A move is underway to ban large events on Boston Common. Large scale events that draw tens of thousands of people are ruining the Common’s lawns and walkways, according to city officials and Henry Lee, president of Friends of the Boston Public Garden, an advocate for the Common.
Last year, more than 1000 events were held on the Common, whose fragile infrastructure is being torn asunder.
“Our goal is to make this the greatest park in America and to identify the challenges and opportunities of doing that,” Councilor Michael Ross said in opening the first public hearing on Boston Common that was held Wednesday night at Suffolk University Law School.
This hearing was more exploratory in nature as Ross, joined by Boston City Councilors Sal LaMattina and William Linehan heard from a variety of city officials as well as civic leaders about their ideas and concerns about the future for Boston Common.
The Common and Public Garden, which comprise more than 40 acres in total are Boston’s great prizes in the heart of the city.
The area receives a tremendous amount of foot traffic on a daily basis as three major MBTA stops, Park Street and Boylston Street Station and the new Silver Line bus stop have direct access in the area as well as commuters who use the Boston Common Garage. In addition to these users, there are also many college students from Suffolk University and Emerson College who regard the Common as their front yard. And there are also dog owners from Beacon Hill and Back Bay who consider the Common a wonderful place to walk their pets.
Officials from the Boston Parks Department outlined how the Common gets extensive use on a daily basis. This use has had an adverse effect in many areas like the Parade Grounds near Charles and Beacon Streets that have been closed off for repairs to the grass.
In some cases, pedestrians in cutting across corners from the paved paths have destroyed the grass and created dirt paths. The department plans to add more fences and then turf or brick areas in order to repair and to maintain the integrity of the park.
Boston Parks Commissioner Antonia Pollak told the Councilors about the planned changes involving a head house at Park Street for elevator access. She noted that the MBTA is under court order to bring the station into compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Pollak also said that there is an opportunity to have the MBTA step up with an added commitment to help maintain the Common.
“Boston Common should no longer play host to large scale events,” she said.
Area 1 Police Captain Bernie O’Rourke told the councilors that crime in the Boston Common is down through the efforts of added policing from the safe street teams, but that crime in the general area including Downtown Crossing is up.
He acknowledged that as the police intensify their efforts in the Common, the crime moves to a different area. He also noted that in the last two weeks there were 21 arrests for people selling drugs. He said that most area assaults are drinking related. He also said reinstituting the 11:30 pm. to 6 a.m. curfew on the Common has also helped in reduction of direct crime in the Common.
Ironically, O’Rourke also noted that the Common is safer when there are events taking place.
Homelessness continues to be a problem in the Common, but due to the curfew this problem has moved more into the North End and Downtown Crossing area. Park rangers also are patrolling the area but their main objective is to be more visible than an active crime deterrent.
The number of mounted rangers has decreased from 25 in 2000 to about 12 this year. The area that they patrol goes as far as Copley Square.
James Green from the Mayor’s Office on Homelessness said that efforts are being made to find permanent housing for some of the homeless especially in this area. He noted that in the annual census that was conducted in December, the number of homeless in Boston went down from 306 in 2006 to 184 in 2007. He also noted that his agency is working closely with other agencies like the Pine Street Inn and Shattuck Hospital.
Henry Lee from the Friends of the Public Garden said, “the Common is all things to all people.” There were, he added, more than 1,000 events in the Common last year and that in the last 25 years the use has overwhelmed the maintenance.
Lee noted that the ground is harder than a concrete floor because it has been compacted by so much by foot traffic and that it is impossible for rainwater to seep through to the roots of the trees. He also said that everyone from developers to abutters should be doing more to help.
Tom Kershaw who owns the Hampshire House and helps run the Frog Pond told of how that part of Common is used both in winter as the skating rink and in summer as the wading pool might be a perfect place for a restaurant. He noted that without a liquor license a venture like Tavern on the Green that is located in Central Park in New York City would have a difficult time in being financially viable.
“This is our front door,” Peggy Ings from Emerson told the councilors about Emerson’s involvement in bringing resources to help the Common. She mentioned that the College runs and maintains a café on Tremont Street. However, the café runs at a $35,000 deficit, but she said that this is cost Emerson is willing to bear when you consider what was happening at this corner of Boylston and Tremont Streets before. Emerson is also planning to install a wrought iron period fence down Tremont Street that will cost more than $250,000.
“This is a wonderful start, and Suffolk understands that it has a responsibility to the Common,” John Nucci, said Suffolk University Vice president.
One resident mentioned that he hoped that the Common or surrounding streets would be more bicycle friendly. Another longtime resident echoed public officials when he noted that large events are damaging the Common.
Rev. Kathy McAdams from Ecclesia Ministries told the Councilors, “we need to look at all the needs of all Bostonians and that poverty and homelessness are not a crime but needs to be addressed by government.”
Colin Zick from the Beacon Hill Civic Association told of how he became involved in the Common with two boys playing baseball.
“When I saw the homeless problem and drug activity, I got involved.”
He mentioned that the Boston Common Management Plan that was written more than 10 years ago foresaw and addressed many of today’s issues.
“Enforcing the rules and regulations in place will go a long way in improving the Common,” he said.
The Councilors asked for input and found out that the Common is much more than a playground or park. For more than 400 years, the Common has been used for not only recreational uses but as a public space for all Bostonians.
The date for the next meeting has not been scheduled.

Back Bay restaurants seem to be taking the city’s decision last week to ban artery-clogging artificial trans fats from food served on their menus in stride. Many seem to have already voluntarily taken steps to eliminate trans fats, also known as partially hydrogenated oils, from their foods and say the ban will not effect them at all.
“I’ve been using soy bean oil for two years and it’s been better for everyone,” says José Cardoza, the chef at Rattlesnake Bar & Grill on Boylston Street.
The trans fat ban was approved unanimously by Boston’s Public Health Commission on March 13. It will take effect in two phases: starting Sept. 13, restaurants and delis must stop using oils, shortenings and spreads that contain trans fats. Then six months later, the ban will broaden in scope to include baked goods and other goods containing artificial trans fats. Restaurants that fail to comply could be fined up to $1,000 per violation.
Cardoza says he didn’t have to wait for the city to make this ruling. When he began to read about the dangers associated with trans fats – which include causing insulin resistance, causing or contributing to type 2 diabetes, clogging and making arteries more rigid, and raising cholesterol levels – he switched voluntarily to natural soy oil.
“It’s a good choice for us in the kitchen,” he says. “I would recommend it to everyone.”
He says the price of natural oils is comparable to that of trans fat oils, and the change hasn’t effected the taste of the food he serves at Rattlesnake.
Over at Scoozi on Newbury Street, owner Jamie Deveney says they’ve been making up tasty paninis and gourmet sandwiches without trans fats for eight years.
“We actually don’t use any trans fats right now, so we don’t have to make any changes,” he says.
Scoozi’s focus, Deveney says, is on all-natural ingredients – something his customers expect and appreciate.
“It’s more healthy that way,” he says.
At L’Aroma Café, also on Newbury Street, manager Dorrie Karlin says that café’s sandwiches and pizzas are not made on-site, only prepared, so she wasn’t sure what the effect of this ban would be, if any. She said she also wasn’t sure what effect the ban may have on the café’s treats and pastries.
"I don’t believe it will have any effect on us,” she says.

A sure sign of spring as men work on the irrigation system at the Boston Public Garden.

Boston Pedicab became the first fully licensed pedal-powered taxi service in Boston on Thursday, March 20. At a ceremony held in O’Day Park in the South End the BPD’s Hackney Division awarded licenses to Boston Pedicab’s 17 rickshaws.
The two-seater rickshaws first appeared in 2005 and have been gaining popularity ever since. Last year, pedicabs brought 1,200 Red Sox fans to Fenway Park every home game.
The cabs operate on a pay-as-you please model and are available from St. Patrick’s Day through the end of December.
Weather permitting, the hours of operation are as follows: Tuesday through Saturday 10 a.m. until 11 p.m., and until 2 a.m. on Thursday through Saturday, Sunday 11 a.m. until 6 p.m. and closed Mondays except for Red Sox home games.

Mayor Tom Menino is pushing an idea to cover parts of Storrow Drive with green space, granting more accessibility to the Charles River Esplanade and increasing the amount of open space available to the public.
In a speech last week, Menino proposed the idea, which would not require new tunnels like the Rose Kennedy Greenway. Instead, Menino’s proposal calls for a wooden deck to be built over part of the highway, which would then be planted over.
"Think about this for a moment," Menino said in a speech last week. "We can reopen the river front to residents, connect the Charles River and the Public Garden, and create more green space in the heart of our downtown neighborhoods."
Local officials and community members have been working for months on ideas to repair the Storrow Drive tunnel along with the state’s Department of Conservation and Recreation. Because the esplanade is owned by the state, and not the city, Menino’s hands are tied without state involvement.
State representative Marty Walz said that she is open to discuss options for the Storrow tunnel, but that she has yet to see any significant details of the Mayor’s proposal. According to Walz, the idea is similar to the Option D proposal drawn up by the DCR’s Storrow Drive committee last year. That idea also called for green space over Storrow, but was tabled due to logistical and cost issues. Walz said she had not seen any details that would differentiate the mayor’s proposal from Option D.
“It’s easier said than done,” said Walz, who pointed out that extremely deep sod was needed to support green space. “It’s not just a matter of building a deck and throwing some dirt on it.”
Walz said that she was not opposed to the idea in theory, but a great deal more information was needed and that any proposals should take into account what the DCR committee discussed. “The Mayor’s proposal should be folded into the work we’ve already done,” she said.
A representative from the Charles River Conservancy said they were aware of the proposal but had yet to take a position on the project, awaiting further details.
The city and state will undertake about $6 million in interim repairs to the Storrow tunnel this year while a permanent reconstruction project remains to be determined.
The proposal is the latest in a series of efforts to increase public space along the river. Earlier this year, the state’s Charles River Conservancy offered up a proposal to close a portion of Storrow Drive to vehicle traffic on Sunday mornings to allow recreational use.

For nearly ten years, Michael Moore has been practicing massage therapy in the Back Bay. Recently, Moore closed his Stuart Street office and relocated to the heart of Copley Square at 575Boylston Street.
A lack of space inhibited growth at Moore Massages’ previous location, according to the owner. At his new office, Moore said he has three other therapists on staff. An acupuncturist and two chiropractors also work out of the same office. “We are all independent of each other, but work together as a team,” said Moore.
For Moore, the move couldn’t have come at a better time. Since winning Daily Candy’s 2007 Sweetest thing award and being named Best of Boston for massage in 2007, Moore said his schedule has been booked solid.
Moore said what sets him apart from other massage therapists is the variety of services he offers. He has massages tailored for clients such as athletes and pregnant women. Moore also makes house calls and offers onsite massage services for large groups.
Perhaps the most unique aspect of Moore’s business is 24-hour online booking (www.mooremassage.com). Moore said he is unaware of any other masseuses in Boston who offer this convenient service.
In addition to Copley Square, Moore Massage is also located in Brookline’s Washington Square inside the Boston Running Center.

This Thursday marked the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
The following tongue-in-cheek editorial ran in our sister publication, The Beacon Hill Times, on March 18, 2003, just before the invasion. It attracted more letters and phone calls than any editorial ever published in this newspaper. About 90 percent of them said, “thank you for saying what I’ve been thinking.” The other 10 percent called the Times staff socialists and worse.
We said we would reprint this editorial every year until America’s soldiers were home and safe. At the time we didn’t realize that we’d still be reprinting this after five years.
This will be the last year, however, that this editorial will run. While it turns out that our 2003 suspicions were correct, the fact that a significant number of Americans were suspicious from the beginning that a ruse was being perpetrated on us won’t matter any more. By next year we will have a new president and, we hope, a new policy.
There are 307 days left in the George Bush presidency, or as writers constantly say, “failed presidency.” Let’s hope the United States survives those days.


Now, tell me again, why is it we’re going to war?
By the time you read this, our country may be at war. Let’s see if we understand this: We’re declaring war on Iraq because they have “weapons of mass destruction” that they are going to use on us. But then we have learned that their missiles have a problem: their range is considerably less than halfway around the world. How can they deliver these “weapons of mass destruction” if their missiles can’t reach us? And isn’t it that other country, North Korea, the one that is ready to make a bomb and has a long-range missile? Since the U.S. is not bothering them instead, we must have our facts wrong.
Let’s try another tack: we’re declaring war on Iraq because that country harbors Al Qaeda terrorists. That’s another piece of info we must be getting wrong. We recently caught a very bad terrorist sleeping in a suburb in Pakistan. And isn’t it in Pakistan where the CIA thinks bin Laden sometimes hides? We wonder why we’re not going after Pakistan if that’s where the terrorists seem to be. Have we actually found any Al Qaeda operative in Iraq or any connection, other than being glad, that Saddam might have had with September 11? We also are a little concerned that we’ve forgotten the job we have to finish in Afghanistan. But what do we know? We’re just running a little neighborhood newspaper. We don’t know the big picture.
Another possibility is that we’re declaring war on Iraq because Saddam Hussein is a bad guy. There’s no disagreement there. But there are a lot of bad guys in the world — Robert Mugabe comes to mind — who hurt their neighbors and their own people. They are all over Asia and Africa and there are a few in South America. But maybe Saddam is the mother of all evil dictators and his methods are so worse than leaders in the Ivory Coast, Liberia, Rwanda, etc., etc., that we must take him out first.
Perhaps this isn’t about bad leaders, terrorist bands or unthinkable weapons. This might be this administration’s idea about how to best invigorate the economy. The former titans of industry now running our country surely know about economies. They know how to make a buck, and they’d like it if pesky people like us weren’t always trying to get them to share their wealth with our fellow Americans who didn’t get the benefits of birth, education and health that they received. But they’ve owned baseball teams and run oil companies, so they must know what they are doing. If everyone worked as hard as they have done and with as much insight into how to run a good business, we’d have a good economy. Besides, didn’t war boost our economy in 1942?
Our leaders’ economic theory must show that war will bring more buyers into the antique stores on Charles Street, that war will cause women to buy more shoes at Moxie. They probably have a theory that in wartime, moms and grandmoms will hustle right into Red Wagon to outfit their progeny in clothing appropriate to our warlike times. There must be a formula they use that calculates that if we go to war, five more people will eat dinner at 75 Chestnut or ten 25-year-olds will get take-out pizza at Harvard Gardens.
War used to be bad because it killed people and wrecked what we now call the environment. But it no longer seems to kill Americans. We managed the Gulf War and the one in Afghanistan with few American casualties. Now our young men and women in combat fatigues seem happy, even jaunty, as they board the planes to go off to war as the television cameras roll. We’re pretty sure almost all of them are coming back. As a civilization, we’re past the times when body counts — at least American body counts — are in the thousands.
Since we have a hard time understanding exactly why all this is going on, we hope somebody does. Colin Powell, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld must know more than we do. Since our understanding is incomplete, we have to trust that they know what is best for us. We remember another group of aging men who knew more than we did and what was best for us. They were led by a capable, former industrial titan named Robert McNamara. He’s the guy who did so well for us in Vietnam.