When do they change the name to Downtown Collection?

That must be what makes Times Square so appealing. The conformity of signage and lack of "carte blanche"

I love the comments in the articles. Especially the Herald's "related" article on Truancy.

The proposed changes would set maximum sizes for new signs and their lettering, and would ban several sign types and all flags except for the U.S. flag.

Store flags, for one, have been around since the turn of the 20th century. How terrible to want to do away with them.

The last thing we need is for Downtown Crossing to turn into another Newbury Street with its strictly controlled upscale aesthetics and neighborhood busybodies with nothing better to do than to wage war against newspaper boxes and sandwich boards.

Geez.

When do they change the name to Downtown Collection?

When all the stores close because nobody wants to come into the city to get yet another Plaza Generica, there will be plenty of foreclosures and collection activity.

This is terrible, lets take away the one last area in the downtown area with even a tiny bit of character. Does the BRA even realize that Boston is a City?

I think I pulled a muscle laughing at these two paragraphs from the globe article:

Students are known to move from one corner to the next. The management company that runs the Food Court on Washington Street has resorted to blasting classical music to annoy and eventually repel teenagers who like more modern music. Other businesses simply ask teenagers to move, and they welcome the police presence.

Oh those kids with their rock and roll and their hippity hoppity!

Maureen White, a 61-year-old from Connecticut, recently returned to the area where her mother worked on Summer Street decades ago, but the businesses she recalled were no longer there. She thought of heading to the corner were she used to buy muffins, but a friend advised her not to stray from the main road. "Hold your pocketbook like this, walk fast, and turn your rings around," the friend told her.

Oh for the love of crepes it's not Detroit. I walk through here every day and sure, the roving teenagers can be intimidating at times but turn your rings around? Don't stray from the main road? Please. Go back to Norwood and Needham and walk around with your hundred dollar bills flapping out of your pockets.

does anyone remember stairway to heaven? i think it was on bromfield? dtc was a lively exciting place back in the 80's. there was always the element of danger.its where all the kids from all the different sections of the city encountered each other.i do remember buying fireworks in alleys in chinatown. the trick was to not get mugged by the chinese kids.they would steal the fireworks back. we figured it out after a while and would go in groups.i remember the strawberries on washington with that crazy elevator at the back.i got in that elevator with some scary characters.never sure if you'd make it to the top floor. stairway to heaven was the place to buy iron maiden tshirts and feathered roach clips.the last few times i walked around down there it felt like it had lost it soul.dont even get me started about harvard square!