CAPTION: “Homeless trash” is seen daily strewn around the benches on the Commonwealth Mall.
CREDIT: Don Schleicher




Every night since the mid-80s the Pine Street Inn’s outreach vans have crisscrossed the streets of Boston providing food, clothing, blankets, medical assistance and compassion to the city’s most vulnerable homeless population—those who will not come into the shelters or food kitchens for help.

But within the last few weeks, Commonwealth Avenue resident Don Schleicher has expressed concern about the piles of unsightly trash left behind by those on the Commonwealth Mall who have benefited from the Inn’s compassion.

“Homeless trash” is a problem that is escalating, he said, and he is organizing a group of residents called the “Trash Free Back Bay Group” to get the Mall cleaned up. The trash strewn from Arlington Street to Fairfield Street is “disgraceful and an affront to the sensibilities of both tax paying residents and tourists,” he wrote in a letter published in neighborhood papers.

“Currently, the Pine Street Inn food truck rides down the middle of the Commonwealth Mall after dark, hands out blankets, sandwiches, oranges and cups of soup,” Schleicher wrote. “Although a compassionate program, those blankets, empty cups and orange peels, along with unused mustard and ketchup packs, empty beer cans, bottles, newspapers, empty cigarettes packs and other trash end up either on the benches or the grounds around them.”

Shepley Metcalf, spokesman for the Pine Street Inn said the organization is very concerned about Schleicher’s complaints. “These are valid complaints, and we are taking them seriously.”

But there are no easy solutions because, Metcalf said, “the vans are not a restaurant delivery service.” In fact, distributing food is a very small part of the mission of the Pine Street Inn’s outreach vans. Instead they are the way Pine Street reaches out to the city’s homeless population 365 days and nights a year. The vans are staffed with counselors and nurses who are trying to build a relationship with those on the street, who are the neediest of homeless people. “We want to bring them a human connection in the hopes that eventually they will come in to Pine Street so that we can provide them with the services they need.”

While distributing the food, counselors on the van have begun talking with the individuals about picking up the trash, she said. “We are telling them that they are living in a neighborhood and they need to pick up after themselves,” she said. “We hope they get the message.”

Schleicher doesn’t think those efforts have had any effect. “The only solution, in my opinion, is to stop daily deliveries of food along the Commonwealth Mall,” he said. He has proposed to the Pine Street Inn and the city’s Emergency Shelter Commission that the food be dropped off at several designated points near the Park Street MBTA station so that the Boston Parks Department could clean it daily.

Metcalf said they would consider changing their distribution method, but that it would be harder to meet their overall goal of building human contacts that way. “And, some of those we are serving are in such tough shape, that it might be out of the question for them to move to another location for food,” she said.

“Moving the drop off locations would be a misdirected response to a misperception of the purpose of the van,” said Jim Green, who is director of the Emergency Shelter Commission. “The vans are a lifeline for a very isolated group of people.”

It would be difficult for the counselors to intervene one-on-one with them if the food were dropped at fewer locations, Green said. In addition, it would create a “swarming” situation that might become unsafe.

At least one homeless person heard the pleas of the Pine Street Inn. Schleicher, who said he has received several emails from other residents concerned with the trash problem, received one from a homeless woman who relies on the outreach services of the Pine Street Inn. “I enjoy going to the Mall on a daily basis,” Mary O’Leary wrote. “It is a beautiful area where I go to relax, read and watch the people and the dogs. As a homeless woman, I also go to the Mall in the evening to get food from the Pine Street van. I guess it is up to all of us who enjoy the Mall to pitch in and pick up litter. I will include in my daily routine an early walk on the Avenue where I will do my part to pick up trash and help, in my small way, to solve this problem.”

credit: Jamie Fairstone



The Folk Arts Center of New England holds folk dancing near Trinity Church in Copley Square in July and August. Participants on Tuesday, July 18, performed an Israeli folk dance called Zemer Atik.

Credit: Jaclyn Trop
caption: The Charlesmark is at 655 Boylston Street.




Mark Hagopian, owner of the Charlesmark Hotel and Lounge at 655 Boylston Street, was denied neighborhood approval last week to extend the Lounge’s hours of operation for non-guests.

“We’re fine with hotels serving alcohol as a guest amenity, but this is a 120-person ground-level bar. We just feel that the Back Bay doesn’t need another huge public bar,” said Thomas High, chair of the Licensing and Building Use Committee for the Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay.

The Licensing Board granted Hagopian a liquor license last year with the provision that non-guests may not enter the bar after midnight. Hagopian sought to appeal this prohibition when he appeared before NABB’s Licensing and Building Use Committee last week. “The neighborhood customers love us and they ask to come in, but they can’t,” Hagopian told the committee. “We’re just trying to stay competitive.”

Hagopian said that the restriction burdened hotel guests who want friends to meet them at the hotel after midnight. “We run a first-class operation and we will continue to do so,” he said.

Despite his promises that repealing the restriction would have “no negative impact on the neighborhood whatsoever,” the committee voted to oppose Hagopian’s request. A 120-seat bar for the 40-room Charlesmark Hotel seems more like a large, public bar than a hotel guest amenity, High said.

“Since the Charlesmark Lounge opened, it has borne out our concerns. It appears to have operated largely as a bar, with food available only until 10 or 11 at night,” High said. High noted that Internet chat emphasizes the Lounge as a bar, not a restaurant, and that Hagopian emphasized that the Lounge won an award as Boston’s “best new bar.”

As for whether Hagopian will appear before the Licensing Board to request the repeal, “I haven’t made that decision yet,” he said.

Several talented musicians from the Berklee College of Music in the Back Bay will appear at the sixth annual Vineyard Vibes festival, a three-night event on Martha’s Vineyard beginning July 28. Among them are vocalists Tiwa Savage and Nadine Ford, who will perform a selection of Motown classics at Outerland in Edgartown on the second night of the festival.
Directed by Berklee’s Ken Zambello, associate professor of ensembles, the concert will also feature Tony Award winner Jennifer Holliday, star of the original Broadway production of “Dreamgirls.” Savage and Ford, who have become close friends during their time at Berklee, share a common passion for giving soulful performances on stage, although their musical inspirations stem from different backgrounds.

Savage moved with her family to London in 1990 at age 11 and became fascinated by new varieties of music that she was not exposed to while growing up in Nigeria. “I started to play the trombone in the school band but eventually switched and started taking vocal lessons,” she said of her early flirtations with the performing arts. “I would listen to my peers sing and then imitate them. This really fueled my desire to go further, to research and discover new artists and genres on my own.”

Savage’s first big break came at one of the most celebrated venues in the world, when she sang backup vocals at a George Michael concert at Wembley Stadium in London at age 17. “I thought it was going to be smooth sailing from then on,” she said. “But it has definitely been a lot of work. I got a late start by some standards, which made things difficult as well.”

After graduating from the University of Kent and working at the Royal Bank of Scotland, Savage decided to devote her time to music. “People said I was crazy for leaving RBS, but my heart was in singing and performing,” she said. Savage entered Berklee in 2003 on a scholarship and will graduate next May after writing and recording her first album.

Unlike Savage, Nadine Ford has carried a love of singing since she was in elementary school. By the time she was seven, Ford was already performing in a choir at the Church of God in Christ on Long Island, New York. “I got the chance to sing in front of an audience when I was very young, and the uplifting feeling stuck with me,” she said. “I definitely think the support and inspiration from my peers along the way helped a great deal as well.”

A music education major, Ford will graduate in the spring of 2007 but plans to continue performing after Berklee. And, while her favorite genres include R&B and neo-soul, she remains connected to her religious roots. “I like to think of myself as having a strong tie to the old-school because of my background in the church,” she said. “But I’m also young, and I have a broad range of performances throughout my time here that reflects that.”

One look at Ford’s resume, which includes several appearances with Berklee’s Reverence Gospel Choir and a two-week tour of the Philippines as a member of the jazz, funk and R&B group the Satya Band, reveals her broad depth of talent.

While both vocalists are new to the Vineyard Vibes festival, professor and performer Ken Zambello will help guide them and the other Berklee students through the weekend. “I’ve worked with him before several times,” noted Ford. “He’s extremely talented, and I’m happy that he’ll be directing the Singers Showcase at the Outerland.”

Broken

A friend remembers a time in his life when he was in despair. His washing machine stopped running. The shower began to leak. A cabinet door hinge wasn’t working right. He needed a new briefcase and a new car. To top it all off, he had to go to Mass Eye and Ear to have an infected gland removed.

These things weren’t tragedies. And with attention, things got fixed. A repair man came for the washing machine. A plumber repaired the leak and the plumber’s friend fixed the plaster that had been damaged. His wife fiddled with the cabinet door, and it worked. Then she traded in their old car for a new one. He came through the operation all right. Finally, he got a new briefcase.

Right now Bostonians feel like our friend felt before he attended to his problems. We’re in despair.

It’s not only the Big Dig ceiling tragedy, although that would be enough in itself to put us over the edge. The city has understandably halted street repairs and construction so traffic will be backed up as little as possible. That leaves construction vehicles, jersey barriers and orange cones littering half a dozen major thoroughfares.

It’s not all traffic related. Violent crime is up. We can’t persuade any qualified person to come to Boston and lead our public schools. About 30 percent of the trees planted so far on the new Greenway are dead. The air conditioners on the commuter trains and the new Silver Line buses didn’t work on some of the hottest days of the year. Speaking of the Silver Line, we are at an impasse caused partly, we suspect, by Orwellian T officials who insult the transit-riding public by calling a bus that is stuck in traffic like every other vehicle “rapid” transit.

We can’t muster the courage to pay for an underground Urban Ring that would connect jobs and transportation hubs and outlying communities to one another. We say no to wind farms, LNG facilities and nuclear energy, all the while insisting on heat and air conditioning, not to mention the electricity that runs our computers and recharges our cell phones. The shambles in which we are living right now isn’t helped by Boston’s perennial condition: dirty streets, a 40-year homeless problem that remains unsolved, and patronage-plagued agencies and departments where honesty, energy and efficiency are scorned.

This depressing picture isn’t helped by July’s heat and humidity and the prospect of a couple more years of “leadership” by the cadre of warlords who run our country.

So how do we get to the other side, where our problems are fixed and we are hopeful about the outcomes?

Like our friend, we attack them one by one. Also like our friend, we enlist some help from some effective people, if we can identify them. Our friend didn’t need leaders, but we do.

We need leadership that is not intent on finding scapegoats or targeting people. Good leadership needs to have a long-term vision that shows us where we are going and gives all the citizenry a sense of what we are working toward. It also needs to have the capacity for short-term nuts-and-bolts problem solving.

We haven’t had such leadership for more than a decade at the state’s executive level, although in the beginning we had high hopes for this administration. Over that time span, we’ve also had a vacuum in several city departments. We urge Mayor Menino to be swift about filling the police commissioner’s job and the public works department chief’s tenure. Joe Casazza is still there, even though he has resigned, because there is no replacement yet. We urge Governor Romney to stop seizing this tragedy as a way to bolster his chances for national office and actually create a vision that all of us can get behind to make life better in our city and our state. Only that kind of leadership will fix all that is broken.