Chinatown

If Brad Kelly hadn't taken the photo, we never would have believed the new Revere Hotel on Stuart Street has a print of Joyce Kulhawik's disembodied hand. Or as Brad puts it:

From out of the void, the hand of Joyce Kulhawik reaches towards you. But, is it an invitation -- or a warning?!?

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

A fare-hike protest that began outside the Park Street T stop this evening ended at Chinatown station on the Orange Line, where 25 protesters held open the fare gates on the inbound side and cheered when maybe 10 people went through the open gates - although some pressed their Charlie Cards to the readers anyway.

Two Lynn residents were arrested today on charges they misled police and a grand jury investigating the way a Revere man was gunned down on Tremont Street in April.

Luis Sepelveda, 27, and Janice Hardy, 22, are both pals of Peter Castillo, a Salem man who went missing before police could arrest him on a murder charge, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports.

A Quincy man who allegedly told police he never goes anywhere without his gun made an exception in the Theater District Saturday night - and now he faces a criminal charge, and somebody out there has a free loaded semi-automatic weapon, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office says.

John Murrett, 26, was arraigned in Boston Municipal Court this morning on a charge of improper storage of a firearm, the DA's office reports.

Murrett has a license to carry his Ruger LC9 semiautomatic handgun, but when bouncers at Club Royale found it on him during a patdown, they refused to let him in the club, the DA's office says.

Around 8:15 p.m. yesterday, Rachel Zarrell spotted Sob Story Guy getting on the Orange Line at Chinatown:

Needed money to get to Worcester to "treat his staph infection." Was pretty gross.

But by 11, he'd either gotten it looked at or had just become resigned to it. Colin Steele reported from the Red Line near Harvard:

No story this time, just "anybody? Anybody?"

Perfect Curve, a Chinatown company that sells accessories for maintaining your collection of baseball caps, is suing the owner of a mall chain that sells baseball caps for selling allegedly patent-violating knockoffs.

In its lawsuit, filed yesterday in US District Court in Boston, Perfect Curve said it had long sold cap storage devices and deodorizers to Hat World, Inc. - which owns the Lids stores typically found in malls - without problem. In 2005, the two companies even discussed Hat World buying Perfect Curve. But, negotiations failed and then last year, Hat World stopped buying Perfect Curve products. And then, Perfect Curve charges, Lids began selling similar looking and named products - one of which even came with an instruction booklet identical to the one Perfect Curve distributes.

Perfect Curve says one of the products violates its patent for:

Boston Police report they have an arrest warrant for Peter Castillo, 23, of Salem, for the April 28 murder of Stephen Perez on Tremont Street.

Anyone who knows where Castillo is can call homicide detectives at 617-343-4470 or contact the anonymous tip line by calling 800-494-TIPS or texting TIP to CRIME (27463).

Perez, an Army veteran who served in Afghanistan, was shot to death around 2 a.m.

Two musicians walked out of the Tam on Tremont Street early Sunday into a chaotic scene following one of your basic head-punching Theater District fights outside a neighboring pizza place.

That much guitarists Javier Reyes and Dustin Boudreau of Animals as Leaders and Boston Police agree on. Their accounts of what led to the two winding up in a cell at District A-1 for the rest of the night, and in court a couple days later for arraignment, however, diverge after that.

In an account posted on the Animals as Leaders Facebook page, a friend said the two men came out of the Tam on Tremont Street around 1:30 a.m., with Boudreau playing air guitar to the song that was playing inside. What they didn't know was that the area around Tremont and Stuart was swarming with cops, investigating a 1 a.m. fight outside New York Pizza, which left the fight's loser bleeding from the head and eye, the result of being punched repeatedly by the alleged victor.

According to the Animals as Leaders account, a cop immediately shoved boudreau and told him he interfering with a police investigation:

For the second time this spring, Bijou Nightclub on Stuart Street found itself before city Licensing Director Patricia Malone to explain why police found people perched on top of couches near the club dance floor.

To be sure, this time police detectives found only three people upright on couches - although an alleged wiseass jumped up on a couch when police ordered the initial three down - and the club said they were only standing there, unlike an earlier incident involving close to 50 people actively gyrating on the tops of couches, Malone heard at a hearing this morning.

The Phoenix talks to the showman about the woman who told police she was hypnotized into handing over $160,000 in cash to some scammers.

Boston Police report the four men spotted running out of a parking garage around the time Stephen Perez was murdered may have been at a birthday party at Caprice/Underbar, 275 Tremont St. earlier in the evening.

Police are looking for the four men, possibly from Lynn, in connection with the death of Perez, an Army veteran, early on April 28. Police have asked anybody who may have taken video or photos around 2 a.m. in the area of Tremont and Stuart to contact them.

Boston Police report they are looking for the four men shown rapidly exiting a Theater District parking garage around the time Stephen Perez was fatally shot on Tremont Street.

Investigators believe these individuals may have a connection to Lynn, MA.

Police are also asking anybody who might have been in the area around 2 a.m. on Sunday and who might have had their phone cameras running to forward copies of their photos or video to them.

Boston Police report scammers made off with $160,000 last month from an elderly resident who thinks they hypnotized her first.

Friends identified the victim as Stephen Perez of Revere, whom the Globe reports had just returned from Afghanistan and who wanted to join the Revere Police Department.

The 2007 graduate of Revere High School was a sniper in the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division in Cop Charkh, Afghanistan.

Police report no arrests for his death, which happened around 2 a.m., Saturday.

Boston Police report finding a 22-year-old man with a gunshot wound on Tremont Street, midway between Stuart and Oak, around 2 a.m. He was taken around the corner to Tufts Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.

The Globe reports five stores in Chinatown were raided yesterday as part of a state investigation into alleged abuses of the cards, given to poor people to buy food. The Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports four people will be arraigned today after their arrests as part of the raids.

Boston Police report a man was found beaten and stabbed around 2:40 a.m. today in a stairwell at the garage at 274 Tremont St.

The victim was taken to the medical center for treatment of what police say was non-life-threatening injuries.

Javier Fernandez, 35, of Dorchester, was charged with assault and battery by means of a dangerous weapon, a knife. Jose Lugo, 31, of Hyde Park, was charged with assault and battery by means of a dangerous weapon. Police say security personnel from the medical center and a nearby club helped find and arrest the two.

On March 26, three men were charged with beating and attempting to kidnap a man in the garage.

Innocent, etc.

Maggie O'Neil filed this report:

Woman in Chinatown trying to open a coconut on the cement on the corner of Essex and Harrison this morning.

A trash fire on the tracks just before Chinatown outbound around 1:40 p.m. shut service to Forest Hills. MBTA workers extinguished the fire themselves, but Boston firefighters went into the tunnel to take a look.

The last major trash fire near the Chinatown stop was almost exactly a year ago.

Updated Tuesday afternoon.

Boston Police report a man who had just pulled into a space in a Tufts Medical Center garage on Tremont Street yesterday afternoon was pulled out by three men who parked their van next to him and who then beat him and tried to stuff him in the van.

Maggie O'Neil photographed this coyote on Summer Street today.

The Animal Rescue League reports it captured the coyote in Chinatown, after a chase that included a brief foray through the mouth of the Ted Williams Tunnel. The League adds:

We are working with Mass Fish and Wildlife on a release site outside the city limits. No ACME products used on this rescue.

Boston Police report that as of 4:15 a.m., NStar had restored power to Bay Village, Chinatown and the area east of Clarendon Street.

Police also provide a tip for motorists who find themselves at an intersection with no functioning traffic lights and no police to direct traffic, and no, it's not to re-create that scene from Gremlins:

Motorists are asked and instructed to treat the signal as a stop sign. As such, motorists should yield to traffic to their right before safely proceeding through the intersection.

The T reports the Prudential and Symphony stops on the Green Line remain closed.

The Citgo sign remains off, as does power in the rest of Kenmore Square.

Berklee, right between both the Dalton Street and TC's Lounge fires, has cancelled classes today.

The Boston Licensing Board today ordered Royale on Tremont Street to close for one day because a club worker offered to let an ejected patron back in if she serviced him orally.

The board ordered the punishment even though the club manager wouldn't let the woman back in after their quickie assignation - timed at four minutes by police - in the men's room of a neighboring hotel. The employee no longer works at the club.

Royale can choose the day it shuts down or appeal the punishment to the state Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission.

A Royale employee's apparent indiscretion in dealing with a woman who really, really wanted to get back into a concert there on Jan. 18 earned the Theater District club a trip to the Boston Licensing Board to explain itself this morning.

Police say the woman, attending an 18+ show that night, told officers she was being escorted out of the club on Tremont Street for being too rowdy when a doorman suggested that if she "performed oral sex on him," he'd slip her back in.

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