A camera-equipped helicopter was used to photograph a car scene for a Tom Cruise movie yesterday on the Leonard P. Zakim-Bunker Hill Memorial Bridge as police held up traffic.
(Pat Greenhouse/ Globe Staff)
Few hitches on an event-filled day
A camera-equipped helicopter was used to photograph a car scene for a Tom Cruise movie yesterday on the Leonard P. Zakim-Bunker Hill Memorial Bridge as police held up traffic.
(Pat Greenhouse/ Globe Staff)
Boston was bustling on the day before Columbus Day, as a heaping of happenings - from the Red Sox playoff game to two movie shoots - drew thousands of tourists and locals to the city and caused some drivers a bit of a hassle.
About 5,000 half-marathoners ran through Back Bay and Jamaica Plain yesterday morning. Tens of thousands marched through the North End in a Columbus Day parade. Roughly 40,000 Sox fans flooded Fenway. Some 18,000 fans took to TD Garden to cheer on the Celtics in a preseason game. Irish stepdancers kicked up their feet in Dorchester, and quirky marching bands paraded through Davis Square. And two celebrity-laden flicks were filmed on several of the city’s major arteries.
Yet transportation officials said traffic advisories and good timing cut down on the potential gridlock nightmare that could have stemmed from the packed city schedule.
“If we felt for a second that the city couldn’t accommodate whatever would be happening, it wouldn’t be happening,’’said Boston Transportation Commissioner Thomas J. Tinlin.
But for some drivers, the detours and delays were more than daunting.
“Everybody is lost. We’ve got all the tourists in town, we’ve got all the streets blocked off, you can’t get to hotels, you can’t get to businesses,’’ groused Peter Romanos, a 63-year-old taxi driver, as he took a break by the TD Garden after the Celtics game.
He said backups yesterday cost the city’s cabdrivers a lot of business.
“People see the traffic and they won’t take cabs or they get out of the cab and start walking,’’ said Romanos, fingering a cigar stump in his right hand.
Scores of camera-wielding onlookers leaned over a railing by the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway in the hope of spotting movie stars on the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge, and a helicopter hovering above, as filming for the latest Tom Cruise flick, “Wichita,’’ got underway yesterday afternoon. Transportation officials said they didn’t know if Cruise himself was part of the scene.
Cars heading to the Zakim Bridge faced a slowdown from 3 to 4 p.m. as authorities orchestrated a rolling roadblock so production teams could shoot two takes, Tinlin said.
Some gawkers searched the sky for a second low-flying filming chopper after rumors surfaced that a helicopter would land on the bridge. But the lone aircraft was filming a simple car scene and nothing landed on the bridge, said Executive Office of Transportation spokesman Colin Durrant.
Still, Giorgia Dal Pont, a 27-year-old Venetian visiting Boston, said the helicopter and the shoot added a little Hollywood glitz to an East Coast city.
“It’s not like just seeing it on television,’’ said Dal Pont. “To be here is like being in the movies.’’
Early in the morning, runners were routed through Back Bay, Brookline, Jamaica Plain, and Franklin Park in the ninth annual Boston Athletic Association Half Marathon.
Globe correspondents Emma Stickgold and Chris Girard contributed to this article. 
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