credit: D. Harney



Ashrita Furman, 52, of Queens, New York, broke the Guinness Book world record for the fastest frog jump on March 28 at the Boston Frog Pond on Boston Common. He did the frog jump for 10 meters in 9.50 seconds. The former record was 11.58 seconds, set five years ago by Bastien Lecomte of France. Furman has broken records in all seven continents and holds the title for having the most number of Guinness records held by an individual (140 since 1979; 57 in the year 2007). A “frog jump” is when you hold both of your big toes while jumping.

Charles Street will – or already did — get 17 new trash receptacles — all designed to keep out household trash.

They are heavy black Victor Stanley receptacles, not the flimsy ones lined with plastic bags that blow trash in the wind and mysteriously disappear from downtown streets. And best of all they have lids on them and small openings, sized just right for the disposal of candy wrappers and coffee cups but not for pizza boxes and plastic bags of trash from homeowners or even shopkeepers themselves.

The barrels have been a long time coming. Joe Green, who is vice-president of the Beacon Hill Business Association and a member of the Beacon Hill Civic Association’s Clean Beacon Hill Committee, was one who worked on getting the barrels for more than five years. “I give Joe a lot of credit,” said Peter Begley, chairman of the civic association group. “He pursued and he pursued. He spearheaded getting the barrels on Cambridge Street and then again on Charles Street.”

There were countless meetings over the years, many with the Public Works Department and with City Councilor Mike Ross, who both groups credited with working behind the scenes to convince Public Works to donate the barrels. Babak Bina, chairman of the business association, said at the last minute he found out the city was about to install the wrong kind of barrels. He and Green and several others went to city officials and said they did not want uncovered ones. “People consider them to be an eyesore because residents keep putting household trash in them, and they keep disappearing,” he said.

Yesterday, Green and others planned to walk down Charles Street picking the locations for the 17 cans. Most of the them, which Bina said cost about $1,000 each, will be bolted to the sidewalk near street corners and at intervals in between, and near businesses that generate a lot of trash. Except for Starbucks and 7-Eleven, which have special contracts with the city, businesses located near the trash cans are not responsible for emptying them. Public Works has said they will empty the barrels once a day.

“We fought very hard for these barrels,” said Bina. “Now we have to work hard to see that they stay were they are.”

Traffic lights: Again, this week the progress is all about traffic lights. The new ones at the Blossom Street intersection are up and running, and the old ones have been removed. Next on the list is the Joy Street traffic light system.

The walk light at Bowdoin near the Red Hat, which caused a woman to be hurt two weeks ago, is now fixed. It took several days. After workers fixed it, it worked intermittently. Finally last Thursday, the entire walk light was rewired and appears to be okay, according to John Lepore, who manages the project for Mass. Highway.

Long waits: Lepore said that pedestrians may wait longer to get a walk light after they push the button. He said the reason is that pedestrians now get a longer time to cross the entire street, instead of having to wait on the median. This means the entire sequence of lights for both traffic and pedestrians is longer.

photos by Shannon O’Connor

#1 Girl’s Easter Dresses at Red Wagon.
#2 Easter Chocolates at Beacon Hill Chocolates.
#3 Pastel Hats at The Designers Leather Clothiers.

credit: Deluca’s Market
#4 A Welshire ham available at Deluca’s.




Easter is right around the corner, and spring is almost here at last. The crocuses are trying to burst through the leftover snow. And Charles Street blossoms into the spring holiday shopping season with Easter items for everyone.

For women, Easter hats are available at The Designers Leather Clothiers. The proper ladies of Beacon Hill can step into the Easter parade with straw hats in pastel colors with decorative flowers. The prices range from $50 to $245.

Down the street at The Red Wagon, precious little pink and yellow dresses for young girls are for sale, with prices ranging from $70 to $100. Promenading down the street with their mothers and wearing their new Easter hats, the children will be ready to devour lots of chocolate bunnies, and hopefully the girls won’t wipe their little chocolate-covered hands on their new Easter dresses.

Beacon Hill Chocolates sells a variety of scrumptious chocolates for Easter in baskets and as single pieces. The baskets range in price from $24.99 to $39.99. One of the single chocolates for sale is a rabbit with almonds underneath the outer layer of chocolate, giving the appearance of ears. Also, a little marshmallow chick in a chocolate egg is for sale in a box with a facsimile nest.

At Beacon Hill Chocolates on Saturday, April 7, a special Easter event will take place for parents who wish to put together an Easter basket for their children. They can bring toys or anything they wish to put in their children’s baskets, so they are not limited to the items that are in the Easter baskets in the store.

Blackstone’s on Beacon Hill has chocolates from Experience Chocolate for the Easter season. The Belgian Easter Bunny box, filled with dark and milk chocolate eggs, will thrill all chocolate lovers if it appears in their basket on Easter morning. Experience Chocolates are also available at experiencechocolate.com.

Is there anything else to put in an Easter basket besides candy? At Deluca’s Market, a basket can be made with anything they sell in the store. They have an assortment of chocolates, and candy, of course, ranging from imported chocolate to jelly beans. If a customer desires, Deluca’s can put any item, from bananas, to yogurt-covered raisins, to a bottle of Italian wine in an Easter basket. The price of the basket can be as little or as much as the customer wishes to spend.

Charles Street has everything for Easter; just hop down the hill with the other bunnies and gather your goodies before the big bunny comes.

Community Boating Inc. held its opening day for the 2007 season Saturday with a day of sailing on the Charles River.
Tom Moore, program director of CBI, located at 21 David Mugar Way on the Esplanade, said the event will launch the adult sailing program for the season. The opening of the junior sailing program will be held on June 18.

Moore has been involved in Community Boating programs for 20 years, having worked for the organization while he was a student at Boston Latin School. Moore began competitive sailing at Latin and then continued his sailing career as a member of the University of New Orleans team.

Moore expects between 2,500 and 3,500 sailors to participate in the adult sailing program this season. There are approximately 1,900 junior members. Sailors from throughout New England take part in CBI activities and programs.

“It’s really a community atmosphere where, with the adult program, most of the classes are volunteer-taught – one member will teach other members how to sail,” said Moore.

The main fleet is Cape Cod Mercuries, which is a 15-foot boat for one to four people. “Most people learn how to sail on those boats and then, as they get more advanced, they move on to smaller and faster boats and bigger and more high-performance boats,” said Moore.

The smaller boats include 13-foot lasers, which are one-person boats; 14-foot 420s, which are two-person boats, wind-surfers and kayaks.

The adult program has a staff of 20 people, assisted by an additional 20 to 30 volunteers. The junior program has a staff of 15 instructors. Sailing lessons are included in the membership to CBI. A full-year membership for adults costs $199. A summer membership for the junior program (ages 10 to 18) is $1.

“You can learn the basics of sailing in a day and get out there and start sailing on your own,” said Moore.

The hours of operation at Community Boating are Monday through Friday, from 1 p.m. to sunset, and Saturday and Sunday, from 9 a.m. to sunset. There is supervision on the water and from an elevated dock. The CBI sailing area extends for an approximately one-mile stretch between the Massachusetts Avenue and Longfellow Bridges.

For more information about Community Boating, call 617-523-1038.

It’s mostly neighbors

We all know Tip O’Neill said all politics is local. He didn’t go far enough. Many human affairs are local. Take the official opening of the Red Line’s Charles/MGH station last Tuesday morning.

There were the dignitaries, federal, state and municipal. There were the photographers, the red ribbon, lots of rather large scary scissors, and the coffee and rolls, of which no one we saw took advantage. But a good many of the people who were there were neighborhood leaders, not national or regional figures.

It was the neighborhood that got this project going. Specifically it was Massachusetts General Hospital, whose officials got tired of having to explain to handicapped patients that they could not get to MGH from Charles Station. MGH brought in the late U.S. Congressman Moakley to get a bit of federal money for the project, and the hospital itself spent $2.5 million to jump-start the renewal.

It was the neighborhood that has seen how the station can be enhanced. Jaime Bard and her Advent School students led a drive to hang art made by members of the community from the high beams to enliven the experience. The art is finished and should be installed in late May.

It was the neighborhood that signed off on the design. Although some neighbors remain skeptical, it was Beacon Hillers and West Enders who decided that the pedestrian crossings should be at street level, not on catwalks, as was the case before. Barbara Boylan, who chaired many of the meetings for the T that got us through the design, was cheered when she was recognized from the podium at the opening. A skeptical crowd cheering a T official doesn’t happen all that often.

It was other neighborhood projects that were the subject of some derision. Mayor Menino asked the question Beacon Hillers are always thinking — how did the T manage a tolerable timetable on construction at Charles Circle while Mass. Highway’s project has dawdled for five years on Cambridge Street?

There were only two off-notes. One was that the public wasn’t invited to the celebration. It’s true it would be hard to fit thousands into the station, but it is better to hold an event for the people who are actually going to be living with the station than one for dignitaries and neighborhood leaders. Residents who weren’t closely involved hardly knew the official opening was taking place.

And the head of the Federal Transit Administration, Jim Simpson, sounded a wee uninformed when he said that five or ten years ago a crowd like the one last Tuesday wouldn’t have turned out with such fanfare because people hadn’t yet come to the realization of how important public transportation was. What people was he talking about?

That remark left everyone scratching their heads. If there is one region that has known forever how important public transportation, such as Amtrak, commuter rail, subways and harbor ferries, is, it is the northeast. We know that Charles/MGH and the network of which it is a part are critical to economic development, residents’ physical health, freeing our roadways from congestion, reducing global warming and making the quality of life so good that we will put up with high housing prices, high taxes and cold weather in order to live here.

Charles/MGH is a step in a good direction. We must give the MBTA the resources to continually improve the system. It was announced recently that a study will be funded to make recommendations on a Red Line/Blue Line connector that would meet underground at Charles/MGH. Don’t worry about Cambridge Street being dug up again. If that project happens it won’t be for at least a decade — and surely Cambridge Street’s reconstruction will have been finished by then.

Meanwhile, did you hear about the bikes that are going to be mostly free in Paris? ZipBike, perhaps? Now there is a public transportation idea that needs some translation over here. The T could do that. It would be a lot cheaper than a fleet of new buses.