The Friendly Toast changes its specials every eight weeks. Its special for June and July is something called a Faux-ke Poké, a vegetarian take on a Hawaiian poké bowl.
It looks exactly like poké but is made up of marinated pink pineapple, mashed avocado, pickled red onion and diced cucumber. It clearly doesn’t taste like authentic poké — no raw tuna — but it plays sweet, rich and acidic flavors off each other. In addition, each major ingredient has a different texture. On top of everything, in celebration of Pride Month, the colors — purple, green, red, and pink — are colors of the Pride rainbow flag.
How does a dish like this come about?
Justin Fischer is The Friendly Toast’s Director of Culinary Operations. Among other duties, he is in charge of recipe development for the chain’s 12 locations, which include its original spot in Portsmouth as well as locations in Bedford and Nashua as well as in Maine, Vermont and Massachusetts. He said this particular dish developed from one particular ingredient: pink pineapple.
“It’s this fantastic ingredient that I really wanted to work with,” Fischer said. “We’ve got a few distributors we work with. If I tell them, ‘I’ve got this fantastic ingredient; can you find it for me?,’ they’ll get it. Each of the pink pineapples came in its own individual box!”
Costa Rican pink pineapples have a firm texture, and a color much like that of raw tuna, though obviously they taste very different. The pineapple, which gets its pink color from lycopene, an enzyme that helps give tomatoes their color, has a sweet, perfumy taste that Fischer decided to pair with the richness of lightly mashed avocado.
“Once we added the avocado, we needed a little acidity, which we got from the pickled red onion,” Fischer said.
One of the constraints Fischer and his team work under is to keep new recipes simple to prepare and use ingredients that Friendly Toast kitchens would mostly already have in rotation.
“Originally, we tried this [dish] as a spring roll,” Fisher said. “It was good — everyone liked it — but there were a lot of steps to teach the staff at all our locations.” So the development team worked to reconfigure the recipe.
The decision was made to add more sweetness and some umami (savoriness), so maple and soy sauce were added to the dish’s marinade. Spiciness was added through an aioli flavored with Korean chiles.
“We had a spicy salmon roll toast [on the menu already],” Fischer said. “That had been one of our first attempts to make a poké-inspired dish, and we had developed the gochujang aioli for that.” Wrapping the poké spring rolls in rice paper and deep frying them had been complicated in terms of adding more steps to their preparation, and had changed the temperature, but the fried rice paper had added a welcome crunch and flavor, so as the dish developed, the team decided to fry it on its own and serve it on the side of the poké as a garnish. Traditional poké has sesame, salt and green onions, so this interpretation is sprinkled with everything bagel seasoning, which adds yet another layer of flavor, color and texture.
At the same time that Fischer and his team were developing The Friendly Toast’s spring and summer specials, they were also reconfiguring all the restaurant’s recipes to eliminate peanuts and tree nuts.
“It’s really important to us that everyone can try our food, so we spend a lot of time thinking about allergies,” said Fischer. The chain announced earlier this month that it was eliminating nuts from all its locations. “The Friendly Toast has transformed its kitchen protocols and menu to include safe meals for children with food allergies,” it announced in a press release on June 12, citing CDC data that one in 13 American children has a food allergy.
The Friendly Toast 4 Main St., Bedford, 836-8907, and 225 DW Highway, Nashua, 864-0051, thefriendlytoast.com
When it comes to papyrus, there’s more to the medium than meets the eye. That’s the message behind “Paper Work,” an exhibition opening July 5 at 3S Artspace in Portsmouth. The upcoming show highlights the versatility and resilience of kozo, an Asian paper made from mulberry that becomes stronger when soaked in water and dried.
Denise Manseau’s art is about transformation. Many pieces are combined works, like “Spring”, an arrangement of dyed kami-ito threads embedded on mulberry paper. Even Japanese kimonos have been made using this method, along with mulberry-lined silk jackets.
In a recent phone interview, Manseau said the pieces to be displayed in the lobby gallery of 3S Artspace came about after she moved from her inland home near Lowell to the Seacoast.
“I did a lot of purging, but there were things that were almost good,” she said. “My friend’s there helping me, and she’s like, ‘Don’t throw this out, don’t throw that away.’ I end up with all this good stuff. Then I just started tearing them up and making other things with them.”
In a statement on her website, Manseau called her artistic process “generative and divergent — I excavate possibilities from previous work as a source for new work to emerge. Drawings make their way into paintings. Prints and drawings become cut-paper assemblages and structures. Through this process, the work undergoes multiple transformations — each alteration leaves a trace of the turbulence, tranquility and beauty I encounter each day.”
Her approach recalls Joseph Cornell, who employed ephemera and found objects in his three-dimensional works, though Manseau does add new touches to her assembled creations. “But there are always these elements from past work, whether they’re prints or drawings or just pieces of paper that had color on them,” she said. “So, they’re kind of recycled in a way; I’m giving them a new life. I feel good about that.”
“Paper Work” focuses on the durability of Asian paper, something Manseau learned about after she took up the fine arts in the early 2000s. “It looks so delicate and it’s so strong,” she said. “Instead of it breaking down like our wood pulp paper, their paper just gets stronger and more robust.”
Prior to becoming a full-time artist, Manseau was a graphic designer. Her old job involved deadlines and strict rules, while working in her art studio was more open-ended. It was something that professors, teachers and friends encouraged her to embrace. Work on as many things as possible at the same time, they told her.
“That is very helpful … because it’s things in the periphery that always turn out the best in my case,” she said. “I tend to be a perfectionist and then I kind of ruin it in its perfection; it works for me. It’s always a thing on the side I’m experimenting on, and I don’t care if it gets ruined; those are always the best in the end.”
Asked if this might be a path toward a different kind of perfection, Manseau answered, “I guess, yes, because nothing can be perfect, right? Maybe that’s part of the bane of my graphic design era was that everything had to be precision, it had to go to press, it had to be a certain size, it had to line up…. I’ve been trying to go against that in the fine arts portion of my life.”
Manseau chose the woodcut image “Rye on the Rocks” to represent the upcoming exhibit. It was inspired by walks along the coastline near her home in Rye Beach and reflects the landscape influence of her work.
It’s something that can be misunderstood by those who consider landscapes “as being a pictorial representation of what you see, instead of how you experience it and how you put it together in your head,” she said. “I think that’s the hardest thing I have to explain to people. I really do consider myself a landscape painter.”
Paper Work When: Opens Friday, July 5, 5 p.m. Continues through July 28 Where: 3S Artspace, 319 Vaughan St., Portsmouth More: 3sarts.org and denisemanseau.com
Soft serve is more than just ice cream. It’s a memory maker. What exactly is soft serve in a literal, non-metaphorical sense? Well, to start, it’s all down to butterfat and machines.
Kaitlyn Witts started working at Arnie’s Place in Concord around 20 years ago. She was basically hired on the spot when she was 16 and now owns the place.
“I bought it from my old boss and now I’m running it,” Witts said.
Anrie’s has a great soft serve setup.
“We have two soft serve machines and we make over 50 flavors of ice cream right in house here,” Witts said.
So what is the difference between soft serve and other ice cream?
“It’s butterfat. Different places will use different butterfats…. The soft serve can be a 5 percent or a 10 percent butterfat whereas a hard ice cream has a 14 or 16 percent butterfat. … It’s a lower-fat option if you will. Lower — not non-fat, but lower-fat.”
Traditionally, soft serve comes in standard flavors.
“One [machine] has vanilla, chocolate, and vanilla chocolate twist, at all times,” Witts said. “[On] the other machine, we switch between flavors like … black raspberry, coffee, maple … Every week and a half or so we try to put in a new flavor.”
Witts has her own favorites. “I would probably go with just a regular vanilla chocolate twist. The maple is really good, though, if you use a maple syrup in it and that’s really, really good, especially if you put some blueberry on top of it — it kind of reminds you of a blueberry pancake.”
Arnie’s is the last stop for local third-graders from Broken Ground School when they do a little field trip around Concord. “They make three lines…. They get a little kiddie cone of vanilla, chocolate, or vanilla chocolate twist. That’s always a really fun field trip that I look forward to coming here every year,” Witts said.
Arnie’s has stayed pretty much the same since the beginning, she feels: “I wouldn’t say it’s changed too, too much.”
But they also serve flavors that are harder to come by nowadays. “People come for flavors they can’t really get a lot of other places. We get requests for frozen pudding, rum raisin, and butter pecan. Flavors that you just don’t see a lot of times at other restaurants,” Witts said.
The soft serves are very customizable, especially with the flurry option.
“We definitely do a lot of soft serve because people really like it,” Witts said. “We definitely go through a lot of soft serve.”
The largest size, she said, is around seven to nine swirls — “We’re not going for the whole gigantic cone thing here.”
This does not mean that soft serve here is any less fun. In fact it’s the opposite. “We have the ability to play around. We tell everyone all the time what we have on the board are just like suggestions as far as flurries go,” Witts said.
So what type of device makes the soft serve? “There are different kinds of soft serve machines. Some you load the soft serve on the top. That’s a gravity soft serve machine. Some you put the mix on the bottom and that’s a pump system because you have to pump it up and into the machine,” Witts said.
The soft serve machines at Arnie’s have seen a lot of swirls. “They’ve been here as long as I’ve worked here, so they’re over 25 years old,” Witts said. The ice cream machine at Arnie’s has been there over 45 years. “That’s pretty cool, that’s my baby.”
On top of daily maintenance and cleaning, these machines go through a deep clean.
“Regularly, once a week, I clean each machine. It takes about two hours to flush the whole thing, pull the entire, all the pieces and o-rings and stuff apart. Like, an hour and a half I’d say for each machine to clean those each week,” she said.
At Arnie’s they have one of the pump machines. Once the machine is sparkly clean, the fun begins. “Pretty much, you put the mix in on the bottom, right, and when you hit the pump button, it pumps it up. It pumps it up through a tube, into the machine, into the barrels of the machine, and once it’s up in there, that’s where it freezes,” Witts said.
After the freezing comes the churning.
“There are blades in there. There’s a big giant metal piece that has these plastic, they’re now plastic blades. They used to be metal blades but they realized they were way too expensive to make, so now they’ve gone to more plastic blades. That thing spins, and as that thing’s spinning, the blades are scraping the barrel of the machine and pushing out the soft serve into the cone or dish,” Witts said.
This machine of tasty delights is complex, she noted. “If you put one tube in the wrong spot and you go to turn the machine on, all of the sudden you’ll have an explosion of soft serve everywhere. … There’s a lot of moving parts in there.”
The human element of making the twists itself is an art.
“Being able to drop the hand that has the cone or dish in it and swirl it at the same time as putting the right amount of pressure on the handle to get it to come out at the right speed — it definitely takes some practice for sure,” Witts said. “Different people have different ways…. There definitely is a learning curve.”
Witts has fond memories of ice cream and as a kid would head to Tee Off at Mel’s to grab some scoops.
“I used to rollerblade down there on the way to my friend’s house,” she recalls. “I’d get a scoop of chocolate and a scoop of Oreo with rainbow sprinkles on it. That was always my go-to. I actually had somebody order that exact thing the other day and it brought all the memories back.”
Since soft serve ice cream is the darling of summer, there are many locations across the Granite State where you can catch that memorable taste.
Soft serve is definitely a star at Golick’s Dairy Bar in Barrington and Rochester. “That is our speciality,” said Alan Golick, who owns the two shops.
“I loved soft serve as a kid,” Golick said. “When I moved up to Dover in the ’70s I used to go to the Princess Dairy Bar.”
In 1986 Alan bought the Princess Dairy Bar and that shop had three or four soft serve machines. “I’ve always considered soft serve to be my specialty because to do it right is not particularly easy. You have to do a good job of maintaining the machines or what you get isn’t always going to be so good.”
Shops do have a choice when it comes to soft serve machine brands.
Arnie’s Place. Courtesy photo.
“Taylor is a very common machine. I run six soft serve machines between my two shops; most of them are Taylors,” Golick said. He also has an Electro Freeze model at the Barrington location.
On a macro level, a standard soft serve machine has a particular build.
“All my machines are what they call a triple head machine…. Each machine is basically two machines in one. The vanilla and chocolate is made side by side so there are three dispensing heads on the machine. One is just straight vanilla, one is straight chocolate, and the middle one does the twist,” Golick said.
That standard chocolate vanilla swirl is joined by other refreshing swirls at Golick’s.
“I have a product called Princess Twist … which was a twist of black raspberry and vanilla, and I continue that to this day and continue to call it a Princess Twist because that was kind of the original,” Golick said.
An almost endless amount of flavors can be found at Golick’s.
“I have a system that allows me to flavor the vanilla soft serve with one of, I think I carry 50 extracts, so just about every flavor under the sun I can create with this system. There’s a pretty good variety there.”
No matter how it’s scooped or swirled, soft serve and hard ice cream are not enemies. In fact, they’re good buddies. “I sell soft serve and hard ice cream side by side in my shop and I honestly can’t say that one sells better than the other on any kind of particular weather day; I think it’s just dependent on what somebody’s in the mood for, you know.”
If soft serve is your treat of choice, getting a proper cone takes experience.
“It’s an acquired skill. It’s not rocket science, but to make a cone look good it takes some technique that we have to teach. The idea is to stack it up nice and tall. The ice cream has to come out from the machine firm enough for that to happen. That involves making sure the machine is adjusted correctly. The product has to come out at a proper temperature, which is usually 17, 18 degrees … when it comes out of the machine.”
A particular favorite is a dip cone, which involves a coating, like chocolate.
“I remember getting those as a kid,” Golick said, “and that involves tipping the cone upside down, which if you didn’t put the ice cream on the cone right it will fall off, but if you do it right, you dip it and turn it right side up and the coating hardens with the temperature of the ice cream cooling it down and you end up with the ice cream coated with chocolate. That’s kind of a classic thing that people like with soft serve.”
Soft serve
Here are some of the local ice cream spots offering soft serve, with information according to their websites and social media. Call ahead to check out current offerings and flavors. Know of one not mentioned here? Let us know at adiaz@hippopress.com and we’ll publish ice cream scene updates in upcoming Weekly Dish columns.
• Arnie’s Place (164 Loudon Road, Concord, 228-3225, arniesplace.com) offers vanilla, chocolate and twist soft serve, as well as a rotation of other flavors such maple, black raspberry and coffee.
• Axel’s Food and Ice Cream (608 DW Highway, Merrimack, 429-2229, axelsfoodandicecream.com) offers soft serve in cones as well as soft serve sundaes and “The Dirt Dessert,” which features chocolate soft serve mixed with crushed Oreo cookie pieces and gummy worms.
• The Beach Plum (3 Brickyard Square, Epping, 679-3200; 16 Ocean Blvd., North Hampton, 964-7451; 2800 Lafayette Road, Portsmouth, 433-3339; thebeachplum.net) offers soft serve in various sizes.
• The Big 1 (185 Concord St., Nashua, thebig1icecream.com) offers vanilla, chocolate and twist soft serve, as well as “Nor’easters,” which feature your choice of any of the three flavors mixed with toppings like M&Ms, Oreo cookie pieces, peanut butter cups, gummy bears, chocolate chips and more.
• The Brick House Drive-In Restaurant (1391 Hooksett Road, Hooksett, 622-8091, bhrestaurant.net) features soft serve as well as hard serve ice cream, sundaes and more.
• Cremeland Drive-In (250 Valley St., Manchester, 669-4430, find them on Facebook) offers soft and hard serve in cones and in sundaes.
• Devriendt Farm Stand and Ice Cream Shoppe, cash only (178 S. Mast St., Goffstown, 497-2793, devriendtfarm.com), offers soft serve — vanilla, chocolate and twist, and as Razzles, blended with your choice of toppings including, when in season, their own strawberries.
• Dudley’s Ice Cream (846 Route 106 N, Loudon, 783-4800, find them on Facebook) offers vanilla and chocolate soft serve, plus a variety of flavor swirls, like “blue goo” (cotton candy) bubble gum, tropical orange, banana and pistachio.
• Findeisen’s Ice Cream (297 Derry Road, Hudson, 886-9422; 125 S. Broadway, Salem, 898-5411; find them on Facebook) has the traditional soft serve offerings of vanilla, chocolate and the twist as well as more than 40 flavors of ice cream, slush and yogurts
• Frekey’s Dairy Freeze (97 Suncook Valley Road, Chichester, 798-5443; 74 Fisherville Road, Concord, 228-5443; frekeysdairyfreeze.com) offers chocolate, vanilla and twist soft serve as well as sundaes and flurries with a variety of mix-ins.
• Frosty Soft Serve Ice Cream Truck (Londonderry, 892-2888, find them on Facebook) offers soft serve ice cream, sundaes, root beer floats and frappes.
• Funway Park Country Ice Cream (454 Charles Bancroft Highway, Litchfield, 424-2292, melsfunwaypark.com) has lots of ice cream options, and patrons can now add flavors to their vanilla soft serve such as mango, bubblegum, black raspberry, strawberry, blue goo (cotton candy), butterscotch, cheesecake and pistachio.
• Goldenrod Restaurant Drive-In (1681 Candia Road, Manchester, 623-9469, goldenrodrestaurant.com) offers chocolate, vanilla and twist soft serve as well as otherhard serve, frappes and desserts.
• Golick’s Dairy Bar (683 Calef Highway, Barrington, 664-9633; 17 Sawyer Ave., Rochester, 330-3244; golicksdairybar.com) offers dozens of unique flavors of soft serve ice cream at both locations, including black raspberry, banana, strawberry, grape, pina colada, pomegranate, red velvet, espresso and more.
• Greaney’s Farm Stand (417 John Stark Highway, Weare, 529-1111, find them on Facebook) offers soft serve ice cream.
• Hawksie’s Ice Cream Fac-Torri (144 Main St., Salem, 890-0471, find them on Facebook) has vanilla, chocolate and twist, as well as 24 flavors of syrups to mix with the vanilla soft serve.
• Hayward’s Ice Cream (7 DW Highway, Nashua, 888-4663; Merrimack 360 Shopping Plaza, DW Highway, Merrimack; haywardsicecream.com) has the traditional vanilla, chocolate or twist, and many other hard ice cream flavors.
• High Tide Takeout (239 Henniker St., Hillsborough, 464-4202, hightidetakeout.com) has soft serve on the menu along with Gifford’s Hard Ice Cream, soft serve, frozen yogurt, sundaes, frappes, banana splits, flavor bursts, fruit smoothies and tidal waves.
• The Inside Scoop (260 Wallace Road, Bedford, 471-7009, theinsidescoopnh.com) serves soft serve options featuring two frequently changing flavors creating twists such as the recent orange and vanilla, and black raspberry and pineapple, according to their Facebook posts, as well as Richardson’s Ice Cream.
• Jay Gee’s Ice Cream (327 S. Broadway, Salem, 458-1167, jaygees.com) has soft serve available in vanilla, chocolate and the twist as well as hard ice cream flavors.
• King Kone (336 DW Highway, Merrimack, 420-8312; kingkonenh.com) boasts “the best soft serve you’ve ever had” on its website and features a chocolate, vanilla and chocolate vanilla twist option as well as a changing line-up of other soft serve flavors including, recently, peanut butter and black raspberry, which could be swirled together as PB& J; orange and vanilla, which could be swirled to create a Creamsicle, and pineapple and coconut, which could be swirled into a piña colada. The menu also features sundaes, Razzles and more.
• Lang’s Ice Cream (510 Pembroke St., Pembroke, 225-7483, langsicecream.com) offers traditional soft serve and many other ice cream flavors and desserts.
• Lix Ice Cream Parlor (55 Charles Bancroft Highway, Litchfield, 438-4797; find them on Facebook) offers Dole Whip soft serve in flavors such as pineapple, strawberry and watermelon.
• Memories Ice Cream (95 Exeter Road, Kingston, 642-3737, memoriesicecream.com) offers chocolate and vanilla as well as rotating vegan flavors, such as raspberry and lemon, which can be swirled.
• Moo’s Place Ice Cream (27 Crystal Ave., Derry, 425-0100; 15 Ermer Road, Salem, 898-0199; moosplace.com) offers a variety of soft serve flavors, like orange, black raspberry, cheesecake, pina colada, peanut butter, root beer and more.
• Pete’s Scoop (187 Rockingham Road, Derry, 434-6366, petesscoop.net) offers chocolate, vanilla and the twist along with soft serve selections from Dole with flavors like watermelon, cherry, lime, pineapple and more.
• Sissy’s Sweets & Ice Cream (1 Suncook Valley Road, Barnstead, find them on Facebook) offers vanilla, chocolate and swirl soft serve and flavor burst options as well as soft serve-based treats such as Sissy’s Flurry, Jumbo Cookie Sandwiches and more.
• Sundae Drive (346 Route 13, Brookline, 721-5209, find them on Facebook) offers a variety of soft serve ice cream flavors in addition to vanilla and chocolate, like strawberry, coconut, cheesecake, bubble gum, pistachio, salted caramel, orange and black raspberry.
• Twin Lanterns Dairy Bar (239 Amesbury Road, Kensington, 394-7021, find them on Facebook) offers coffee, black raspberry and coffee and black raspberry twist soft serve, in addition to vanilla, chocolate and vanilla and chocolate twist.
According to a press release, Concord Hospital health system recently welcomed 19 students from New England College (NEC) who are pursuing a bachelor of science in nursing (BSN). Five of the students will complete their clinical training at the Laconia campus while the rest will train in Concord.
This partnership benefits both Concord Hospital health system and NEC because the hospital gains a year-round part-time LNA workforce helping to fill staffing gaps while students acquire vital clinical experience and become eligible for full-time employment upon completing their BSN, according to the press release.
The accelerated BSN program integrates classroom instruction with nine months of clinical training where students gain hands-on experience as licensed nursing assistants (LNAs) while learning under the guidance of a preceptor in various clinical settings across Concord Hospital health system, according to the release.
In a statement, Erin Collins, RN, VP of Nursing Professional Practice and Development, said that “this program allows students to earn while they learn, gaining invaluable on-the-job experience that contributes to their studies and introduces them to the nursing profession.”
Students will embark on a 14-week rotation over the summer working alongside a licensed registered nurse preceptor while alternating between classroom learning and hospital work, which allows students to complete their degree in three years, according to the release. As Concord Hospital employees, they will become familiar with hospital policies, experience different departments, and gain a comprehensive understanding of nursing across the health system, according to the same release.
On the highway to health
The New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) announced the release of the DHHS Roadmap 2024-2025, which builds on the successes from the DHHS Roadmap 2023 and was informed by extensive input from community partners and DHHS program areas, according to a press release. The Roadmap 2024-2025 identifies initiatives and goals that will serve as a guide for the Department over the next fiscal year and beyond.
In a statement, DHHS Commissioner Lori Weaver said that “as we work to support and promote the health and well-being of all New Hampshire residents, it is critical for us to be able to state, share, and track the progress of our priorities and goals. This plan is the culmination of months of work with our partners and the people we serve to create a bold plan of action that will set us on the course to enhance key systems and policies to improve the health of our state.”
The three major commitments of the roadmap will be to invest in people and culture, promote thriving communities, and improve customer service, according to the release.
The plan initiatives include achieving “Mission Zero,” their plan to end emergency department psychiatric boarding; reducing health impacts from harmful exposures to such hazards as lead and PFAS; strengthening school-based services for children enrolled in Medicaid; increasing access to residential behavioral health services for children; and building a system of care for healthy aging, according to the same release.
TikTok lawsuit
According to a press release, Attorney General John M. Formella announced a lawsuit against TikTok, Inc., in Merrimack County Superior Court for violating the State’s consumer protection statute and other laws as part of the latest development in a comprehensive effort by New Hampshire leaders to address the serious harms posed to children by addictive social media platforms.
The lawsuit follows a complaint filed by the State against Meta Platforms, Inc., in October 2023, that alleged similar manipulative design features and deceptive business practices, according to the same release.
The State’s complaint against TikTok alleged that the company engages in unfair and deceptive acts or practices in violation of New Hampshire law by designing an unfair product and misleading New Hampshire consumers about its safety because TikTok’s platform includes addictive features to exploit young users’ naivete and ongoing brain development and maximize the time young users spend on the platform in the interest of profit, according to the release.
It’s alleged that TikTok’s addictive design features make it hard for children to disengage from the platform, leading to a cycle of excessive use, and the complaint alleges that the company knows this cycle of excessive use results in profound harm to its young users, including depression, anxiety, and isolation from friends and family, according to the release.
It is also alleged that as the company deployed these features the company lied to parents about the safety of the platform, downplaying the risks posed while touting supposed safety measures that the company knows are ineffective, according to the same release.
New Boston will hold its 94th annual Fourth of July celebration on Thursday, July 4, with food, games, activities and a parade, culminating in a fireworks display when it gets dark. The parade begins at 10 a.m.; its theme is sci-fi and fantasy. Fairgrounds admission begins at 4 p.m. and is $10 for ages 12 and up, $5 for ages 2 to 11; free for ages 2 and under; family package $40. Parking is free. Visit newboston4thofjuly.org.
There will be fireworks at the Fisher Cats games in Manchester (Northeast Delta Dental Stadium, 1 Line Drive) Thursday, July 4, to Saturday, July 6. Games start at 6:35 p.m. and the Fisher Cats will be playing the Portland Sea Dogs. Visit nhfishercats.com.
July 4 festivities in Nashua start at 11 a.m. at Holman Stadium for a Silver Knights Game where children under 12 and the first 500 adults are free but tickets must be reserved in advance. There will be an expanded kids zone and on-field activities. At 5:30 p.m. there will be a free concert by The Slakas, followed by local acts at 7:30 p.m. Spartans Drum & Bugle Corps performs at 8:30 p.m. and fireworks are at dusk. Visit nashua-silverknights.com for tickets and check out nashuanh.gov/SummerFun.
From disco nights to Taylor Swift sing-alongs, attempts to cash in on musical trends are legion. However, Live Free or Cry, a bimonthly emo-themed night at the Shaskeen Pub in Manchester, is and always has been a passion project. It’s lasted eight years, but since the pandemic ate one of them, 2024 is technically the seventh anniversary.
“The people running it and the people in the bands genuinely have been in the scene for 20-plus years,” founder Aaron Shelton said by phone recently. “We’re not following bandwagons, we’re playing songs that we listened to; we watched all these bands, even toured with some of them…. It comes from a really honest and heartfelt place.”
In the early days, bands like Taking Back Sunday, Paramore or Panic! at the Disco weren’t lumped together as emo.
“We always called it The Scene, which included emo, pop punk, hardcore, metalcore, all offshoots of, I guess punk rock would be the father of it all,” Shelton said. “One of the beautiful things about it was it always felt like a place for all the people who didn’t have a home, the outcasts, quote unquote. All the punk rock kids who didn’t know where to go.”
It’s an inclusive milieu.
“The emo image is always Hot Topic, black hair and nail polish, [but] I see nu-metal kids show up and metal kids and goth kids,” Shelton said. “It’s born out of a genre where the Get Up Kids and Bane would play the same show, and everyone would be psyched about it. It really is a place for everybody.”
Shelton worried the first Shaskeen emo night in 2016 would be a one-off. It included a set from The Nintendos and a pair of Boston DJs. Six months later The 603 Emo Collective performed; it included Shelton and members of a few other area bands. When it fell apart, Shelton started Early 2000s, which became Dangerous Nights, and something of a house band.
“That’s been kind of the constant,” Shelton said. “We’ve played 80 percent of the Emo Nights at this point.”
The effort has evolved and grown. Shelton promotes emo nights in Concord, at Tandy’s, as well as Lowell and Salem, Mass. It’s become a community along the way.
“Between the bands and the audience, it’s kind of found itself,” Shelton said. “In the first years, the crowds were rarely the same. Now I see a lot of repeat people; you can almost predict the type of audience that will show up at this point.”
The celebration on June 29 will include two bands. My Chemical Chungus, a Worcester area band, will be making its LFOC debut. “They’re normally a My Chemical Romance tribute band,” Shelton said. “They recently started branching out and playing more songs. I spoke to them, and they were excited about the set that they had.”
The second act, A Blockbuster Summer, “is your all-encompassing cover band; they do ’90s, ’80s, emo, basically whatever the show calls for,” Shelton said. “They’re just a very talented group with really incredible harmonies out of two singers…. I think it’s going to be musically a very strong night.”
Asked what has surprised him most over the past seven years, Shelton had a fittingly emo response.
“I joke with my band and my fiancée that every time we do one, it’s going to be the last,” he said, “and it just sells out again and again. I think there are four other emo nights in New Hampshire because it works so well. That’s been the surprise; not that I thought it was going to phase out immediately, because it’s been a constant in my life for over two decades, but I didn’t expect it to be this successful for this long. I’m constantly surprised year after year that it just keeps working and working.”
Live Free or Cry w/ My Chemical Chungus, A Blockbuster Summer When: Saturday, June 29, 9 p.m. Where: Shaskeen Pub, 909 Elm St., Manchester Tickets: $10 at the door, 21+, facebook.com/LiveFreeorCryNH
Three generations of a family undergo gradations of life crises whilst grandma seeks to take down some scammers in Thelma.
I believe the generations work out like this: Zoomer Daniel (Fred Hechinger) spends time with Silent Generation grandma Thelma (June Squibb) while her Gen X daughter Gail (Parker Posey) and son-in-law Alan (Clark Gregg) worry over both their life trajectories. The movie centers Thelma, of course, but it helps that we’re seeing people in different life stages feeling different kinds of lost. We avoid the cute-ification of Thelma, what Tara Ariano on the Extra Hot Great podcast refers to as the “rapping granny” effect.
Thelma lives alone after the death of her husband. Daniel is kind of adrift both in his career (we see his mother encourage him to apply to work in a friend’s dental office) and in his personal life, where he is “still on a break” with a girlfriend who we get a sense was the together one in the relationship. Gail is worried that her mother, who has suffered from a variety of health ailments and no longer drives, might not be up to living alone anymore (just as she is also worried that Daniel isn’t getting with the program, adulting-wise).
Gail expresses this worry after Thelma is taken in by a phone scam in which “Danny” calls to tell her he’s been arrested and to give money to a defense attorney who asks for $10,000 in cash. Thelma rushes to mail the envelope of cash but Daniel turns out to have been at home asleep all day. After the police tell Thelma there’s nothing they can do, her family takes her home, with Daniel promising to look in on her more and pushing her to wear her life alert watch.
Despite her family’s urging that she let it go, Thelma decides she wants her money back. But she doesn’t want to involve Gail or Daniel in her plans. Transportation-less, Thelma turns to Ben (Richard Roundtree), a not-super-close friend who lives at a senior facility. Much like how friendships among teens are often forged based on who has a car, Ben’s appeal to Thelma is largely that he has a sweet electric scooter.
Thelma first tries to “borrow” Ben’s scooter but when he stops her he agrees to go with her to the location of the post office box she sent the money to so she can scope it out and find the scammers. The trip across the San Fernando Valley takes time but Thelma is determined to get her money back — and probably to prove that she can still take care of herself.
Meanwhile Gail, Alan and Danny are desperate to find the missing Thelma, especially Danny, who feels responsible for having “lost” Thelma and that it’s yet another example of his general life failure.
The June Squibb/Richard Roundtree of it all perhaps had me expecting some level of action cleverness, humor and overall smartness that this movie doesn’t quite achieve. But, stepping back from my expectations, the movie has nice moments between the different characters and a general sweetness. We get to see their relationships to each other and their own difficulties. Thelma, for the most part, gets to feel like a real person, someone who is enjoying her independence for the first time ever (we learn that she lived with her parents until marriage and then with her husband until just a few years ago) but also is at times lonely and feels the vulnerability of her age for all that she tries to fight against it. Squibb gives a solid performance that has heart even as it has fun with its heist movie-like elements. B
Rated PG-13 for strong language, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Written and directed by Josh Margolin, Thelma is an hour and 37 minutes long and distributed in theaters by Magnolia Pictures.
