Bostonians Tyler Balliet and Morgan First love wine. Drinking it, talking about it, introducing other people to it. But wine, unfortunately, is often perceived to have an attitude, a culture of snottiness and pretension that puts people off before they even get close to a wine glass. Why swirl it? What's with that obnoxious sucking sound? What the hell is the deal with spitting it out? What about the
confusing vocabulary and snooty descriptors? When did wine become "sassy" or "understated", instead of "delicious"?
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posted by MissySedai
on Apr 30, 2013 -
127 comments
Up until last week, "One Direction Infection," a Tumblr blog created and maintained by an eighth grader we'll call Claire, looked like any other 14-year-old's Tumblr. But over the weekend Claire's subject matter took a sharp turn. In place of candid shots of Harry Styles and Zayn Malik, there are now photos of accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev; instead of inspirational image macros, there are annotated crime scene photos. Gawker's Max Read on where social media fandoms meet conspiracy theories.
posted by Rory Marinich
on Apr 25, 2013 -
99 comments
What started as a report of a convenience store robbery near the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology last night has sprawled into a chaotic manhunt for the perpetrators of
the recent terrorist attack on the Boston Marathon.
The deadly pursuit, involving
a policeman's murder, a carjacking, a violent chase with thrown explosives, and the death of one suspect, has resulted in
Governor Deval Patrick ordering
an unprecedented lockdown of the entire Boston metropolitan area as an army of law enforcement searches house by house for the remaining gunman.
The Associated Press has identified the duo as
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, and his 19-year-old brother Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, who remains at large. Both are
immigrants from wartorn
Chechnya in southwestern Russia.
The Guardian liveblog is good for quick updates, and
Reddit's updating crowdsourced timeline of events that has often outpaced mainstream media coverage of the situation. You can also get real-time reports straight from the (Java-based)
local police scanner.
posted by Rhaomi
on Apr 19, 2013 -
4937 comments
From the most recent Boston Magazine. "The Boston sports media, once considered one of the country’s best and most influential press corps, is stumbling toward irrelevance. The national media not only seems to break more big Boston sports stories than the local press, but also often features more sophisticated analysis, especially when it comes to using advanced statistics. To put it bluntly, “The Lodge”—as Fred Toucher, cohost of the 98.5 The Sports Hub morning radio show, mockingly refers to the city’s clubby, self-important media establishment—is clogged with stale reporters, crotchety columnists, and shameless blowhards. "
There's even a whole blog dedicated to hating Dan Shaughnessy,
Dan Shaughnessy Watch, aka the
CHB.
posted by Melismata
on Jan 29, 2013 -
17 comments
"People haven’t been fascinated by this book because the translation is mellifluous or beautiful,” said Michael F. Suarez, a professor of English at the University of Virginia who directs the Rare Book School there. “People haven’t been attracted to this book because the presswork is beautiful. It’s not.” Instead, the
Bay Psalm Book is treasured for being
the first surviving piece of printing done in the British North American colonies. Only 11 copies, many incomplete, today survive. Remarkably two of those copies belong to the same owner, Boston's
Old South Church. This month, the church made the
controversial decision to sell one (the first such sale in 65 years), and it could bring as much as $20 million for the church's endowment.
posted by Horace Rumpole
on Dec 25, 2012 -
7 comments
Lets Swim To Work! "Centuries of boat traffic, heavy industry, sewage runoff and toxic dumping have ingrained in us the idea that urban waterways are not places for people. Even as cities have rushed to the water’s edge over the past couple of decades, building elaborate waterfront parks and esplanades, few have taken the next logical step: encouraging residents to dive in."
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posted by the man of twists and turns
on Nov 23, 2012 -
42 comments
The Improper Bostonian: "In a town rightfully famous for its trailblazing female chefs, where Julia Child helped introduce American families to fresh vegetables and unprocessed foods, and Lydia Shire fine-tuned the buttery possibilities of French cooking, women have hardly disappeared from the dining scene. They can be found in other kitchens.
But where and why are subject to debate, depending on whom you ask."
posted by hypotheticole
on Jul 25, 2012 -
20 comments
Shit Boston Cops Say: "For at least six years, the Boston Police Patrolmen's Association (BPPA) has published a boldly bigoted official union newsletter, the
Pax Centurion. Full of screeds against minorities, women, progressives, gays, Muslims, and even crime victims, its pages have long drawn ire from
activists and union members alike. Last week, though, the mostly obscure paper finally broke into the spotlight: Mayor Tom Menino
called the Pax 'garbage,' Boston Police Superintendent Ed Davis
condemned the rag on Twitter, and several
big-brand advertisers yanked their sponsorships."
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posted by ericb
on Jul 6, 2012 -
69 comments
The Boston Symphony Orchestra is one of the handful of orchestras for which musicians the world over will drop everything to scramble for a job, and the audition ranks among the world’s toughest job interviews. Mike Tetreault has spent an entire year preparing obsessively for this moment. He's put in 20-hour workdays, practiced endlessly and shut down his personal life. Now the percussionist has 10 minutes to impress a selection committee and stand out among a lineup of other world-class musicians. A single mistake and it's over. A flawless performance and he could join one of the world's most renowned and financially well-endowed orchestras at a salary of more than $100,000 a year.
The Audition.
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posted by zarq
on Jul 5, 2012 -
90 comments
WFNX is D-E-D, dead. The last remaining Boston indie major market radio station,
WFNX, has been sold to Clear Channel Communications. 17 full- and part-time staffers, including almost all the current radio personalities, have been laid off. The station will continue to operate for a few months with a skeleton crew until the FCC approval and changeover.
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posted by clone boulevard
on May 19, 2012 -
72 comments
He considered himself an artist, but his work, while
popular and
incendiary, showed little
talent or
originality. Later in life he took up working with
precious metals, and that would be the craft he’s remembered for, but earlier in his career he
printed his own
engravings, or his
version of
the work of others. Earlier this year at Brown University’s
John Hay Library, something very rare was discovered. One of
Paul Revere’s prints depicting the Baptism of Christ was found tucked in an old textbook. While not a particularly valuable work or great art, this rare print does tell us a bit about the man as an artist, and about
his faith.
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posted by Toekneesan
on May 7, 2012 -
6 comments
Fenway Park, in Boston, is a lyric little bandbox of a ballpark. Everything is painted green and seems in curiously sharp focus, like the inside of an old-fashioned peeping-type Easter egg. It was built in 1912 and rebuilt in 1934, and offers, as do most Boston artifacts, a compromise between Man's Euclidean determinations and Nature's beguiling irregularities.
So wrote John Updike in his
moving tribute to Red Sox legend Ted Williams -- an appropriately pedigreed account for this
oldest and
most fabled of ballfields that saw
its first major league game played
one century ago today.
As a team
in flux hopes to recapture the magic with an
old-school face-off against the New York
Highlanders Yankees, it's hard to imagine the soul of the Sox faced the
specter of
demolition not too long ago. Now
legally preserved, in a sport crowded with corporate-branded superdome behemoths,
Fenway abides, bursting with
history,
idiosyncrasy,
record crowds, and occasional
song.
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posted by Rhaomi
on Apr 20, 2012 -
48 comments
"A
short film chronicling the legendary Johnny Canuck, his years of triumph and turmoil, and how they mirror the history of the Vancouver Canucks franchise and their Stanley Cup run in 2010-2011." [SLYT]
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posted by Felicity Rilke
on Jun 9, 2011 -
28 comments
Long before the Web, The Boston Globe had a “homepage” of sorts – its old storefront downtown. Taking advantage of its location in a heavily trafficked block of Newspaper Row, the young daily brought the news to Bostonians in a whole new way: handwritten signs.
posted by Trurl
on May 24, 2011 -
8 comments
