Vermont Cynic

Issue date: 4/15/08 Section: Arts and Entertainment

Media Credit: photo courtesy of Futureclaw Futureclaw released its new magazine Friday at a packed Parima.

We might be living in the biggest city in Vermont, but it's not everyday that we think of Burlington as a hub connecting us to our surrounding cities.

Burlington is a sort of "bubble" of eclecticism and free spirit whose attraction - for some - is a sense of disconnect from the chaos of the "outside" world.

Last Friday night at Parima, a quiet Thai restaurant on Pearl Street dressed in white Christmas lights, the bigwigs of FutureClaw - Burlington's newest magazine - introduced us to their latest creation with a launch party.

If you had walked into Parima that night you would have forgotten those dairy farms and mountains were just miles away. You would have been among some of Burlington's "hippest" party-goers, as well as DJs Justin Miller and Lovefingers who appeared from New York City from the DFA record label - a label that, according to FutureClaw's General Manager and Events Planner Adam DeMartino, houses artists such as LCD Soundsystem and Hot Chip.

Meet FutureClaw: a large, tabloid size magazine whose editorial offices are right on Church Street. The magazine's content reaches as far as New York City and Toronto but it's our little city that acts as the hub connecting us to the biggest metropolises around us.

The publication, which will appear quarterly for a whopping $15 at various locations in the Burlington area, aims to provide its' audience with everything from editorials to art to music to fashion and the like, Guy Derry, FutureClaw's creative director, said.

And the creators are all former or current UVM students. Ben Weller (business manager), Bobby Mozumder (editor/photo editor), Gordon Holden (marketing director), Drew Stock (deputy editor/events) and Tommy Wheeler (promotion) have all attended UVM.

Though Friday night marked FutureClaw's magazine release, the project has been growing since August of 2007. Originally, DeMartino and Derry planned to start a techno band. "We really like techno," DeMartino said. "So we were going to start a band. But instead, we started a comprehensive arts magazine."

For the past several months, FutureClaw existed as a music/tech blog that was updated twice a day. When Derry met with Bobby Mozumder - with whom he had worked on a street-fashion photo documentary in the past - they discussed the idea of creating a magazine to promote creativity, DeMartino said.

With the help of friends at UVM's WRUV and Tick Tick, FutureClaw -- whose name comes from a metal object that DeMartino and Derry saw on the sidewalk during a trip to New York City that DeMartino said looked like a "mechanical claw … a claw from the future" - was introduced to 250 of us at Parima.

"There aren't many places in the world quite like Burlington," DeMartino said. "We want to refine the creative energy we find and channel it through the filter of this city. We seek to procure and refine art and provide people with something they can show the rest of the world."

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