District D-4 police reported 177 arrests for drug-related incidents in the Back Bay from June 1 through September 22.

“We’re addressing it. I don’t think the Back Bay is an area known for drug dealing,” said D-4 community service supervisor Sgt. Kevin Power.

Of the 177 incidents, 29 arrests involved Class A substances, which include heroin and morphine; 75 involved Class B substances, which include cocaine, angel dust, crack, amphetamines, LSD, opium and methadone; 71 involved Class D substances, which include marijuana; and 1 involved a Class E substance, which include steroids and codeine. There were no arrests for Class C substances, which include Valium, speed, and mesclun.

Several of the transactions took place in alleys around Newbury and Boylston streets and in nearby public parks, according to Power. “You have a transient population that on occasion utilizes the park. I don’t think it’s a major problem,” he said.

The Storrow Drive tunnel that lies between Clarendon and Arlington streets is still crumbling, but progress is slowly being made toward a determination of how to fix it.

The state’s Department of Conservation and Recreation has begun to put together the advisory group that will help assess the four Storrow Drive tunnel options. But the meetings of this group have been postponed from September until November because the analyses of the traffic studies are not finished.

“We don’t want to bring people together without the information,” said Nancy Farrell of Regina Villa Associates, which manages the public process for DCR. She said the traffic consultants wanted to count traffic and find out where traffic originated and where it was headed — known as an origin and destination study — in September when traffic is greater than in the summer.

Meanwhile, 19 civic and government groups were asked to submit names for membership on the Transportation Advisory Committee and several names have been approved. They are Meg Mainzer-Cohen and Debra Carrow from the Back Bay Association, Steve Wintermeier and Barry Solar from the Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay, Peter Thomson and Steve Young from the Beacon Hill Civic Association. Scott Peterson and Tom Lisco from the Central Transportation Planning Staff, Jeff Rosenblum from the Livable Street Alliance, Kelley Brown from MIT, Bonnie Michaelman and John Messervy from Massachusetts General Hospital, Robin Assaf and Malek Al-Khatib from the West End Civic Association, Larry Adkins from the Riverside Neighborhood Association in Cambridge, and Drew Phelps and Leslie Greis from the Cambridgeport Neighborhood Association.

Other members are expected from the Boston Transportation Department, Cambridge’s traffic department, the Newbury Street League, Harvard University and the Beacon Hill Business Association.

The composition of the Landscape Advisory Group, the other group that DCR will appoint, is not as far along, said Farrell, since landscaping depends on how the roadway will be configured.

Farrell said that the engineers are now doing preliminary design and determining the phasing of the work on all four proposals for fixing the tunnel. The solutions include rebuilding what is there now, other tunnel possibilities and a surface roadway. Preliminary designs on all the proposals are necessary so that advisory committee members and DCR staff can analyze the effects of their decision. “Progress isn’t visible at this point, but we are moving along,” she said.

Through the advisory committee’s analysis a consensus will emerge as to which design has the most benefits, Farrell said. She suggests that those who want to follow the progress go online to Mass.gov/dcr/storrowdr.htm.

credit: Courtesy photo
caption: Kendrick Oliver will perform at the BeanTown Jazz Festival.




The sixth annual BeanTown Jazz Festival is expected to kick off tonight with unmatched gusto now that Berklee College of Music is producing the weekend-long event. The festival, which drew 40,000 people to three outdoor stages in the South End last year, will spotlight more than 15 performances by artists with national and international reputations.

“We hope it’s not in the too distant future that when people think of the best jazz festival in the world, BeanTown comes to mind,” said Dr. Lawrence Simpson, Berklee’s senior vice president for academic affairs. “I think it’s going to be a festival the likes of which have not been seen in Boston in some time.”

Jeff Turton, host of Sunday Jazz Brunch on WFNX, agreed that Berklee “upped the ante” this year. Turton said that the festival, founded by Bob’s Southern Bistro owner Darryl Settles, started with modest expectations and grew fast. “It’s definitely going to be the best of the BeanTown festivals. The line up is very strong.”

In addition to the daylong, free-of-charge performances on Saturday, Berklee added to this year’s roster two ticketed concerts — a Friday evening performance from The McCoy Tyner Septet at the Berklee Performance Center and a Sunday gospel brunch, headed by Berklee alum Kendrick Oliver’s New Life Jazz Orchestra, at the Westin Copley Place.

Like many BeanTown performers, Oliver, 31, is a Berklee alum. He founded his 19-piece group of 20 and 30-somethings when he was a student in 1995. “I always wanted to play in a big band professionally, never guessing that I’d get the opportunity to lead one,” he said.

As a composer, arranger, and tuba player from Houston, Oliver said that his faith plays a significant role in his music, which he sees as a “fusion of God and big band.” “It’s an issue of putting more of myself into the music,” he said.

The band’s 2003 debut album “Welcome to New Life” earned a place on the “Hot List” of Boston magazine, which described the album as “the music of Kansas City — cradle of swing and birthplace of the Count Basie band — with the hand-clapping, foot-stomping, sanctified sounds of the black church.”

Channeling Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and Dizzie Gillespie, Oliver said, he enjoys taking hymns such as “Wading in the Water” and “Amazing Grace” and putting a “jazz feel” to them. Headlining this year’s gospel brunch is an “incredible honor,” he said.

“I was really excited when Berklee took over [BeanTown]. I knew they’d take it in the right direction,” Oliver said. “Berklee is one of the most amazing places in the world. I feel that any musician who doesn’t go to Berklee is cheated.”

Oliver said that he is especially looking forward to performing with Grammy-winning vocalist Kevin Mahogany and catching McCoy Tyner, whom he called “an incredible legend, part of a dying breed of incredible jazz musicians that bridges young guys with the old guard.”

Oliver’s act has music critics equally excited. “You don’t get a lot of young big bands that can swing the way his band can,” said Turton. “I mean, they really swing.”

Berklee has long-range plans for making BeanTown a national destination for jazz fans. “We’re bringing a strong focus to the music,” Simpson said. “Berklee is committed to continue supporting BeanTown and to continue to make improvements.” He said that Berklee’s ideas for subsequent BeanTown festivals are still in the planning stages.

Proceeds from the festival, which is sponsored by Sovereign Bank, will support Prostate Cancer Research and Awareness and Berklee City Music, the college’s youth outreach program. For more information, visit www.BeanTownJazz.org.

They were expecting, if they thought of it at all, a typical street cleaning day, since a sizable portion of the Back Bay’s streets are scheduled for cleaning on Monday morning. The meter maids walk along ticketing parked cars and the street cleaner follows, chugging along, weaving into the curb and out into the street to avoid the cars that don’t move. At most, if a resident had forgotten to move his or her car, the result would be a ticket.

Instead on Monday their car may have gone missing.

Marlborough Street resident Marcia Gregg observed it all. When she went out to move her car tow trucks were lined up, carting off dozens of residents’ cars so the street cleaner could make a clean sweep.

“I thought the Coast Guard had landed. The city was towing every single car for street cleaning,” she said. “There were 10 tow trucks on every block. I got my car out in time, but a lot of people were not so lucky.”

The Mayor’s office confirmed that the towing took place and that it will continue. “This is not the first time the city has towed during street sweeping,” said Jennifer Mehigan, a spokeswoman for Mayor Menino. “This is simply an increased effort of enforcement by the city. Street sweeping signs say, “No Parking, Tow Zone, Street Cleaning—and the day and time of that week.”

But Gregg said it was strange that suddenly a long-time policy of just ticketing scofflaws would change with no warning. “There was no notice,” she said. “I’ve lived here for 18 years, and this has never happened.”

Gregg estimated that at least 100 cars were towed on Monday morning. Mehigan confirmed that 224 cars were towed in the Back Bay between September 11 and September 26.

Mehigan said she could not say if Back Bay residents had been notified that towing would begin, but that the message on the signs is clear and always has been.

Towing for street cleaning has stepped up because the city now has the resources to tow. Beginning on September 15, contracts the city signed with seven private tow companies allowed them to sweep the Back Bay and other neighborhoods of cars blocking the street cleaner.

Previously the Boston Transportation Department’s trucks did all the towing. They didn’t have enough trucks to tow many cars, so they concentrated on cars blocking fire hydrants and loading zones, said Mehigan.

The Sun got calls complaining about the towing, as did City Councilor Mike Ross’s office.

“Some of the people in the Back Bay were upset,” said Sita Smith, director of constituent services for Ross. “We’re not trying to be harsh to these folks, and it does seem like a change.”

Smith said Ross’s office wasn’t notified the towing was going to take place, but that residents have in the past said they wanted the cars towed so the street cleaner could do its job.

It looks as if the towing will continue. “It is our policy that we want the streets cleaned to the curb,” said Smith.

credit: Karen Cord Taylor


Fall officially began last week and was reflected nicely in the buildings of the Back Bay.

This is the Back Bay Sun’s first annual private schools issue. Most of the children in this neighborhood attend private schools, and over the past couple of decades the Back Bay has been a favorite location for new schools. The private schools fill a void left when Back Bay’s public elementary school became housing in the 1970s. (The Sun will present a guide to public schools at a time nearer to the Boston public schools’ enrollment dates.)

The schools issue is a reminder that to be healthy, vibrant places, neighborhoods need children. It would be depressing to walk down Marlborough Street and see only adults just growing older.

The babies and the children and their attentive mothers and fathers, themselves in the prime of their lives, are better works of art than all the sculpture and painting that the MFA holds. Just go over to the Clarendon Street Playground to get a look at the future leaders of Boston raising the next generation.

Seeing the children with their parents calls to mind a contradiction: Most people think that parents influence the lives of their children irrevocably.

But it gradually dawns on people with children that their children influence their lives to a much greater extent than their parents ever did.

When a baby is first born, for example, the parents’ lives change dramatically. New feelings of love, fatigue, responsibility, frustration and wonder surprise new parents with their intensity, and the new parents’ world views shift. Sometimes children are born with unexpected attributes or conditions, such as autism or extreme giftedness, which pose stiff challenges to the families, but also introduce them to new people and new ideas they would never have considered without their child.

Later, at the playground and school, a parent meets the parents of their child’s friends. The adults form friendships with people one would never meet at one’s job or other activities. The school itself will educate not only the child but also the parent, introducing him or her to new experiences—just when one thought one’s schooling was over.

As children grow, they demonstrate interest in subjects the parent never considered, and before long, a parent who never saw a soccer game has mastered the rules and is serving as a Hill House coach. Or they are learning to play a musical instrument with their child as they both engage in the Suzuki method of learning the violin or cello.

When children get married, it brings a whole host of changes to parents’ lives. The son or daughter-in-law has had different experiences, may have grown up in a different city, country or culture, further challenging the parent, who is still learning from his or her child.

Grandchildren arrive and the parent—now a grandparent—is changed by those children, who have interests and talents of their own.

After a lifetime of raising children, many people find that they have a hard time remembering themselves as children and the lessons their own parents taught them, since they are merged with those they learned while raising their own children.

Because of the effect on parents as well as on their child, choosing a school is an important task. The parent must be as happy with the place as the child.