The MBTA - not much to tweet home about
(Jeremy C. Fox for Boston.com)
Are all these people unhappy? Maybe.
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City's ParkARTS program offers free painting workshops in parks
Amateur artists have a chance to create al fresco during two painting workshops hosted by the city this weekend.
The Boston Parks Department is holding free watercolor painting workshops at Christopher Columbus Park in the North End Saturday from 12 to 2 p.m. and at the Public Garden by the Lagoon Sunday from 12 to 2 p.m.
Blick Art Materials will provide supplies while a professional artist offers tips to seasoned painters and newcomers, alike.
The workshop are part of Boston’s larger ParkARTS program, a citywide initiative now in its 16th year designed to make the arts more accessible and draw residents to their neighborhood parks.
In addition to painting workshops, this year’s events include craft and photography workshops, marionette puppet shows, movie nights, and a variety of concerts.
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Twitter: @YourBackBay
E-mail: johanna.yourtown@gmail.com
Swim club to take annual dip in Charles River
The Charles River might not be Boston’s most popular swimming hole, but that won’t stop one group of dedicated swimmers from taking the plunge for their annual race in the city’s historic “dirty water.”
Up to 150 swimmers are set to join the the Charles River Swimming Club Saturday for the one-mile lap around the river that starts at 8 a.m.
The swimming club formed in 2005 to organize competitive swimming events in the Charles and push for continued clean up efforts to allow recreational swimming in the river.
While the Charles is not a yet swimmable river, the ongoing Clean Charles River Initiative, founded in 1995, has made progress in restoring the river’s ecological health.
Earlier this year, the Environmental Protection Agency gave the lower Charles River a “B” grade based on the amount of bacteria found in water samples collected at 10 locations from the Watertown Dam to Boston Harbor by the Charles River Watershed Association during 2011.
The samples showed that the river met the water quality standards for boating 82 percent of the time and for swimming 54 percent of the time.
That is a vast improvement from 1995. That year the river met boating standards 39 percent of the time and swimming standards 19 percent of the time. It received a “D.”
Saturday’s scheduled race will be moved to June 17 in case of rain on race day or excessive rainfall in the days leading up to the race.
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Twitter: @YourBackBay
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Work begins to transform old restroom on Boston Common into Earl of Sandwich shop
(Photo by Brock Parker for boston.com)
Two men work on renovating a former restroom on the Boston Common to turn it into an Earl of Sandwich shop.
Construction has begun in a project to transform a long-vacant Boston Common restroom into a sandwich shop.
Fencing and scaffolding surrounded the octagon-shaped structure earlier this week as a construction crew worked inside the 660-square-foot building to turn it into a new location for restaurant chain Earl of Sandwich.
The building, known as the Pink Palace because of the pinkish hue of its masonry, was built in the 1920s as a men’s comfort station, but has not been used since the 1970s.
It sits near the Common’s baseball fields and tennis courts, and the Parkman Bandstand.
Last September, the city announced it had signed a 15-year lease with Orlando-based Earl of Sandwich under which the company will pay $50,000 a year to the city.
"This building has been kind of a decaying and dead building in the Common for many years. It will be great to have some activity in there,” said Elizabeth Vizza, executive director of the Friends of the Public Garden.
Vizza said she expects the sandwich shop to attract visitors and revitalize the area, much like the Friends’ recent renovation of the Brewer Fountain Plaza has done.
“It will bring some life to that part of the Common,” she said.
The eatery has hired it own contractors for the project and will pay for the cost of renovations, according to the Boston Parks & Recreation Department.
Vizza said the eatery has worked to maintain the historic facade of the building while renovating the interior. She said the Friends hope to ensure lighting and signage are well-integrated into the park and truck deliveries are timed to cause as little disruption as possible.
The franchise already has locations in California, Florida, New York, Nevada, and Texas, as well as a location inside Logan Airport.
A sign hanging on the fence surrounding the construction site promises passersby “the sandwiches are coming.” When the project was originally announced, an opening date as early as this spring was said to be possible.
The Globe has previously reported that an engineering report on the Pink Palace commissioned by the city and released in 2007 found that renovations would take about two years and cost anywhere from $750,000 to just under $1 million.
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Twitter: @YourBeaconHill
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Boston Public Library offers courtyard concerts during lunchtime
Music is set to fill the courtyard of the Boston Public Library every week as the library kicks off its summer concert series.
The library’s central building in Copley Square will host weekly lunchtime concerts in its courtyard every Friday throughout the summer. The concerts will feature a range of musical genres, including jazz, classical, folk and funk.
The Friday concerts start at 12:30 p.m. and will be moved to the Rabb Lecture Hall in case of rain.
The library has released the following schedule of performances:
FULL ENTRYEsplanade's Eliot Memorial revitalization continues
A friends group of the Charles River Esplanade is moving forward with efforts to revitalize the park’s Eliot Memorial and the landscape around it.
The Esplanade Association announced that the Eliot Memorial and the area near Community Boating could be revitalized by the fall as volunteers donate hours of work and money to help improve the area.
The association has received grants from the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation Partnership Grant Program, Porpoise Fund, Lawrence and Lillian Solomon Fund and Garden Club of the Back Bay, and individuals to help fund the project.
The association hopes to repair the lawn, plant new trees and shrubs, install an irrigation system, add benches and seating, improve pathways, and add a lockable gate and stairs to the Community Boating dock as part of the revitalization process.
Already, diseased or hazardous trees around the site have been removed or pruned and Equity Residential aerated and re-seeded the soil, removed invasive shoreline plants, cleaned and painted benches, and built compost bins behind the Lee Pool building.
More work will begin mid-summer, according to the association.
"We are counting on the support of everyone who loves this park to help us raise the remaining $50,000 needed to turn this worn out area into a beautiful gathering spot with the addition of trees and shrubs, circular benches, granite curbing and a repaired Founder's Overlook with magnificent views of the river and Boston skyline," Sylvia Salas, executive director of The Esplanade Association, said in a statement.
The Eliot Memorial revitalization is the first project outlined in the association’s Esplanade 2020 vision to be undertaken.
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Twitter: @YourBeaconHill
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A hot week on the MBTA
(Jeremy C. Fox for Boston.com)
Will these unsuspecting passengers be greeted by waves of heat once they board their bus? Many commuters were this week.
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Berklee College of Music honors Zumix co-founder Madeleine Steczynski
(Phil Farnsworth/Courtesy Berklee College of Music)
Madeleine Steczynski, center, accepts her award from Lynette Gittens, Berklee City Music director of operations and enrollment, and Hebert Labbate, Berklee City Music business operations manager.
Berklee College of Music recently presented the leader of an East Boston arts organization with an award for her leadership and empowerment of youth through music.
Madeleine Steczynski, co-founder and executive director of Zumix, was honored by the music college’s office of community affairs and campus engagement at a recent ceremony for the third annual Berklee Urban Service Awards. The awards “are based on the principle that institutions of higher education realize their greatest potential when they serve as fully committed members of the community,” according to press release from Berklee.
The awards ceremony included performances by Beyond Borders, a Berklee student group that uses music to raise awareness; the international ensemble Women of the World, winners of Performance of the Year for their 2011 performance at Swingin’ in Mothers Rest; and Studio Heat with the Berklee Hip-Hop Ensemble, a collaboration between Berklee students and young people from Blue Hill Boys and Girls Club Music Clubhouse
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On Biking: learning to love Hubway
One of the great things about Hubway, Boston’s bicycle sharing program, is that it allows all sorts of people to go out for a ride.
Until last year, Love Nickerson never considered herself to be a cyclist. Sure, she knew how to ride a bike, but she didn’t own one. For Love, the challenges of maintaining, storing, and securing a bicycle were more than she cared to manage.
When Love first learned about Hubway she was thrilled. “But when I saw the pricing structure I was turned off,'' she said. "The all-day rental was expensive and not practical.”
Fortunately some colleagues at work explained to her that she probably wouldn’t be riding her bike for eight hours in a row. “They weren’t even cyclists and they don’t use Hubway, but they got me to see that Hubway was meant to give me access to bikes when I needed them and to encourage shorter rides.”
For Love, this was, “A different way of thinking about transportation and commuting. It was about sharing, and I liked that.” Once she understood that Hubway could be cheap, practical, and fun, she joined up.
Last year Love biked enough to become a Gold Club member, an award given to the six men and women who logged the most number of trips on Hubway. Love did this by commuting every day from her home in the North End to her job at Dana Farber.
When she began riding to work she was not able to complete her commute in under 30 minutes (the cut off point at which members incur additional charges). “I wasn’t confident about my route and I was just getting used to dealing with the traffic.” Love adapted by docking her bike halfway through her ride. This restarts the clock and allows you to keep riding without being charged extra.
After a while Love felt confident enough to ride her entire commute without stopping. “It turned out I did that trip in 25 minutes, though I would have been thrilled even if it had been 29 minutes.”
Love first began biking so she could get to work by Hubway instead of the subway. Still, she noticed that even though she rode at a moderate pace for a moderate distance it was more than enough to get her into shape.
After a few weeks Love could tackle the two small hills on her commute “without huffing or puffing or needing a drink of water. The bikes have three gears. When I first started biking I used gear number two. But now I can go in gear number three (a harder gear to push), though every once in a while I’ll be exhausted and have a gear one and two kind of day.”
Love knows that she’s become a cyclist because of the fact that “I’m now aware of how things affect bikers. Even if I’m not on my bike I notice when someone’s double parked in a bicycle lane or if there are potholes or debris in the bike lane. The things that make it tough on cyclists.”
So if Love is so enthusiastic about Hubway, why won’t she be biking this summer and seeing if she can become a two-time Gold Club member? She would if she could, but as of now, Hubway doesn’t have any stations in Mongolia. That’s where Love will be living as of next week when she travels to Asia to teach English through the Peace Corps. “It was something that I’d always wanted to do, to speak another language and experience another culture.”
For Love, “Hubway was one of the first things I thought about that I’d be leaving behind when I decided to join the Peace Corps. I’ll miss how easy it is, how it just became part of my life...I didn’t anticipate that I’d adopt it so completely, but I did.”
Love said, “If I’m stationed in a place with paved roads then I’ll definitely consider getting a bike. But wherever I live after the Peace Corps I see a bicycle in my future.”
In the meantime, Love plans to explore Boston before she flies to Mongolia. At the top of her list of local places to visit is The JFK Library. “I know it’s not entirely Hubway accessible, but I’d like to get over there. Especially as he was the president who signed off on the Peace Corps.”
Jonathan Simmons is a psychologist and an avid cyclist. His book, “Here For the Ride” will be published later this year.
Readers: if you’re interested in following Love Nickerson’s adventures in Mongolia check out her blog at To Mongolia with Love.
Looking for something to do this weekend? Check out Charles River Wheelmen’s “Introduction to Group Riding.” (Full disclosure: I am a member of CRW). This is a great way to learn about paceline riding but it’s not for beginners.
Sing a song of public transit
(Jeremy C. Fox for Boston.com)
The wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round.
Email Jeremy C. Fox at jeremycfox@gmail.com.
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