Ah, the Somerville Theatre. It gives you beer; AltCom gives you laughs. Together, beer and laughs are dangerous—they can make you pee your pants. Bostonist narrowly avoided a very wet debacle last night as we took in the hilarity that was AltCom. When there are four comics and the first act is already making you giggle like a schoolgirl and cross your legs desperately, you know the evening’s going to end good—but hopefully not in......

Via Wicked Local, Newsday reports that a Somerville woman gave birth yesterday at the Port Authority bus station in New York. We can't imagine a worse place to give birth, except perhaps on a Fung Wah bus that's in motion. The family was apparently en route to Oklahoma City for some inexplicable reason--we recommend avoiding all bus travel when 9 months pregnant. Despite his strange beginnings, the baby (born at around 6:00 p.m. Tuesday near......

Recently, BoltBus announced that it would be entering the low-cost bus fray. And now another company, Megabus, would like to be at your service for your rides to New York City. From the New York Times: Two-year-old Megabus.com, a subsidiary of Coach USA, is based in Paramus, N.J., and is structured much like Southwest and other low-cost airlines. Tickets are sold on the Internet and by telephone, with the best deals for those who buy......

Planning a trip down the Northeast Corridor? Leave the Hitachi Magic Wand at home. Or say hello to the Fung Wah. According to WBZ News, Amtrak officials say that "mobile security teams" are poised to swoop, unannounced, into South Station and other train stations between Boston and D.C. and perform some bag-searching. Here's the proposed procedure: Randomly-selected passengers will enjoy a few squirmy moments as their carry-on bags are probed with a "special swab"......

Due to red tape, the Vamoose bus, which Bostonist had written about recently, is no longer allowed to run from Cambridge to New York City. Vamoose didn't get a jitney license that lets them pick up and drop off passengers, the Crimson reports. This is such a letdown when it comes to cheap buses, especially now that the Peter Pan drivers are earning a reputation for douchebaggery. Vamoose was even supposed to have wireless. The......

--Maybe Fung Wah isn't so bad after all. The local press picked up on a b0st0n LiveJournal story that a Peter Pan bus driver felt that his passengers on a trip to Boston should be punished and forced to stay on the bus in Framingham because one of them called the company about his poor driving. The driver's sorry ass is about to get fired. [WBZ, Globe, b0st0n Live Journal] --Female parking enforcement officers......

Other -ists, such as Chicagoist, Houstonist, and Austinist, regularly peruse Craigslist's "Missed Connections" for the good stuff. Boston's Missed Connections have been fairly straightforward, with the exception of the guy who thought he found Fung Wah Love. But this has been a good week for impressive Missed Connections. First, a love note to a "meter maid" caught our eye: You waited until I backed into the parking space to tell me that in the future......

--Paul F. Ware Jr., the special prosecutor looking into the Big Dig has cost the state $1 million so far. Maybe, if the AG's office actually gets around to getting some money out of Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff, they can foot the bill. [Boston Globe] --More gratuitous limos and tour buses in New Hampshire! Oprah's coming to town to campaign for Obama! She'll be in Manchester, NH, on December 9. [WBZ] --The Worcester Telegram & Gazette gets......

--Eunice Kennedy Shriver, sister of Ted Kennedy and JFK, mother to Maria Shriver, and mother-in-law to Arnold Schwarzenegger, has been hospitalized at Mass General, although no one is saying why. She is 86. [Boston Globe] --Today marks the last day of Bob's Southern Bistro and the opening of some generic swanky watering hole. [WBZ] --With the departure of the infamous Mark Flomenbaum, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner is disinfecting its hazardous practices by......

With Thanksgiving and the holiday season approaching, the time has come to focus on travel options. Vamoose buses now offer WiFi access and guaranteed seating, but perhaps it is time to take another look at its oft-maligned competitor, the Fung Wah Bus. Established ten years ago, Fung Wah, which is Cantonese for “magnificent wind,” has gained notoriety for buses slamming into guard rails and getting stuck in a toll booth. But even with these occasional......

Did you know? Red Sox fans get happy when the Red Sox win. And they get sad when the Red Sox lose. They also like to nibble on munchies during the game. The Globe apparently didn't think that their readers were aware of that fact, so they hired the MIT Media Lab for a study that showed up on Sunday's City & Region front page. In the study, MIT's Media Lab observed Elena Tate,......

All of Fung Wah's accidents were kind of cute, in a twisted sort of way. Fung Wah is the cheap transportation of choice for all the cool kids wanting to get out of town. But Fung Wah's latest scrape with the law isn't cute at all. Fung Wah must pay a blind couple $50,000 because the company wouldn't let the couple take its seeing-eye dog on the bus. Fung Wah must also cough up a......

A startup by some MIT grads started making waves a year ago when they began putting some venture capital to use to build their social networking site. After a year of growth some issues arose with their name, coincidentally with their expansion from Boston into New York City and the Bay Area. HeyLetsGo was to be no more; they were looking for a new name. Today they announced their new identity: Going.com. Going is looking......

We were impressed by the verbal descriptions of Fung Wah's latest driving mistake, but it should be seen to be believed. Bostonist reader Nedward was kind enough to share his on-the-scene shot of the Fung Wah bus wedged up on a curb in Weston: Image of Fung Wah bus from Flickr user Nedward.......

Fung Wah accidents are bad news, especially for those riding the bus. But their reliable clumsiness is always a source of humor. Most times, when you hear the words "bus accident" in Massachusetts, someone will invariably ask, "Oh, was it Fung Wah again?" The infamous low-price bus service is so trustworthy in its untrustworthiness that we should probably create a category for it on this site. Today, the Globe reported that a Fung Wah bus......

Crime seems to have gone down because a) no one feels like going outdoors and making trouble or b) the news stations are so busy reporting on the endless road accidents that they don't notice any trouble. Fung Wah remains the superstar of the blotter, as the driver of the bus that crashed into a guardrail on the Pike got busted with a fake log book. For once, Fung Wah could have blamed it on......

The old saying goes that nothing is certain except death and taxes. You should add Fung Wah buses to that list. A Fung Wah bus was understandably overwhelmed by today's nasty weather. Mac Daniel reports that a Fung Wah bus hit a guardrail this morning on the Pike by the Allston-Brighton tolls. Another Fung Wah bus came by to retrieve the freezing passengers. For once, it seemed that Fung Wah could probably blame an accident......

Sunday. Usually, a quiet, contemplative day in the Blogosphere. But not here in the Ist-a-Verse. Nonono! Just look below and see all of the wild and crazy stuff our staffs are up to. In Austin, bands are beginning to confirm for SXSW and the rumor mill is up and running. Good thing, too, because we all know how much Austinites love live performances. Austin also found itself in the national spotlight, with Longhorn Legend......

Apparently there's not a cosmic law dictating that buses are allowed to have only one brush with disaster per week. Yesterday, an MBTA bus with over 40 passengers caught fire. One rider told WHDH news that the incident started with a bang at the back of the bus: "It sounded like a huge gunshot. We initially thought it was just a blowout of the tire." (Given the Fung Wah loose-wheel episode, that's hardly surprising.)......

The only things certain in life are death, taxes, and problems with Fung Wah buses. Mac Daniel reports that the latest Fung Wah problem involved two tires coming right off the bus as it headed down the Turnpike. But here's the real howler - the bus passed its state inspection on November 29. Surely, whoever inspected that bus was smoking something absolutely magnificent. How on earth can someone whose line of business it is......

IPO might still elicit thoughts of Initial Public Offering for many around Boston. This week it stands for International Pop Overthrow. About a thousand bands each take stage for a short set at the Paradise Lounge before the next act gets up. Ok, so it's not a thousand, but there are at least 40. The festival kicks off on Wednesday with Bostonist favs Anuska Pop and play all week. Each show is $10 and......

Yesterday the Fung Wah Bus Line agreed to conditions of operation outlined by State and Federal regulatory agencies. One of the provisions was that they would no longer allow drivers who could not speak or read English to operate their vehicles to make trips between New York and Boston. It isn't clear how many drivers they had in their employ that didn't have a basic command of the English language, but if such a rule......

It was big news a couple months back that the Fast Lane transponders were crapping out on drivers. The batteries in the devices were crapping out on the drivers who had gotten them in the first wave. The little tidbit about the Fast Lane we learned in reports following the Fung Wah bus' turnover is that they used the timestamp on the entry and exit to fine the bus company for speeding. As the Globe......

The threats of massive traffic slow downs hit us over the long weekend. City officials and the main stream media were warning of resulting problems as some hundreds of thousands of students returned to school and workers returned to a full schedule after the summer. Despite the Big Dig issues stemming from safety checks and repairs after the July incident, traffic wasn't all that bad. Reports from the field indicate a relatively normal commute (though......

Oft noted as of late, it seems like Armageddon Boston more and more. But troubles aren't all local. Take a look at the many other, much worse, events in the world: wars, tsunamis, and that's just the beginning. The quagmire that is the US engagement in Iraq routinely makes the dailies as young local servicemen are killed abroad. What's captivated our attention lately is the new surge in violence between Israel and Lebanon. Measuring the......

There’s something about the mustache. Some folks sport it well (Tom Selleck, Alex Trebek) and can look just as dashing without it - naked for a while, but we got used to a mustache-less Trebek. Others opine in song about their desire for the ‘stache, take Jimmy Buffet's ballad for example: "I wish I had a pencil thin mustache." Fresh from a Fung Wah trip last month we overheard talk that hipsters in NYC......

About a month back, Bostonist got all caught up in the $25 fare offered by Jet Blue to get you from Boston to New York City. We even called the contest, shunned the Fung Wah, and gave the advantage to the plane. This widely successful move by the discount carrier has actually made competing shuttles drop their prices a bit too. But we’re done with New York: There are just far too many people in......

The news lately seems to be tugging us back and forth between the Fung Wah bus and the more high-end ways to get to New York: First we found out that all the Acela trains had defective brakes. Then a Fung Wah bus burst into flames on the road. Then the radar at Logan started seeing planes that weren't there. Now, Jet Blue, which recently set up shop at Logan, will be offering $25 flights......

Many buildings around the Hub are grandfathered, but those with new construction must comply with the American with Disabilities Act. The Act, signed fifteen years ago today by President Bush the elder, requires new and public facilities to be accessible by disabled persons. After spending a couple months in a wheelchair following a car accident, Bostonist became aware of all the challenges to getting that around people with disabilities face day in and day out,......

The term "Masshole" is a loving term to describe those of use who live in this state..."Massholia" is the name of a rock 'n roll musical/comedy that opens May 6th in Manhattan's Lower East Side. Now before Bostonians get riled up at the thought of New Yorkers mocking us with the art of theater, Bostonist would like to point out that the show is written, produced and starring lots of Emerson grads, so they are......