Guy taking macro shots of tulips in front of a Bank of America branch downtown is ordered to stop by a bank rent-a-cop.

Paul Levy reports on the tsouris he is having thanks to a Bank of America ATM in Newton Centre that ate both his ATM card and the checks he was attempting to deposit.

He follows up with a post on his travails with a Bank of America rep who contacted him via Twitter.

Word reaches us that Bank of America has told Stillman's Farms it can't use the bank parking lot off Centre Street for its farmer's markets this year:

... So, we are searching for a new location to have our market as well as our CSA drop. This year we have some Hmong farmers joining the market, as well as some local bakers. We are holding out a little hope that the community of JP can persuade the bank to allow us to return. We encourage anyone who feels like it, to politely ask the bank to reconsider. We have always felt they were very generous in the past, so we are not sure what changed after all these years. Meanwhile, we will look for another location nearby. If you have any connections, or thoughts, please get back to us as soon as possible. Let's try to solve this together. ...

The market had taken place there for more than 10 years - dating back to Bank of Boston days.

Steve S. gets that real secure feeling when he notices the armed security guard asleep at the Bank of America kiosk - and he explains why, in the end, he decided not to knock over the bank.

No, there's no punchline:

... But by 10 a.m., dozens of police had surrounded the bank and were waiting for equipment to cut through the chains and the bicycle lock looped through the door and around one protester's neck. ...

The story also raises that perennial question: Is Copley Square part of downtown?

Milan Kohut had been charged with peddling without a license when police objected to him standing outside a Financial District branch of the Bank of America with a pile of nooses and a sign reading "Nooses on sale."

On Friday, a Boston Municipal Court judge dismissed the charges, the Dig reports. Kohut had argued he was making a political comment about the mortgage crisis, not actually trying to sell downtown workers a way to hang themselves. He's now asking for his nooses back.

This deserves exactly what the photo says it deserves!

Boston Police report arresting a woman yesterday afternoon for scrawling graffiti inside a Bank of America ATM on Tremont Street in Roxbury. No, not Pixnit - this woman was 60. Alas, BPDNews did not report what she wrote with her red marker.

Meanwhile, police also report that somebody tried holding up the Dunkin' Donuts at 510 Southampton St. last night by threatening to inject the clerk with an HIV-filled needle. The clerk refused and the alleged perp fled in a dark-colored vehicle. And over in Charlestown yesterday afternoon, a woman kicked and bit another woman in an effort to convince her to hand over her cell phone and cigarettes. The gambit worked, but the toothy terror was arrested after a brief foot chase.

On Soho the Dog, Matthew does some back-of-envelope calculations and concludes the bank pulled its $600,000 annual donation not out of any sense of tough love for the series (bank officials talked of forcing the series to broaden its base of support) but because it simply gets more of a marketing bang out of similar donations to the MFA and BSO. And it will only get worse, he writes:

... As corporations get bigger and bigger, and are frequently operating far away from their own home base, corporate visibility and brand promotion will become the main goal of all non-operational activity; the personal relationships and local civic pride that support smaller, less splashy causes will become more and more abstract until they disappear completely. And if visibility is the key, let's face it: music is not the most visible of art forms. It would appear that the transitory, elusive nature of music has a real-world financial cost, at least in a society where the free market reigns, and philanthropy is just another front in the war for eyeballs. ...

Joel Brown discusses Bank of America's decision to stop funding the Celebrity Series, started by predecessor FleetBank:

...Both sides make nice with quotes about how important it is for givers and getters to diversify and blah blah. But basically this is the now out-of-town bank yanking major support from an arts series that has been a mainstay. ...

It's another reason to patronize a locally owned bank, Leslie Turek writes.