BACA Brings Beacon Together

Cooperation of arts and business attracts visitors to Beacon

by Jack Sine

The Beacon Arts Community Association (better known as BACA) began, oddly enough, as the result of a trip to Philadelphia to take in a rock concert.

“A friend of mine and I had tickets to a Martin Sexton concert on Saturday May 7th in 2001,” said [...]

Beacon Voices: Sal Cumella, President, Dorel Hat Company

by Michael Daecher
This month, the Beacon
Arts Community Association (BACA) is sponsoring the Beacon Hat Parade, a
celebration of Beacon’s heritage as the hat making capital of the Northeast. The
Grand Marshall for the parade will be Sal Cumella, owner of the last hat
factory in Beacon, the Dorel Hat Company. The factory is located in a
non-descript green and [...]

The Red Hat Society Gets Their Groove On

Social club gives the middle age mindset a swift kick in the shins (and
laughs about it too!)
by Jeff Battersby
When I am an
old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.
– from
“Warning” by Jenny Joseph
You’ve no doubt seen the “Red Hats”—groups of
women, most of whom are over 50, that [...]

City Sewer Lines Pooped

Aging infrastructure
causing problems for area residents
by Jennifer Sipple
Over the past few years, Beacon residents George Mansfield
and KazumiTanaka’s many encounters with city sewage in their home has made them
Beacon’s poster children for sewage run amuck. The problem has haunted the homeowners since early 2002. It was then that sewage-laden water first
began to seep through the [...]

Editorial: Find Your Inner Milliner

You may detect a theme running through this issue: hats. And
not just any kind of hats. The kind of headwear we’re celebrating in the Beacon
Hat Parade and in our profile of the owner of the last hat factory in Beacon are
seen less and less in public these days. You’d probably see the most modern
examples on [...]

Dancing Queen

Valerie Feit’s Ballet Arts Primes the Pump for Professional Ballet
by
Gina Masullo
It’s
a perfectly sunny April Saturday, and clusters of young girls are standing on
the hilly lawn outside the Ballet Arts Studio on a residential strip of Teller Avenue. They’re wearing black leotards and pale pink tights and posing for camera-wielding parents.
More
parents clog the studio’s doorway, [...]

Letter to the Editor: Howland Library Cost Too Expensive

The “response to the community” by the Howland
Library was wholly inadequate. At almost
11 million dollars the cost of the library project remains excessive. It is out of line with what other area
libraries have accomplished or will accomplish using far less taxpayer money. The
Library seems proud that this project is being proposed using public
funds. However it [...]