Kerry Healey may be doing miserably in the polls, but the gubernatorial race is still very much a live issue in this East Somerville home - notice the defiant, handmade Deval Patrick sign in the front window. We like to think that this photo captures the political awakening of the next generation: Although mom and dad are G.O.P. stalwarts and proudly display their allegiance in the front yard, Junior is struggling to make his... [continue]

If any doubt remained that this Commonwealth is the epicenter of wicked-smahtness, let that doubt be dispelled: A carpenter and a supermarket deli counter employee played a game of Scrabble at the Lexington Scrabble Club on October 12 in which the loser scored 490 points and the winner scored 830. This game broke the record for most total points in an officially sanctioned, competetive game (1,320), most points by one player (830) and most points... [continue]

Frankly, when we learned that Nelson de la Rosa, the world's smallest man/ Pedro Martinez mascot, had died, we did not automatically think, "I would like to look at his lifeless body." Then again, we have still not been to see the Body Worlds exhibit at the Museum of Science, so we're clearly out of touch with the mainstream when it comes to looking at dead people in museums. Other people, though, are interested in... [continue]

Bostonist has never made pretensions of conservatism, and it won’t take much to guess whom (this) Bostonist is voting for in a week and a half. Because of that, we don’t expect people to care if we take time out of our busy schedule to debunk things that Kerry Healey and her supporters say. Also, with Christy Mihos and Grace Ross running quixotically for governor, Healey has enough higher-profile-than-us detractors already. But damn it, if...... [continue]

Sure, this cluster of equipment on the roof of an apartment building in Somerville might be innocent radar dishes and TV antennae. But it looks to Bostonist like a diabolical weapon of interplanetary destruction. We hope it is, anyway, because we'd feel good if Somerville got weapons of mass destruction before Iran.... [continue]

You may read in the papers that the Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin expects low turnout for the Democratic primary on September 19, but damn it, Bostonist is still excited. We've told you before about the three democratic candidates for governor, but did you know there's a whole raft of other nominations up for grabs in both parties? Oh yes indeed! Although the Republicans have but one candidate for governor, the ever-predictable Kerry Healey,... [continue]

We always see this sign on Washington Street in Downtown Crossing, and we always like it. Is it the jaunty little stout man, or the fact that stout men and big men, whom we always thought of as distinct groups, must share a store? We don't know, but this sign is cool....... [continue]

Last week, Bostonist crowed (prematurely) about a change in the definition of planets that would have added three new ones to the solar system of which Boston (or, more precisely, the State House) is the Hub. But really, that whole twelve planets thing was just a proposal from a secret cabal of mad scientists panel of experts. This morning in Prague, the rank-and-file of the International Astronomical Union rejected the twelve-planet approach and Pluto with... [continue]

The hot days of August sometimes get Bostonist to thinking about cooler climes, which caused us to do a Google image search of Antartica this evening. (Well, actually, that's not true. Toddler Bostonist recently saw March of the Penguins and it was he who wanted to see pictures of Antartica.) We never would have guessed that in that distant land, we would find a welcoming little bit of Somerville. But pictures do not lie,... [continue]

We spied this woman in Chinatown one morning, doing some stretches (or making a futile attempt to move a concrete wall). It made us wish everyone would wear awesome floral jackets for their outdoor exercise.... [continue]

It's easy to make fun of the Herald, as Bostonist has oft demonstrated, but sometimes you can't get the full story in this two-newspaper town unless you read both papers (or let Adam at Universal Hub do it for you). Case in point: If you read in the Globe about the collapse of an exterior metal staircase on a Brighton building, you learn that a man was killed when the staircase, which he was climbing,... [continue]

The legislature may not be in session, but someone out there is still trying to get a message across to lawmakers. Frankly, we're not sure exactly what the message is, but its placement on a sign on Bowdoin Street right across from the side entrance to the State House suggests a political motive.... [continue]

In the past, Bostonist has risen to the defense of Boston drivers - perhaps more out of regional chauvinism than reason, but still - and we tend to think that their selfishness is actually a good thing, because it makes them, if nothing else, hyper-alert for a chance to get ahead. But last night, we witnessed the downside of automotive self-interest, in a classic example of what philosophers call the Collective Action Problem - everyone... [continue]

Nothing takes the fun out of a summer frolic in the Frog Pond on Boston Common like rain. On the other hand, anyone who does happen to be out in the rain, as Bostonist recently was, gets to enjoy the rare and lovely sight of the Common devoid of people.... [continue]

Shamefully, Bostonist didn't really nail down the order of the planets in our solar system until our obligatory college astronomy course, and then only because extra credit was offered for the best sentences submitted by students that used the first letter of each planet as the first letter of each word in the sentence (our winning entry: "Muchachos, vosotros, en mi juicio, sois unos necios putos"). Now, all that learning and hard work is down... [continue]

With all the news surrounding the Big Dig and the upcoming gubernatorial election, the Herald could be forgiven for slacking in the area of animal reporting. But the newspaper game in Boston is too competitive for the Herald to neglect a niche it has controlled so completely, and any doubters are advised to check out today's edition, in which two, count 'em, two dog tragedy articles (pitbull pup gets ears cut off, 60 puppies die... [continue]

Every now and then, Bostonist tells you about some fabulous, or absurd, or fabulously absurd thing that the good folks at MIT have cooked up for their own amusement or the greater good. But until now, we never had any sense of what went into the making of these innovative inventions. Sure, we supposed that socially awkward people with oversized backpacks were involved, but that was pretty much all. Today, though, that all changed, as... [continue]

This string of nice days has made for some gloriously blue skies and thoroughly Hudson-River-School-esque cloud formations. Seeing this natural splendor as a dramatic backdrop to the enormous industrial plant in Everett just across the water from Charlestown reminded us of some sort of communist propaganda poster celebrating industry or progress or some such thing. Also, it was pretty, so we took a picture.... [continue]

When Bostonist saw this guy on a tricycle tooling down Washington street at 10:00 a.m. this morning with two cases of Corona in his basket, we thought he looked cool, so when he stopped to chat with a friend, we caught up to him and asked if we could take his picture. As he was saying yes, the friend hopped out of his wheelchair and posed too (we don't know why he decided to... [continue]

Just in case the prospect of death and destruction at the airport weren't enough, there's more news today in the ongoing saga of the route to the airport here in Boston. Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff, the contractor overseeing the Big Dig, has now announced that the bolts holding up ceiling panels in the Ted Williams tunnel - the ones that haven't already given out and caused a fatal ceiling collapse - may not be good for the... [continue]