Medford

Orange Line riders north of Boston to face two years of periodic weekend, night bus service

adamg — Thu, 24 May 2012 14:32:11 +0000

South End Patch reports on impending bustitution north of the city to let the MBTA build the new Assembly Square stop in peace. There's no set schedule yet for the "diversions," but the T says what will start out as sporadic shutdowns will grow more frequent as the station progresses.

Bank robbers run on Dunkin'

adamg — Fri, 11 May 2012 18:56:19 +0000

Medford Patch reports a man suspected for at least two bank robberies, one in Charlestown, was arrested after a teller recognized him as they stood in line at a Medford Dunkin' Donuts a couple of days after he'd allegedly handed her a note demanding money.

Tufts rowers suspended, then unsuspended over double-entendre T-shirt

adamg — Fri, 04 May 2012 15:23:26 +0000

Tufts Daily chronicles the men's crew team, which was suspended for T-shirts reading "Check out our cox" after somebody complained that promoted "a culture of rape and sexual aggression," then unsuspended after the university president said the university did not want to infringe on "free expression" and that the real issue was that the team printed up unauthorized T shirts, not about whatever message they were sending with the slogan, and besides, the guys apologized.

The Globe also wrote about the issue, but could not bring itself to write out the word "cox," instead referring only to "a common abbreviation of the coxswain's title."

Here at ~~Phallus Daily~~ Universal Hub, of course, we long ago lost the pearls we once clutched to our chests on such occasions. Plus, in a previous job, we worked with a colleague named Cox, who reported to an editor named Dix.

Medford store held up at axepoint

adamg — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 15:35:52 +0000

Michael Moura reports a store in the Meadow Glen Mall on Mystic Valley Parkway was held up this morning by a masked man with an axe.

Court rules Tufts wasn't horsing around with the First Amendment when it barred veterinarian who owed it money from a lecture

adamg — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 19:19:01 +0000

The Supreme Judicial Court ruled today Tufts University had every right to bar the door to a lecture to a veterinarian who'd refused to pay its veterinary school for treating her horse.

The state's highest court ruled that at issue was strictly a non-paid bill, not any attempt to get at Margo Roman because she holds a different philosophy on veterinary care than her counterparts at the university veterinary school.

Scott Brown, ahead 2-1 in cash-on-hand and $13M in the bank, hilariously plays “underdog” card

Anonymous — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 23:27:17 +0000

Medford students get a charge out of new car

adamg — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 11:43:39 +0000

Inside Medford reports students at Medford Vocational Technical High School recently got some hands on experience with a plug-in Prius:

Robert Dell'Ova is teaching the Automative Technology students to be cautious when working on electric cars because they use high voltage and how to avoid being electrocuted when working on them.

Police: Car that may have been in a drag race slammed into by car going wrong way on Rte. 16 in Medford

adamg — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:14:29 +0000

State Police are investigating a particularly violent car crash around 12:30 a.m. by the Wellington T stop that sent three people to the hospital with serious injuries:

Preliminary investigation indicates that one car was traveling westbound in the eastbound lane when it collided head-on with the second car, which may have been racing at the time of the crash. Preliminary investigation further indicates that a 2004 Honda Accord driven by a 30-year-old Somerville man was going the wrong way when it collided with a 2001 Honda Civic being driven by a 23-year-old Cambridge man and carrying a 25-year-old Cambridge man as a passenger. Both drivers and the passenger were transported to Massachusetts General Hospital, where they remain this morning with serious injuries. The investigation into why the Accord’s driver was going west in the eastbound lane, and whether the Civic was involved in a race at the time of the crash, remains ongoing.

Shocker: The driver of the second car in the impromptu speed trials fled the area, State Police say.

Woman attacked near Tufts

adamg — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 21:03:28 +0000

Lanicita posts an alert from Tufts University Police that a student was knocked down and sexually assaulted around 1:15 a.m. at Stanley and College avenues in Medford. She managed to fight off her attacker.

The suspect is described as Hispanic, late teens, 5'5" to 5'7" tall, with a thin build, dark, short hair and wearing a dark hoodie.

On Thursday, another woman was similarly attacked on Holyoke Road in Porter Square in Somerville.

The Friends of Eddie Coyle, stage adaptation of classic Boston crime novel, opens Dec. 8 at Oberon

Eddie Coyle — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 11:25:39 +0000

Cambridge, Mass. — Tickets are on sale now for George V. Higgins’ The Friends of Eddie Coyle, Stickball Productions’ world premiere stage adaptation of the quintessential Boston crime novel. The production runs Dec. 8–Jan. 15 at Oberon in Harvard Square, for tickets, visit www.thefriendsofeddiecoyle.com

It is the winter of ‘69 in Boston and Eddie Coyle is a bottom of the barrel hood attempting to stay alive and out of jail among his “friends” – cops, bartenders, radical hippies, bank robbers, hit men and informants. Weeks away from a prison sentence for trucking stolen booze, Eddie’s making a few bucks supplying the guns for a rash of brazen bank heists, while looking to tip someone in for a kind word to the judge.

George V. Higgins’ classic novel has been called the “best crime novel ever written” by Elmore Leonard, and literary scholars have compared his unforgiving and realistic depiction of Boston’s underworld with the works of Dickens, Dostoevsky, and Balzac. Through dialogue quintessentially Bostonian, and the most poignant homage to Bobby Orr and the ’69-’70 Boston Bruins in literature, The Friends of Eddie Coyle has set the bar for Boston crime stories for nearly 40 years.

Delays in Green Line extension mean fewer burritos for Medford

adamg — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 12:33:41 +0000

The Medford Green Line Neighborhood Alliance posts e-mail from Boloco honcho John Pepper about the Boston Avenue Boloco:

We opened our Medford restaurant 5 years ago in great part due to the knowledge that the Green Line was "coming" and would add vitality to Boston Ave. We heard it could be 4-5 years which sounded crazy at the time. Sadly, we’ve recently decided not to renew our lease and we'll be out November 30.

The state recently announced it could be 2020 before anybody can ride the Green Line north and west of Lechmere.

Via Davis Square LiveJournal.

Redistricting Olympics

creightt — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 17:42:03 +0000

Common Cause Massachusetts is hosting a Redistricting Olympics this summer. We will be taking citizen drawn Congressional, State House, and State Senate maps all summer, evaluating them, declaring a winner, giving out prizes and submitting the winning maps to the MA Legislative Redistricting Committee for consideration.

The purpose of the redistricting Olympics is threefold: to educate the public about the steps in the redistricting process, to initiate public participation in the political arena, and to pressure the legislature to draw the districts so that the citizens are appropriately represented.

Help show the legislature that redistricting is about our interests, not theirs. By participating in our redistricting Olympics and learning how to draw your own fair districts, you can acquire the tools you need to expose attempts by public officials to politicize the state’s new legislative maps.

For more information check out and/or email us at .

Participate in our democracy!

Tip: Next time a Boston team wins it all, drive to Lowell to get the train to the parade

adamg — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 10:54:52 +0000

Sure, the T proved Saturday it has lots of capacity on commuter rail, carrying almost twice as many people to and from the parade as it does on a normal workday. But that was of little solace to people waiting at "inner" stops closer to Boston, who watched full train after full train just whiz right by them without stopping. Among them: Charley on the MTA, who describes his experience at West Medford:

At 10am a train whizzed by, blowing its horn, didn't stop.

Another train whizzed by, blowing its horn, didn't stop.

The electronic message board said there was a train leaving north Billerica. We waited. Train #3 whizzed by, blowing its horn, didn't stop.

I called the MBTA: the person I talked to had no idea which trains would stop or when – indicating that there had been no communication between the conductor and customer service.

Finally at 10:45am, the message board said a train was leaving Winchester. At 11am, we were on the train, having had been there since 9:20.

The Orange Line is melting in the dark? Someone left the track out in the rain?

adamg — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 21:38:45 +0000

An Orange Line problem Ray Davies would love. Photo by MBTA.

A "heat kink" in the tracks near Malden (above) is wreaking all sorts of havoc on the Orange Line this afternoon, forcing Oak Grove-bound riders onto buses at Wellington - which is also causing problems on the bus lines from which buses have been diverted to shuttle subway riders.

Red Line riders heading to Alewife are faring no better due to a dead train at Harvard.

From somewhere in the bowels of the Orange Line, OwenWilsonsNose at first tweeted:

Usually I'd be pissed, but B's won the cup last night, can't complain!

But that was before he actually tried getting on one of those shuttle buses:

Neve rmind, line for the bus is atrocious. I hate you, MBTA.

Dead Red. Photo by Tammytantrum.

Police: Man sexually assaults T worker trying to help him with his CharlieCard at Wellington

adamg — Thu, 26 May 2011 18:36:42 +0000

MBTA Transit Police charge Michael Hutt of Medford lured a female T worker out of the customer-service booth at the Wellington Orange Line stop on the pretext of needing help adding value to his CharlieCard last night, then rubbed her back and grabbed her breast.

Hutt, 58, was charged with indecent assault and battery and assault and battery on a public employee following the 7 p.m. incident.

According to a police report, when the worker came out of the booth, Hutt handed her a CharlieCard and $2. As she walked over to the CharlieCard machines, police say, he began rubbing her back. She told him to stop that, added the $2 to his card, then handed him his card:

When the suspect walked through the gates, he stopped, reversed himself and physically grabbed the victim by the right breast, before continuing past the entry gates.

Last Thursday, another man was charged with open and gross lewdness after he allegedly exposed himself to two women at the station busway.

Innocent, etc.