Culture
The Public Access Studio Becomes the Town's Media Center
Public access television was funded by a cable levy that cord-cutting is quietly ending. The studios that survived did so by becoming something the town needed more.
Community
Tagged stories
Culture
The Adult Beer League Is Quietly Municipal Infrastructure
Adult recreational leagues are among the few remaining places where unrelated adults meet weekly on purpose. They run on volunteer commissioners and field access that towns increasingly sell to someone else.
Culture
The Congregation Shrinks. The Building Does Not
Religious institutions hold an enormous inventory of well-located, structurally sound buildings that fewer and fewer people attend. What happens to them is becoming one of the larger quiet questions in American land use.
Culture
The Local Festival Becomes an Economic Development Line Item
Towns that once treated the annual festival as a civic nicety now fund it from economic development budgets and measure it accordingly. The measurement is where the trouble starts.
Culture
Small Venues Rebuild the Middle of the Music Business
Touring economics hollowed out the rung between the bar and the arena. The rooms rebuilding it are doing so with nonprofit structures, civic support and business models borrowed from theatre.
Culture
The Youth Sports Economy Prices Out the Neighborhood
Travel teams, private coaching and pay-to-play facilities have built a multibillion-dollar industry on childhood athletics, and the sandlot is the casualty.
Culture
Retailers Are Selling Belonging, Not Goods
The stores thriving in the post-e-commerce era have stopped competing on inventory and started competing on gathering, and the run club is the new loyalty program.
Culture
The Library Becomes the Last Free Room in Town
Visits, programming and circulation are climbing at public libraries reinventing themselves as the one remaining indoor public space with no purchase required.
Culture
Night School Is Back, and It Looks Nothing Like Before
Adults are enrolling in evening classes at rates not seen in decades, but the subjects, the venues and the reasons have all changed.