Image tagged Bostonist by AntyDiluvian on Flickr This here giraffe laughed... as it broke out of the circus. [Guardian] Security is being tightened tonight in response to racially targeted threats against Sox players. [WCVB] Safety for fans, on the other hand, isn't guaranteed--Fenway and TDBN Garden are both lax on inspections. [WCVB] In addition to helpfully closing the sidewalks on the Longfellow Bridge (which just forced pedestrians into the bike lane--thanks!), the city is......

Universal Hub talked to Joe Pesaturo and found that the MBTA still needs to finish some work on the inbound rail ties on the Longfellow Bridge tonight and tomorrow night. Service into Boston should progress "full speed ahead" starting Wednesday. The outbound tracks, however, still need more work, which will happen the weekends of July 12 and 19. Guess we'll be crawling into Cambridge for a while yet.......

This weekend is going to suck if you live in one part of Boston and would like to go to a different part. In addition to Saturday's Boston Gay Pride Parade, which will be packing downtown Boston with an estimated 500,000 spectators, the Cambridge River Festival will be closing Memorial Drive all day on Saturday. To top everything off, the Red Line will be taken out of operation between Park Street and Kendall/MIT so......

While Tuesday's crash on Storrow Drive was good for a few one liners on the internet, in real life it has caused someone a miserable headache (and we don't mean the hypothetical but clearly nonexistent keeper of the Longfellow Bridge). Over at b0st0n.livejournal.com, a user put two and two together after getting an email about a horrible moving experience over a local college's alumni list. The upshot? The drivers at Broadway Express moving company......

Peanut butter and jelly, bread and butter, trucks and Storrow. And it's not even September! [b0st0n LiveJournal] Victoria Welch provided the text. Image appropriately titled "oopsie" from k a t m from photos tagged "Bostonist" on Flickr.......

-- It's official. Bostonist reported back in April that the Longfellow Bridge is falling apart, which is clear to anyone who walks across it. As of Friday the sidewalk facing Back Bay was closed to pedestrians to repair a support beam. And no spectators will be allowed on the bridge to watch the fireworks on the Fourth of July. [Boston Globe] -- Ed O’Reilly, an attorney and former lobsterman from Gloucester, is going to......

How tall do you have to be to ride the Red Line again? Because you'll feel some thrills riding this particular MBTA line in the next few weeks. The Longfellow Bridge has been in a state of disrepair for some time, and authorities are considering closing the bridge during the 4th of July to prevent the teeming hordes from plunging into the water. Now, according to the Cambridge Chronicle, the Red Line trains are going......

The condition of the Longfellow Bridge is something most Red Line riders and drivers would rather not think about as they cross the Boston-Cambridge border. If you've ever walked across it, you might have wondered if it would collapse with a mere hop, skip and jump. And it might, especially during the 4th of July. The Cambridge Chronicle just put the masses on notice: "Engineers at the Department of Conservation and Recreation, which controls the......

-- Call him Governor Patrick-agressive. Deval Patrick unveiled his 2009 budget, and it had a little surprise. $300 million of revenue is set to come from taxes on three casinos that do not yet exist. Patrick wants to license casino gambling in Massachusetts but faces heavy opposition in the legislature. It's a battle he has already won in his own mind. Nearly half -- $124 million -- of the speculative funds will shore up a......

The Longfellow Bridge, which looks a little busted, is in terrible condition, the Herald's Casey Ross reports. Of course, anyone who has seen the bridge could have told you that. The state has already made $2 million in repairs. And it still seems a little busted. Here's the details on what's been done and what will be done: [Rick Sullivan of the Department of Conservation and Recreation] said DCR has spent $1.2 million since August......

Photographer and blogger Lolita Parker Jr. was on the scene when fed-up and overheated MBTA passengers broke out of a Red Line train stuck on the Longfellow Bridge during Friday's Park Street Station fire. The following image says a lot of good about Bostonians helping each other. It doesn't say as much about the T, which has some 'splainin' to do. Image courtesy of Lolita Parker Jr. More pictures of the incident are available on......

And good for them! Last night's trash fire at the Park Street MBTA station caused the usual delays and annoyance, but some passengers became so dangerously overheated when their train got stuck on the Longfellow Bridge that they broke out, using the emergency handles. The Globe noted that the passengers' actions were "unauthorized," but what were they going to do, bake in there like Toll House cookies in an oven? Lolita at Boston Faces, Boston......

Update: A commenter let us know that MIT is paying $6,000 to help clean up the boat. Pretty much everyone and their mom knows that MIT has a yearly tradition of dropping sodium off the Longfellow Bridge into the Charles. It was only logical that, when some volunteers cleaning up the Charles got burned by sodium, someone would put two and two together and look at MIT. But a recent article in The Tech argues......

Now that a partially dissolved piece of sodium metal has been deemed the culprit in the burning of several Charles River cleanup volunteers, the local news is playing up the MIT ritual known as the "sodium drop." MIT students like to drop stuff. Sometimes they drop pianos. In this case, at the start of each school year, students get the sodium from somewhere on campus, tote it to the Longfellow Bridge, and drop it bit......

--Someone must've really wanted to get caught while robbing Central Variety convenience store in Somerville. While he was awkwardly diving over the counter, he shoved an 8-year-old girl and stole the money she was spending for milk. The perp received only a box of cigars for his troubles. And the surveillance camera captured all the gory details. We say, "Amateur!" This behavior splashed the perp all over last night's news, even beating out the fire......

Paul posted a detailed description of his experiences as one of the evacuees during last night's Longfellow Bridge Fire, which shut down the bridge, the MBTA Red Line, Charles-MGH station, and Storrow Drive. By the way, Red Line service is back up now. Here's what Paul had to say (paragraph breaks and boldface emphasis are ours): I was one of the evacuees on the outbound red line train entering Charles/MGH on May 1st. It's difficult......

This from WBZ: A two-alarm fire that started at about 8:20 pm shut down the Longfellow Bridge. Trains were stopped, traffic was diverted, and heavy smoke forced the Charles-MGH station to shut down. The MBTA has posted the alert on its website and offered a few terse details: "A homeless man started a fire underneath the Longfellow Bridge. As a result the Boston Fire Department has stopped all traffic. Subway Red Line service is being......

Do the networks need any material for a midseason replacement? Peter Berdvosky and Sean Stevens, who were arrested for hanging the displays of the "Mooninites" that scared the city and pissed off the mayor, might be the right guys for the job. The city finds these two rather amusing. Bostonist overheard some T passengers laughing about the shaggy appearance of the two guys arrested for the ATHF attack. One guy said, "I'm not scared any......

On Monday the Globe reported that "Antiterror cameras capturing crime on T" and Boston is safe. On Wednesday the Globe reported that " T's searches turn up only false alarms" and Boston is safe. Wednesday afternoon pretty much every media outlet reported on the breaking story that "Holy f*ing sh*t lite-brite is going to blow up our city." Mac Daniel's article on Monday touted the cameras installed in T stations as crime solving machines that......

UPDATE: In their streaming newscast, WBZ has been showing the image of the "mooninite" from Aqua Teen Hunger Force. And, boy, is it funny to hear a straightlaced, gravitas-filled newscaster utter the words "Aqua Teen Hunger Force." But we don't envy who is behind this promotion. Governor Deval Patrick is pissed. Don't worry - everything is fine. But it seemed as if these circuit boards were popping up all over town. WCVB lists all the......

A major fire at One Broadway resulted in injuries, one of them critical. Universal Hub moved fast and posted a report from a woman who works in the building and saw the impact of the smoke inhalation firsthand. They also have a report from someone who was on the Kendall T stop platform and saw lights "flicker and flash and eventually [go] out." CBS4 has video of people describing the smoke, and they also......

Local born photographer and lover of handbags has completed her Longfellow Bridge Project. Following her photography for the last few months has taken a trip around the country recent months – landing back in Boston for a brief time before the recent move to Queens. We're sure she'll bring a fresh lens to the NYC Photoblogging community. Over the last few months she undertook a project of photographing the view from the Longfellow Bridge......

Do you know what movie is being flimed on Charles Street (the Cambridge end)? The last block is filled with trailers and temporary tents. I saw some names on a trailer door - Lucy and Desi - which led me to believe it's an "I Love Lucy" remake. But a quick search on IMDB revealed no movie of the same title. So have you heard what it is? Or, more importantly, do you know what......

The Executive Office of Transportation is shrouded in a cloud of mystery no more. Today, the office launched a new addition to its website: Projects Under Design and Construction. Bostonist can now track the status and cost of every local road construction project from the comfort of our living room. You can search by city, MassHighway District, Senator, Representative, Metropolitan Planning District, or US Congressional District. Bostonist has been exploring the site throughout the......