It was Guy Fawkes versus L. Rob Hubbard yesterday on Beacon Street. More than 100 people were outside Boston’s branch of The Church of Scientology yesterday, protesting the practices of the church, Boston NOW reported. Led by the Anti-Scientologist internet group Anonymous, word was spread about numerous protests worldwide through You Tube, message boards, and e-mail. Anonymous had previously announced that February 10th would be a day of mass protest of all Scientology churches......

People, so many people, mostly young people, people everywhere. There were so many people waiting in line for Senator Barack Obama's rally at the Seaport World Trade Center last night that the campaign turned the queue into a phone bank, handing out lists of voters and asking people to use their cell phones to plead for support. There were so many people waiting in the cold that a nearby Dunkin' Donuts had to prematurely......

Susan Plante, a receptionist at Brockton Hospital, died of injuries sustained yesterday when a car drove through the doors of the hospital. WBZ interviewed the driver of the car, 76-year-old Jane Berghold, who said she had "no idea" what happened. In the interview, Berghold looked down, held her hand to her head, twiddled her thumbs, and appeared to be in shock. She kept saying, "I really don't know what happened." Berghold has breast cancer and......

Update: We spoke to a patient MBTA customer-service rep who said that she didn't know how long Park Street Station would be closed. She said that the decision to reopen it was entirely up to the fire department. Update to the Update: A tipper going from downtown to Cambridge let us know that a red line train actually made it through, and the doors opened at Park Street, so the T appears to be functional......

--Meet Dirus Gaines, a man with an iron constitution. Mr. Gaines' seemingly lifeless body was found by the railroad tracks on Wednesday afternoon in Framingham. Gaines exhibited all the signs of being dead – no movement, eyes rolled back in head, odd position of body. Then, Gaines "suddenly" awakened and displayed his beverage of choice, a bottle of blackberry brandy. And here's the best part – Gaines is awfully lively when he's not completely pickled:......

Happy Father's Day! For those of you who have dads, are dads, or know dads, this one's for you, from all of us at the Gothamist network. It was a week of bizarre, embarassing headlines at DCist. The trial of the local administrative law judge who sued his cleaners for $54 million over a pair of missing pants left everyone shaking their heads. Then the capital city was nearly brought to its knees, twice, by......

The Globe's Mac Daniel reports that a man was separated from his briefcase during yesterday's morning rush hour. Orange Line doors suddenly snapped shut on Juan Sierra’s shoulder as he tried make his way out of the car, using his briefcase as a shield. “The closing of the doors also sandwiched my head to the point that my glasses popped off to the outside of the train car onto the platform," Sierra wrote in an......

The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny will open at the Cutler Majestic Theatre tonight, February 23, 2007 7:30 pm. Other showtimes include Sunday, February 25, 2007, at 3:00 pm and Tuesday, February 27, 2007, 7:30 pm. For more information, visit Opera Boston's website. In the city of Mahagonny, you can do anything you want - but you better make sure you pay your bar tab! Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht unleashed The......

Today is National Pancake Day. IHOP is giving away a free short stack of buttermilk pancakes to anyone who walks through the doors from 7am to 10pm. If they ask you for ID please let us know. We thought for sure that it was little more than a marketing ploy to get us into IHOP to be suckered into a side order of bacon and a bottomless cup of coffee, but there is, in fact,......

The Littlest Bar shuttered the doors last year after a prolonged closing. What remains in the Littlest spot is a gutted construction site (though you can still see the mirror behind the bar and wood paneling) for a set of upscale condos being constructed at the downtown location. On January 30 Tir na nOg in Somerville will be the latest Irish bar casualty to gentrification in the area. The Brendan Beehan may now be able......

Unfortunately, the holiday has not brought a respite to the violence in Boston. Yesterday, a 14-year-old boy got shot in the chest on Cummins Highway in Roslindale and later died. Another teenager was shot a block away, but his injuries aren't life-threatening. A bus passed by during the shootings, and the Herald reports that the bus passengers and members of the nearby Born Again Evangelistic Outreach Ministry scrambled to escape the gunfire: The bus witness......

MBTA employees are getting their surly on, perhaps because a handful of them got busted for having affairs and running side businesses on company time. It's fine if they're in a crabby mood, but it's not fine if their negligence causes someone to get hurt. Via Universal Hub, Jenny reports a disturbing incident on the Red Line that could have had a terrible ending were it not for some quick-thinking riders. She describes what happened......

There is something intriguing about snooping around your neighborhood to see what is going in the vacated spots that once housed a locally owned business. In February, many were surprised when arriving at Zathmary’s in Coolidge Corner for some matzah ball soup and the doors were locked, bread in front of the door, with no sign of life inside. The place was gone forever without a last chance to hit up the great salad bar.......

Sitting outside on a grassy patch next to flip-flop and business suit clad Bostonians seems like a recipe for snippets of wonderment. Sometimes it is and sometimes it isn’t. As the weather turns from Spring to Winter to Summer (it’s New England, right?) we’ve got our ears open and hope you do, too. When you hear something, say something. Send in your nuggets of out-of-context statements, outrageous pickup lines, and nonsensical musings to us......

After justified criticism that Bostonist hasn’t been paying enough attention to local bands we’re looking fondly at the Exploit Boston concert tonight. It’s the first event they’ve been sole sponsor and it’s brimming full of local act goodness. There’ll be time enough to get surly playing your favorite State of the Union drinking game and still make it to the headliner. Only problem with that plan is you’ll miss out on the free drinks. Yep,......

Over the last week patrons and outsiders have been taking note of the imminent closure of the Waltham Taven in the South End. The closure was forecasted in the Boston Globe and then solidified when the Licensing Board met and ordered the bar closed. Bostonist will be honest, we aren’t surprised to hear reports of “shady goings on” at the Waltham Tavern, substantiated or not. We’ve walked by the dive a hundred times, and admittedly......

One of the better kept secrets in Boston is the Langham Hotel's Three Season Chocolate Bar at Café Fleuri. Bostonist wants to be clear. It's a bar that serves chocolate, not a bar of chocolate or a bar made out of chocolate. (What imaginations you have!) When the doors are closed for three months over the summer, it's not certain whether the chefs head for the Cape or if no one in Boston likes chocolate......

Elitist liberal that we are, Bostonist likes foreign movies (or "films," as one ought refer to such artsy fare). Sure, there are plenty of bad ones, as anyone who has watched Telemundo on a weekend afternoon knows, but for some reason, the ones that find their way to US theaters tend to be a little better than average. That goes double for films shown at the library, so we are very excited about the ongoing......

Afraid that Boston would succumb to the C line controversy that’s rocked Gothamist commuters the Boston Fire Department told NSTAR to cut power to a couple thousand Bostonians for a short time yesterday evening. MBTA power substation near JFK/UMass Station blew up when gas had leaked into the area where a generator started up to create the power to run trains on the Red Line. MBTA has told commuters that they should expect fewer......