Brookline Village

Signal problems, flooding, disabled trains, they're all so passe. AlertNewEngland reports Riverside trains are being delayed because police at Brookline Village are searching for "man with a snake."

A Proper Bostonian is amazed to count nine dry-cleaning places in Brookline Village:

... I never thought of Brookline Village as terrifically pressed and creased. I've always experienced it as more of a yuppie-hippie enclave. After all, there's the hot yoga and at least one holistic spa. I envision the typical Villager wearing organic natural fibers that were washed in biodegradable suds. ...

So how about that giant cube now rising on Harvard Street?

... The cube itself is a monolithic presence, kind of like a big stereo speaker in a room of antique furniture, as we look across the street to the fine historic red brick buildings, with their inviting doors and windows, fine detailing and timeless simplicity. It would have been entirely possible to design a modern structure that nonetheless fit in this setting. Had it had some elements remotely in common with the structures in the vicinity, namely the original church, the house on Holden, or the brick buildings on Harvard, be it materials, height, massing, roof height and angle, the rhythm of windows, shape, form, etc. But these structures have none of these. ...

Via Neal Simpson.

Brookline Police report that Horai-San Book and Crystal Shop, 242 Washington St. in Brookline Village, was held up around 6:42 p.m. on Friday.

Saturday morning, Brookline Police raided 21 Child St. in Jamaica Plain, arresting two men on armed-robbery charges. Police blame the pair, who they say were shacking up there temporarily, for at least one other armed holdup in Brookline and say they were likely planning more holdups to support an addiction to crack. Police said one of the men was from Fall River, while they described the other only as "homeless."