Who says Boston is hard to navigate?

Sign, sign, everywhere a sign

At Edward Everett Square in Dorchester.

Twice in three days, men pulled off Blue Line tracks

A man wound up on the tracks at Airport station around 8:30 p.m. on Thursday. The train operator managed to stop the train before hitting him. An MBTA spokesman declined to say how the man ended up on the tracks but said he was not seriously hurt (click to see a photo from the scene, forwarded by Heath - it's not gory, but could be disturbing).

Around 1 p.m. today, Jenn Martinelli reports:

A guy just fell on the tracks at Maverick Station right before the train arrived. 3 people jumped right down to help. The train was almost at the station and they just jumped right down and got him.

Residents tied up with zip ties in Mission Hill home invasion

Boston Police arrested one man but are looking for three more for a home invasion at 142 St. Alphonsus St. around 5:15 p.m., Stanley Staco reports.

The residents were tied up. Police are looking for a black Chrysler sedan seen fleeing the scene with three occupants, all black and all described as large. The car, which may have a gun in it, has a partial Mass. registration of 4120.

Some North End parents want tall fence around neighborhood playground to keep vagrants out

The North End/Waterfront Mothers Association says fight-happy homeless people in Christopher Columbus Park are becoming a menace to their children and that one answer is a six-foot-tall fence around the park's playground - locked every night from May through November.

In an e-mail to members, organizers say they reached their breaking point last month after a fatally injured man was pulled out of the harbor near the park, possibly as the result of a fight in the park.

The e-mail is a call to action to have members show up in force at a community meeting on Tuesday with city councilors. The session starts at 6:30 p.m. at the Pilot House, 2 Atlantic Ave.

We have to let the councilors know that protecting children is our first priority as a neighborhood. A packed room of concerned, involved residents will do that.

Dead man found in Mattapan cemetery

Boston Police report a man was found with a gunshot wound inside Calvary Cemetery at Harvard and Walk Hill streets, around 10:45 a.m.

The victim is Boston's 19th homicide victim this year - and the sixth since the Marathon.

Imagine if they still made Hostess Sno Balls and a truckload of them exploded

Pink everywhere

Brad Kelly photographs a pink explosion in Somerville.

Copyright Brad Kelly. Posted in the Universal Hub pool on Flickr.

Not a drone, but a Cessna, but still annoying

The Globe posts a photo of the Quincy airplane (or maybe one of the Quincy airplanes, unable to find out who's really behind it. Last August, the plane in the photo was listed as an FBI craft although it's not any longer.

The mayoral dance continues

Our newest candidate for mayor is John Laing of Hyde Park, who quickly found his newest supporter in Mister Malcolm the Dorchester Dancer.

Ed. note: If Laing wins, he will not only be Boston's first black mayor, he will be the first mayor to have graduated Brandeis.

Citizen complaint of the day: When Ty-D-Bol isn't enough

A pissed-off citizen reports from Stratford Street in West Roxbury:

Dirty Tap and Toilet water due to Water and Sewer work in WR. Someone could have warned us?

Complete with a photo of a toilet with the lid up so you can fully appreciate what discolored toilet water looks like.

Getting off track in the South Boston rail yard

Off-track Red Line

A somewhat stationary yet still roving UHub photographer noticed T workers dealing with a couple of Red Line cars that slipped off the rails in the Cabot yard around lunchtime:

All these T workers have just been standing around for the past 90 minutes while one guy saws away on something between the 2 cars. Do they think they're going to pick it up?

A T spokesman said the workers know what they're doing and figured out how to get the cars back on the tracks. He added that because the two cars were in the yard, they were not carrying any passengers and did not delay any service.

Preserving the memorial items

Teddy bear

In advance of this week's rains, the Boston City Archives began collecting mementos left at the Marathon memorial in Copley Square. The archivists took them to the archives in West Roxbury, where they've begun cataloging them. More photos.

Just call us Cloud City: Boston to outsource e-mail, other apps to Google

The mayor's office announced today city government will be moving from its current legacy applications - such as Microsoft Exchange and Outlook - to Google Apps.

In addition to making legally required e-mail retention easier, the move will save money and free city MIS from the task of maintaining creaky legacy applications, by handing the thing over to Google:

"By bringing city government into the cloud, Boston continues to modernize our technology while saving taxpayer dollars and freeing up city workers to focus on the vital work of helping people. Our technology experts will now be able to focus on moving the city forward, rather than maintaining servers," Mayor Menino said. "I applaud the vision of our technology leadership and the efforts of all those involved in this process."

In addition to Gmail, the move, expected to happen this summer, will give city workers access to Google Hangout, Google Docs and Google Drive. The city has hired San Francisco-based Appirio to manage the transition and to oversee ongoing support and security for the new system.

The city claims 75,000 e-mail users, although roughly 57,000 of those are Boston public-school students who have addresses on city systems.

Foot-dangling maintenance worker briefly causes downtown traffic jam

Look at the traffic on North Street.Look at the traffic on North Street.

Shortly before 9 a.m., firefighters and police responded to 16 North St., which houses the UBurger across from Faneuil Hall Marketplace, on a report of a guy on the roof, just sitting there, dangling his feet off the edge of the building.

Erin B. snapped the resulting traffic jam on North Street, which ended not long after firefighters made their way to the roof and determined the guy was just a maintenance worker doing some maintenance, as maintenance workers are wont to do.

Thunk

Truck on Storrow Drive

Just another morning on Memorial Drive, Adam Shutes reports.

Roslindale is just JP's 'chain-store sin eater'

In an editorial, the Jamaica Plain Gazette rhapsodizes about how Roslindale completes JP, in part because Roslindale hosts all the trailer-trash kind of chain stores that would otherwise try to muscle their non-local way into the pristine Elysian fields of Jamaica Plain:

It has been easier for local-business-minded JP to fend off the likes of Family Dollar when we all know we can go to the one already in Roslindale Village. And while a big-box store coming to JP would face protests, many of us have popped into the Rozzie Staples, which is not much farther from central JP than Jackson Square is.

Roslindale ed. note: Maybe it's time for a field trip to the JP Whole Foods to see what a real local, non-big-box store is like, one that managed to get built without any protests, let alone arrests. Well, no more than three, anyway. And it's not much farther from Rozzie Square than Grew Hill is.

At first mayoral forum, candidates practice Kumbaya approach, avoid specifics

The Jamaica Plain Gazette reports on a gathering of nine mayoral candidates at a forum sponsored by the West Roxbury Courthouse Neighborhood Association.

The candidates were mostly non-specific in their answers regarding plans for improving the city, sticking to generalities like "bringing people together," "broadening opportunities" and "improving schools," though Arroyo brought up his proposed "Invest in Boston" bill, which would invest Boston’s money in banks that invest in Boston to help promote economic development.

Same-sex couple in JP sues IRS for tax refund

Vickie Henry and Claire Humphrey yesterday sued the IRS, alleging rules that prohibit them from filing tax returns as a married couple unconstitutionally taxes them at a higher rate than other married people.

The pair, who filed their suit in US District Court in Boston, say they have filed amended returns listing them as married for 2007 and 2009 and want a refund on their taxes for those years, based on the lower rate charged a married couple versus two single people.

A year ago, the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit ruled that the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which the IRS uses to define "married" was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court is currently considering the law.

Henry and Humphrey married in 2004, a few months after the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled same-sex couples have the right to marry. Among their arguments for a refund:

Who knew what when?

BPD: Feds never told us about the brothers.

FBI: Did too. Well, sorta. BPD had full access to an FBI database and could've looked up Tamarlan at any time.

LA Times: Boston was warned of Marathon threat.

BPD: Was not.