North End

An alert citizen holds his or her nose with one hand and types with the other near the old turnpike-authority building in the North End:

2 days going now, walkway across greenway smells like something died in there .. Real bad stench

The city replies:

It has been confirmed that there is nothing decaying in the area. The odor is from the organic holly-tone fertilizer recently spread and will dissipate in the next few days.

A concerned citizen says enough's enough and uploads this photo from tiny Wiget Street in the North End.

NorthEndWaterfront.com posts a Bingo card to carry around while talking to North Enders. Hmm, I bet you could do similar cards for every other neighborhood, too.

Boston Police are searching the North End for a man with a gun in connection with an apparent larceny attempt at the McDonald's on North Street around 10:15 a.m.

He's described as a white male, in his 40s, about 6'2", 220 lbs., with a big nose, white hair and white stubble. He was wearing a dark-gray hoodie, a brown jacket and a Sox hat. Witnesses spotted him running away down Hanover Street into the North End - after he dropped and then picked up a gun. Police have recovered change from the alley behind the McDonald's.

Recommendations for a relatively inexpensive place in the North End to get lunch and a beer?

A North End diner who didn't think the free meal he got in exchange for a restaurant's mistake was good enough got the place hauled before the Boston Licensing Board today - even though he's now refusing to cooperate with the board or police.

NorthEndWaterfront.com reports that Mint, the New York-based car-rental service (as opposed to Mint, the personal-finance service or Mint, the coin-making service), has put some rental cars in the North End, to go along with its cars in downtown and Back Bay locations.

Maggie reports on 93 bus driver 69999, one of whose passengers yesterday afternoon was blind and who asked him to let her know when they got to her stop - only he didn't, which led to this exchange:

Operator #69999 replied "Well I stopped and you didn't get off."

Andrea: "You didn't tell me."

Operator #69999: "Was I supposed to pick you up and carry you off?"

NorthEndWaterfront.com reports several state reps are shepherding an "emergency" bill that would, immediately on passage, let Boston and other communities ban overnight commercial trash pickups. Legislators consider the ide at a hearing on Oct. 18 at the State House, Room A-1, starting at 10 a.m.

The proposal, backed by, among others, Marty Walz (D-Back Bay) and Aaron Michlewitz, would dovetail with an effort by city councilors Felix Arroyo and Mike Ross to limit commercial pickups because of noise complaints in neighborhoods such as the North End, downtown and the Back Bay. Current state law prohibits such bans.

Cambridge, Mass. — Tickets are on sale now for George V. Higgins’ The Friends of Eddie Coyle, Stickball Productions’ world premiere stage adaptation of the quintessential Boston crime novel. The production runs Dec. 8–Jan. 15 at Oberon in Harvard Square, for tickets, visit www.thefriendsofeddiecoyle.com

It is the winter of ‘69 in Boston and Eddie Coyle is a bottom of the barrel hood attempting to stay alive and out of jail among his “friends” – cops, bartenders, radical hippies, bank robbers, hit men and informants. Weeks away from a prison sentence for trucking stolen booze, Eddie’s making a few bucks supplying the guns for a rash of brazen bank heists, while looking to tip someone in for a kind word to the judge.

George V. Higgins’ classic novel has been called the “best crime novel ever written” by Elmore Leonard, and literary scholars have compared his unforgiving and realistic depiction of Boston’s underworld with the works of Dickens, Dostoevsky, and Balzac. Through dialogue quintessentially Bostonian, and the most poignant homage to Bobby Orr and the ’69-’70 Boston Bruins in literature, The Friends of Eddie Coyle has set the bar for Boston crime stories for nearly 40 years.

Busted!

An alert citizen uses Citizens Connect to praise an unidentified city worker:

The gentleman in blue seems to be offering tourists on Segways citations as souvenirs of their tour. Boston Gliders should be ticketed every time they use the sidewalk and this is a good spot for it. They use the sidewalk for a large part of every tour but try to hide on the harborwalk, puopolo park, behind the aquarium, fan pier, where they think there is no enforcement.

The city banned Segways from parks and sidewalks in June; the owner of Boston Gliders, of course, promptly sued.

City Councilor Sal LaMattina (North End, Charlestown, East Boston) says it may be time to require North Enders to put their trash out in metal or plastic barrels rather than bags that can be easily ripped open by rats, NorthEndWaterfront.com reports. There's a hearing on Thursday.

State officials today charged Gerald Esposito, 40, with heading up a ring that sold cocaine, painkillers, sedatives and marijuana in the North End and out of a Revere apartment.

Indictments announced today also charged two other North End men with participation in the ring, along with five Revere residents and residents of Melrose, Winthrop and Maine, the state Attorney General's office reports.

Two city councilors are working on proposals that could prohibit 3 a.m. commercial trash pickups in neighborhoods like the North End and limit the number of companies allowed to pick up trash there at all.

Dallin in his later years with a model of his statue. From the BPL's Art and Artifacts photo collection.

It'd be hard to imagine the space between Hanover Street and Old North Church without Paul Revere warning the colonists the Redcoats were coming, right?

And yet, it almost wasn't there at all.

The North End Waterfront Residents Association voted to oppose any efforts to increase the number of stores selling liquor in the North End, NewEnglandWaterfront.com reports. The neighborhood currently has 11 retail liquor licenses - one currently unused.

The vote has no legal authority, but the Boston Licensing Board, which doles out booze permits, asks neighborhood groups for their input on license requests. Both the North End association and its Back Bay counterpart have already set similar informal limits on the number of alcohol-serving restaurants.

NorthEndWaterfront.com was there with a camera today.

NorthEndWaterfront.com reports on a North End community meeting that focused on both the most recent sexual attack and a series of incidents during the recent St. Anthony's Feast in which festival-goers found themselves under attack:

In an organized series of attacks, out-of-town teens set up feast visitors to be punched and shoved last Friday night at the St. Anthony's Feast. Boston Police believe the kids communicated by texting each other, identifying victims indiscriminately and then hitting them for no other reason than the thrill of assaulting random people. Observers witnessed punching, shoving and pushing in several locations on Endicott Street.

Officers identified suspects from Revere, Everett and Charlestown. Victims of the punches and fights choose not to pursue charges.

Out-of-towners were also blamed for much of the problems at the Mac Miller concert at City Hall Plaza.

Matt Conti of the North End, where gasoline trucks are a big deal, reports on a hearing in Waltham on Boston's proposal to ban through trucking of hazardous materials and re-route trucks not making local deliveries onto 128:

Only politicians and those fulfilling a job function (ex: trucking lobby) testified against the proposal to have the trucks on Rt. 128. There were no homeowners or abutters to Rt. 128, nor community groups in attendance. A North End resident who testified in favor of the proposal was the only person who was NOT a politician or paid representative.

Earlier:
There's no safer place for large gasoline tankers than the narrow, congested streets of downtown Boston, truckers claim.

A concerned citizen reports from Powers Court off Commercial:

TV and chicken bones need to be picked up.

Boston Police report this brief video shows the suspect in Saturday's sexual assault, as well as two people who happened to be walking by at the time. Police would like to speak to all three, natch.

North End Stories interviews Italian-Americans whose families emigrated to the neighborhood.

Why, it's a wonder they don't propose running convoys of trucks all the way down Washington Street or Beacon Street.

The state held the first of four hearings tonight on a request from Boston city officials and North End and waterfront residents to get gasoline and diesel tankers off streets like Commercial Street and Atlantic Avenue unless they're making local deliveries, and instead detour around Boston by way of Rte. 128.

Representatives of local trucking companies and a statewide trucking group told state transportation officials - who have to make a recommendation to federal highway officials - that they are not motivated for one second by the extra costs of detouring 30 to 40 miles around the city but purely by safety. All those traffic lights and traffic - and pedestrians - make city roads far more safer for trucking because they keep drivers alert. Plus, the slow speeds means it's "virtually impossible" to roll a truck over at city speeds, Anne Lynch, executive director of the Massachusetts Motor Transportation Association, said.

And, they asked, who has a better fire department for dealing with any problems than Boston?

Residents and elected officials didn't buy it for a second. Imagine, one after another said, if that truck in Saugus had been in the North End instead and questioning why anybody would want to let 18-wheel trucks hauling explosive fuel on crowded city streets instead of making them travel on interstate highways designed for trucks.

History guide points out part of the cavalcade of tankers that rumble next to the Greenway.

The state Department of Transportation holds a hearing tonight on the city's request to ban trucks carrying hazardous cargoes not making local deliveries from downtown streets, including the surface roads above the O'Neill Tunnel, from which the trucks are already barred.

The hearing starts at 6:30 p.m. on the second floor of the Transportation Building, 10 Park Plaza.

City officials had barred tankers not allowed in the tunnels from driving down North End streets in 2009, but the federal government overturned that, saying the city had not proven the risk to residents and building. The city then hired a consultant to show why the tankers should be restricted to highways, even if that means circling the entire city along 128.

The state has also scheduled hearings on the proposal in Quincy, Stoneham and Waltham, where, presumably, reaction will be a bit different than in the North End.

Alex Mellion, who took this picture, wonders why Bizarre Foods guy Andrew Zimmern was being filmed on Hanover Street today. Based on his Twitter feed, he spent much of the day eating pretty normal North End-type stuff, like cannoli and sfogliatelli at Maria's Pastry and skate at the Daily Catch.