Out Front
Adams nightlife is unforgettable
Rachel Barenblatt
Wednesday, May 18, 2005 - The place was packed, but my companion and I were
lucky enough to secure a table right up by the musicians. They produced a surprising
amount of sound. One guy played kora -- a stringed instrument originating in
Mali, West Africa; it has an enormous gourd for a body, and a long neck, and
is held and plucked vertically like a harp -- and the other played horn.
Now and then the kora player switched to playing a long, low Malian xylophone
with wooden keys. Or a clay urn-shaped drum which produced several pitches.
Or, in a particularly playful moment, a Mason canning jar half-filled with water:
the resonating chamber changed shape as he tilted it one way or the other, and
his taps on the metal lid went up and down in pitch, like the clay drum had
done. The horn player, for his part, alternated between a flute, two saxophones,
and a clarinet.
During the first half of the show, I ate pita bread with hummus and dolmades
(rice- and lemon-stuffed grape leaves) and nursed a glass of house red wine.
Midway through, just because I could, I withdrew my laptop from my briefcase,
unfolded it, accessed the wireless network, and fired off e-mails to a few friends
describing my exciting evening of live African-inflected jazz in this hipster
joint, where the ceiling sparkles like stars and a mural of several female nudes
graces the wall behind the undulating copper bar.
A weekend in New York City? A lucky jaunt to Paris or Dakar? Not hardly: This
was in Adams, Mass., my first visit to Café Topia.
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Travel writer Bill Bryson has written a number of excellent books. My favorites,
in no particular order, include In "A Sunburned Country" (a chronicle
of his travels across Australia), "Notes from a Small Island" (about
Britain, where he lived for many years), "A Walk in the Woods" (a
paean to the Appalachian Trail) and "I'm A Stranger Here Myself" (a
kind of sequel to his Britain book, written about the United States, to which
he returned a few years ago). In that last book, he gives the town of Adams
a bit of a backhanded compliment:
"A couple of years ago, when I was sent ahead of the rest of the family
to scout out a place for us to live, I included the town of Adams, Massachusetts
as a possibility because it had a wonderful old-fashioned diner on Main Street,"
he writes.
"Unfortunately, I was compelled to remove Adams from the short list when
I was unable to recall a single other virtue in the town, possibly because it
didn't have any."
Ouch. Granted, the old-fashioned diner he cites is entirely wonderful, though
since he wrote those words it has closed, turned into a hot dog stand, and then
turned into a diner again. These days, under Scott Avery's excellent direction,
the Miss Adams serves some of the best burgers in North County.
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Maybe best of all, the Miss Adams is open until 10 p.m. on weeknights, and 2
a.m. on weekends. When I left Topia the other night, there were folks sitting
at the diner car's bar, lit by funky blue neon, sipping beers and cups of coffee.
The new Firehouse Café was also packed, and live music spilled out their
open front door -- something in the rock 'n' roll genre. And now there's Topia,
serving excellent food, organic coffee and beer, and a wildly diverse programming
menu of world music, trapeze artistry, and occasionally even visiting novelists.
And the women behind Topia intend to refurbish the old theater behind the current
café space. On a recent visit, they took me down the corridor to the
echoing old theater. It's been stripped to concrete and rafters, currently lit
by a handful of carpenter's work lights, but it's easy to imagine its former
glory -- and how it will shine when the renovations are done.
So, Mr. Bryson, much as I respect your venerable travel-writing skills, I have
to disagree with your assessment. Adams is becoming quite the nightspot.
Allow me, therefore, to extend a kindly invitation. If you're reading this,
come on back. Catch a rare glass armonica performance at Topia, have a focaccia
lunch sandwich at the old firehouse-turned-restaurant.
And if you want to read from your work, there's a nifty little literary center
in the next town over; I'll bet we could find any number of places to host you.
Even in Adams, the town you thought time forgot.
Rachel Barenblatt is the executive director of Inkberry, a nonprofit organization
dedicated to fostering the literary arts.
Sent By: 4.154.206.233