The Burlington Student Survival Guide

Okay, we're just a bunch of lame musicians and we don't think we know any better than the next lame musician, but we do live in Burlington and we are poor, so, we think we're pretty qualified to tell all the incoming students where they can find good food cheap, see great live music, and buy cool clothes. We know where the waitresses suck and we know where they work their asses off, so that should count for something. You be the judge.

So you're new to town, huh? Need to know where to get your smokes, drink your java, hang your hat? We know a few things about Burlington. We've been here for a while. Trust us. We're not a big glossy magazine funded by Gap ads and publishing out of our mom's house. We're real people. You can trust us. We're here to help. We want to help you so much that we're publishing this, our very first Burlington Student Survival Guide. A completely opinionated, incredibly biased look at our fair city. Where to eat. Where to drink. Where to wake up the next morning. You know, the dirt. What you really need to know. 

EAT!
Our favorite places to chow:

Boves (68 Pearl Street) is the place for cheap Italian food. The garlic spaghetti rips shit up.  Manhattan Pizza (corner of Main and Church) gets the vote for downtown pizza, and they have bands. They have a large selection of microbrews available, and they're open late too.  Ahli Baba's (163 Main Street) has some amazing falafel and a bus on the UVM green, so you can eat up on the hill, too.  Kountry Kart (155 Main Street) is open very late, until 3 am, and is as good as a deli gets around here.  Stone Soup (211 College Street) has become a new favorite, especially with the crunchy crowd. Great salad bar, nice people.  The Vermont Pub and Brewery (144 College Street) has a very cool menu, including a lot of British dishes, and they brew some great beer too. For Mexican food, we eat at Paradise Burritos (88 Church Street) all the time, and we've been known to dig in at Coyote's (169 Church Street) quite often too. Coyote's has free chips and salsa before your meal, so they make up for being a little more expensive. Catch the Grilled Cheese Cart on the upper block of Church Street before he closes up for the season, and tell Tom we said "Hi!" For breakfast, we recommend the First Waltz Cafe (55 Main Street) and the Penny Cluse (169 Cherry Street). The Penny Cluse has coffee from Uncommon Grounds and they keep filling 'em up for you. If you're looking for a diner, both Henry's (155 Bank Street) and the Oasis (189 Bank Street) have many loyal followers. For pizza delivery, call the locally owned (and delicious) Leonardo's (862-7700) first, and then try the chains if you have to. Eat local!

ROCK!
Our favorite places to see and hear live music:

Nectars (188 Main Street) is a fine place to start, although you have to be 21 or over to see any music there. For twenty-some-odd years Nectar Rorris has booked a variety of live bands there, quite a few of them cover bands, but occasionally some as cool as Phish. Just up the stairs from Nectars, Club Metronome (also 188 Main Street) has been offering a mix of national and local acts for over six years now. Blind Melon, Counting Crows, Dave Matthews Band and Ani DiFranco have all played there, to name a few, and the sound guy, Sergei Ushakov, kicks some serious ass, so it always sounds great. Across the way, Club Toast (165 Church Street) just celebrated its fifth aniversary, and the brothers Wygmans have kept the place packed over the years with lots of national and local music, with a slightly more alternative bent than Metronome. They have a lot of all ages shows, but check the schedule to be sure. Bands who have graced the Toast stage include Everclear, Moby, L7 and various Phish side projects. Lots of great hardcore shows have happened at the city-owned 242 Main (242 Main Street) and the non-alcoholic, all ages club has survived on the sweat of a proud few, and is a testament to the ardor of its scene. Considering the sporadic support and involvement of the city, every show that happens there is monumental and the folks working down there should be given some kind of an award or something.  Manhattan Pizza (see Eat!) has had live bands pretty consistantly. The Rhombus Gallery (corner of Church and Cherry) has had a good schedule lately, and some unfortunate noise violations during the rock shows. Jeff Miller hosts the weekly Burlington Coffeehouse there, with a legendary roster of national, touring, folk and acoustic acts. A beautiful new club called Higher Ground opened in May. Just across the river, in Winooski, Higher Ground has great sight lines, great acoustics, and a very ambitious roster that this fall includes Guster, the Samples, Toots and the Maytals and George Clinton and P-Funk. They have a very cool staff with a lot of familiar Burlington faces help make the place seem like home. And they're 18+, too.  Red Square has a hip little scene going on (136 Church Street) and the Thursday night Barbacoa shows are worth checking out. Feel like traveling out of town? One of the coolest bars in the world is in Waitsfield (Route 100) and it's called the Mad Mountain Tavern. The building is an old barn, the staff is super laid back, and the grub is pretty good. Monday nights are especially rowdy, and during ski season the place is crazy. We go there every year for the (sic) Halloween Bash, so mark that sucker on your calendar now. Unless you're going to Vegas, of course. 

SPIN!
Our favorite places to buy music:

If you're looking for vinyl, find Route 15 to Essex and keep on driving until you get to Tones (802-635-2223) in Johnson. No contest, the best vinyl selection we know of sits out at Jeff and Rita Angione's house in Johnson. Right in the middle of town, on Route 15, Jeff has been stockpiling the vinyl for years, and people drive from all over to find weird and rare recordings. You can call him for mailorder, too. Tell him we said "Hi!"  Flex Records (161 Main Street) in Burlington has a lot of dancehall, reggae and hip hop. If you're shopping for compact discs, of course you have to head down into the basement of Pure Pop (115 South Winooski). The Pop Shop has a huge local music section, and if you keep an eye on the $1 cassettes, you can find some treasures. A lot of our friends work there, so be nice to the staff and don't shoplift! It's just not nice! We also highly recommend Buch Spieler (27 Langdon Street) in Montpelier. Fred Wilbur has owned the store for something like 25 years, and in addition to being a very nice guy, he's a local musician himself (late of Ken Sleeps Naked) and makes sure they always have a good inventory of local music in the store. A recent expansion has allowed Fred to expand his jazz and classical sections into their own room, so we suggest you pay him a visit. Speaking of musicians and music stores, Bob Recupero owns Sound Source (Star Mill) in Middlebury. Bob's been a musician on the Vermont scene for a long time and was in the band Downpour back when they were writing and recording their own music. Bob gives great deals on stereo equipment, car stereos too, and his enthusiasm for all things music will impress you. For used CD's, try Disc Go Round (198 College Street), they have a pretty huge inventory. If you're a musician and you need anything from strings on up to full P.A.'s, we'll tell you this: every professional musician we know deals with Advance Music (75 Maple Street) in Burlington. For years, Mike Trombley and his crew have been servicing the needs of Burlington's musicians, and they're a mighty fine bunch. Most of them are musicians, too, so they won't steer you wrong. Trust us. We also like Play it Again Sam (66 Main Street) in Montpelier, and we know a lot of musicians who have loaded up on gear over there. 

FUEL!
Our Favorite Places to Suck Down Caffeine:

Downtown Burlington has gone coffee shop crazy and even though two of them have gone out of business already, there are still plenty of places to get fueled.  Uncommon Grounds (42 Church Street) would be our favorite even if they weren't the only coffee shop in town that advertises in Good Citizen, but that alone should be reason enough for you to drop in there and say hello. They roast their own beans and sometimes you can smell them all the way up and down Church Street. Bev and Skip are way cool and you might even have a member of a local band get your coffee for you! You can also meet local musicians at Muddy Waters (184 Main Street) and it's a cool place to hang out on a rainy day. They have a juice bar, too. Speeder and Earl's have two locations and they aren't really a chain, they just kind of look like one. I dunno, we used to get along and then one of the owners freaked on us one day, and we haven't been back since. Coffee ain't bad, or nothing. Chris thinks that Brueggers (93 Church Street) has good coffee, although Andrew disagrees. Java Blues (197 College Street) has good coffee and Stuart's a good guy.  Borders has a coffee shop right where Samsara used to be (29 Church Street) and NECI has a coffee shop right next to that. Damn! That's a lot of coffee! There are a million more we could mention, but that should get you started.

CONSUME!
Our favorite places to shop, cheap:

First stop, and maybe your last, should be Battery Street Jeans (182 Battery Street). The place goes on forever, and some stuff may get a little pricey, but there are treasures to be found, trust us. Tell Jef we said "Hey, Jef." Garment Gallery (266 Pine Street) has got a lot of cool stuff, and they're over near Recycle North (266 Pine Street), so it's worth a trip. Trust us. Recycle North is chock full of used stereo systems, household items, beds, bureaus, etc. On the same tip, but primarily for clothing, is the Possibility Shop (38 South Winooski Avenue). It's in the basement of a church and smells like old clothes. Stuff is cheap there, and some days they surprise you with half-price sales. We like those. On the opposite end of the money scale is Old Gold (180 Main Street) where everything is pricey but they have some really cool things. If you head out to Johnson to go to Tones, right across the street is the Forget Me Not Shop (Route 15), a two-story house filled with surplus clothing and weird shit.

READ!
Our favorite local publications:

Obviously, Good Citizen is the coolest of all, but since we're just a music magazine, you should probably read a few other things. The arts weeklies in Burlington are Seven Days (Wednesdays) and the Vermont Times (also Wednesdays). We love Seven Days to death, and if you're an NPR-listening woman, you're right on target. Their club listings get stolen by all the local radio stations and run without credit, so obviously, you should check Seven Days before you go out. If you want to see it on-line, be sure to check out the Big Heavy World web site at www. bigheavyworld.com. The entire music universe of Vermont is on-line at Big Heavy World, so you owe it to yourself to memorize the whole damned site. The Vermont Times has undergone an overhaul recently (and it now includes the arts newspaper Vox as an inside section) and how it grows remains to be seen. They have Colin Clary on music and Simon Brody on himself, so it's worth a weekly perusal. A periodical that comes out a little less often include Pete Gershon's amazing Signal to Noise magazine (formerly called Soundboard). Signal to Noise is an internationally distributed "journal of improvised and experimental music" and Pete gets some pretty cool interviews, so you should check it out. For gay and lesbian news, look for the free newspaper Out in the Mountains (monthly). New editor Chris Moes has done amazing things with it. You can too. 

RECORD!
Our favorite places to lay down tracks:

We can get into a lot of trouble here if we're not careful, but since two of us are in a band (and we call it Chin Ho!) we should tell you that we've done something at almost every studio in town.  Eclipse Recording (482-4371) is in beautiful Hinesburg. We'd trust Joe Egan with our lives, so it's hard to not to recommend him. We love the guy, and his studio is comfortable and growing rapidly. Also out of town a little is Chuck Eller's Studio(425-3508), which is in a house like Eclipse, although Chuck has a windmill in his yard and he's in Charlotte. Chuck does some very fine work out there, without a doubt. The house that Dan Archer built, Archer Studio, is in Fort Ethan Allen out by Saint Michael's, and some of Vermont's biggest albums have come out of his studio. He probably has points on them, too. Gus Zeising is a local legend and his Low Tech Studio (862-0149) is cramped and cluttered but has been the source of some really great albums over the years. He's in the Union Station building down on the Burlington waterfront, so you can watch some amazing sunsets while you record. Quennie and Coop have set up a new location in downtown Burlington for Channel 2 Studios (860-1509), but you'll have to call them to find out where.  Resting Lion (464-4760) is out in Huntington, and owner John Hadden does very nice graphic design work, too.  Ad Adstra (872-8583) is owned by Peter Engisch of the band Picture This. Peter also works at Advance and he knows his shit.  The Orange Factory is at 186 College Street and Jeremy Skaller and posse have turned out many a cool groove.  Noteworthy Studio (728-4600) in East Randolph has been the source of some great sounding recordings, and they're another comfortable, rural studio worth checking out.

OTHER!
Miscellaneous Favorites:

Suntan Sam's (271 Pearl Street) for tanning, Metropolitan Hair (163 Pearl Street) for piercing. Full Tank (150A Church Street) for smoking accessories and weird cool shit and Garcia's in the Burlington Square Mall for cigarettes. We don't smoke but we can tell that Brooks Drug (on Church Street) has pretty good prices by the number of people we stand next to who are buying smokes there. For video rentals, you'll need a membership at Waterfront Video (131 Battery Street) and no place else. You'll never support the corporate censorship of chains like Blockbuster ever again, trust us. If you wear glasses, go to Eyes of the World (168 Battery Streett) and check out all the cool frames they have there. If you're a girl and you need girl clothes, Chris' cousin works at Ecco (63 Church Street) and her name is Jenny. Go in and say "hey." 

One last thing. Go see a band. Right now. You're welcome.