Business

@onetoughnerd So your plan is now to compete w/dead garment workers in Bangladesh? Otherwise, RtW is pointless.

— emptywheel (@emptywheel) December 10, 2012

Are you ready for The Street Chestnut Hill?

BostInno reports on Karmaloop's experiment in online clothes peddling today (Karmaloop, you may recall, is run by the guy who thinks Tom Menino is too stodgy to be mayor).

Not everybody was amused. Maria Mercedes Martinez writes:

Its so lame and something some old pervy dude would come up with, not a cool young equal rights minded man of this century.

Daisy Razor adds:

"half-naked chicks sell shit" doesn't count as boundary pushing OR satire. It's the oldest trick in the book.

The Boston Business Journal has the latest on the DeNormandie Wharf project.

Rapper and City Life/La Vida Urbana activist Antonio "Twice Thou" Ennis takes on BoA:

Since 2009, instead of negotiating a loan modification with principal reduction to allow Ennis to stay in his home, Bank of America (servicer) has been trying to foreclose although he can afford his home at the current real value. After receiving several dissatisfying loan modifications, one of which increased his monthly payment by $1,000 he turned to his passion and profession of producing hip-hop music to shame the banks for their predatory business practices.

A federal appeals court ruled today Starbucks owes Massachusetts baristas more than $14 million for tips that were shared with supervisors between 2005 and 2011, because state law bars managers from dipping into the tip jar.

Starbucks tried to pour cold water on a class-action suit on behalf of more than 11,000 former and current baristas by arguing that "shift supervisors" weren't really managers because they mostly did the same work as baristas and so were entitled to the perk of sharing in pooled tips collected from customers.

But in a scalding decision, the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston told Starbucks that the Massachusetts tip law is about as explicit as can be that managers are not allowed to share in tips and that shift supervisors are, indeed, managers:

NorthEndWaterfront.com reports the North End/Waterfront Residents' Association has put its foot down and is saying no more liquor licenses for the North End.

With 91 restaurants and bars already pouring libations, the group voted recently to oppose any new pouring licenses. It will refuse to meet with anybody seeking a new license and will instead file an automatic letter of opposition with the Boston Licensing Board.

The licensing board requires applicants for liquor licenses to try to meet with neighborhood groups but is not bound by local recommendations. In May, board Chairwoman Nicole Murati Ferrer said she would no longer automatically comply with a similar moratorium request from the Back Bay.

The Boston Business Journal reports.

A Red Lion, PA resident who says she's still suffering from the fungal meningitis she got from a painkiller shot a year ago, yesterday filed a federal lawsuit against the New England Compounding Center in Framingham and against the individual members of the Conigliaro family who owned and ran it.

John Ford writes the developer is sending out mixed signals about the skyline-changing project.

The Boston Business Journal reports that Katsiroubas Brothers Fruit and Produce, which sells produce at wholesale, has purchased two modular, hydroponic farming systems from Freight Farms, a South Boston startup that turns 40-foot-long shipping containers into movable farms.

Katsiroubas plans to use the stacked units to grow basil.

The Globe reports on plans for the old John Hancock hotel and conference center.

Episcopalians from across Massachusetts plan an unusual protest tomorrow downtown: A march that will end with Communion - and the destruction of participants' Bank of America cards:

During the service, Bank of America credit and debit cards will be collected in the offertory plate and destroyed, and a special prayer will be said over those who pledge to bank locally and close their accounts with Bank of America and other large banks.

The march starts at 10 a.m. at the Cathedral Church of St. Paul to Government Center, with Communion on the corner of Cambridge and Court streets.

Bishop M. Thomas Shaw, SSJE will be present to preach and bless the efforts that individuals are making to bring about economic reconciliation.

Michael tweets Facebook game company Zynga laid off its entire Boston staff today - some 50 programmers. Gameranx reports mass developer layoffs in Austin, as well, with the news timed for the Apple iPad Mini keynote, presumably to reduce the coverage.

The Swellesley Report alerts us that Roche Bros. has slapped QR codes on its seafood displays that let smartphone users "see a photo of the fishing boat, the location fished, and even a description of the fishing gear used."

For years, our own Boloco has sold a Nutella milkshake. Soon, no more. Seems Big Hazelnut objects to the use of the name, to the point of threatening legal action, so Boloco's now looking for alternative, preferably locally sourced, hazelnut spreads.

Andrew Sellars, a lawyer, explains why Boloco could actually have a case, although he allows as how it's probably not worth all the trouble - and legal fees. Still, he adds:

[W]hen I was in Boloco today (field research!) I couldn't help but see the dozens of jars of Nutella in the back, and thinking about the dozen-or-so other locations around Boston with similar stacks of Nutella jars. Those will be replaced by a competitor's product, in a chain that seems to be growing with each passing month. Not to mention the thousands of Bostonians who have heard about this case and will naturally root for the local guy; you get the feeling that this whole experience is going to leave a bitter taste in their mouths.

The Jamaica Plain Gazette explains how the builder behind the Blessed Sacrament project in Hyde Square is fighting the Home for Little Wanderers project on South Huntington Avenue.

The Globe reports.

Luke Timmerman explains why Boston is poised to overtake the Bay Area as the biotech hub of the universe - and his reasons sound a lot like the reasons why the Bay Area overtook the Boston area as the high-tech center of the world:

Success begets success and companies and innovators are drawn here by the unique concentration of companies and innovators already here - and now we've got a unique concentration of start-ups, established Big Pharma, research hospitals, Harvard and MIT. Also, everybody's piled on top of each other, especially in Kendall Square, thanks to smart zoning decisions, which is what you want in a collaborative, cross-pollinating kind of field like biotech. Plus, the Bay Area's now become too expensive for start-ups and people just getting out of college (sound familiar?). Also:

People on the West Coast sometimes like to trot out stereotypes about the sharp-elbowed competitors in Boston, how they just can't collaborate as well as us laid-back West Coasters. That's just not consistent with the Boston I've experienced. If anything, there's more of a tight-knit collaborative community in Boston than in San Francisco. There's a can-do spirit, an energy in Boston that is palpable. It will endure. Boston is reaping what it has sown for decades.

And the Rev. Gregory Groover told Charles Street AME parishioners to stop giving donations rather than risk having it fall into the hands of the bank seeking to foreclose on the church, the Bay State Banner reports.

In addition to heading up the church, Groover is also chairman of the Boston School Committee.

Ed. note: The Banner once again failed to note in its story that owner Mel Miller is on the board of directors of the bank.

Cambridge Day reports, is not amused.

The Herald reports Lowell and some of its suburbs have joined together in an economic-development push they hope will one day see the area rival Boston and Cambridge as an economic powerhouse. They've dubbed themselves Middlesex 3 because of the importance of the renovated Rte. 3.

A Newmarket Square company that makes frozen fillo pockets stuffed with vegetable and meat fillings says a supplier's paper boxes were so poorly made it lost a contract with Trader Joe's - and $1 million in profits.

In a suit filed yesterday in US District Court in Boston, Peppercorn Food Service charges Atlantic Packaging Corp. of Norwich, CT sold it crappy "ovenable" containers for a private-label line of frozen spinach pies that fell apart in Trader Joe's freezer sections:

Jalopnik reports on some vindication this week for Clay Nissan: A Norfolk Superior Court judge this week ordered the assets of two brothers seized because the judge agreed they sure seemed to have libeled the car dealership over the way it fired their sister.

Far from firing Jill Colter because she had cancer, her manager at Clay Nissan agonized over dumping her because of poor job performance that had nothing to do with her treatment, Judge Renee Dupuis wrote in an order. In fact, Clay knew when it hired Colter she had cancer and even as it was firing her, it continued to employ two other people with cancer in the same department, Dupuis wrote.

An extensive blog and Facebook campaign by the brothers cost the dealership large amounts of money in lost sales when they had no evidence to back their claims the dealership regularly fired people diagnosed with cancer, she added in ordering the brothers' assets attached in what she said was the likely case the company would win its defamation suit.

Fox Business News reports.