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The Boston Phoenix rises from the ashes like, well, not a phoenix but an online archive
By adamg on Thu, 12/16/2021 - 12:02pm
The Internet Archive has put up a collection of Boston Phoenix copies dating from the 1970s through its demise in 2013. You can do keyword searches, just browse through copies (including all those Phoenix Personals) or download entire copies for reading at your leisure.
Caralee Adams describes the travails of getting the collection online, which involved digitizing a "master microfilm" of the contents - and getting permission from Northeastern University, to which publisher Steve Mindich had donated paper copies and the copyright to go with them.
Northeastern journalism professor - and Phoenix alum - Dan Kennedy, writes the collection is missing copies from 2010 through 2012 and everything from the paper's pre-Mindich days, but that, still, he's thrilled most of the Phoenix is now online and easily accessible.
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Comments
Thanks to the Internet Archive
Thanks to the Internet Archive and all who worked on this project. The Wayback Machine is a treasure!
I met my husband through the
I met my husband through the Phoenix Personals. I also have a Phoenix Puzzler pen for solving one of their puzzles. I miis that paper!
I gave them a good donation this year
of a couple days' pay. I probably use the Wayback Machine at least once a week to recover articles from dead websites.
My 20s in the 90s used to
My 20s in the 90s used to read it all the time.
I kind of miss the Boston Phoenix.
I wish that it would come back, at least on line, so that it could be readable for everybody.
in the 90s?
That's like saying you went to Woodstock in the 90s.
If you suffer from nostalgia...
If you suffer from nostalgia don't read the club directory in any of those issues. You'll be overcome with a sense of loss, not just of your [wasted] youth but also of the vibrant, cultural city that Boston used to be prior to the housing market speculation and neighbors that abhor any inconvenience that isn't of their own making.
I'm going to lie down now.
A lot of my early restaurant criticism in there, too,
mostly from my years helming the On the Cheap column, plus a few cover features. That was a pretty exciting time for food geeks in Boston, an opening up of the local food culture to traditional cuisines most of us hadn't seen here. Good memories!
I also share your nostalgia for all those bygone live music clubs. Haunting those places occupied thousands of my nights in those days. RIP.
I followed your column...
... "religiously". It was great.
OMG @JayF!
The Film Listings are even worse. There were over 26 screens in Boston in 21 separate movie theaters back in 1974. Now in 2021 there is only one movie theater building with 19 movie screens. What was once a cinema mecca has become a cultural wasteland. Good dog, I'm old I think I've been seated in at least 18 of them and I didn't even include the Cambridge movie theaters I've visited. WTF happened?
The disappearance of both sorts of places...
... is truly depressing. No one could have predicted back then just how the cultural landscape could get so devastated.
OMG @JayF!
duplicate please delete.
Magoo sez
Magoo used to watch the cartoon Conan the Barbarian. Magoo ‘members that one of Conan’s best buds was a Phoenix. Magoo can remember the name of the Phoenix but Magoo remembers that the Phoenix luv luv luved pomegranates. Magoo
One of the Great Cartoonists of the Phoenix
Karl Stevens, former Phoenix cartoonist until it's demise, has found a new life drawing for the New Yorker and the NYTimes. (He also did a cool exhibit at the Gardner 2 years ago, where he had been a security guard after the end of the Phoenix). You can find him on insta: @karlstevensart
Me, page 3, 1978
Mind you I've always had copies of my appearance in the Phoenix, but here's me:
https://archive.org/details/sim_boston-phoenix_1978-04-25_7_17/page/n1/m...