Episode 68: Sir Vival Mode

Episode 68: Sir Vival Mode

A hot afternoon recording session in the community garden, catching up on the rent control question, the limits of ballot questions as a tool, and on the eve of this great nation’s 250th birthday, a taking of pause, putting our patriotic and totally respected right to criticize the government on the shelf for a moment—to consider how blessed we are to live here, in the free world that America maintains with its highly effective air force and navy at no social expense to the imperial core, and not somewhere repressive and/or authoritarian. Plus, Worcester’s coolest invention by a mile. Also I edited the audio in the passenger seat of Katie’s car so… our usually pristine—some are saying This American Life-level, if not better—production fidelity is probably a bit lacking. I can’t tell myself because highways it turns out are pretty loud. Please support this outlet! As all of our revenue comes from readers and/or listeners it is literally up to you to make sure we still exist. Today’s the last day to take me up on the 50 percent deal I’ve been running [https://www.worcestersucks.email/subscribe?coupon=04c52b0f&utm_content=204282513] for the six year anniversary! Thank you! Tips are great too. [https://buymeacoffee.com/worcestersucks] Some links from the discussion My piece on the rent control ballot question from yesterday [https://www.worcestersucks.email/p/the-comi-tragic-death-of-the-rent] Meet the Sir Vival, the safest car that never was [https://archive.fo/20260607221046/https://www.telegram.com/story/lifestyle/columns/2026/06/07/worcester-county-wonders-the-sir-vival-lives-on-in-nashville/90352043007/] Subscribe [https://www.worcestersucks.email/subscribe] / Tips [https://buymeacoffee.com/worcestersucks] / Merch Store [https://www.billshaner.bigcartel.com/] This podcast is available on Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/3h18ugRFuHQPxnz1QQf9XM], Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/outdoor-cats-podcast/id1785258649], YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYS2GF89VhHz7qjCg6dqtz6M4D8M0Aw4S], Overcast [https://overcast.fm/itunes1785258649/outdoor-cats-podcast], Pocket Casts [https://pca.st/wcs3swbc] others via this RSS link [https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/57244/s/168689.rss]. Ok I’m actually on vacation now, unlike when I said that yesterday. Get full access to Worcester Sucks and I Love It at www.worcestersucks.email/subscribe [https://www.worcestersucks.email/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Episode 67: "Maybe bloggers cramp"

A literal garden variety show this week. Dispensing hard won wisdom and totally accurate and good advice for competitively growing potatoes for the Tuber tourney from a park bench in the new Green Hill Park Community Garden, where Chris has a lovely plot and so do The Noes. And wouldn’t you Noe it (sorry) they make a surprise appearance early in the show! (Don’t worry, Matt and Gabby, we cut out all the stuff about a certain ongoing local drama). The first 10 minutes or so were pure field audio, off the built-in mics of my trusty little Sony Dictaphone, walking around the lovely little garden patches, up there on the top of the hill next to the municipal golf course we have for some reason, that at one point was probably sold as something that would pay for itself and/or usher in a Renaissance, and now does neither. A grand Worcester tradition. Subscriptions are down and it’s freaking me out! Please subscribe! Running a half off for a year deal until July 1 to celebrate the six-year anniversary! [https://www.worcestersucks.email/subscribe?coupon=04c52b0f&utm_content=202054568] And don’t forget about the little party we’re throwing Saturday at Steel and Wire [https://www.instagram.com/p/DZDteYohiOM/]! Would love to see a lot of your smiling faces. Other great ways to support right here: Tips [https://buymeacoffee.com/worcestersucks] / Merch Store [https://www.billshaner.bigcartel.com/] This podcast is available on Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/3h18ugRFuHQPxnz1QQf9XM], Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/outdoor-cats-podcast/id1785258649], YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYS2GF89VhHz7qjCg6dqtz6M4D8M0Aw4S], Overcast [https://overcast.fm/itunes1785258649/outdoor-cats-podcast], Pocket Casts [https://pca.st/wcs3swbc] others via this RSS link [https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/57244/s/168689.rss]. Here’s the twice-edited Bergman sick own discussed at the top… Burnin Down The House tickets are live [https://tickets.thehanovertheatre.org/Online/mapSelect.asp]! We interviewed John Keogh about this on Episode 59 [https://www.worcestersucks.email/p/episode-59-burnin-down-the-house]Is there a childcare center opening up at the old Riviera strip club? [https://www.facebook.com/share/p/18N4yshh5M/] Outro: Rodney Crowell - “East Houston Blues” [http://Burnin Down The House tickets are live! We interviewed John Keogh about this on Episode 59 Is there a childcare center opening up at the old Riviera strip club? Outro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cn-7vxAozGQ] Get full access to Worcester Sucks and I Love It at www.worcestersucks.email/subscribe [https://www.worcestersucks.email/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Episode 66: Mayor Cooper

The summer doldrums kicking in, Chris and I do what we do best: chip away at the boring old rocks of local government in our fair city, hunting for rich veins of silver and gold. We find it in Toomey’s narcissism and lack of institutional memory, in a cross reading of city hall bologna and Thomas Pynchon’s “Vineland” (1990), and how the Galleria never closed so much as spread out around the foundations of downtown, an invasive root network that is by now intractable as it continues its slow work, pulling the thing down into some ruin it can one day swallow. ADU or ADA clip [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osCaxy0vWEs] Bergman doing the Bergmanian Switcheroo [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wk_aqy1yNto&pp=0gcJCSgLAYcqIYzv] Weather Star 4000 [https://weatherstar.netbymatt.com/] Worcester or Providence Reddit post [https://www.reddit.com/r/WorcesterMA/comments/1tqix7m/comment/ooi84jd/?screen_view_count=2] Mark your calendars folks: Saturday, June 20 at Steel & Wire [https://www.instagram.com/p/DZDteYohiOM/], celebrating the first SIX years of Worcester Sucks! Free and fun good time!! See you there. And as always please consider supporting this outlet! Subscriptions are a little down right now and it’s a source of anxiety to be quite honest because I’m prone to enter the End Is Nigh Mindset. Nighmaxxing if you will. Subscribe [https://www.worcestersucks.email/subscribe] / Tips [https://buymeacoffee.com/worcestersucks] / Merch Store [https://www.billshaner.bigcartel.com/] dAnd help us spread the word! Outro: Warren Zevon “Down In The Mall” [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mi5u6T57OB4] Intro: Bill Shaner 6.2.26 Get full access to Worcester Sucks and I Love It at www.worcestersucks.email/subscribe [https://www.worcestersucks.email/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Episode 65: Haggler’s Delight

As mentioned quickly in the editor’s note at the start and at length at the end of the program, head to the page “John Cashman Needs A Liver [https://johncashmanliver.my.canva.site/]” if you are someone who’s in the position to donate a liver to save a life, or if you know someone who might be, or if you know someone who knows someone who might be. The widest net possible will yield the best results. Please share any way you can. Again that’s “John Cashman Needs A Liver [https://johncashmanliver.my.canva.site/].” As far as the show’s concerned: a loose round up of the activities engaged in by our fair city’s collection of gross little guys. We go over Joe Petty’s op-ed, the Sturbridge man who runs the public market trying to run for Mary Keefe’s State Rep seat despite not living in the district in a very proveable way, Ray Mariano’s little baby brain, his childlike wonder, his rose-colored glasses, the ongoing insult to the profession it remains that the Telegram lets him “write” a “column” while they have “no other actual columnist.” Local journalism is a hell of a way to try and earn a living, and we’ve got a rare thing going here where we get to do it exactly how we please to the best of our ability. I’ll stress again that is rare. And it’s all due to the people who chip in a few bucks a month to make it happen. Subscribe [https://www.worcestersucks.email/subscribe] / Tips [https://buymeacoffee.com/worcestersucks] / Merch Store [https://www.billshaner.bigcartel.com/] “A Sturbridge resident is trying to run for a Worcester state rep seat [https://www.worcestersucks.email/p/a-sturbridge-resident-is-trying-to]” Ray Mariano: “Things I Miss Most In Today’s Politics” [https://archive.ph/20260515110014/https://www.telegram.com/story/opinion/columns/2026/05/15/ray-mariano-things-i-miss-most-in-todays-politics/90050371007/] FIFA may f**k up the US World Cup for fans in even more ways than we could’ve imagined. Will Worcester even have our scheduled viewing parties? [https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/05/13/metro/its-maddening-fifa-licensing-delays-threaten-massachusetts-world-cup-party-plans/] This podcast is available on Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/3h18ugRFuHQPxnz1QQf9XM], Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/outdoor-cats-podcast/id1785258649], YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYS2GF89VhHz7qjCg6dqtz6M4D8M0Aw4S], Overcast [https://overcast.fm/itunes1785258649/outdoor-cats-podcast], Pocket Casts [https://pca.st/wcs3swbc] others via this RSS link [https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/57244/s/168689.rss]. Get full access to Worcester Sucks and I Love It at www.worcestersucks.email/subscribe [https://www.worcestersucks.email/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Episode 64: Eureka Street Revisited (Live!)

It was an amazing night at Hunchback Gallery on Friday, the one-year mark of the Eureka Street ICE raid [https://www.welcometohellworld.com/they-dont-need-a-warrant/] that put a mother in various federal detention centers for months, ripping a family apart in the process, as well as two other mothers through nine months of court proceedings [https://www.worcestersucks.email/p/convicted-of-assault-for-getting?utm_medium=email] on the sort of b******t charges that police departments get to file against anyone perceived to have slighted them. Here’s a pic [https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!eeri!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F15cceb47-ec0a-4849-88a1-a2f5b848a690_5712x4284.jpeg] of the crowd at Hunchback Gallery [https://www.hunchbackgallery.com/] that Chris took. This two hour recording has been left unedited for content (while heavily edited for sound quality, due to the band practicing on the floor below us, hence the delay in getting it up) because we feel it’s worth it to have the entire thing preserved. It is, as Etel put it in a text shortly after we all packed up and left, the first oral history of this event—one I feel will be looked back on as one of the most significant hinge points in the city’s history. Through the course of the show, we move loosely from past to present, starting with a pre-written local political context, up to what people can and should be doing now, as the deportation machine becomes more streamlined, more efficient, more eerily quiet. From ticket sales, we raised $450 for LUCE’s direct support fund in Worcester, which has a specific name that is escaping me right now, but can be found here [https://venmo.com/u/LUCEWorcester] if you’d like to make a direct donation yourself. The “big check” discussed in the episode is currently being commissioned! Updates to come. Thank you to everyone who purchased a ticket, especially those who bought the extra generous tier, which ended up being almost half. For a first live show, it went better than we could have hoped. That’s not to say it went perfect and the flubs and hiccups are left in the tape so that the next time we do a live show, you can marvel at how much better we got at it. Have an idea for the next Outdoor Cats event? Drop it in the comments. And please consider a paid subscription. Outdoor Cats episodes getting put up on a weekly basis is one thing, but this live event? There is no conceivable way I could have booked this event, promoted it, ripped apart my recording desk, schlepped it all to an art gallery, rebuilt it for the purposes of recording and a live mix, ran sound for the event, ran the event, did the podcast, packed up my recording desk, brought it home, rebuilt it, mixed and mastered the recording of the event, which took several days in this case, then wrote this post… there’s no conceivable way any of that happens if this newsletter does not support at least one full time position. So, given our only source of revenue is reader contributions, the question becomes whether you, the reader and/or listener, appreciate having this outlet in your city? Is that appreciation worth the equivalent of a beer a month to you? Subscribe [https://www.worcestersucks.email/subscribe] / Tips [https://buymeacoffee.com/worcestersucks] / Merch Store [https://www.billshaner.bigcartel.com/] Something to think about! I can promise you I’ll keep doing this with gusto so long as I’m able. The event was a ton of work, but it was soul restoring in a way I didn’t know how much I needed. I know I’m not the only one. If you feel the same, share this episode far and wide! That helps too! This podcast is available on Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/3h18ugRFuHQPxnz1QQf9XM], Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/outdoor-cats-podcast/id1785258649], YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYS2GF89VhHz7qjCg6dqtz6M4D8M0Aw4S], Overcast [https://overcast.fm/itunes1785258649/outdoor-cats-podcast], Pocket Casts [https://pca.st/wcs3swbc] others via this RSS link [https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/57244/s/168689.rss]. Intro music by Bill Shaner 5.10.26 Outro music: Orgone “Lay Your Life Down” [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmjluV2yrpM] Get full access to Worcester Sucks and I Love It at www.worcestersucks.email/subscribe [https://www.worcestersucks.email/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]