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]

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.