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Where were you when the Mooninites came out?
By adamg on Mon, 01/31/2022 - 12:08pm
The first inkling that something was awry: Video of one of the devices being removed at Sullivan Square.
Has it been 15 years already? Yes, today is the anniversary of the day Boston was paralyzed by the discovery of IEDs that turned out to be harmless light-up ads for a cable cartoon.
Even as people were beginning to identify the things for what they were, the mayor kept calling them bombs, although the governor tried to reassure us:
"There is not a reason for anyone to panic, but there are reasons for us to be vigilant."
We made the national news and everything. We even got a parody or two.
Anybody feel like discussing haircuts of the '70s?
In-depth behind-the-scenes look at a marketing scheme gone bad.
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Comments
Mayor Menino eventually calmed the citizenry
when he announced that it was a "hoak device", which must mean that the plural is hoaks.
Oh yeah, memories. Right up
Oh yeah, memories. Right up there with the time they closed 93 for the DNC.
Memories.
Light the corners of my mind.
...
*Lite Brite
My sensibilities.
I find comments like these injurious to my sensibilities. Perhaps you can make them in the provided "Free Speech Zone" which is located right under an as yet unremoved but crumbling section of the John F. Fitzgerald Expressway, safely behind concrete barriers topped with fencing and razor wire.
Welcome to Costco. I love you
Welcome to Costco. I love you.
Water?
You mean like from the toilet?
Fond memories of the DNC
Naive and young enough to strike up a conversation with a Lyndon Larouche supporter near the free speech zone.
Somehow I was wise enough to see right through the layers of BS and pick up on the cult aspects of it, holy hell.
And
And they set off fireworks each night of the convention after midnight when the hoi polloi had to work the next day. I heard them in Canton.
also..
dont forget the huge amount of new "toys" the cops got thanks to the DNC. They never got to use them at the DNC, no massive protests or anything. However, the Red Sox won the world series so they got to shoot them at fans in Kenmore. It killed Victoria Snelgrove (RIP) and innocent bystander and a victim of the BPD's over zealous desire to protect property.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Victoria_Snelgrove
Don't remind me!
I was stuck on the T for hours while it was halted to act out this little theater of the absurd. Don't remind me! I could have told anyone that those things posed no danger. I had been walking by one on the way to work for a week. Terrorists seldom use little cartoon figures to make their point. They are generally a humorless lot.
I beg to differ
That notorious terrorist Wile E. Coyote often cackles diabolically while he is preparing one of his infernal devices. It is true that he has not so far posed much danger to the general public.
Then, in September
We were in the news again, when Martha Coakley prosecuted an innocent MIT student for wearing an art installation to Logan Airport. Most of the news reports referred to it as "a fake bomb," but it was a measure of the paranoid times we lived in that it was seen as such.
oh yeah, Star Simpson,
oh yeah, Star Simpson, vaguely remember that, looks like it didn't hinder her much at all.
From one worry to another
I'd dare say,
is a statement most everyone could apply to the plentiful misinformation & skewed data in today's global society.
Paranoia was rampant.
And how could we forget the uproar Os Gemeos caused when they painted the Dewey Square Intake Structure with a mural that sent ordinary, common sense citizens into an Al-Qaeda-induced frenzy?
I got a reminder of this
When this explainer of the event was released.
First, it is tough to call this history when it happened less than 2 decades ago.
Second, the guy actually does a good job breaking down what happened.
Anything in the past is history
Anything in the past is history. It may be recent history, but it's still history.
Yeah, but
At first, I like to think that anything that has happened in my lifetime isn't history, but I'm getting older, so there's a lot that is indeed history that I've lived through.
The thing that twerked me is that this was done by "The History Guy," whose videos I do find insightful, but 15 years ago hardly seems like history in the traditional sense. Anything in the past is history, but, as an example, discussing the 2020-21 NHL season as history just seems odd, even though that period has passed.
But again, I recommend the video.
nfsw:
https://archive.org/details/bostonthebootleg
Security Theatre
I was trying to remember which agency started this circus that shut down the city. I should have known it was the MBTA and its security team.
suspicious devices everywhere
And not even a month later BPD blew up a traffic counter.
Can you see this?
Because I'm doing it as hard as I can.
My friends and I were just
My friends and I were just discussing this the other day. 9/11 changed us forever. Was the anthrax and white powder terror before the light up cartoon scare? I believe it was. Now we have deadly contagious Covid and its offspring. Maryellen I need more nature and wildlife therapy. Send more photos of nature around us.
I was overseas
I was traveling in third world countries when this happened so wasn't really dialed in with what was going on at home because it was less fun to sit in an internet cafe and wait for web pages to load than it was to just explore. I came back in the latter half of March and when follow-up stories popped up I was utterly confused as to just what the hell had gone on.
I have no idea. Yay me!
I have no idea. Yay me!
Go, Mumbles!
I thought it was a brilliant ploy for Menino to get a training exercise paid for by the cable channel and not the city.
I have a feeling they knew their suspicions of the devices were dubious, then figured they could play it up for both P.R. safety theater AND it would be free. Win-win.
Menino kept calling them
Menino kept calling them "terrorists" even though it was just a PR stunt and that's it. He was a popular mayor but pretty thin skinned about many things and I think his overreaction is a result of that.
Wow - time flies!
Wow, in my terms that was six apartments ago when I first moved back to Boston after being in exile in NC….time flies!
My Dad...
...totally owns a dealership.
The Question No One Wants to Answer
I think the Mooninite scare provided wonderful evidence that no Authority Figure - especially one wearing a badge - is willing to give the obviously correct answer to the question that ultimately paralyzed the city: "Is that a bomb?"