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Cover Story

Bennett's Best

by Charlotte Hsu

Cheyenne Ketter-Franklin is valedictorian of Bennett High, one of Buffalo’s worst-performing schools. It’s the type of institution whose problems people sum up using terms like “urban” and “inner city.” In 2010, the state slapped the school with the label PLA: “Persistently Lowest-Achieving.” Privately, many local residents will skip the euphemisms and admit to thinking of Bennett as some kind of hellhole.

The News, Briefly

Tolbert Campaign Begins

by Geoff Kelly

Greenpac Reveals Radioactive Waste Issue at Niagara Falls Mill

by Geoff Kelly & Louis Ricciuti

Small Talk

by Geoff Kelly

News Analysis

A Good Mystery

by Bruce Fisher

The Urban Institute’s most recent profile of Cleveland reads like a devoted fan’s defense of the Chicago Cubs, a baseball team which has been “rebuilding,” as the saying goes, for about a hundred years. The entire Cleveland metropolitan region has been stagnating, and the economy of the region isn’t growing, either. The City of Cleveland, like the City of Buffalo and the City of Detroit, has been shrinking drastically.

Guest Essay

The Next Social Contract

by Kemal Dervis

Around the world nowadays, persistent unemployment, skill mismatches, and retirement frameworks have become central to fiscal policy—and to the often-fierce political debates that surround it.

Arts Feature

Last Chance to Infringe

Another year of art under the radar passes; another Infringement Festival comes to a close. Even on the final day of the Infringement Festival, there is still a ton to do: from an outdoor concert by avant folk band Shubbalulium outside of Coming Home Buffalo, to an interactive comedy show by Brainless Improv at Main (St)udios, and even a live-action game of Pac Man in Days Park. The official end of Infringement Festival 2013 happens at the festival’s unofficial headquarters though: Nietzsche’s.

Art Scene

A Major Exhibit of the Late Andrew Topolski's Work at the Buchfield Penney

by Jack Foran

Homeless Portraits Go Homeless

by J. Tim Raymond

Classical Music Notes

Cellist Rising

by Jan Jezioro

One of the highlight’s of last spring’s classical music season was the well received, long overdue Buffalo area premiere of Witold Lutosławski’s 1970 Concerto for Cello and Orchestra by the UB Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of its innovative music director, Daniel Bassin.

Theater Week

Uncle Vanya at Torn Space

by Anthony Chase

With Anton Chekhov’s 1899 masterwork, Uncle Vanya, Torn Space Theater—Buffalo’s foremost non-realist theater—once again lunges unflinchingly into the realm of theatrical realism. Last season they took an expressionistic view of Tennessee Williams’s postwar realist play, A Streetcar Named Desire, but with Chekhov, they mine the mother lode, taking on the man who, with Ibsen and Strindberg, arguably invented Modern Drama.

Film Reviews

2 Guns

by George Sax

I'm So Excited

by M. Faust

This is Martin Bonner

by M. Faust

Byzantium

by M. Faust

Listings

On The Boards Theater Listings

Movie Times (Friday, August 2 - Thursday, August 8)

Flim Now Playing

Featured Events

See You There!

Artvoice's weekly round-up of featured events, including our editor's pick for the week: Chalkfest, going on this Saturday & Sunday on the 500 block of Main Street.

Dispatches: War of 1812

Jungle Bungles

by Mason Winfield

The summer of 1813 was a hot one on the west side of the Big River. Since late May the Americans had held Fort George and a perimeter around it in today’s Niagara-on-the-Lake. But Canadian guerrillas, British paramilitaries, and the Empire’s Native allies drove them crazy. The informal war-inside-the-war may be the most neglected side of the Niagara conflict.

Letters to Artvoice

Peace Bridge Expansion - Deja Vu With an Episcopalian Twist

by Arthur J. Giacalone

The Peace Bridge Authority and its governmental allies have spent more than 20 years in pursuit of two goals.

Offbeat News

News of the Weird

by Chuck Shepherd

Dewayne Eddy, 54, was charged in Yuba County, Calif., in May with beating his adult daughter with folding lawn chairs and a can of beans after discovering that a bolt was missing in the chicken coop in his yard.

Horoscopes

Free Will Astrology

by Rob Brezsny

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Since 1948, the chemical known as warfarin has been used as a pesticide to poison rats. Beginning in 1954, it also became a medicine prescribed to treat thrombosis and other blood ailments in humans. Is there anything in your own life that resembles warfarin?