asked to dress to impress.

On Friday nights, DJ Esthera rushes off to Union Square for Dyke Night at Toast Lounge. The arrival of Kristen Porter's famed event has launched this club to new gay-bar heights. Friday nights start with "Dykotomy" (our personal pick for best-named night) with Pamela Berry. "Save your pretense for Boston," the flyer reads. "No cover. No drama." A perfect precursor. And then "Dyke Night" begins in earnest, with DJ Susan Esthera and lovely lesbians from Somerville and beyond.

Happy hour
Let's be honest: happy hour in Boston is a sham. When we think "happy," we think half-price margaritas or two-for-one pitchers. We do not think three bucks for a plate of buffalo wings. But here, because of a ridiculous, predictably Puritanical opposed-to-binge-drinking laws, the only happy-hour discounts apply to grub. Bah! All right, no one's complaining about cheap food, and for the happiest happy hour you consistently head to McCormick & Schmick's. The national seafood chain, with two locations in Boston, offers more than 40 types of fresh fish daily, and at the Columbus Avenue spot, they offer a net full of seafood specials for $1.95 at the bar, as well as more land-lubbing fare like quesadillas and chicken wings.

McCormick & Schmick's | 34 Columbus Avenue, Boston | 617.482.3999 | www.mccormickandschmicks.com

Irish pub
Unlike France, India, and Italy, Ireland isn't known for its food. (Beer and booze is another story). So it's the rare Irish pub that's actually recognized for its grub. Such is the case with Matt Murphy's Pub. All the food at the low-key and welcoming spot is made fresh and from scratch. And there's live music every night. The tiny size of Tir na Nog in Union Square belies its reputation. There's cheap food, good music, well-pulled pints, and its regulars are of the most loyal breed. Indeed, there have been two patron-published newsletters, the "Tir na Nose" and the "Tir na News." How many Irish pubs in this city can say that?

Juke box
Patron preference and tune selection come together in equal measure to create the right soundtrack for the night. You can't blame the dude slotting all his quarters to hear a Paula Abdul album in its entirety; the jukebox shouldn't have that kind of shit to choose from. At Charlie's Kitchen in Harvard Square, you can rely on the taste of your fellow imbibers and trust that the available albums will yield a few perfect picks. The right music is the ketchup on your double cheeseburger.

Charlie's Kitchen | 10 Eliot Street, Cambridge | 617.492.9646

Lesbian night
"Some like to watch. Some like to play." So goes Felt's mantra. Primarily a pool hall, Felt holds this maxim to be true even for Thursday's "Tribe," this year's pick for best lesbian night. Its downtown-lounge vibe is a bit saucier than Somerville and DJ Gay Jim spins Top 40 and hip-hop. You can watch or play, whatever your persuasion. No surprise that Toast Lounge's Dyke Night takes this category. It's swept every gay-related category this year (see best gay bar, best gay night, and best club night). What more can we say? Boston has spoken.

Local author
Writing fiction is bearing brainchildren. It requires conjuring characters and amalgamating the facts of your own existence with the myths of your imagination. Arthur Golden, a Brookline dweller and first-time winner in this category, is the man behind the raging bestseller Memoirs of a Geisha. Not only did he write in the first person, channeling a Japanese woman in 1930s Kyoto, he described his debut novel as a memoir, a piece of nonfiction. And according to our readers, and hundreds of thousands of others who bought the book, he pulled it off.

Local band
"Since the first hammer of a bass, cry of an electric guitar, or pound of a drum, No One's Kind has fought to bring into this world a kind of expression that would make a difference," write the band on their Web site. Their expression is making a difference to our readers. This is the second time No One's Kind has been chosen as best local band. Likening themselves to Killswitch Engage, A Perfect Circle, and Thrice, No One's Kind is made up of five kids who started playing in Wakefield basements and are now based in Boston. The quintet have since been playing gigs at the Palladium, the Kirkland Café, and the Middle East.

No One's Kind | www.nooneskind.com

Place to play pool
Be you pool shark or minnow, nine-ball pro or chalk-on-your-cheeks beginner, Boston Billiards is your pick for a spot to shoot some stick. Gold Crown tables, plush seats, dinner served until 1 am, Wednesday ladies' nights with 25 percent off, football deals on Sundays and Mondays when Coors Light Drafts are two bucks and wings a dime a piece. Sweet. Guzzle a forty while running the table at Flat Top Johnny's, the perennial pool parlor of choice across the river in Kendall Square. The tables are top-notch, and the vibe is subdued and Cambridge cool. Women pay half-price on Tuesdays, everyone plays free after 11 pm on Wednesdays, and there's a nine-ball tourney every Monday night.

Place to hear readings
Tim Huggins knows how to run a bookstore. He understands the serendipity of browsing. He understands how to connect readers with writers, and he ups the intimacy at the readings he hosts at Newtonville Books. Whether you're sitting in the backroom grotto, or raising a pint with authors through the "Books and Brews" series, Newtonville is the bibliophiles' pick for interacting with authors, such as George Saunders, Aimee Bender, Chris Castellani and Margaret Atwood.

The pulsing Harvard Book Store prides itself on being a beacon of independence and intellectualism in increasingly homogenized Harvard Square, and it pulls some of the best writers of the world to its reading series. Salman Rushdie, Kelly Link, Zadie Smith, and Billy Collins are only a few.

Sports bar
A lot of things come to mind when thinking about Game On!, and Wayne's World isn't one of them. The new sports café, as it calls itself, opened its doors in April, and it didn't take long for it to clobber the competition in this category. There's 12,000 square feet of space, and over 50,000 square inches of high-definition TV screens. The food ranges from grub (beef chili and Buffalo wings) to gourmet (filet mignon or pizza with mushrooms, caramelized onions, and brie). The gaming room is called "The Crib," the seats upstairs allow a clear view of the action outside Fenway, and downstairs you can't turn your head without seeing a TV. A place of worship, not for the athletes, but for the fans.

Game On! | 82 Lansdowne Street, Boston | 617.351.7001 | www.gameonboston.com

Tattoo artist
Less than five years ago, if you wanted a shamrock on your ankle or an anchor on your arm, you had to head outside the Commonwealth. Not anymore. Fat Ram has become Boston's most sought-after tattoo artist; it's a testament to his inking prowess that Fat Ram's booked four months out. He attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, worked at several tattoo parlors learning the trade, and opened his own shop, Fat Ram's Pumpkin Tattoo, in Jamaica Plain. (The name was inspired by his passion for Halloween, which also happens to be his birthday).

Fat Ram's Pumpkin Tattoo | 380 Centre Street, Jamaica Plain | 617.522.6444 | fatramtattoo.com

Theater company
Young(ish) upstarts The Tribe Presents . . . take this category for the first time. Neraj Tuli conceived of the Tribe in 2003 as an artists' collaborative aiming to lure audiences and aid artists in their creative endeavors. The troupe consists of improv actors, musicians, filmmakers, stage managers, choreographers, puppeteers, writers, and jugglers. Their production of Pterodactyls garnered great reviews, and their Thursday-night comedy residency won over our readers for the best night of comedy in the city.

The Tribe Presents | 67 Stuart Street, Boston | 617.510.4447 | www.thetribepresents.com

Video store
Give us rare, give us foreign, give us cult, give us comedy, give us convenience. Hollywood Express gives it all. Pity the folks who live in Boston, none of whom have one around the corner. Regardless of its Cambridge and Somerville status, you pick this video store as the best place to rent flicks every year. That's because membership gives you access to over 100,000 movies, which you can return to any of the four locations; the range of selection is a cinephile's wet dream; and they offer coupons and other deals. Show a Brattle Theatre ticket stub and you get your second rental free, and don't forget to pick up a copy of "Expresslane," the quarterly bulletin produced entirely by the staff.

Hollywood Express | 1740 Mass Ave, Cambridge | 617.497.2001 | 765 Mass Ave, Cambridge | 617.864.8400 | 238 Elm Street, Davis Square, Somerville | 617.625.4900 | 14 McGrath Highway, Somerville | 617.628.6000

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