West Roxbury

The Greek International Food Market at Washington and Grove streets in West Roxbury goes before the Boston Licensing Board next Wednesday to request a license to sell beer and wine. It's across the street from Dedham Line Liquors.

Also going before the board next week: Sugar in Roslindale, seeking a license to sell beer and wine with its food.

Potentially at issue for both places: Whether the board has any licenses to dole out. The number of liquor licenses in Boston is limited by the state legislature; over the past two years, the board has denied a number of license requests because none were available at the time.

Licensing hearings start at 10 a.m. in Room 801 at City Hall.

Billings reports it was hit by a car around noon on Mt. Vernon Street, and that for awhile, it was just lying on somebody's lawn with its leg up, because police who responded said there was nothing they could do. It didn't appear to be there this evening, so with any luck it was either put out of its misery or taken somewhere for care.

Residents had been pleading with the city for more than a week to do something about the animal, which seemed completely at ease around homes during the day, but city officials said all they could do was notify state environmental officials.

The la-di-da coyote of West Roxbury observed in action:

In this video, note that the guy with the camera is not letting his young son investigate the snow because of the coyote.

The mayor's office tweeted tonight that state Environmental Police, who are responsible for coyote corralling, have been notified.

Another West Roxbury resident takes note of the daytime-roaming coyote that seems completely at ease with modern civilization:

This coyote has been hanging around for a couple weeks. It is completely unafraid of humans and is out during the day. This makes me think that there is something wrong with it. This photo was taken in my neighborhood at the corner of Church and Rendall.

Earlier:
Wily coyote evades police capture in West Roxbury.

A Roxbury 14-year-old who was on probation for one beating and robbery and awaiting trial for another similar case, was arrested this morning after alert workers at the West Roxbury Education Complex spotted him trying to sneak in a side entrance, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports.

When the workers stopped the teen, not named because of his age, they found a gun on him, prosecutors said, specifically, a Smith & Wesson .38 loaded with five rounds of ammunition.

Meira Levinson of the Arborway explains the ice problem she and other parkway residents have.

MBTA officials told a City Council committee today they will commit resources this winter to shovel out bus stops in Boston - and the connections to the sidewalks behind them.

At a hearing called by City Councilor Matt O'Malley (West Roxbury, Jamaica Plain), a T official said the authority will have at least 72 people dedicated to keeping bus stops clear during and after storms - with some additional help from more than 200 subway-station workers. The T is not technically responsible for bus-stop clearing, but pitched in this past winter as storm after storm left stops inaccessible to riders.

Meanwhile, the state Department of Conservation and Recreation says it is considering snowplows that push to the left instead of the right for the populated parkways that pass through Boston, such as the Arborway, the Jamaicaway and the VFW Parkway.

Boston Police report arresting a West Roxbury teen yesterday on charges he helped steal two gorilla suits from the IParty store on VFW Parkway.

Police say the kid was one of four who grabbed the suits, valued at $100 apiece. Store workers in turn grabbed one of the four; workers somehow convinced the kid to call the guy with the suits and get him to come back. The other two made good their escape.

West Roxbury Patch reports on a candidates' forum at the Deutsches Altenheim.

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.

A police officer assigned to track down a coyote spotted this morning on Pelton Street off the West Roxbury Parkway found the canine, but the animal decided not to wait around for Animal Control and escaped into the woods around the water towers on Bellevue Hill.

At least at the West Roxbury Home Depot, 80-degree temperatures on this Columbus Day weekend (and Thanksgiving) be damned.

Thomas McCann, 27, was sentenced to 18 months in jail today for bashing a man's head in with a tire iron at a party he crashed in West Roxbury last year, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports.

Alex Jones spotted this coyote crossing right in front of the West Roxbury police station last night.

City Councilor Ayanna Pressley posted a friend's photo of the scene on one Jamaica Plain street this morning.

Meanwhile, a tree fell on the house at 739 VFW Parkway in West Roxbury, damaging it enough firefighters were worried it would collapse.

A tree also crashed into a house at 6 Oak Pl. in Hyde Park, where firefighters summoned an ambulance for an elderly resident having breathing problems.

Bruegger's, which sells bagels in the Village of Chestnut Hill mall on VFW Parkway, is converting the store next door into a Timothy's Cafe, fair-trade coffee, baked goods and sandwiches.

Bruegger's bought the chain from its Canadian founders and plans to expand it across the US. The West Roxbury outlet will be either the second or third Timothy's in the US.

There's currently one Starbucks in West Roxbury, but on the other side of the neighborhood, by Roche Bros. on Centre Street.

I was not ready to be confronted with this when I walked into the West Roxbury Shaw's yesterday (it was right at one of the entrances). To paraphrase our own Suldog, "Labor Day comes first!"

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!

The Zoning Board of Appeals holds a hearing on Aug. 9 on plans by TD Bank to tear down the Zoots dry cleaners at 1833 Centre St. and turn it into a bank with drive-thru ATMs. It will be right next to a Bank of America branch and across the street from a Sovereign.

Inexplicably, Zoots managed to replace a bank at that location on Centre a number of years ago.

Also on Centre and Spring streets: Peoples Federal Savings, Hyde Park Savings, Co-operative Bank, Energy Credit Union, City of Boston Credit Union, Brookline Bank, Mt. Washington Bank, Eastern Bank, Citizens Bank and a Well Fargo mortgage office.

Liz Dolin recounts her time at the JP Licks in West Roxbury last night with the 3-year-old kid of some woman she'd never met. She reports both had a grand time.

It would have been all too easy for J's mom to admonish her child to not bother the solitary woman eating her ice cream that evening. Instead, she encouraged her child to interact with a stranger, albeit under her watchful eye.

We are teaching our children, heck we even behave ourselves, that strangers are not to be trusted. On a Saturday evening, a child was taught to talk to a stranger and that it would be okay

The Boston Public Health Commission reports the latest sampling of mosquitoes shows West Nile Virus in one sample taken in Dorchester and three in West Roxbury - following the detection of the virus in other West Roxbury locations a few days earlier.

To date, nobody has been diagnosed with the mosquito-borne virus, which typically does not seriously affect otherwise healthy individuals, the commission says.

West Roxbury Patch reports a Joyce Kilmer Road homeowner found what could be a human skull today while renovating his basement.

The Boston Public Health Commission reports the year's first detection of mosquitoes carrying West Nile Virus, in West Roxbury. No human cases have yet been diagnosed.

The disease generally poses little threat to people with healthy immune systems, but officials say people should take the usual steps - use insect repellent outdoors, especially dusk to dawn, and wear pants and tops with long sleeves. Also, empty those gutters, get rid of old tires and turn over all those old flower pots. The city has started applying larvacide to its catch basins.

Naked Pizza, an all natural pizza chain with outlets in Brookline and Brighton, today asked its Twitter followers:

Can we thrive in JP through delivery from West Roxbury?

Ed. note from somebody halfway between JP and West Roxbury: No. West Roxbury already has 12 gazillion real pizza places (and a Papa John's). JP just seems too far away for delivery.

In October, 1921, the Boston Fire Department's Engine 30 in West Roxbury officially and finally switched from horses to a truck. Herald-Traveler photographer Leslie Jones was there to watch the horses leave the station for the last time. From the Boston Public Library's fire department collection.

Centre Street regulars will notice that one thing hasn't changed: The firehouse itself, still home to Engine 30 (and Ladder 25).

Posted under this Creative Commons license.

The Herald reports the West Roxbury man who chased a pizza delivery guy with a gun the other day is a firearms instructor for the NRA.