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Owner of Beacon Hill Pub to ditch the bar in exchange for an addition with three new apartments

The Zoning Board of Appeal this week granted the owners of the Beacon Hill Pub on Charles Street for a rear addition that will let them add three new apartments to the six that already sit in the building.

In exchange for that, the real-estate investors who own the pub - along with a couple of other bars in Boston - agreed to class up the joint by eliminating the current bar and turning the whole first floor into the sort of fine-dining experience Beacon Hill residents have come to expect on their main street.

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Comments

in fact it sucks.

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And how are we supposed to know that we're in Beacon Hill, let alone Charles St. if the BHP isn't there? Won't somebody think of the [Suffolk University] children?

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These developers are known to buy property in East Boston and increase the units for a quick flip, using the help of an Eastie lawyer who happens to be employed by their company and with a little help from city of Boston political connections they usually get what they want to maximize their profit margin.

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Upside - No more Guinness in a plastic cup.

Downside - No more NBA Hoops game swallowing quarters like a fat kid eating Skittles.

So - BHP, TC's, Daisy's and others all gone from downtown. Nice job. Hope your Yemeni / New Zealand fusion restaurant can make it over a place which was generally a lot of fun.

It is going to be interesting watching as storefronts on Charles Street and other streets get repopulated with retail places that might swing a more 70's / 80's practical urban mix and not all be a throw pillow / $300 sweaters for kids cluster of shops.

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Hanging out with some friends on a Summer afternoon, drinking cheap beer and playing darts with some guy who just been released from the Charles Street jail. Now that I'm an old man, all the old man bars I planned to be a regular in are gone or are going away.

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Reading your post made me really want to play darts. I'm very much looking forward to when I can belly up to a bar and shoot darts with friends.

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Still has a dart board. You might give puncture wounds to a few in the required distance to throw but when they reopen, hopefully the board will still be there.

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A few bars in Dot still have dart boards too (well, they did last February - we'll see when they're able to open again) 12 Bens has the two in the side room.

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Biddy Early's has one too

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Now I miss Biddy's too. Not sure what I miss more Biddy's, Sam LaGrassa or Chacarero. I have to get back in town and out of this house.

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Bumped into him the other day. He is holding on. The staff is really, really reduced. He could use some business. I gave him some. Best I can do.

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a few there a buncha times in my younger, poorer days. I'm truly sorry to see the "Star Wars bar" go, even if I weren't a regular. The dim, grimy atmosphere of these old places is irreproducible: once they're gone, their ineffable, ancient whiff of a faded demimonde is lost forever: see countless great ol' buckets-of-blood that have vanished from every Boston, Cambridge, Somerville and even Brookline neighborhood over the last 30 years.

My personal pain: the Waltham Tavern in the South End, a Mafia-operated holdover from the neighborhood's grittier days that I lived nearby and got to enjoy for a few years before Sonny Baiona's drug-dealing, illegal sports book and loan-sharking caught up with him: https://www.dea.gov/sites/default/files/divisions/bos/2006/boston011706a... . He was a stone-cold murderous, scary fuck even as an elderly man: glad I didn't cross paths with him often: https://mcslimjb.blogspot.com/2009/04/lesson-in-workforce-management-fro... .

The Quencher Tavern is another humble, true dive bar with singular local atmosphere that I miss from my City Point days: it had big-reservoir shot dispensers of Jägermeister and zambuca. I once missed most of a Pats playoff game I went there to see because the heartbroken granny on the next stool needed a sympathetic ear and a few pints spotted for her due to her troubles with an opioid-addicted grandson. Sic transit gloria.

Nevertheless, a Yemeni / New Zealand restaurant sounds awesome. It's not a zero-sum game. Occasionally, the change is even salutary. The B-Side Lounge -- which was Ground Zero for the revival of serious, pre-Prohibition craft bartending here, spurring a revolution in our bar scene that has reverberated brilliantly for over 20 years -- replaced the Winsor Tap, a grotty shithole of a drug bar. More examples: http://mcslimjb.blogspot.com/2010/09/from-archives-my-dirty-secret-i-lik...

The real threat to our scene, both pre- and post-pandemic, is not quirky, independently-owned restaurants working obscure traditional cuisines. It's creeping chainification, the near-impossibility of talented, creative would-be restaurateurs and bar operators to strike out on their own here thanks to gentrified rents, shitty public transportation for their staffs, and insane liquor-license costs, and the resulting irresistible lure of cashing out and retiring to the historic operators.

Please don't make it about Old Man Bar vs. non-cookie-cutter indie. They're allies. Deep-pocketed national chains, with all their middlebrow uniformity and enervating mediocrity, are the real enemies of a vibrant, diverse, compelling dining and drinking culture here. Support your local indies if you don't want Boston to turn into Fort Lauderdale with better oysters.

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The creepy one that said "Pool Table" with "Ladies Invited" just below it?

That is a museum piece as was the paneling from the pre-1995 Franklin Cafe.

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So well said

. Now that I'm an old man, all the old man bars I planned to be a regular in are gone or are going away

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When this group bought up the few good dive bars left in Boston. I’m glad they’re still finding new ways to cater to super rich people around here.

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Normally I am all for assigning blame for developers but when the other party is Beacon Hill residents, well, I'm willing to call it a draw.

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The luxury bubble will burst . It’s simple a matter of when.

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Now you know about when I used to go there.

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It was *ahem* awhile ago, but I think I remember a sign advertising PBR tall bottles for either $1.50 or $1.75.

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Now has 3 kids in college. I know him. He's doing alright. Great guy.

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and 10 cent hot dogs on Sundays back in the Father's Three days

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