Quincy Market

Leslie Jones photographed some pre-Thanksgiving turkey shopping at Threser & Kelly, Quincy Market, in 1933.

Also see some of the 12,000 turkeys at Pine Hill Turkey Farm, 2938 Mass. Ave., Lexington.

Photo from the BPL's Leslie Jones collection. Posted under this Creative Commons license.

General Growth Properties, which operates Faneuil Hall Marketplace and owns the Natick Mall Collection, filed for bankruptcy today.

Faneuil Hall Marketplace up for sale.

Well, technically, the lease on the city-owned marketplace is up for sale, as current operator General Growth shrinks.

When giant toilets attack.

Alicia goes down to the Quincy Market Starbucks with a gift card, buys one of its new fruity Vivanno drinks, reports:

... The smoothie had a unique taste to it; it definitely didn't taste like oranges, mangoes and/or bananas, but it was sweet and I became slightly nostalgic drinking it. About halfway through the drink, I realized what it tasted exactly like: amoxicillin! Amoxicillin is the pink bubblegum flavored medicine I used to take for ear infections, and it was delicious (for a medicine.) I'm not sure if drinking Vivannos will cure a bacterial infection, but they sure taste like they will.

Tom Menino has a new mission: Turn Faneuil Hall into the Natick Mall. The Globe reports that an angry Menino, way up there near the top of Mt. Crumpit, could no longer take the noise, noise, noise, noise and ordered Boston Police to bust up those dangerous street performers - and balloon artists - in front of Faneuil Hall:

The officers shooed away clowns and caricature artists. They ordered music and dance acts to contain their performances to a single, small patch of brick - measuring 15 feet by 15 feet - near a stand of trees. And they erected steel crowd-control barricades in a wide swath around three sides of Faneuil Hall, to make sure the performers didn't sneak back.

But did they confiscate their tartinkas and who-hubas?

Why, Tommy, why?

Flann takes a photo on the Orange Line of the Quincy Market Ben Franklin, you know, the one who gets crabby if you try to take his picture without paying him. No word if he started yelling at her or didn't mind because he was off the clock.

Boston Guerrilla Queer Bar will "take over" a Faneuil Hall bar this Friday. No, of course, they don't announce which one beforehand (you need to sign up for the mailing list to get some e-mail the morning of the event):

The idea is to turn an unsuspecting straight bar into a gay bar for one night. Call it guerrilla bar fare.

Didn't realize it was that cold yesterday:

Dare I suggest it was better in New York?

Margaret and Rich take the kids to the Quincy Market tree lighting tonight, which featured Tom Menino, Wally and Santa Claus:

... And they threw the switch and the whole square lit up and they blew millions of white, swirling pieces of rectangular paper over the crowd. The effect was reminiscent of standing in a snow squall but it was quite pretty. ...

And Greg MacKay is there.

Cowbark photographs a parrot shredding a Metro at Quincy Market:

He was eating popcorn and shredding newspaper (apparently that's how parrots build nests, but made out of tree pulp), and had a friend that was sitting on a woman's shoulder. The woman also had an iguana hanging out on top of a cage that you could pet.

Susie: The sketchiest, worst time in Boston ever is leaving the bars at 2:00 a.m. In Faneuil Hall. As a female. All alone. In the pouring rain.

Say you're that guy who walks around Quincy Market all day dressed like Ben Franklin. What do you do when it's time to go home? Suzie reports you keep your britches on and get on the train to Andover, but adds that seeing him there only raises more questions:

... Does he take his wig off and lay his costume aside when he enters his home? Or does he don a nightcap and traditional Ben Franklin night clothes? Does he fly kites around the neighborhood? ...

Boston Behind the Scenes interviews a guy at Quincy Market who escapes from straightjackets.

No word if the next interview will be with one of those eight-foot-tall mimes in gold fabric who just stand there until you give them some money.

The Herald reports that the Yankee Candle shop was held up yesterday by a guy carrying what appeared to be a shotgun in a bag (also: when an assistant manager asked a customer to call 911, he instead just ran away, leaving his credit card behind).

On Thursday, a guy carrying what appeared to be a shotgun in a bag held up Bel Tempo in Downtown Crossing.

Seth Finkelstein just happens to have a copy of the same software used by the city to decide what you get to see on your laptop while connected to the city's WiFi network in Quincy Market. And so he discovers exactly which Boing Boing post got it banned.

You're sitting down, I trust. It's a post about some guy painting a mural about the ocean.

Huh? Seems Boing Boing has a link to a Google search to bring up other posts about the guy that includes the term "safe=off," which means, if the guy has done any murals of NAKED PEOPLE those links might come up. And we can't have links to photos of NAKED PEOPLE showing up on screens all over the marketplace rotunda, now can we?

Earlier:
Banned in Boston.

With no fanfare whatsoever, the last Steve's Ice Cream location has changed its name to Sprinkles Ice Cream. The store was at the east end of the Quincy Market building. I don't know exactly when the change happened -- some time in the last two or three months.

(A brief history for people who don't know what I'm talking about: Steve's started in the early 1970s as a famous ice cream parlor in Davis Square, and originated the concept of "mix-ins". Its founder, Steve Herrell, sold it, then a few years later started a competitor, Herrell's Ice Cream, which is still in business. Meanwhile, Steve's became first a local and then a national chain, but then declined and gradually lost all of its stores. Quincy Market was the last holdout.)

John Keith notes that Abercrombie and Fitch is moving back (although only three floors instead of eight this time) to one end, while the Hard Rock Cafe is moving to the other end:

Whatever. It can't make Faneuil Hall any less relevant than it already is.

Ed. in-a-daze note: When did Quincy Market become Faneuil Hall, and why wasn't I cc'ed on the memo?

We have it on good report that Japanese TV news crews have descended en masse on our fair Hub and they are, even as I type, Borat-ing innocent tourists from Iowa at Quincy Market demanding to know what they think about Daisuke Matsuzaka. Given that most tourists from Iowa have no idea what they're talking about, the crews are extremely grateful when somebody like Jose Melendez, being half-Japanese himself, wanders by:

... "Do yoo seenk, oder peoper in Boston, will know how to say hees name?"

"Probably not," Jose answered. "Not yet, but by the time the season starts everyone will be able to say it perfectly. After all, we all managed to say Yastrzemski for 23 years." ...

Herald Managing Editor Joe Dwinell checks in from the Quincy Market rotunda, where he files a blog post via the marketplace's free WiFi - and where he learns from a visiting Mayo Clinic physician that the wireless service won't be giving him a brain tumor:

... He has pulled up a seat next to me to blog along. He's also asking about Mitt Romney and how a liberal Massachusetts can elect a Mormon Republican. Checks and balances, I say. ...

No, don't worry, we won't have two of them - the one in the Back Bay is moving. Which means the old space could become something actual Bostonians would go to. Or as John Keith puts it: Hard Rock Cafe to move. Bostonians rejoice.

Greg Kulaga begins and ends a music video (set to Ween's "So Many People in the Neighborhood") with everybody's favorite panhandler (also features streets scenes from Downtown Crossing and Quincy Market). From January.

On Involuntary Slacker, Lyss describes the scene (before abandoning it for the non-green environs of the Union Oyster House):

... As we waited in line, the friends an I spotted this girl licking the shaved head of a bald guy through the window of the nearby Bell in Hand bar. Then she got on his lap (facing him) and began rhythmically moving up and down. ...