West Roxbury

Why can't we have things like this now?

From a discussion of the Washington Street trolley and the car barns that sat where the Domino's by the parkway is now.

No doubt the driver of this $40,000 Lexus, spotted on VFW Parkway in West Roxbury the other day, had some old shmatte on.

The Globe reports.

Pesky bankruptcy and all that. But the West Roxbury Upper Crust remains open - it's a franchise owned by a West Roxbury family, not the battlin' chain owners.

Conley School in Roslindale around 7:30 a.m.

Polls opened in Boston this morning with long lines of waiting voters. What are you seeing when you vote? Add a comment.

Wendell Willkie campaigns in Quincy in 1940.

West Roxbury celebrates tomorrow today with its traditional Truman Rally in the municipal parking lot at Centre and Hastings streets (right across from the mural of James Michael Curley and Dapper O'Neil).

State Rep. Ed Coppinger and City Councilor Matt O'Malley worked with the Harry S Truman Society to revive the longstanding West Roxbury tradition, in which candidates from both parties get one last chance to speak their piece before voters speak theirs. Elizabeth Warren is confirmed; Scott Brown isn't.

The rally starts at 7 p.m.

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

Rox Diner, 1881 Centre St. in West Roxbury, goes before the Boston Licensing Board next Wednesday for permission to offer beer and wine.

Rox Diner, which grew out of a small breakfast-and-lunch place called Auntie Bea's, already serves beer and wine with dinner at its Newtonville location.

A power line came down on Powell Street in West Roxbury, off Spring, around 10 p.m., knocking out power in the area of Spring and Baker, as far south as the Deutsches Altenheim.

The NStar outage map is beginning to light up, although all of the outages so far are small (exactly one customer in Newton).

Christopher photographed the scene in the water aisle at the Waltham Shaw's on Saturday night.

At the Dedham Star, a manager went on the PA: "Attention shoppers, get all your power-outage needs at the front of the store." At the front of the store was a table with votive candles, cans of propane, empty gasoline containers, batteries. pink umbrellas, "12-inch Mini-Quick disposable grills," and those fire-starter wand gun things.

Daisy reports:

The clerk at Blanchards in West Roxbury assured customers that they'd be open during the storm.

The Boston Licensing Board today ordered the Burger King on VFW Parkway to shut for an additional two days after a police detective found it open on the first day it was supposed to be shut as two-day punishment for staying open late without permission.

On a trip to the West Roxbury Shaw's this afternoon, Alex Jones noticed a rather precariously parked Jeep. Jones reports he happened to be there when the driver came out; guy explained, "it was just something I always wanted to do."

Copyright Alex Jones.

Timothy's on VFW Parkway recently shut down and took all its coffee with it. The table area's still open to customers from the neighboring Bruegger's, where a cashier said the Canadian-based Timothy's (which has nothing to do with Tim Horton's) was an experiment that just didn't bring in enough customers. It opened only a year ago.

Frosty, is that you?

Wicked Sharp (is that a good Boston name or what?) uses discarded ice from the Roche skating rink on VFW Parkway to create snowmen outside their store on Centre Street in West Roxbury.

Citizens Connect has several reports of tree damage from last night's storm, including this tree on wires on Ansonia Road in West Roxbury and this snapped tree on wires off Clarendon Street in the South End.

Among the press types who rushed to West Roxbury yesterday on word of a possibly bad crash involving a police cruiser was Alex Jones, a freelancer who specializes in "spot news" (i.e., things like car crashes). He tweets:

Had a @BostonPolice officer threaten to take my cameras for photographing in a public space today w/o his permission.

Naturally, he took the guy's photo.

BPD Superintendent in Chief Daniel Linskey tweeted this morning he will review the situation.

You may recall how, last summer, a federal appeals court said people have the right to photograph police in public places, as long as they're not interfering with the police - after which the city paid out $170,000 to settle a lawsuit by a lawyer arrested on the Common for photographing officers making an arrest there.

Crashed cruiser. Photo by Christian O'Brien.

An alleged gun assault on an off-duty police officer on the VFW Parkway across from the West Roxbury Education Complex entrance this morning led to a massive police response followed a few minutes later by a crash at VFW Parkway and LaGrange Street.

Around 10:15 a.m., an off-duty officer called for help. Responding officers quickly responded, found the two teens who might have pointed a gun at him and detained them. A few minutes after the initial call, a cruiser collided with another vehicle in the intersection.

Police then shut the parkway to divert traffic around the crash scene. In addition to the officer, at least one other person was injured in the crash.

SUV the cruiser collided with in the background. Photo by Christian O'Brien.

Fauxyote

We were headed south on the VFW Parkway the other day when, whoa, was that a coyote hanging out by the VA Hospital? We did a quick uey, pulled into the parking lot and discovered that, no, it was not a real coyote, just a plastic replica of one. Hokay.

Compare to this photo of a real coyote, taken on Friday in the Arboretum.

AlertNewEngland tweets the idea is to try to scare geese away - like those fake owls you can get to scare pigeons off your roof. Lin Dolin tweets the fauxyotes work just as well as the bogus owls - geese may be stupid, but they're not that stupid:

There was one where used to work. Geese quickly figured it was fake.

Only since there aren't any overpasses there, the tractor-trailer took out a couple of telephone poles and wires near the Beethoven School around 2:15 p.m. Police blocked southbound traffic at West Boundary Road and northbound traffic at Grove Street until the situation could be cleared.

Earlier:
In Hyde Park, trucks get jammed between buildings, not under bridges.

It's at the Home Depot in West Roxbury.

Chris Casey spotted this sparkly new District A-1 Boston Police cruiser today on Centre Street in West Roxbury, wonders why BPD couldn't find a dealer closer than New York to buy them from.

The Globe reports that City Councilor Matt O'Malley (West Roxbury, Jamaica Plain) is going to hold jogging treks that double as office hours - lace up and put your questions to him as you jog around one of the neighborhoods. He says he's willing to consider "brisk walks" as well.

West Roxbury Patch reports police had to be called after a man annoyed with his neighbor's retaining wall on Grove Street began digging a trench along the wall - on his neighbor's property.

Jenna Cramer, the assistant principal at the Joyce Kilmer, is now the principal, replacing Jerome Doherty, who remains in some sort of administrative limbo in which he has no position after being yanked from the Kilmer for reasons that have not been made public.

The Globe reports a teacher at the Joyce Kilmer School is under investigation by police and school and state child-protection officials for "inappropriate contact with students" and that the school's principal has been removed from his position.

The Globe says Superintendent Carol Johnson announced the news - along with news that the principal at the Frederick Middle School in Dorchester has been put on paid leave for possible "inappropriate" use of funds - on Friday night, the traditional time for announcing bad news.

Overheard in West Roxbury Y men's locker room among two retirement-age guys:

• 1: You still going to Egypt?
• 2: Yeah, sure.
• 1: I wouldn't go, even if it was free.
• 2: You're afraid of Egypt but you go to Dorchester?