The Herald reports residents near a proposed gym that originally intended to help active gang members turn their lives around through weightlifting vow to fight the place even though the owner now says he'll mostly serve Southie kids instead of busing in people from other parts of the city. Dude never talked to neighbors about his plans until after they found out about them somehow, and neighbors quoted by the Herald say they can't trust him.

They ran the dog hotel out of town (well, sort of; it moved to the Black Falcon pier).

Jeff Tamagini took in the Red Bull cliff-diving tourney, in which participants jumped off a board extending out from the roof of the ICA down into Boston Harbor 85 feet below. Unlike other dives into the harbor, this had the blessings of city officials.

Copyright Jeff Tamagini. Tagged as universalhub on Flickr.

Call it Mini-Aquapocalypse: Many Belmont residents were without water today due to multiple water-main breaks across town.

Belmont resident Rob Sama reports on a conversation with a guy working on the main down the street from his house this afternoon:

Apparently the MWRA has a water pressure spike of 20%!!! This spike has caused blow outs all over the place. He thought there were like three or four on my street alone. I asked him how many people were without water, and he said he worked for a private contractor and wasn’t sure. But he had no idea as to when they’d be done with repairs. He said they were literally fabricating parts for the water mains as they went, because these pipes were so old nobody made parts for them any more. Sounded like a real cluster fuck.

Apparently, Michael Graham thinks a Texas Starbucks franchise was within its rights to fire a woman with dwarfism. Dan Kennedy wants to know just what went down on a Graham segment on 96.9 yesterday for which City Councilor Felix Arroyo was a guest:

Councilor Arroyo, you appeared on Michael Graham's show yesterday while Graham and his fellow guest Rob Eno were making fun of people with dwarfism. What do you have to say about that? Will you be issuing a statement? Will you appear again? Will you demand that WTKK post the audio on its website so that we can judge whether your own comments were appropriate or not? Thank you.

Arroyo responds (in the same discussion):

I was the only who disagreed with the woman being fired because of her dwarfism. I believe Starbucks should have found work she could have performed.Should I be invited, I will appear on the program again. Our democracy depends on deferring opinions in debate. If liberals cede talk radio to conservatives, then only one side gets heard. We can’t allow one ideology to dominate the airwaves.

He adds he wants the station to post a copy of the segment.