North End

Matt Karolian spotted Steve Martin jamming outside the Paul Revere House in the North End this afternoon. Video!

Andrew Ricardo, meanwhile, spotted an Avenger in South Station - we can only assume Iron Man was not around to give him a ride up from Providence:

The Herald gets the scoop on the arrest of Vincent Martorano, charged with punching a woman in the face in a Salem Street purse grab - and with beating up his own wife in a Saugus motel. His dad is John Martorano.

Innocent, etc.

Last year, Gordon Ramsay showed up at Davide for his Kitchen Nightmares show. This week, he was in town attending to La Galleria on Salem Street. And leaving behind quite the mess, a disgusted citizen complains.

NorthEndWaterfront.com reports police nabbed a suspect for last week's attack on Salem Street, in which a guy got out of a car, punched a woman and took her purse. He's also a suspect in a similar attack in Charlestown and his wife did the driving.

NorthEndWaterfront.com reports on today's election for seats on the North End Waterfront Council, an advisory group to city agencies and boards.

Who goes around snapping poor little baby trees in half?

Earlier:
The tree killer of Mass. Ave. is back.

Boston Police are looking for a man who got out of a black Charger on Salem Street shortly before 10 p.m., punched a woman, grabbed her purse, then jumped back in the car, which headed toward Charter Street.

FakeEmpire tweets:

I saw that North End attack happen tonight. Pretty scary. It took no more than 10 seconds. The woman was pretty roughed up.

That attack happened about 50 minutes after a woman walking down Burroughs Street, about midway between Centre and the Jamaicaway, was robbed by a man who pushed a sharp object into her neck hard enough to draw blood. The man, described as young, black and heavyset, ran toward the Jamaicaway.

Mayor Menino today announced a building swap with the North Bennet Street School that could let the Eliot K-8 School double in size.

North Bennet Street will pay the city $11.4 million for 150 North St. and 130-140 Richmond St. and will give the city its current buildings at 37-39 North Bennet St. and 48-52 Tileston St.

The Eliot currently has 322 students and a waiting list of 295. The city will hold a meeting on May 22 to discuss possible renovation plans over the next few years for the new buildings, starting at 6 p.m. at the current Eliot School.

NorthEndWaterfront.com reports four guys armed with a crowbar forced the attendant of the garage at 600 Commercial St. to the ground before trying, and failing, to open a garage safe.

According to a police report, one of the would-be safecrackers demanded the combination to the safe from the attendant, who apparently didn't have it. They then fled with money from the cash register, around 4:20 a.m. on Monday.

The garage is best known for its part in the Brinks Job.

Allan Danley, who faces a mounting number of violations of a city ordinance against the way he operates his Segway tours, hopes to win a seat on the North End Waterfront Neighborhood Council.

Like Durgin-Park, Haymarket has softened over the years - most of the vendors no longer yell at customers daring to turn fruit over. Bob Skole reviews the changes and how the proposed public market nearby could make Haymarket even better.

Karen Cord Taylor considers competing proposals for Parcel 9, next to Haymarket, which include a museum about Boston, a bunch of apartments and a hotel.

David Schachner photographed the North End in the rain last night.

Copyright David Schachner. Posted in the Universal Hub pool on Flickr.

NorthEndWaterfront.com reports on a four-story brick wall came down on Thacher Court Sunday/Monday.

NorthEndWaterfront.com posts a photo of a coyote spotted on Copp's Hill Terrace in the North End this morning.

It's not the first North End coyote spotting, but they remain relatively rare, unlike in, say, West Roxbury.

Boston Police are stepping up patrols in the North End to crack down on both loud late-night parties by students and bars and restaurants that violate their license requirements, A-1 Captain Tom Lee says in an open letter to neighborhood residents.

In recent years, college students have come to rival rats as the annoyance most detested by residents. Lee says that among the steps he's taking are a general beefing up of patrols in the neighborhood, with a specific two-cop patrol along Hanover Street between 11:45 p.m. and 3:45 a.m. on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, chats with both tenants cited for noise complaints and their landlords, to let them know just what sort of citations they could be getting for future violations, and working more closely with Suffolk on a weekend "noise patrol" that could mean college sanctions in addition to whatever BPD can dish out.

Lee says one neighborhood liquor store has already been cited for selling to a minor and for failing to keep minors from hanging out outside.

Proof in the North End.

The barrage of news about bodily fluids continues, this time via a report on NorthEndWaterfront.com about an incident this past Friday at the playground at Christopher Columbus Park, two hours after a father called 911 to report homeless men sleeping in the playground equipment and blood everywhere:

The playground area was teeming with children and mothers. I walked around the equipment and to my horror, at the back side, 2 of the tunnels were smeared with blood, there was a large puddle of urine and feces under the equipment. A little boy was just about to crawl through the tunnel. I yelled at him to stop and then told everyone they had to leave. I waited for the clean up crew, keeping everyone out of the area.

The park department's initial response: Send out a worker with some water and a pine-scented solution.

Mystery Pill gives us a taste of the Banditos Misteriosos pillow fight by the North End yesterday.

Posted under this Creative Commons license and in the Universal Hub pool on Flickr.

NorthEndWaterfront.com reports on a testy North End community meeting with the local constabulary. And it wasn't just the unsolved late-night attacks on women that had North Enders up in arms:

Captain Lee apologized for the lack of police presence during the St. Patrick's Day weekend. Longtime Fulton St. resident Janet Gilardi said, "in 40 years, I have never seen a St. Patrick's Day so bad." Lee said police were focused on South Boston and did not expect such bad activity in the North End. Since then, he has heard several complaints and said "that won't happen again."

Boston Police report a woman was indecently assaulted around 11:45 p.m. on Friday on Prince Street:

The female victim reports that she was walking in the area of Prince Street when a male suspect approached her and engaged in inappropriate contact.

Police say the suspect was a white Hispanic or Mediterranean male, in his late 20s or early 30s and between 5'6" and 5'8" with a thin build, short, dark hair and a goatee. He was also described as "well groomed" and wore a dark, hip-length wool coat, possibly with a dark shirt and dark shoes.

Police say they've stepped up patrols - again - in the North End following the attack, which comes after a number of other unsolved attacks on women walking alone in the North End late at night in recent years, most recently last August by a man described as white, Hispanic and 5'6".

Boston Police report arresting Edward Fennessey, 26, on breaking-and-entering charges around 1:50 a.m. after a Hanover Street resident called to report strange noises coming from his building's skylight area.

Officers observed the skylight was damaged and glass fragments were on the stairs leading to the roof.

While officers were canvassing the area, they observed a plywood door to a vacant apartment damaged. Officers then observed the suspect kicking out a window screen to the vacant apartment.

Innocent, etc.

Battery Street, to be exact.

The Globe reports (subscription required) Boston has agreed to the settlement in the federal lawsuit by Michael O'Brien over a 2009 incident on Hanover Street, in which O'Brien charged he was left permanently brain injured by the way a Boston cop knocked him to the ground following a minor collision.

The settlement was filed in US District Court nearly a month ago - about a month after Boston Police fired the cop, David Williams, for his role in the North End incident and for lying about it. Williams had earlier been fired for his role in the infamous Michael Cox beating case, but he won his job back in an appeal.

• O'Brien's original complaint

The Worcester Telegram picks up the cudgel of a Worcester County resident feeling put out by the way Mike's on Hanover Street doesn't display prices for any of its baked goods. Quotes both a state official who says that's just against the law, and a clearly annoyed Mike's manager, who says he had no idea that was a law and that this is the first time in 60 years anybody's ever complained.

Via NorthEndWaterfront.com.