"Secret Mall Apartment," Cheap City, Wine Thunderdome

Have you ever looked at large architecture and wondered just how much space is being actually used, or how you could take advantage of that space?

Today, we speak to Michael Townsend, a member of Tape Art art collective, who answered both of those questions with resounding yeses. We learn about “Secret Mall Apartment," a documentary about the 4-year-long inhabitable art project in a most unlikely spot, a hidden and unused space at the Providence Place Mall. You can catch the documentary and Townsend on May 19 in a screening and Q&A at Amherst Cinema.

We also say goodbye to Cheap City on today’s Live Music Friday. They've been democratizing dance floors across the east coast for years and performing one of their last shows in western Mass. at theMarigold Theater on May 17. Self described as "what would happen if Zappa and Fugazi were, for some reason, collaborating on a disco record,” Cheap City affirms that they were “tasked by the city government of Cheap City to document life in the town." We find out how efforts to archive the town’s existence has led to a post-punk theatrical amalgam of psychedelic sound with many instruments and many slices of life.

And, at Tip Top Wine Shop, Miranda Brown introduces us to a grape we’d never heard of before, whose name is spelled wrong, but who tastes totally right, Pineau d’Aunis enters the Wine Thunderdome.