■Beardsley’s Cafe at 11 Button St. was granted a live entertainment license for Thursday through Saturday nights. Arthur S. Cohen of Beardsley’s said the café plans background coffee-house style blues and folk music with no more than three musicians playing at a time.
■Republican mayoral candidate Paul M. Craig said today that he favors altering the city charter to remove the mayor as a member of the School Committee. Craig also said that he believes that members of the School Committee should be elected from wards rather than at-large, as is now done.
■One of the real estate developers who hit it big in the 1980s by renovating the old Pleasant Street post office has returned with another large-scale building proposal. Jeffrey P. Dwyer is proposing a three-level parking garage topped by a five-story office building on land owned by the city near Pulaski Park.
■The Northampton Education Foundation, a private education-support group, announced this week it will expand its school grant program to include funds for innovative projects that come up unexpectedly during the year. The foundation’s so-called Special Grants will provide up to $1,000 each for projects in the city’s six public schools and at the Smith Vocational and Agricultural High School.
■The Beardhampton Competition will be held on Saturday at Diva’s Nightclub in Northampton. Locals and whisker-wearers from as far away as Virginia and Maine will compete for prizes for the best natural full beard, freestyle moustache and artificial beard, among other honors.
■The drug Molly continues to cast a dark shadow over electronic dance music concerts at the Mullins Center, with University of Massachusetts Amherst officials announcing Thursday the cancellation of two more shows next month. The decision comes after the university’s cancellation of a concert by Return to Fantazia after seven deaths were linked to Molly used by concert-goers in Boston and New York.