CAPTION: Anindividual rummages through the trash on Boylston Street near Old South Church.
CREDIT: Jamie Fairstone



“Once the weather starts breaking, the calls start coming in,” said District 4 Community Service Coordinator Carolyn MacNeil.

She’s referring to the 911 calls from Back Bay business owners and shopkeepers who worry about the proliferation of homeless people and panhandlers on the streets and alleys and want help dealing with them.

Tom Brennan of C. Talanian Realty Co. Inc. called homelessness one of the biggest problems in the Back Bay. Carol Sapoznik of Crate & Barrel is dismayed at the activities of the homeless living in the alley behind the Boylston Street store.

“It’s a social problem,” said Officer MacNeil, “and a vexing one, with no easy answers.”

The Back Bay Association estimates that over the past five years, the number of panhandlers and people living on the streets has almost doubled. The association has been working with the Boston Police Department and Boston’s Emergency Shelter Commission to deal with the increasing numbers, which come at a time when the services to support such individuals have been significantly cut, said President Meg Mainzer-Cohen.

The cutback in state funding for substance abuse detoxification and long term residential treatment facilities was identified as the cause of the problem by both Officer MacNeil and Jim Green, director of the Emergency Shelter Commission, whose mission is to coordinate a safety net of services for Boston’s homeless and others in need of food assistance.
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We share the same concerns [as the business owners] and would like to be a city with no homeless,” said Green. “But as long as we have inadequate resources, we are going to keep having this problem,” said Green. “If you cut detox and residential treatment facilities, that’s a recipe for troubled people living in alleys.”

The city provides for overflow beds in the shelters from November through April, according to Green, but closes them in late spring. At that time, the number of beds to house the homeless drops from 800 to 1,000 to 200 to 250. “But homeless people do not become water resistant, and they still have a need for shelter in the warm weather,” said Green.

With the shortage of beds, increase in transiency and many homeless choosing to remain outside in the warmer weather, the numbers on Back Bay streets and alleys keeps increasing, said Green. They are also shuffled from one neighborhood to another; around the fourth of July, for example, the homeless are displaced by the state from the Esplanade and so move elsewhere. “We are trying to get every aspect of the community talking together,” said Green.

Which is just what Officer MacNeil is doing. Her department works with the community associations, shelters such as the Pine Street Inn, and other law enforcement groups to share information and coordinate efforts.

MacNeil said that in addition to the increase in numbers, during the last nine months the police have been seeing more aggressive, threatening individuals than they have seen before. “We do not know where they are coming from,” she said, “but they are doing more aggressive panhandling.”

When the police get reports about homeless individuals, they address the problem by stepping up the walking beat and dispersing them. They have particularly focused on the Dartmouth Street area between Boylston and Newbury streets this spring, and have asked storeowners to put up no loitering and no trespassing signs in the alleys so that the police can arrest vagrants if necessary.

“But we can’t arrest everyone—we have to prioritize—we don’t have resources to jail everyone,” said MacNeil. “There are just not enough cells.” If someone is clearly intoxicated, they are transported to the Boston Medical Center. Others are brought to shelters. Most are just scattered.

The alleys are regularly patrolled because frequent illegal activities take place there. “The homeless think alleys are far out of the way, and that they are not bothering anyone,” said Green. “But in an intimate city like this, there is no place they’re not bothering anyone.”

credit: Katie Garypie
caption: Eric Tucker.




While thousands of people turn out for the Boston Pops Fireworks Spectacular each year, few ever get to see where the real action takes place—on a barge in the middle of the Charles River.

On that barge is Eric Tucker, choreographer and show designer for Pyro Spectaculars, and man that puts it all together. This was his fifth year in charge of the country’s largest single-position fireworks event. Every precaution is taken to make sure the show goes on without a hitch, he said.

“There’s only a few rules for the show,” Tucker said. “Protect the public, protect ourselves, and then do the show.”

Floating on four connected barges, two that are 250-feet long, one at 120-feet, and another at 100-feet, are 10,000 fireworks ready to light up the sky. When the fireworks are detonated, only six people remain on the barge, safely hidden in a metal container near the rear.

The pyrotechnic team works hard, though, to make sure the audience only sees the fireworks. They work 12 to 14 hour days and 20 hours on the 4th of July. With extensive preparation time and four days needed to tear it down, the whole process takes almost two weeks. All for a show that lasts just over 22 minutes.

Tucker said this year’s show featured new fireworks from Portugal and Spain that “have never seen this side of the pond,” and others with new shades of cyan, magenta and aqua. He said attentive spectators could tell which fireworks came from which countries. For example, Italian fireworks are known for their elaborate designs while Portuguese fireworks use slow rhythmic patterns of light and noise.

This year’s spectacular showcased fireworks from Spain, Portugal, Italy, United States, China and Taiwan. Tucker’s favorite part of this year’s show was during the song “You’re Beautiful” by James Blunt, when fireworks were set off that look like “you’re pouring gold lamé out of a pitcher.”

With high expectations, Tucker said the show is exciting for both the crew and audience. “Boston is the crown jewel,” he said. “Everybody in the business wants this show.”

credit: Marco Baldassarre
caption: These photos show an MFA sign before and after cleaning.

Taggers beware, there’s a new group in town working hard to keep Back Bay graffiti-free.

The Graffiti NABBers, an offshoot of the Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay’s crime committee, is a 15-person group that has begun turning the tide against graffiti and other forms of defacement. Armed with a bucket of supplies that includes latex gloves, special graffiti removal formula, touch-up paint and utility scrapes, the small group is making big changes.

“It really is quite exhilarating to clean up some of this signage,” said Anne Swanson, chair of NABB’s crime prevention committee. “We’ve already removed thousands of stickers, and it makes a huge difference.”

The group targets not only graffiti, but stickers obstructing signs and markings on mailboxes. One notable site is a railing near the Virgin Megastore at the end of Newbury Street. “We have members who are on their way to dinner parties and bring their scrapers to peel off stickers,” Swanson said.

She said once her group got the ball rolling, others followed suit. She particularly remembers cleaning stickers off a firebox on Newbury Street, which drew attention from the local fire department which promptly repainted them as well as other fireboxes on Marlborough and Beacon Streets. The same attention has been given by the postal service, which repainted or replaced several mailboxes after stickers were removed.

At the NABBer’s forefront is a man named Marco Baldassarre, a resident of Fenway, who has cleaned up graffiti there along with his friend Erica Mattison. The two attended NABB’s graffiti forum earlier this year and offered advice and tips on how to clean. They soon became the most active members in the Back Bay clean-up.

“We spoke about how to preserve the integrity of a neighborhood,” Baldassarre said. “It’s something so simple that can change a street.”

They have started on Newbury Street and plan to meet every Saturday morning for the next four to six weeks to clean Newbury, Arlington and Boylston streets. Baldassarre said anyone can participate. “We are from all walks of life, from doctors to lawyers to musicians,” Baldassarre said.

The NABBers are only one part of a multi-pronged attack on graffiti in the Back Bay. Swanson has worked closely with Boston Police Officer Billy Kelley to record instances of graffiti in the neighborhood. A database has been created with photographs of the work of over 100 known graffiti artists.

“When they arrest someone, we try to have digital photos of these tags, so that taggers can be held accountable in court,” Swanson said.

Swanson said the hardest hit in the neighborhood are the commercial alleys, especially those that run parallel to Boylston and Newbury, and between Clarendon and Exeter streets. As such, she is organizing an effort to make use of Mayor Menino’s Wipe it Clean program, which was established in 1997. The program offers free graffiti removal by graffiti Buster Mike Bartosiak and his crew, who use a non-toxic cleaner called Taganator to wipe graffiti away. With this process, an alley can be cleaned in under 40 minutes. All property owners need to do is sign a release of liability form. Swanson is currently working on ways to distribute the information to all of Back Bay’s property owners.

Swanson is confident that once property owners and residents become active in the clean-up, the neighborhood will stay clean. She said the committee’s efforts are aimed at discouraging taggers from coming to the area for fear of being caught or seeing their tags removed.

With an overflow audience, the Boston City Council’s final budget hearing opened at City Hall last Wednesday. Among the projects included in the $2.14 billion budget approved for the coming fiscal year, which began on Saturday, are $40 million in improvements to Beacon Hill and the Back Bay.

The council approved the budget in a vote of 9 to 4, allotting to District 8, which also encompasses parts of Fenway, Kenmore, Mission Hill, the West End and Allston, “one of the highest totals in the city,” according to Councilor Rob Consalvo, chair of the Committee on Ways and Means, which oversees the budget review process. District 8’s capital plan grants over $4.5 million for improvements to the Boston Public Library, over $1 million for maintenance to the Public Garden, $539,000 for construction and renovations in Boston Common, and $120,000 for the Clarendon Street Playground.

The final budget, which reflects the input gleaned during 29 public hearings and 72 hours of public testimony, is a 4.5%, or $91.3 million, increase over the budget for the 2006 fiscal year. Other city improvements include a 1percent increase in funds to all public schools, including 350 new kindergarten seats and the addition of 100 police officers on the streets.

Noting that “there’s only so much money to go around,” Consalvo said he tried to balance the city’s long-term needs, such as health care and employee pensions, with its short-term concerns, particularly youth violence, in what is becoming one of Boston’s deadliest years. “By far, public safety was the theme that dominated this process,” he said.

The announcement did not satisfy the chamber’s audience, an estimated 150 teenagers and youth workers lobbying for an extra $5 million for summer jobs. Holding signs that read “9,000 jobs for 20,000 teens is not enough” and “City Councilors: Let’s talk together about what’s best for youth,” the teens hissed when councilors spoke in favor of the budget.

The group, which was organized by Councilor Sam Yoon of Dorchester, had already secured an extra $300,000 for 250 summer jobs after Mayor Menino submitted his version of the budget to City Council on April 12.

“What’s important to remember is because of your efforts and your actions, you now have $300,000 extra for summer jobs,” Consalvo told the audience. “We can’t be all things to all people. We can’t say ‘yes’ to everyone who walks through the door.”

Calling the budget “very imbalanced, antiquated thinking,” Councilor Chuck Turner suggested hiring youth workers instead of police officers. “I think we need to rework the way we think about public safety,” he said. “Police officers in reality don’t stop the drugs from coming in.”

Councilor Charles Yancey called the budget “very modest, unimaginative and timid.” “I believe it’s too expensive not to make this investment,” he said.

Councilors who spoke in favor of the budget faced hissing and chanting. “We have to look at this realistically,” said Councilor Maureen Feeney. “A ‘No’ [vote] says we want to stop city government from doing what it does best. We are constantly challenged to invent new ways to serve the public.”

“There are a thousand jobs out there,” said Councilor Jerry McDermott. “It’s not a birthright for every child in the city of Boston to have a job.”

The teens’ antics escalated into an outburst that caused Council President Michael Flaherty to order an evacuation of the chambers. The demonstration was unusual for City Hall, according to Consalvo. “It doesn’t ever happen,” he later said. “It should happen more.”

The Fourth of July for sale

Picture the scene: a July 4 party in Boston. People gather in backyards and on rooftops, and hundreds of thousands claim a patch of the Esplanade to celebrate our nation’s independence with the famed music and fireworks display.

It’s an afternoon spent at a barbecue or a picnic, with burgers and blueberry cobbler, and humidity and mosquitoes.
Evening sets in and, as though on cue, everyone tunes their radios to the same channel. Everyone joins in the patriotic sing-along, and then the Boston Pops launches into a stirring rendition of the “1812 Overture.” The crowd is swept up in the musical uncertainty of battle, then hearts soar as victory comes within grasp, and the roar of real cannon reverberates through the air, and the brass trumpets blare clear and true, and then there is the first explosion of a spectacular fireworks show.

Only it doesn’t happen that way anymore.

On Tuesday night there was a 45-minute delay between the crescendo of the overture and the orchestra launching into John Philip Sousa’s “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” which marks the beginning of the fireworks display. For the third year in a row, Sousa and the fireworks and the people of Boston were put on hold so that the fireworks could be broadcast “live” to the West Coast. The gap was filled by an intermission, the “Liberty Fanfare” and a performance by Steve Tyler and Joe Perry of Aerosmith—but it was a thankless task because the moment of high feeling was lost.

Commercialism is the new patriotism.

The glossy complimentary program handed out free to visitors on the Esplanade says on the cover that the celebration is presented by Liberty Mutual, an insurance company, along with a handful of other corporations. Boston 4 Celebrations is the non-profit organization responsible for the “Fourth of July event and television production.”

The program has rave reviews of the fireworks from people in Florida, Texas and Washington State. It states that the “pyromusical” begins at 10:30 p.m. on CBS, “presented commercial-free by Liberty Mutual.”

It has struck us as peculiar that watching fireworks on TV is so highly rated—but according to the program, the “Boston Pops Fireworks Spectacular” has been the “highest rated program” twice in its three-year history.

But who benefits from the 45-minute wait? Perhaps the Boston Pops do well because of nationwide publicity. CBS bought the rights to broadcast the celebrations on TV and radio and the high TV ratings are a sign of commercial success—though for people who care about sound quality, the acoustically inferior AM station affiliated with CBS is disappointing. Liberty Mutual certainly gets visibility for its sponsorship. Boston 4 Celebrations is branching out into other local events including the “Boston Family Fireworks” on New Year’s Eve.

Tired Bostonians certainly don’t come out ahead in the deal. A classic musical crescendo fell flat as the fireworks were delayed for commercial purposes. City workers stay out later to deal with crowd control and cleanup. And it means a late start for many who have a long trip home after a day spent downtown. Party hosts we talked to reported their guests began leaving when they realized the fireworks wouldn’t start until 10:30 p.m. We imagine that families with young children were frustrated too.

We don’t delay the dropping of the ball in New York’s Times Square on New Year’s Eve, or move the start time of the SuperBowl, so why should Boston delay its fireworks display?