On the mystery of Newstead Montegrade
Maps of Franklin Park show a small area near the northern end called Newstead Montegrade. For some reason, the US Geological Survey designates Newstead Montegrade a ''populated place." MapQuest and several travel websites (and one adult phone-chat service) take it a step further and declare Newstead Montegrade a city -- conveniently located just 4.1 miles from Boston.
Some of those travel sites invite users to post reports on their travels to the nonexistent city. That's led to a bit of online mischief, which you can check out at www.newsteadmontegrade.com -- a site set up by Ron Blum, who lives across the street from Newstead Montegrade. He has links to everything from reports by alleged visitors (um, including me) on Newstead Montegrade's culture, dining, and tourist highlights to supposed photos of the famous Newstead Montegrade carnival (which looks amazingly like the ''Mardi Gras" at the Jordan's Furniture in Natick).
Erika Rose McLaughlin, who had long been puzzled by the ''Newstead Montegrade" that popped up whenever she did a MapQuest search involving Roxbury, set up several forums on it, including for haikus. Scott Delano wrote:
Lost in the 'bury unknown locale no marker near White Stadium
Blum says he's tried without success to get to the bottom of the Newsteadian mystery: ''I've looked online at a few old maps of Boston, and even the earlier West Roxbury, back when Franklin Park was known as West Roxbury Park, and there's no mention of Newstead Montegrade. An earlier map, from the mid 1800s, shows the area parceled off into estates or farms -- I don't know which -- but there's no mention of Newstead Montegrade."
Thank you very mulch
Kristie Helms of Roslindale reports on her Dish It Up, Baby weblog that her yard emerged from the recent winter covered in salt, fast food wrappers, and leaves from last fall. Five bags of mulch, though, succeeded in ''making the whole yard look as if I actually care. Mulch. The miracle landscaper."
Not quite kosher
The Kosher Blog notes that a recent ''Passover Menu 2005" advertising circular from
Suddenly desirable
Derek Lumpkins writes on The Third Decade that he is surprised to see his current neighborhood (Fort Hill in Roxbury) and his former digs (Hyde Square in JP) described as two of the most desirable in the city by Boston magazine:
''Let's see what kind of pressures this new attention puts on the community. There's already tension about affordable housing and changes in the demographics (racial and economic) simmering beneath the surface."
Getting results
Jay Levitt drives down the turnpike in Allston past a commercial building (119-129 Braintree St.) on which a large banner advertising its space has nearly disintegrated.
A day after he posts an item on his Parapoetica blog about what the shredded banner must say about the owner's management abilities, he gets e-mail from the owner promising to take the banner down.
Local news disconnect
Chris Cagle of Jamaica Plain says on his Left Center Left that Edward R. Murrow would surely roll over in his grave if he knew that in a station promo for winning a journalism award named after him, WHDH-TV (Channel 7) incorporated footage from its coverage of the Michael Jackson trial.
That's just further proof, he said, of how divorced local news coverage is getting from reality, when stations send reporters to do live shots that add absolutely nothing to our understanding of the news: ''We get no more from David Muir standing in a Qatar desert than we would from anchors or voiceovers reading [the military's] responses."
Reach Gaffin at adamg@gaffin.com. You can see the complete posts cited above at www.universalhub.com/0417.html.
