It's fun to stay at the MBTA

by | Aug 30, 2013 | transportation, urbanism

I was not looking forward to my trip to the Charlie Card Store. I was prepared to beg, threaten, maybe even bribe my way through what I was certain would be a Dantean, Kafkaesque, Orwellian, and probably Quixotic* quest to repair or replace my expired Charlie Card. I...

Now you T it, now you don't

by | Aug 28, 2013 | technology, transportation, urbanism

Do you know what you were doing five years ago today? Well, according this this blog, I was in Santa Monica, but according to the MBTA, I was unboxing a brand new Charlie Card. I know this because today, five years later, that Charlie card, suddenly and without...

Day of the day: Juneteenth

by | Jun 19, 2013 | culture

Today is Juneteenth, a day commemorating the abolition of slavery in Texas on June 19, 1865 (yes, the Emancipation Proclamation was years earlier, but Texas was not about to take orders from Lincoln at that point) that is now observed in some fashion in 42 states....

Bus stop, T woes, stop goes, speed grows

by | Jun 18, 2013 | transportation, urbanism

Via the estimable newsmachers at UniversalHub, a report that the MBTA is eliminating some stops on 15 of the busiest bus lines in the city this summer. The idea is that snipping out some redundant stops and refurbishing others will reduce end-to-end trip time and cut...

60 days after the marathon bombing

by | Jun 14, 2013 | culture

I’m writing this on April 16th, the day after the bombings, but I’m setting it to publish 60 days later, on June 14. There’s a lot of great reporting today (April) about how nice everyone is being and how many relief efforts are underway. One thing I...

This chocolate pudding could be A+

by | Jun 4, 2013 | culture, eating, urbanism

I’ve called out food trucks before for obfuscating the name and content of common dishes, but when Mei Mei Street Kitchen put Sanguinaccio Dolce on the board, they helpfully, if bluntly, glossed it with “Taza chocolate, John Crow farm pigs blood.”...

Let's call the matzo ball off

by | Jun 3, 2013 | culture, reading & writing

A nice Indian American boy from New York won the national spelling bee on the yiddish word “knaydel.” That’s a matzo (not matzah, don’t get me started) ball if you’re among the perplexed. Whether the Bar Mitzvah-aged winner picked up his...

Back in Quack

by | May 21, 2013 | design

The long deflated night of the Hong Kong rubber duckie is over. Sayeth the Straits Times: Hong Kong on Tuesday joyfully welcomed the return of a giant inflatable rubber duck, which drew tens of thousands of visitors before it was abruptly deflated for maintenance for...