Downtown

Just a little drain clog, MassDOT says of flooded Ted Williams Tunnel

By adamg - 12/13/24 - 8:53 am

O'Neill Tunnel became a river in yesterday's downpour

By adamg - 12/12/24 - 1:27 pm

NBC Boston reports (with video of non-aquatic drivers just trying to survive the flood) MassDOT spent the night pumping out the tunnel.

311 complaint of the day: The calliope crashed to the ground, but she was blinded by the light

By adamg - 12/12/24 - 10:01 am

No lights needed in downtown residence because of how bright the lights are across the street

No need to turn on the lights in one Broad Street residence.

A bleary-eyed resident files a 311 complaint about the seeming spotlights blaring out of a building under construction at 125 Broad St. downtown: Read more.

Boston Common kiosk to switch from the Earl of Sandwich to the duchess of baked goods

By adamg - 12/11/24 - 12:09 pm

The city announced today that Joanne Chang's Flour has won a lease to re-open the former Earl of Sandwich kiosk on Boston Common this coming spring. Read more.

Owner of a downtown office building proposes turning it into 36 apartments

By adamg - 12/11/24 - 10:10 am

The building, photo from owner's filing.

A New York real-estate investment firm has filed plans to convert the seven-story and currently mostly vacant 4 Liberty Sq. at Water and Batterymarch streets into 36 apartments - and for a tax break under Boston's downtown office-to-residences pilot program. Read more.

Shining city on a hill

By adamg - 12/7/24 - 4:34 pm

Two downtown building fiercely reflecting the setting sun around 4:05 p.m.

The view of downtown from the Bates School parking lot in Roslindale at 4:05 this afternoon.

And yes, the Hancock wanted to get in on the act: Read more.

Boston's biggest bow back

By adamg - 11/30/24 - 9:58 am

Handmaid snapped both ends of the city's largest Christmas bow, on the Flour and Grain Exchange building on Milk Street downtown.

Developer wins approval to turn office building near North Station into apartments; another applies to convert a Downtown Crossing office building into residential units

By adamg - 11/27/24 - 10:10 am

The Zoning Board of Appeal yesterday approved developer Greg McCarthy's plans to convert a vacant six-story office building at 129 Portland St. into 25 apartments. Read more.

Police return to foot patrols to try to curb rising crime downtown and on the Common; residents, parks advocates say more work needed

By adamg - 11/26/24 - 5:39 pm

At hearing, mother took items out of her diaper bag: Diapers, wipes, a spare onesie and a sharps container for discarded needles on the ground.

At a hearing on public-safety issues downtown and around Boston Common today, Elizabeth Vizza had a request for suburbanite do-gooders who keep coming to the Common to feed the homeless: Stop! Read more.

Bertucci's to open fun-sized outlet downtown

By adamg - 11/25/24 - 11:36 am

Bertucci's says it plans to open a new, smaller outlet, dubbed Bertucci's Pronto, at 18 Tremont St., near Court and Cambridge streets downtown this spring.

Its proposed 34-seat location will be open not just for lunch and dinner, but for breakfast as well, for people who have been hungering for a downtown place to grab a breakfast pizza, and yes, that is a thing.

Proceeds of sale of the liquor license of a defunct Union Street bar with a history of violence will go to family of Chicago man killed by a bouncer outside

By adamg - 11/20/24 - 3:05 pm

The Boston Licensing Board decides tomorrow whether to let the landlord of the defunct Sons of Boston/Loyal 9 buy its liquor license as it looks for a more food-oriented restaurant operator to re-open the troubled space. Read more.

Clowning on forced-birth supporters on the Common

By adamg - 11/16/24 - 8:56 pm

Some clowns protesting men who want to force births

A couple hundred men, mostly Catholic, mostly from out of town, marched from the Packards Corner Planned Parenthood to the Parkman Bandstand on Boston Common today to try to impose their will on a state where abortion remains a right and part of women's health care.
Read more.

Terrier in Boston

By adamg - 11/16/24 - 6:21 pm

Among the people taking one of those Freedom Trail tours on the Common today was a woman with a terrier, a terrier wearing a tricorn hat.

You'll have your choice of protests Saturday against out-of-town men in suits marching down Comm. Ave. to demand we stop all the abortin'

By adamg - 11/13/24 - 5:16 pm

A group of out-of-state Catholic men, possibly joined by some local Nazis, have decided to try to shove their will down our throats in a march Saturday morning from the Planned Parenthood clinic at Packards Corner down to the Common, where they will keen and wail and demand us godless heathens just stop all this nonsense immediately. Read more.

Repeat perv charged with exposing himself to young tourist in historic downtown cemetery

By adamg - 11/1/24 - 1:36 pm

A man who lists the Southampton Street shelter as his home address was ordered held without bail this week at his arraignment on a charge of exposing himself to a teenage girl in the Granary Burying Ground on Tremont Street in July, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports. Read more.

Sure, New York just legalized jaywalking, but in Boston, some people get paid to jaywalk downtown

By adamg - 11/1/24 - 10:53 am

Wait, isn't that just a photo of people crossing High Street by the preggo bank building? Yep, the difference is they're getting paid to do so because, as the Fort Pointer notes, they're extras in a Zendaya/Robert Pattinson move being filmed here (ooh, look, here's Sparkly Vampire Boy on Federal Street!), which may or may not be a romance that takes an unexpected turn before a couple’s big day.

Homegrown Roche Bros. chain to be sold to Connecticut grocery wholesaler, which plans no changes

By adamg - 10/31/24 - 1:52 pm

West Roxbury Roche Bros. this afternoon.

Members of the family that owns Roche Bros., which grew from a Roslindale Square meat market in 1952 into today's Roche Bros. and Sudbury Farms chains, are selling controlling interest in the company to a Connecticut food-delivery concern that has long been the chains' principal supplier of food and other products. Read more.

Touring a new multi-bendi Green Line trolley

By adamg - 10/29/24 - 2:32 pm

New Green Line mock-up on City Hall Plaza

Eric the Half a T on City Hall Plaza.

Nick Schmidt moseyed onto the mock-up of a proposed next-gen Green Line trolley, the one that will have multi-segments, on City Hall Plaza today. He reports: Read more.

Councilors to look at curbing drug use, violence on Boston Common and downtown; one councilor wishes her colleagues and the media would stop being so darn negative, though

By adamg - 10/24/24 - 12:02 pm

The City Council yesterday approved holding a hearing at which to consider ways to combat what some said was drug use and related violence that are so bad they are making some residents think of moving away and of threatening Boston's tourism industry. Read more.

MBTA to give you a chance to test out one of the planned new Green Line mega-trolleys

By adamg - 10/23/24 - 4:29 pm

Rendering via MBTA.

The MBTA says it will assemble a mock-up of its proposed new Type 10 Green Line trolleys - the ones 40 feet longer than current trolleys - for visits by prospective riders at City Hall Plaza next Tuesday and Wednesday. Read more.