Universal Hub - All Boston, all the time

Friendly East Boston man offered toke to wrong person at Andrew station

adamg — Wed, 16 May 2012 20:59:37 +0000

So this guy from East Boston strikes up a conversation with another guy sitting on a bench in the busway at Andrew station yesterday afternoon. He's feeling mellow, gets a joint out of his right jacket pocket, lights up and offers his newfound friend a toke.

Unfortunately for the man, the guy was an undercover Transit Police officer, assigned to anti-drug duty at the South Boston station, police report.

Transit Police report the officer summoned other officers and they confiscated the man's cigarette - and the two additional bags of pot he had in his pocket. Fortunately for him, he was holding less than an ounce, so he was only issued a $100 citation, police say.

Councilors, school officials to consider educational musical chairs on Thursday

adamg — Wed, 16 May 2012 18:23:20 +0000

Mission Hill teddy bear explains the problems with moving Mission Hill K-8.

BPS officials are scheduled to explain a proposed $21-million school relocation plan to a skeptical City Council committee at a hearing that starts at 11 a.m. in the council's fifth-floor chambers in City Hall.

Under the proposal, two high schools, including New Mission High School, would be moved to the closed Hyde Park High School - for which state officials are now withholding renovation funds because the money was supposed to be spent only for schools that are open and Fenway High School would be moved into the building that now houses New Mission and the Mission Hill K-8 School, which would be moved into the mold-infested Agassiz School, along with a new high school BPS is opening in the fall.

If a tree falls in a public square ...

JohnAKeith — Wed, 16 May 2012 18:04:06 +0000

A sad day in Copley Square today as 20 London Plane trees are being cut down.

The affected trees are located throughout the park and average eight-inches dbh (diameter at breast height). All specimens are dead or dying due to canker stain fungal infection. Other tree species in the park are not affected by the disease.

Every single person walking through the Square stopped and remarked on the shocking site on view. Kids from the nearby high school were almost in tears.

But, all is not lost:

Parks Department staff will be on hand to present details on the trees slated for removal in the park and the remedies planned for the site including immediate planting of 20 replacement trees and enhanced tree care to the park’s remaining 30 trees.

http://www.cityofboston.gov/news/default.aspx?id=5578

Inevitable becomes more concrete at South Station

adamg — Wed, 16 May 2012 18:01:35 +0000

New fare schedule on a fare machine. Photo by MBTA.

The T began slapping new fare schedules on fare machines at South Station today, in advance of July 1's increases.

But will they rename it WSUX?

adamg — Wed, 16 May 2012 17:49:44 +0000

The Boston Business Journal reports the Phoenix has sold WFNX to Clear Channel and that pretty much everybody but ~~news anchor Ted Baxter~~ Program Director Paul Driscoll has been let go. The station could go to Spanish or country and western.

Norwood man wants ad agency to sing different tune over McDonald's Filet-o-Fish ad

adamg — Wed, 16 May 2012 13:13:14 +0000

Who could forget that McDonald's commercial with the singing fish? Not Daniel Thomas Calden of Norwood, who says the ad agency that came up with it ripped off his idea, to the tune of $20 million in damages.

In his copyright-infringement lawsuit, originally filed in state court but now in US District Court in Boston, Calden says the ad by Arnold Worldwide of Boston is based on a music video he posted to a McDonald's contest on MySpace in 2008. Calden's video was about the Big Mac and featured a singing sock puppet, but Calden says it's obvious Arnold took his work and parodied it for use in what became one of the earwormiest TV campaigns of the decade.

Compare for yourself:

Hub of the Universe, indeed

adamg — Wed, 16 May 2012 11:51:49 +0000

Andy Woodruff at Bostonography dug up a 1911 copy of Life magazine (the original Life, not the Time-Life Life) that focused on Boston. Also see his earlier discussion of a Boston map that predates the more famous Steinberg cartoon about New York.

MBTA starts useful service and the Herald won't stand for that

adamg — Wed, 16 May 2012 11:07:04 +0000

Seems that when a big convention is in town, the MBTA runs special Silver Line service to the airport straight from the convention center, rather than making people carry their bags on that long walk to the nearest Silver Line stop and crowding onto a bus there.

Are you outraged? The Herald is, to the point of displacing its long-running Indian Joke of the Day series from the front page, which today features end-of-world fonts to accuse the T of stealing "all" its buses to service fat-cat conventioneers. Who, the Herald grudgingly admits, pay their fares just like rest of us - but only after the paper's crack investigative unit did some undercover surveillance:

On Friday, a Herald reporter and photographer observed people at the convention center paying regular fares to board the nonstop airport-bound Silver Line buses. The drivers did not take normal Silver Line routes or make any Silver Line stops before dropping passengers at Logan Airport. A driver said the buses provide conventioneers with rides to the airport. A bus tailed by the Herald did not follow the Silver Line’s dedicated bus route, instead driving directly to the Ted Williams Tunnel.

The horror!

Ed. derail question: Why is the convention center stop so far away from the convention center?

Group wants to grab the City that Always Sleeps by the shoulders and shake it awake

adamg — Tue, 15 May 2012 23:42:34 +0000

BostInno interviews Greg Selkoe, CEO of Karmaloop and founder of something called the Future Boston Alliance, which wants to transform Boston into a city that doesn't roll up its sidewalks every night. Starting with gyms. Why doesn't Boston allow all-night gyms? And no, Boston Bowl doesn't count.

Maybe just as well we let Curt Schilling move his company to Rhode Island

adamg — Tue, 15 May 2012 19:42:52 +0000

Massachusetts has failed solar companies and Rhode Island might soon have Curt Schilling. The Providence Journal reports Gov. Lincoln Chafee spent his weekend trying to figure out how to keep Schilling's game company "solvent," because otherwise the state might be out the $75 million it loaned it to get it to move from its original home in Maynard. Schilling has often said he doesn't want government handouts.

Former local prosecutor vows hunger strike on steps of New York City Hall

adamg — Tue, 15 May 2012 19:24:52 +0000

Bobby Constantino, a former assistant district attorney in Roxbury District Court, is vowing to give up food and water tomorrow while protesting New York's "stop and frisk" policy, which he says violate the rights of young black and Latino men while doing nothing to stop violence. In a post that features a photo of Mike Bloomberg in a Mets cap - to remind the mayor of 1986 and how a single mistake can have lasting consequences - Constantino writes:

I am asking you -- no, begging you -- to please correct these things now, before the court makes you do it, before another million black and Latino kids are punished for the actions of a tiny few, before another generation of young people learns to fear and mistrust the police as enemies, not protectors, and vows to never work with them to help solve crimes, before this issue becomes the defining ground ball incident of your legacy, and mine, before an otherwise perfectly healthy and happy 34-year-old comes down to City Hall and very publicly starves to death on your doorstep.

JP day-care director charged with trying to run over church rector in parking-lot tiff

adamg — Tue, 15 May 2012 19:13:12 +0000

5/6/12 - 1:00 pm

Linda Valintin, 46, of Natick, was released on personal recognizance today at her arraignment on charges she turned her anger over a crowded parking lot into a murder rage behind the wheel of her SUV, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports.

According to the DA's office, Valentin was upset that Our Lady of the Cedars of Lebanon Church on Rockwood Street was using its parking lot for a Mother's Day event May 6, the same day she'd scheduled an open house for her center.

Valentin allegedly drove her SUV at the church’s rector and a parishioner, then exited the vehicle and pushed the rector, saying, "You are going to be sorry."

Valentin, who pleaded innocent at her arraignment in West Roxbury District Court on two counts of assault with a dangerous weapon and one count of assault and battery, was ordered to return to court on June 11.

Argument over missing $4 ends with three stabbed on South Boston street

adamg — Tue, 15 May 2012 17:27:24 +0000

A dispute over a few dollars in a South Boston apartment spilled into the street early Sunday and ended with three people hauled away to local hospitals with stab wounds, police say.

Another train hits somebody, who dies

adamg — Tue, 15 May 2012 14:51:48 +0000

The Globe reports an outbound Franklin Line train hit a trespasser around 12:30 a.m. in Norwood, several hours after an inbound Acela train struck and killed a trespasser in Sharon.

Citizen complaint of the day: Metro-selling dude

adamg — Tue, 15 May 2012 14:04:10 +0000

A dumbfounded citizen complains, from Mass. Ave. and Melnea Cass Boulevard:

Dude is selling copies of the metro, the free paper. Somewhat aggressive in his approach, knocking on car windows.

Councilor wonders: If the T lets you pay for parking with your phone, why not Boston parking meters?

adamg — Tue, 15 May 2012 12:11:25 +0000

City Councilor Tito Jackson (Roxbury) says it's time for the city to look at installing parking meters that let motorists pay via their smart phones.

At its regular weekly meeting tomorrow,the council will vote on a request from Jackson for a hearing into technology to enable phone-loving meters, similar to the phone payment system now in place at MBTA commuter-rail parking lots. He notes Boston already has meters that accept credit cards and CharlieCard-like smart cards.

Meter maids might not like Jackson's proposal, however - he says the meters could be set up to send text alerts to parkers when their time is almost up.

Officials want to know why BPS teaching staff so much whiter, more female than student population

adamg — Tue, 15 May 2012 11:58:19 +0000

WBUR reports BPS could face a federal probe into the racial makeup of its teaching staff because it's failing to meet diversity standards set in the court order that desegregated schools in the 1970s.

The City Council takes up the issue tomorrow, when Councilor Ayanna Pressley (at large) makes a formal request for a hearing into diversity in a system where 85% of students are black, Hispanic and Asian, but 62% of teachers are white - and the vast majority are women.

Pressley says the percentage of black teachers has not increased from 23% since 2007, even with a black superintendent and black School Committee chairman. BPS is still under a federal court order to increase that number to at least 35%; Pressley says she also wants to see the percentages of Latino and male teachers get closer to their numbers in the student population.

The council's weekly meeting begins at noon in its fifth-floor chambers at City Hall.

Death of bicyclist under 18-wheeler on rainy night in Cambridge ruled an accident

adamg — Tue, 15 May 2012 11:32:58 +0000

The Tech posts copies of the reports into the death of Phyo Kyaw last Dec. 27 in a collision with an 18-wheeler at Mass. Ave. and Vassar Street.

Del Boca Vista phase IV must be stopped

adamg — Tue, 15 May 2012 11:20:05 +0000

Karen Cord Taylor writes the city needs to do more to stop us from becoming an overgrown retirement community, starting with requiring developers to build more units with three bedrooms in their downtown projects and making BPS build schools downtown - presumably on the theory that the young'uns now fleeing Boston couldn't possibly want to live in the outer neighborhoods.

Women attacked, robbed in the North End, Jamaica Plain

adamg — Tue, 15 May 2012 10:26:59 +0000

Boston Police are looking for a man who got out of a black Charger on Salem Street shortly before 10 p.m., punched a woman, grabbed her purse, then jumped back in the car, which headed toward Charter Street.

FakeEmpire tweets:

I saw that North End attack happen tonight. Pretty scary. It took no more than 10 seconds. The woman was pretty roughed up.

That attack happened about 50 minutes after a woman walking down Burroughs Street, about midway between Centre and the Jamaicaway, was robbed by a man who pushed a sharp object into her neck hard enough to draw blood. The man, described as young, black and heavyset, ran toward the Jamaicaway.