L ooking out the studio window of the radio station where she’d worked for 29 years, DJ “Mistress Carrie” Sarao could see a crowd gathering outside. It was a Friday night, Feb. 21, 2020, and freezing, but that didn’t stop hundreds of Bostonians from flooding the parking lot when they …
Read More »A Fire in the River: Big Sugar and 'Black Snow' in the Everglades
A long the rim of Lake Okeechobee, the seasons aren’t marked by temperature or falling leaves but by the humidity, light, and plumes of ash that blanket this part of Florida come October. Just as the air dries, the wind turns east and sugar-cane farmers set to harvesting stalks of …
Read More »After Two Decades Undercover, She's Ready to Tell the Real Story of Human Trafficking
O n an August night in 2003, a young woman who went by the name Paulina sank into the sofa of her modest, rented apartment, opened up her laptop, and began talking about sex with a man she’d recently met in a Yahoo chat group. His name was Stephen Bolen. …
Read More »The Gerontocracy Waged War on Gen Z. Now They're Fighting Back
W E’VE LIVED THROUGH a pandemic. We’re living in a climate crisis. We’re living through a mental health crisis. We’re living in a day and age when school shootings are the norm,” Keely Magee, a 21-year-old activist from New Jersey says with frustration. It’s a feeling familiar to many of …
Read More »Go-Go's Guitarist Jane Wiedlin Claims Influential Rock DJ Sexually Abused Her as a Teen
F our years before she co-founded the beloved New Wave group the Go-Go’s, guitarist Jane Wiedlin was about 15 years old living with her parents in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley. It was around 1974, and she was enamored with glam-rock titans like David Bowie and Marc Bolan. Looking to …
Read More »Their Bodies Were Donated to Harvard. Then They Went Missing
I n sleepy, suburban Saugus, Massachusetts, sisters Robyn D’Apolito and Nicole MacTaggart pack up the car, getting ready to meet about 30 members of their friends and family at Castle Rock Park in Marblehead. It’s July 2022, high season for the New England shore, but this isn’t a typical trip …
Read More »Inside the World's Most Dangerous Gang War
J ust before eight in the morning on May 29, Lourdy Denis answered his phone and a woman informed him that his son had been shot in the head. She’d found Denis’ number scribbled on the back of the child’s notebook, and pleaded with him to come quickly. Denis raced …
Read More »MMA Legend Rickson Gracie's Fight Against Parkinson's: 'I'm Not Scared of Death, but Quitting is Unacceptable'
T HE GREATEST BRAZILIAN JIU-JITSU fighter in the world is looking to fight me. “Put your hands up,” Rickson Gracie tells me as he advances. “Like you’re talking like an Italian.” I raise my hands as he lunges toward my head. “Don’t let me touch your face.” Gracie — the …
Read More »Breaking Through Rock Journalism's Boys' Club
PLEASE ALLOW THIS ASIAN AMERICAN music writer to articulate this at the level it deserves: Egregious racism and misogyny have a long history in rock & roll — from those on the industry side who have appropriated Black artists’ work to those at the top of the publications who dictated …
Read More »Bob Lee's Murder Shook San Francisco. What Really Happened?
T he 911 call came in around 2:30 a.m on April 4. “Help, someone stabbed me,” said the voice on the phone. Police and paramedics rushed to the address he gave near the downtown waterfront, beneath the hulking steel beams of the Bay Bridge. By the time first responders arrived …
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