Downtown

Jocelyn spotted Mumbles the Turkey at State and Congress this morning, wondered which downtown tourist attraction she is headed for today - Faneuil Hall or the Freedom Trail?

Meghan M. spotted a pair of cats by the South Station tracks today, wonders "Why are there a bunch of homeless cats hanging around the tracks?"

Earlier:
Remember Kenmore the Kitten?

The Boston Licensing Board yesterday ordered a three-day suspension for the Grand Canal on Canal Street due to an incident in December in which bouncer Sidney Phillips was charged with punching a patron in the mouth.

This is on top of a five-day suspension ordered by the Mayor's Office of Consumer Affairs for the same incident. The bar now awaits hearings before the city's two licensing boards for a more recent incident in which Phillips allegedly punched and choked three patrons and stomped a fourth patron's head.

Separately, the board ordered a two-day suspension for the function facility at the Westin Copley Place for a Tufts University undergraduate party that ended with drunk students ferried to local hospitals and urinating in the hotel lobby.

Jpilz spotted the downtown turkey setting up housekeeping on a ledge at Rowes Wharf this evening. If only it were a duck, it could get a room and put it on its bill.

Speaking of the turkey, there's a move to name the turkey. Given the bird appeared just as the mayor was announcing his departure, how about Tom?

Earlier:
Turkey continues to stick neck out in downtown Boston.
As God is my witness, I though turkeys could fly!

The turkey spotted on a fifth-floor ledge on Federal Street yesterday safely flew the coop. This morning, the Animal Rescue League of Boston reports, it was strutting its stuff near the Federal Reserve Bank on Atlantic Avenue (here it is trying to break into the bank). Around 2 p.m., it was still in the area, Jen Gray tweeted:

Turkey Sighting: Near Congress and Atlantic ... walking down middle of street.

High turkey.

Turns out Mr. Carlson was right. Although it's a bit hard to tell in Dave's photo, that's a live turkey on a fifth-floor ledge at 133 Federal St. in the Financial District this morning.

UPDATE: A turkey was spotted today on Boylston Street near Tremont (and here it is trying to get into City Place - if only it had opposable thumbs). Another was seen in Chinatown. Have urban turkeys come home to roost or do we just have one visiting bird taking in the town?

The Boston Licensing Board votes tomorrow whether to let the impending Walgreens at School and Washington streets sell sushi and "locally sourced" bakery items, smoothies and coffee around the clock.

The ultra-luxe drug store is also seeking permission for a 42-seat patio overlooking the Irish Famine Memorial, but store attorney Joseph Hanley told the board this morning the chain would shut the patio at 11 p.m., in part to discourage early morning loitering. The chain's initial license request seemed to indicate a desire for a 24-hour patio.

Hanley added that Walgreens might also cut back on fresh overnight sushi if it turns out there's not much call for it.

Hanley said the food-serving license is the last major city approval the new Walgreens needs before it opens. The store will also feature a mezzanine liquor store open until 10 p.m. and a nail salon, in addition to more traditional drugstore fare in the former Borders/Boston Five Cent Savings Bank building.

City officials and the Downtown Boston Business Improvement District all voiced support for the license request.

The Grand Canal had to answer to the Boston Licensing Board today for an incident on Dec. 30 in which the same bouncer arrested Sunday for allegedly stomping four people was charged with punching another customer in the mouth so hard he had a tooth partially dislodged.

The board decides what action, if any, to take for that incident, on Thursday. WBZ reports the Mayor's Office of Consumer Affairs and Licensing, which holds its own hearings, recently ordered a five-day suspension for the incident.

The bouncer, Sidney Phillips, 31, of Avon, faces arraignment today in Boston Municipal Court on charges he beat and stomped four customers early Sunday.

As with Sunday's incident, the alleged 12/31 punching at the Canal Street bar happened with a group of people Grand Canal bouncers were trying to get out, around 1:40 a.m.

Boston Police report arresting a bouncer at the Grand Canal on Canal Street early Sunday.

Sidney Phillips, 31, of Avon, was charged with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon - a shod foot.

According to police, witnesses told officers that Phillips violently escorted a group of ten people outside around 1:30 a.m. after an argument inside the bar:

When the bars close down, cabbies pull the no-cash, no-ride trick, apparently. A discussion going on on Twitter:

Boston Restaurant Talk reports Emerson College decided not to renew the leases for Remington's and Dick Doherty's Beantown Comedy Vault. The bar is closing, while the comedy club will seek new digs.

A Cambridge man was ordered to stay off the T following an incident last week in which he allegedly ran his hands up the thigh of a female Red Line passenger when she closed her eyes, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports.

According to the DA's office, Transit Police nabbed Bashir Shaikh, 63, of Cambridge, on Monday - on the same afternoon train he had long shared with his alleged victim.

The woman told police she and Shaikh were familiar strangers - she recognized him as a frequent traveler on the train she'd take each afternoon out of Central Square. According to the DA's office, on the afternoon of March 13, she closed her eyes as the train on her trip:

Leslie Jones took lots of photos of Boston things covered in ice, such as firetrucks, but especially fishing boats, such as this trawler in 1938.

Posted under this Creative Commons license.

In addition to the Lowell guy charged with kicking a woman in the throat at Downtown Crossing, Transit Police report arresting two young men for whom the lure of the big city proved too enticing yesterday:

At approximately 10:22 pm Transit Police officers from Area 1 were at South Station MBTA Commuter Rail assisting and monitoring crowds who had attended the Saint Patrick's Day Parade when they were alerted to two males, later identified as Mathew Heney, 22, of East Wareham and John Stackable, 21, of Worcester, engaged in a fist fight with one another. Upon arrival of officers they observed a large crowd gathered around the two combatants just outside the men's restroom. Officers intervened and restored peace. Both subjects were placed under arrest for Affray and Disorderly Conduct and transported to TPD HQ for the booking process. They are expected to be arraigned sometime today in Boston Municipal Court.

Innocent, etc.

Among the arrested in Boston yesterday: Patrick J. Kelly, 25, of Lowell, charged with assault and battery for an incident around 4:30 p.m. near the fare gates at the Downtown Crossing T station, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports.

Preliminary information suggests that Kelly was angry at the woman, whom he knew, because she didn't share his desire to drink at a bar after the St. Patrick’s Day parade.

Transit Police report:

Officers were alerted to a female victim who was lying on the ground near the fare gates holding her throat and crying. Officers immediately proceeded in her direction and assisted the victim to her feet. The victim pointed to a male. later identified as Patrick Kelley, 25 of Lowell, and stated to the officers Kelley had just kicked her in the throat. A witness present confirmed the victim's statement. Victim informed the officers she and Kelley had traveled to Boston with the same group and he assaulted her because she was too young to go drinking at a bar after the parade.

Arraignment scheduled for today in Boston Municipal Court. In addition to Kelly, roughly 30 people are scheduled for arraignment in South Boston District Court, mostly on disorderly-conduct charges for incidents along the parade route, the DA's office reports.

Innocent, etc.

Walgreens goes before the Boston Licensing Board on March 27 to serve food 24 hours a day at its impending upscale emporium on the site of the old Borders store at School and Washington streets.

According to its application, Walgreens, which plans sushi and juice bars to go with more traditional drugstore fare, is also seeking permission to operate an outdoor patio 24 hours a day, with 24 seats on its own property and 18 extending onto the city sidewalk in front of the Irish Famine Memorial.

Board hearings begin at 10 a.m. in its eighth-floor hearing room in City Hall.

It may look like a park and have people walk in it like it's a park, but the far end of Long Wharf isn't a park, the Supreme Judicial Court ruled today.

The ruling is a victory for the Boston Redevelopment Authority, which wants to turn an open-air kiosk-like structure there into a restaurant.

A group of ten North End residents has fought the idea for years - and won a victory in Suffolk Superior Court, when a judge ruled that end of Long Wharf was a park on which a restaurant could not be built without a two-thirds vote of the state legislature, under a section of the state constitution that pertains to the preservation of parkland and open space.

But the state's highest court ruled today that intent is everything, and that the BRA took over the wharf in 1970 under its authority to revitalize the area and promote real-estate development - as part of an urban-renewal plan dating to 1964 - rather than to put a park in. Therefore, the court concluded, the area is not subject to the constitutional restriction, known as Article 97:

Downtown Crossing store taped off. Photo by Kim Janey.

Large numbers of Boston cops , state troopers and Secret Service agents swarmed Time Products, 449 Washington St. this afternoon as they arrested the alleged mastermind of a ring dealing in stolen phones and fake cash, credit cards and identities.

The raid came after State Police arrested Shahab "David" Yousheei, 36, of Brighton, on the Common after he allegedly purchased counterfeit money from an undercover trooper, the state Attorney General's office reports:

The Tiffany & Co. Foundation announced today it's giving a $1.5 million grant to the Greenway Conservancy to build a permanent carousel between Faneuil Hall Marketplace and Christopher Columbus Park:

The Tiffany & Co. Foundation Grove at Carousel Park is destined to be a major attraction for locals and visitors. Plans for Carousel Park include a signature grove of trees, a robust garden perimeter, and comfortable park furnishings.

The new carousel will feature Boston-specific characters: Grasshoppers, lobsters, cods, butterflies, foxes, skunks, sea turtles, sea lions and falcons, based on drawings by Boston school children, as well as an enclosure for winter use.

Construction is slated to begin next week, with an opening planned for September.

Pi Alley today.

Across the river, MIT celebrates.

Emmie reports from the 4:40 p.m. train to Lowell, which confidently rolled out of North Station, then promptly suffered a fatal heart attack some sort of problem and now the brakes won't release.

UPDATE, 5:36: Emmie reports the T has offloaded passengers to the 5:10 train, which, obviously, is a bit late.

Updated.

Orange Line service came to a halt around 2 p.m. when somebody wound up under an outbound train at State Street station, Mike Moura and Ruddy S. report.

The victim was extricated, alive, put on a backboard and taken up to an ambulance around 2:40 p.m.

Full service on the Orange Line resumed around 3:30 p.m.

A T spokesman said the investigation into how the person wound up under the train is ongoing.

This time, the rail was between South Station and Broadway, shortly before 1 p.m., and, of course, its impact was felt all up and down the Red Line.

Mykah Murphy tweeted from Park Street:

MBTA workers shouting at one another, no Ashmont/Braintree bound trains leaving Park station. No trains on Alewife tracks.

Christine added:

The best is they are telling us to take the green and orange lines instead...that makes sense.

The past three months have seen a series of cracked rails on the Red Line.

It's by the New Yorker, but, still, this deserves to be some sort of Official Song of the Commonwealth, no?

Meanwhile, Greyhound is still launching its Chinatown Fung Wah killer, called Yo, the New York Business Journal reports. And that, of course, leaves the door wide open for somebody to come up with a Brookline-based bus service called Oy (which, Jeremy Marin informs us, could launch with this slogan: "Gay aveck, vashtinkina bus!").

H/t Ron Newman and Stephanie.

WBZ reports State Police have been busy finding people involved in a January brawl in the Transportation Building garage.