Bostonist made our way to City Hall Plaza on Sunday to catch the 2008 Peace concert, a free hip hop event sponsored by the city and featuring classic hip hop artists EPMD, Das EFX, and Chubb Rock as headliners. We'd been hoping to get a shot of Our Popular Mayor popping and locking along with the b-boys. Instead, we ended up with drenched trousers and a long ride home on the Orange Line. The show......

Today from 12-6 PM, Dunkin' Donuts will be handing out free samples of their oven-toasted sangwiches in a "toasty tent" that has been erected at City Hall Plaza. If that were not enough excitement for ya, from 1-2 pm, preselected contestants and a few random people off the street will have an audience with Ted Lange and Bernie Kopell from the Love Boat (TOS). Isaac and Doc will serve as celebrity judges for a......

Some City Councilors have complained about the mayor's blame game regarding the snowstorm, but one city councilor might be contributing to the problem. WBZ sent cameras to Chuck Turner's house in Roxbury, where his sidewalk wasn't shoveled. It gets better. Turner said that he's not going to shovel it and "claims people in his neighborhood don't use sidewalks." Well, where do they walk, then? Do they float? If a sidewalk is on the street, it's......

-- 18 protesters were arrested during yesterday's Veterans Day ceremony at City Hall Plaza. They were members of Veterans for Peace, an organization of former soldiers opposed to the Iraq War. The American Legion had placed the group in the rear of the Veterans Day parade and told them that they could not carry signs protesting the war. The Veterans for Peace responded by blocking the official ceremony podium with gags in their mouths and......

Be prepared to take a long lunch break tomorrow. Mayor Menino has announced that Red Sox celebration festivities will begin tomorrow at noon. Bostonist watched the WBZ webcast of Mayor Menino giving the details. The players will be riding in duck boats in a repeat of 2004's "rolling rally." Menino said that the parade will follow the same route as it did in 2004. Here's an image of last year's route from the Globe.......

--Sure, people like to collect knickknacks. Salt-and-pepper shakers, Beanie Babies, comic books, parking meters. Yeah, parking meters, 123 of 'em, in fact. Thomas Gannon of Cambridge had cut the meters off poles all over Cambridge and Somerville. Police stumbled upon them when visiting Gannon for other reasons on Monday night. Master of understatement and Cambridge PD spokesman Frank Pasquarello said, "This does seem to be odd." Indeed. --Police arrested 17-year-old Derek Lodie, of Revere, for......

New England Film and Video Festival Thursday, October 4, through Monday, October 8 Coolidge Corner Theatre, Brookline All tickets $10 Official Site Full Schedule What with the Red Sox savoring victory and rallies raging at City Hall Plaza, the New England Film and Video Festival planned the opening night for its 32nd year perfectly. On Thursday, the NEFVF will kick off with the documentary Play-by-Play Men and the Art of the Perfect Call, which begins......

Congratulations, Sox fans! You made it through approximately three minutes of the Red Sox Rally Monday festivities at City Hall Plaza before the first chants of "Yankees Suck" filled the air. New record! Well done! A few thousand fans descended upon the plaza early Monday afternoon to cheer on their hometown baseball team (and decry the arch rivals) for the Boston version of the shindigs going on across the country. Rally Monday was a tradition......

Mayor Menino has gone so green that he might end up looking like Kermit the Frog. First Menino laid out his plan to improve life for cyclists in the city, and now he's drawing inspiration from Cape Wind by proposing wind turbines for City Hall Plaza. The Globe reported on Saturday that the mayor wants a single turbine that can "generate up to one-quarter of the electricity used at City Hall." Globe writer Peter Howe......

If you're feeling particularly juicy today, head on down to City Hall Plaza between 10:30 - 2 PM for the 23rd Annual Massachusetts Tomato Festival. Local farmers will submit their best fruits to be judged by an elite panel of food writers, state officials, chefs, and various other tomato aficionados. The nutritious globules will be appraised on such criteria as color, flavor, slicing quality, and weight. The winning fruit(s) will receive awards at 12:30. The......

Earlier this week Cardinal Sean O'Malley invited Pope Benedict XVI to Boston during his planned 2008 visit to the United States. The Pope has planned a trip to visit the United Nations in New York and O'Malley suggests that a short trip up from the NYC in the pope-mobile might be in order. The Globe quotes O'Malley as saying "Given everything Boston has been through, having the Holy Father come, I think, would be a......

After a rocky start when the fundraising chair stepped down when the Weekly Dig noted that he was a registered sex offender (whoops!), Pride is back on track and not looking back. The full Pride Week schedule is available at the Boston Pride site, but we've highlighted some of the best events: --Flag Raising Over City Hall Plaza: today, 12 noon --Puppy Pride Costume Contest: Saturday, June 2, 11 am to 1 pm at......

Berklee and Essence have teamed up again this year to bring the best young talent out to compete in the Hip Hop Songwriting Contest. If you are, or know, an eligible teen (unsigned and between 15 and 18) the time is nigh. Deadline for submission is March 9. It's all for a good cause, helping to balance the message in hip hop music and giving young songwriters a stage and training, not to mention......

This morning Bob Oakes started reading copy on wbur's Morning Edition reporting on Menino's idea to sell City Hall and City Hall Plaza. The plan was outlined at a breakfast meeting today (and missed the print dailies deadlines) with the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce. It would be excellent to see the brick and concrete wasteland that is City Hall and the Plaza disappear – but what then would Boston residents have to complain about?......

We're thinking of format. No, not like the formatting changes that WERS just made to their programming. More like readability of the weekly picks. It's fall now, and since we never really get around to spring cleaning in the spring, maybe we'll get to it in the fall. If you've got suggestions drop them in an email to music at bostonist.com or just right in the comments. But be on the lookout – this......

Along with nearly 15,000 other folks, Bostonist was on hand as TV on the Radio and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs rocked City Hall Plaza. The pairing of Brooklyn (Williamsburg's) TV on the Radio with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs makes perfect sense for so many reasons. Not the least of which is the fact that TVOTR's David Andrew Sitek produced the YYY's Fever to Tell and Machine Ep. And the YYY's crack guitarist (and occasional......

It's Wednesday. That means come noon we've made it to the middle of the work week. Come 5 p.m. we've made it over the hump. We'll be smooth sailing into a free Yeah Yeah Yeah's show at City Hall Plaza and a Friday so full of music we're not sure where exactly we'll be headed. Is it bad that we haven't had lunch yet and libations are already on our mind? We blame Raj and......

Now that we're on this eight days a week kick for doing these picks it seems like it might be time for a new graphic. We'll give you a cookie if you design us a new one. Or maybe a Newcastle next time you catch us at the Middle East. Promise. Monday 8/7 The Roots with Talib Kweli It may not be a Brooklyn block party hosted by Dave Chappelle, but it will be......

Last night on the Real World: Key West, Jose made a really poor Mastercard "Priceless" reference. It didn't take long for someone to remark on how the joke is real old. Say what you will about a group of people watching the Real World who are themselves too old to be on the Real World – but at least we're getting our fill of acne medication ads rather than the daytime dish of Jim Sokolove......

It should come as no surprise that Bostonist spends a whole lot of time pulling stuff through those tubes. Once in a while we find ourselves getting an internet a little late. Today's video feature of RADIx TV is one of many snippets of RADIx, the hip hop duo of Quite Nyce and Seek, which have made their way to YouTube. There are several live performances of tracks you'll find on their April release, The......

Bostonist has mentioned many times before our love for the 'list. ut in truth, we were always a little skeptical about the barter section. Because, honestly, what are the chances there's someone out there who can sand, prime, and paint the bottom of a boat and is looking for a used van? Or someone who is looking to get rid of a crystal ball ('preferably 4" or larger') and wants an 80-key electric organ? Recently,......

Bostonist has decried the tremendous ugliness and lack of utility of City Hall Plaza before, but for once, this Sunday, it served a worthwhile purpose: The World Cup's final match, between France and (hometown favorite) Italy was shown on a massive screen for thousands of people. We watched most of the game there, and can attest that the view of the screen was remarkably good from most everywhere (Toddler Bostonist, who accompanied us, insisted......

While the world readies for the final match of the FIFA World Cup, Boston gets ready to watch it. The French and Italians will match up on Sunday afternoon – and everyone has an opinion on where the best place to watch the game will be. Mayor Menino has sanctioned a World Cup Party of sorts on City Hall Plaza this Sunday. A big screen broadcast of the match will have capacity to hold up......

The best quote comes from Sal DiMasi as reported by Channel 5 - "It's the balcony where all the reporters are sitting, and so, therefore, we are used to the leaks coming from the reporters in the gallery." The statement, while chuckle worthy, isn't accurate on two counts. The reporters merely report on the leaks that come from the politicians themselves and the leaks reported on today are actually from the roof and not politicians.......

Some mornings, when the sky is low and cloudy and the forecast calls for rain, Bostonist purposely leaves our raincoat home in an attempt (usually fruitless) to will away bad weather. Just so, when the rain and cool temperatures persist into June (see this past weekend), we feel inclined to do warm-weather things to force summer's hand. Luckily, tomorrow, Wednesday, and Thursday will provide the perfect opportunity, as the Scooper Bowl will be taking place......

Maybe you were walking by City Hall Plaza today and noticed a strange encampment of sign- and flyer-bearing, Spanish-speaking protesters on the traffic island where State Street meets Tremont. Perhaps you said to yourself, "What gives? I thought yesterday was the big day for immigrant protests!" Maybe you even took a flyer (see right). Still, you would likely have been left wondering, "Why are these people making such a fuss about UNICCO, the Mass.-based cleaning......

The search for the perfect cheap haircut is, to a certain degree, a quixotic one. On one level, since Bostonist sports nothing more than a glorified buzz cut, it's hard to go wrong. But on another level, there is frequently much room for improvement. Our last two haircuts have been unhappy studies in this phenomenon. Luzia's Broadway between Sargent and Marshall Somerville First, we found ourselves in Winter Hill with some time to kill......

Where has Bostonist been these days? We’re not telling, but Monday afternoon, we finally got back on ye olde interweb and discovered that the world actually did continue to turn during the week between Christmas and New Year’s, and even over the holiday weekend. Luckily, Adam at Universal Hub appears to be less of a perennially hung-over lush than Bostonist, and he has kept his eye on developments relating to our fair city. Foremost among......

We live in an iTunes nation. It's easy to pull a track down to your pod for under a buck. Bostonist still longs for cover art, liner notes, and that masterwork that is a multi-track collection of songs we call an album. Listed here is our much discussed, unbiased by payola, top 25 albums of 2005. After the jump you'll find where some of us stand individually on the subject of the years best. (Apparently......

Last week, before we started shedding tears of sorrow for the Red Sox, Bostonist had overheard some stuff in the city. We asked if you had overheard some things to. Apparently you had. Crazy guy sitting alone at outdoor table by City Hall Plaza Starbucks As ugly as I am, people still love me! I'm not angry. Two twenty-somethings walking down Newbury Street First Girl: I'd rather have cancer than be pregnant. Second Girl:......