South Boston

Foodies hopes to bridge the channel between the South End and South Boston with a new store on West Broadway it's planning on opening Oct. 1.

The licensing board decides tomorrow whether to grant a food-serving license to the new outlet at 230 West Broadway, where owner Victor Leon will offer sandwiches, take out and locavore-type comestibles in an 8,000-square foot space. City officials and state Rep. Nick Collins all supported the application; nobody opposed it.

Photographynatalia took in the cliff diving off the ICA yesterday.

Jeff Tamagini watched the divers splash into Boston Harbor as well:

An alert citizen looks down and notices one of the stencils with which the stupid network has been defacing our sidewalks, in this case on East 4 Street in South Boston.

Apparently, people walking across E Street at W. 6 Street in South Boston just can't help themselves: They get across the street and then WHAM, they hit their heads on a short stop sign. Or as a concerned citizen puts it:

This stop sign needs to be raised. Dozens of people hitting head on edge of sharp sign. Has been like this for years.

Ed. question: I've been trying to figure out under what circumstances pedestrians could not see a stop sign and just walk around it rather than slicing open their foreheads on its razor-sharp edges. Is there an overhang or cliff or something there that prevents people from taking a step to the side to avoid potential life-threatening injuries from this red octagon of doom?

The Herald reports four development groups have submitted proposals for a city lot next to the waterfront restaurant complex, ranging from more restaurants to a boutique hotel to a "floating event space."

WBZ reports that when State Police tried to stop a stolen SUV on L Street last night, the driver, who turned out to be a Westwood teen, took off, got on 93 north and kept driving onto 128 until his tires blew out when he drove over some "stop sticks" police had put on the road. G.A. Robinson reports police estimate he hit the sticks at 65 m.p.h., kept driving on his rims and managed to ram a cruiser before finally coming to a stop and getting arrested.

The Constitution went out into the Outer Harbor today and briefly sailed under its own power in honor of the 200th anniversary of its victory over HMS Guerriere. On its return trip to the Charlestown Navy Yard, it paused off Castle Island to shoot its cannons.

Brian D'Amico took photos. Paul Keleher was there as well.

Adam O'Day of South Boston likes painting skylines - with vivid red and orange skies.

Wednesday, Aug. 22, 6-8 p.m. at Medal of Honor Park, a.k.a. the M Street Park, featuring Michael Dutra and the Strictly Sinatra Band.

Crispy forklift. Photo by BFD.

The Boston Fire Department reports a forklift used to lift and lower some of those large containers at the Conley Terminal by Castle Island caught fire around 1:45 p.m. The fire started in the engine and spread to the operator's cab, but he was able to escape without injury. The department says these forklifts go for around $300,000.

Some background info on the ad.

The Boston Public Library has an online collection of more than 400 Leslie Jones photos of fishing boats covered in ice, including this 1929 photo of the Trimount, a trawler docked at the Boston Fish Pier.

Posted under this Creative Commons license.

The Patriot Ledger reports a Quincy man went to police after he recognized his daughter as the woman on a wanted poster for three bank robberies last month, including one in South Boston.

A Quincy father has turned his daughter in for bank robbery. According to the Patriot-Ledger, Meredith Cunniff, 36, was arrested and charged with the robbery of the Colonial Federal Savings Bank on Beach Street in Quincy. Her family believes she has substance-abuse issues and her father had tried to send her to rehab. Her father identified her after seeing what he believed was her photo on a most-wanted poster at the Quincy police station.

He bailed her out later.

The Boston Licensing Board yesterday approved a Tasty Burger on L Street, but denied the restaurant's request to add 20 patio seats in the back.

The board decides tomorrow whether a proposal by Tasty Burger to limit its hours and cut back an outdoor patio at a proposed L Street location are enough to warrant a food serving license or whether some nearby residents are right that the burger outlet would ruin the neighborhood.

Tasty Burger had originally proposed staying open until 1 a.m. at the site of the old Boathouse ice-cream place and add a 40-seat patio, but in the face of criticism from neighbors scaled its proposed hours back to 10 p.m. most nights and midnight on Friday and Saturday - and agreed to cut the number of outdoor seats to 20. The patio will only be open until 10 p.m. all nights.

Andrew Urbaniak, 39, a priest at Our Lady of Czestochowa in South Boston, was arraigned today in South Boston District Court on one count each of possession of child pornography and distributing images of a child in the nude, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports. Urbaniak was arrested by Boston and State Police yesterday. In a statement, the DA's office says:

A Dorchester man was arraigned on burglary charges yesterday in his hospital bed - where he is recuperating from injuries allegedly suffered when the cops found him and his partner in mid-theft and his partner drove off with him hanging onto the back of their pickup truck.

Charles Thompson, 46, and his alleged accomplice, still at large, were loading rugs from a business at 1 Design Center into the pickup around 9 p.m. on Sunday when a municipal security guard noticed them and the window they'd allegedly smashed and radioed for back up, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office says:

A Southie bar is looking for "a bad ass barback" who can lift "50+ lbs."

Via Boston Grub Street, which IDs the bar in need of bad assery as one of those new frou-frou places catering to all the pretty young things looking for Mr. Damon.

South Boston native Billy Baker has a long exposition in the Globe today on the decline of Olde South Boston. His initial point seems to be that all the reality shows being filmed there will make Southie the laughingstock of America by turning it into Jersey Shore North. But read the whole thing and you get to the point where he explains that Matt Damon, Ben Affleck and starry-eyed young women who just couldn't control themselves destroyed the Southie of old:

GOOD WILL HUNTING has turned out to be a double-edged sword. It captured something great about Southie and at the same time ruined it forever. Because what I saw after that was unbelievable: Young women would get out of college and choose to move to Southie. Sure, it's close to downtown, but the real reason they were moving was because they were subconsciously thinking they were going to find "a Southie" like Matt and Ben. Everything else followed them, namely young guys. That's how everything changed. That's how the old Southie reality ended.

Added bonus anecdote: Be sure to look for the part about how some Southie guy moved to Dorchester to stay out of trouble, but just couldn't help himself when he went back for a visit and some young punk called him a yuppie. Twice. So of course he decked him. But since he's part of that generation of more sensitive Southie lads, he felt a little bad about it.

A Fort Point resident is seeking liquor and food-serving licenses to open a wine bar in the Channel Center Street building where he lives.

Brian Bresnahan's lawyer, Diane Modica, told the Boston Licensing Board today his proposed Internal Matter, 35 Channel Center Street, would give the area's burgeoning population of residents and workers a place to hang out after work and "have a glass of wine and eat something special." Bresnahan, a photographer, hopes to eventually add unspecified performances to the space, Modica said.

The board votes tomorrow on his requests, although board Chairwoman Nicole Murati Ferrer cautioned the board might not have any beer-and-wine licenses to hand out - which means Bresnahan would either have to reapply for an alcohol license and hope one became free or go out on the open market and buy one.

Bresnahan acknowledged that while he has worked in the food-service industry for several years, he has no experience running a restaurant. However, staked with a loan from his parents and a dream, he began talking to residents of his building several months ago about buying the space for Internal Matter. Modica said he's gotten overwhelming support for the proposal.

Bresnahan has lived in the building for five years.

Boston Restaurant Talk gets some details on Ming Tsai's proposed Blue Dragon restaurant.

An eight-story building at 27 Drydock Ave. was evacuated after an apparent electrical fire broke out shortly after 3 p.m. The Boston Fire Department struck a second alarm and reported the fire was still smoldering around 4 p.m. as firefighters awaited the arrival of an NStar crew to help deal with the situation.

Nicholas Scricco reports 21 Drydock was also evacuated, and that hundreds of people were milling about on the street.

Boston's Economic Development and Industrial Corp. has gone to court to recover what it says is nearly $570,000 in back rent on a floor in a building in the Boston Marine Industrial Park used to make semiconductor wafers.

EDIC, which runs the industrial park, filed a lawsuit in US District Court in Boston yesterday against the US subsidiary of Umicore, a Belgian company, for back rent owed by Semiconductor Processing Co., to which Umicore has subleased the seventh floor at 12 Channel St. since 2007.

EDIC says Semiconductor Processing stopped paying its rent in June 2009 and that it went after Umicore because that company agreed to be ultimately responsible for rent payments.

In its suit, EDIC asks for the back rent, penalties and lawyers' fees.