a strikingly decent use for the marquee tag for once

[spatch]

The scrolling LED sign by the fare gates at South Station used to helpfully tell you the time, which was useful when you were coming up the escalator from the platforms below and your cellphone doesn't like telling you the time if it can't get a signal ("Hey, if I can't get my signal, you ain't getting your time.") However, since Thursday (at least) it has been replaced with a scrolling message, which I shall attempt to reproduce verbatim below:

<--- Silver Line boards donwstairs

"Did you know that sign's got a spelling error on it?" I asked one of the gate attendants on Thursday. She took a look, read the sign as it scrolled by, and snorted.

"Figures," she said.

We're all in this together.

Hey, have some pictures from this weekend and last:

Cold March in Boston Snow and statuary and some kind of metal thing I don't know what

Comments

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

I've never been to that Bowdoin T stop in all my years in Boston. Always vaguely wondered what was there.

[spatch]

I've been only once, and that was in 1998 and it was solely to see both Ends Of The Blue Line. I had to get off the train and wait on the platform until it screeched its way around the turnaround loop.

Other than that, I'm usually occupied when the station is open, so I have no reason to go down and say hi. But maybe I should at some point and TAK MOR PICTUERS.

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

What is above ground that the stop services? I don't even know what neighborhood it is.

[spatch]

Oh, Bowdoin Square is just a little further down Cambridge Street from Government Center. It's up at the northern end of the big brick wasteland that passes for City Hall Plaza. Less than a 5-minute walk, really.

So it pretty much services the Verizon building and the other major offices around.

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

Oh, it's near the Cee-ment Prairie. I hate being on that thing except when there's a concert there (which there usually isn't.) I wonder if it's original purpose was for public executions? Gallows would look right in place up there.

[spatch]

The primary bulk of Government Center's wasteland and the 1-2-3 Center Plaza used to be a bustling, thriving neighborhood called Scollay Square. Was pretty much Boston's version of the Barbary Coast, full of dives, burlesque houses and hotels where politicians could either revel or be publically scandalized. Sailors would come up from the Naval Yard in the North End (there was a thriving tattoo and dentistry business in the square), drink at the bars, watch the ladies at the Old Howard theatre, that sort of thing. The Old Howard was also a favorite among Harvard students; legend has it an ardent young John F. Kennedy tried proposing to one of the dancers, but Dad put the kibosh on that.

The city finally shut the Old Howard down in 1953. Then plans were announced to completely level Scollay and Adams Squares to make way for Government Center; a group tried to start a movement to keep the Old Howard as a protected landmark, but it fell victim to a mysterious fire in 1961. Mysterious because gosh, as soon as the embers died down, the city had rushed right in with the bulldozers and wrecking ball.

Lots of other places are now lost to time -- the Crawford House, the Olympia Theater, the office where Alexander Graham Bell made his first telephone call to Watson. The "Sears Crescent" building, the one with the giant teakettle in front of the Starbucks, is one of the few Scollay Square buildings that was spared. It pretty much formed the southern edge of the area.

If you notice a book called "Always Something Doing" go and read it. It's very entertaining and contains quite a bit of personal reminiscing from some of the burlesque dancers, including Sally Rand (of the infamous Fan Dance) and the Old Howard's favorite, Ann Corio.

[juldea.livejournal.com]

I read "Ayn Rand" instead of "Sally Rand."

That is all.

[spatch]

What would the Moral Objectivism Striptease be like?


OH, BITSY?

[juldea.livejournal.com]

Apparently Lunacon had as part of their programming track three years ago a panel that involved both Ann Rice and Ayn Rand in the title. It made my eyes water in either beauty or pain, I'm not sure which. Perhaps painful beauty.

[spatch]

The world is a terrible yet wonderfu-- nah, it's just a terrible place.

[ron_newman]

And if you can't find the book, take a look at the author's extensive Scollay Square web site.

[scout1222.livejournal.com]

The snort and "figures" would be my exact response for my employer. Every damn sign that gets posted has something wrong with it.

[mhaille.livejournal.com]

Hey, you should report that under the "See Something, Say Something" program. Could be a coded message to terrorists.

(They're spending their mooninite money to beef it up. Surely I cannot be the only person clutching her head in pain.)

[spatch]

Yeah, I saw that news article too today. My first thought was "Yeah, and look how well that turned out!"

Also, there's an ad they're running on the T where a superimposed woman is looking slightly askance at a Mysterious Square Package Undeneath A Bench.

I so want to go up to every ad I find and draw a little Mooninite on each Mysterious Square Package.

EVERYBODY SHOULD.

[mhaille.livejournal.com]

I saw those when I was in town. I nearly did.