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IIPC: AFTERHOURS
A brief guide to food, events and shopping

Start with: About Amherst and the Pioneer Valley, written by an anonymous contributor on the UMass computer-science department web site.

SHOPPING AND FOOD

By far the most concentrated, varied and "unchained" shopping experience in the region is along Main Street in Northampton, with its eateries, galleries, specialty shops, cafes and bookstores -- all within an easy walk of The Hotel Northampton, where Monday's reception will start at 5:30 p.m. and from where a bus will depart at 9:30 p.m. for the UMass Campus Center Hotel. The Lycos City Guide to Northampton is a good starting point for Web exploration, as is the home-grown ThunderWeb Guide.

Any cuisine is available in the Valley. The largest concentration of eateries is in Northampton ("NoHo"), but there are also dozens of restaurants in Amherst and smaller nearby towns. Two good sources for restaurant reviews and menus are offered by The Daily Hampshire Gazette, Northampton's paper, and by The Valley Advocate, the region's alternative weekly. A static, but comphrehensive listing of NoHo restaurants, with phone numbers, is also available. Once you've picked a good candidate, Virtual Valley's "menusearch" page, alphabetized by restaurant, may have the full menu, with prices, but it is not yet comprehensive.

Because of the presence of UMass, Smith, Mount Holyoke, Amherst and Hampshire colleges, music, arts and culture proliferate. The Valley Advocate has these updated weekly in its events summary. But the GazetteNET calendar listings and club guide is comprehensive. If you want an exhaustive calendar listing of events focused more on the colleges than the commercial nightlife and music, check out the Five College Calendar

If you're into folk and contemporary music, you should check out the Iron Hourse Cafe and music hall in downtown Northampton, which draws national acts seven nights a week. Northampton's Words and Pictures Museum is devoted entirely to contemporary works of graphic storytelling comics and fantasy illustration. Mirage Studios, the headquarters of Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird's Ninja Turtles creative operation, is in Northampton.

A five-minute campus walk from the conference venue and hotel is the UMass Fine Arts Center, with ongoing gallery exhibitions. Also, a free bus service operated by the university provides frequent service from campus one mile into the center of Amherst.

By far the most famous organization in the Valley is probably the UMass mens' basketball team. On Feb. 28, they'll be playing in the afternoon at Temple in Philadelphia [televised on CBS]. The Hampshire Gazette maintains a standing website address for the lastest staff and wire stories on the Minutemen, plus the team's latest schedule.

IF YOU'RE DRIVING . . .

If you're driving to the conference, you can use the Northampton Film Festival's How to Get There page to navigate from Boston, New York or elsewhere. the UMass campus is six miles east of NoHo on state Route 9, on the other side of the Connecticut River, in Amherst. If you're staying at the Campus Center Hotel, there is validated parking in the Campus Center Parking garage, which is reached from the perimeter road along the north side of the campus.
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