Working Waterfront Festival this weekend!

No need to tune into television for seafaring dramas like "Lobster Wars" and "Deadliest Catch" to get a peek inside life chasing catch on the water. This weekend, New Bedford's fifth annual Working Waterfront Festival shows off the real stuff at home, with more salty contests, more maritime music, more fishing boats to tour and more ocean adventurers to meet firsthand than ever before.

Unlike some piers designed to draw tourists with bistros and boutiques, New Bedford's waterfront is still dedicated to serving the fishing industry that has [read more]
 

  New Bedford attracts its largest downtown convention ….x5!

The 4th annual Bioneers by the Bay: Connecting for Change, a national environmental and social justice conference, will take place this year for the first time in historic downtown New Bedford, from Oct. 23 to 26.

Founded in 1990, Bioneers is a nonprofit organization that promotes practical environmental solutions and innovative social strategies for restoring the Earth and communities.

The conference is moving downtown this year because they outgrew their space at UMass-Dartmouth [read more]
 

  NBEDC has money to lend

NEW BEDFORD — It isn't only individuals who are living week-to-week these days. Small businesses — healthy ones, established ones — are having cash flow trouble and could topple like dominoes unless someone intervenes with short-term loans, according to government and bank officials.

But loans are harder to get as nervous and sometimes overextended creditors clamp down. For a few, there is nowhere to turn. Their otherwise healthy businesses are going to fail. [read more]
 

  WindCheck Magazine hightlights New Bedford and other SouthCoast seaside communities as sailing destinations

Buzzards Bay can lay claim to being one of the most consistently windy bodies of water on the East Coast. A fortuitous southwest-to-northeast orientation and a funnel shape create a venturi effect that accelerates the prevailing southwesterlies. The seabreeze averages 15 knots on a typical summer afternoon, frequently approaching 25.

Surrounded by the Elizabeth Islands to the south, Rhode Island Sound to the southwest, Cape Cod to the east and Bristol and Plymouth Counties in Massachusetts to the northwest, Buzzards Bay is [read more]
 

  Some Thoughts on New Bedford from a visiting sailor
 

How can I say enough about New Bedford? If it weren’t for the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, I’d vote for New Bef ’d to be the capital city of Massachusetts. After all, their fish chowder is as good, or better, than Boston’s. Their streets are all one way, just as Boston’s are. All we’d have to do is build the new Fenway Park close to New Bef ’d. Think of it: you could sit in the stands and watch Manny hit one into the harbor and, at the same time, keep one eye on your sloop to make sure her anchor wasn’t dragging.

I really should tell you a little about  [read more]
 

  Happy to be stranded in New Bedford

THE MOTORSAILER Queen Charlotte was forced into New Bedford, Mass., by engine problems, but truly, the crew could hardly be sorry. New Bedford is a splendidly salty town — the headquarters of the New England whaling fleet, the town where Herman Melville shipped out on the voyage that inspired his masterpiece Moby Dick, the place where a jocular whaling captain gave an abandoned oyster smack to Joshua Slocum, who rebuilt it here and then sailed it alone around the world.

New Bedford is also home to [read more]
 

  Whaling Museum names new president

NEW BEDFORD — The 43-year-old former vice president of the International Yacht Restoration School and Museum of Yachting in Newport, R.I., has been voted the new president of the New Bedford Whaling Museum.

James P. Russell won a unanimous vote of the Board of Trustees of the Old Dartmouth Historical Society to take over the position vacated by Anne B. Brengle, who resigned last year to take the helm of the U.S. Coast Guard Foundation.

Museum Trustee John N. Garfield Jr.,  [read more]
 

  "Green Up" Your Business

Going green isn't just better for our planet—it's better for your business.

Study after study confirms that consumers are eco-conscious about where they shop and how products are made.

All the big companies are into reducing their ecological footprint—but if you're not the size of GE or Wal-Mart, it can be challenging to know which eco-friendly programs to pursue.
Need help?

Small and medium-sized business [read more]
 

  Sisters open JuiceBox downtown

NEW BEDFORD — Officials cut the ribbon on another "hip," lifestyle-oriented business in the downtown business district Monday, marking the opening of The JuiceBox at 285 Union St. operated by sisters Natasha and Jessica Suarez.

Jessica Suarez, who is from New Bedford but also lived in San Diego, said she and her sister looked for a location for more than a year before settling on the storefront in the R.D. Wroble Building at the corner of Union and Eighth streets — diagonally across from the newly opened state Registry of Motor Vehicles office. [read more]
 

  Metal band films video at Orpheum

NEW BEDFORD — The Orpheum Theater stage saw a lot of acts during its heyday from 1912 to 1958, when it closed its doors, but none like the band that took the stage on Sunday. The theater’s ambience went from historic to headbanger when Unearth, a Boston heavy metal band, blew the cobwebs away while filming a music video for the MTV2 show called “Headbanger’s Ball.”

Cameras, sound booms, lighting equipment and cables crowded the area in front of the stage as the old walls reverberated to the thunderous [read more]
 

  Community contributes talent, energy to public art project

NEW BEDFORD — From Clark's Point to Butler's Flat to other landmarks along the Acushnet River, New Bedford's landscape started coming to life in a 105-foot panoramic mural over the weekend.

Area artists and volunteers began transforming an old railroad containment wall into a panorama reminiscent of paintings in the Whaling Museum.

The wall is on Quansett Street across from Taber Mill. Two elderly residents watched appreciatively [read more]
 

  OUR VIEW: ArtWorks saw city's creative future

Fifteen years ago, few in New Bedford would have looked at the empty store fronts and boarded-up windows and seen a bright future for the city.

But some did. In the empty mills they envisioned a place for studio and performing artists to live and work. They saw a city that would be transformed by the creative impulse of a new generation of citizens.

They created ArtWorks and helped artists gain a foothold in this historic old waterfront city, [read more]