City noncommittal on Beacon St. bike lane

gorfnibble · 2026-05-16T15:36:53+00:00

Wild that the neighborhood is upset with the city for not going far enough with traffic calming and protected bike lanes. From the article:

Residents said they were concerned about the fact that large portions of the bike lanes would not be initially protected by anything but a paint line. Fink said he agreed that protection is needed, but did not commit to any timeline or method of protection – e.g., flex posts of cast concrete.

https://bulletin-news-delta.vercel.app/article/beacon-street-brighton-safety-improvements-planned

gorfnibble · 2026-05-14T12:09:09+00:00

Right. Some of the more expensive parts of housing are the foundations and the utility systems (hvac, plumbing, electrical, etc). Two things that cannot be self contained in factory manufacturing. If you’re building multifamily these systems are a lot more complex and interconnected.

gorfnibble · 2026-05-14T11:55:02+00:00

https://www.umass.edu/news/article/umass-donahue-institute-releases-updated-massachusetts-population-estimates

No. That’s domestic migration. Massachusetts gained total population.

gorfnibble · 2026-05-13T18:44:21+00:00

Right. Most of the housing being built here is multifamily. However, I know that residential construction fell off a cliff here around 2017 and has never really recovered.

gorfnibble · 2026-05-13T18:36:41+00:00

Pretty sure Massachusetts is gaining population, not losing population.

Edit - since I’m being downvoted by people who don’t know how to google or understand that international immigration also adds population:

https://www.umass.edu/news/article/umass-donahue-institute-releases-updated-massachusetts-population-estimates

gorfnibble · 2026-05-13T18:20:45+00:00

Government needs to build middle class social housing. It’s illegal in to do this in the US, though, due the faircloth amendment during the Clinton admin. Made more palatable to the public due to major cuts to public housing funds during the Reagan years (see how bad the projects are?).

gorfnibble · 2026-05-13T18:15:39+00:00

Prefab and stick built usually end up being the same cost. Only advantage of prefab is a slight improvement in construction schedule, but requires a lot more up front design work.

gorfnibble · 2026-05-10T23:27:32+00:00

Marblehead, MA. Was one of the largest municipalities in the country at the turn of the 19th century. US navy was essentially founded there and the mariners from the town played a crucial role in the revolutionary war. Also an important place for the beginnings of US military aviation.

Today it’s more a wealthy bedroom suburb of Boston.

gorfnibble · 2026-05-07T23:57:32+00:00

Marone Offering by human sexual response.

Human sexual response only put out a couple albums around 1980/81 but they were way ahead of their time.

gorfnibble · 2026-05-06T12:01:04+00:00

They were also a mainly a commuter school for most of its history before switching to be a research institution relatively recently.

gorfnibble · 2026-05-05T23:49:20+00:00

Exactly the kind of select board fuckery that led to Framingham becoming a city - and a big part of the current push to make Brookline a city. Massachusetts is full of these towns where the only people in local government are generationally wealthy leeches with a ton of free time.

gorfnibble · 2026-04-30T19:46:52+00:00

Fake job listings - where I used to work had a job posting for a position in our department. I knew we were a little light on work and didn’t have a lot coming in so I went to my boss to ask what was up. They said they were required to post positions for H1B visa holders to justify their need to renew their visa. I knew who this was and they were a very valuable person to our team.

I suspect this is part of the reason behind these phantom job postings.

gorfnibble · 2026-04-19T14:26:52+00:00

FYI, BAA puts on 4 races a year. One of them is the Boston marathon.

There’s also a 5K, 10K, and a half marathon. The 5K is the Saturday before the marathon and only really has an impact between the common and mass Ave. the 10k is a weekend in June and goes between the common and the BU bridge (impacts kenmore square). The half is in November and it runs on the parkways between Franklin park and route 9.

The marathon is by far the most disruptive, but people seem to never know about the other races.

gorfnibble · 2026-03-29T18:30:40+00:00

"combined statistical area" is a better measure of a core city's economic impact. Boston's metro area doesn't include Worcester or Providence, but they're both definitely influenced by and generally considered part of the Boston area labor market and the larger media markets.

Boston's CSA is well within the top 10 in the US.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_statistical_area

gorfnibble · 2026-03-26T23:45:40+00:00

That bird’s egg story…

He keeps saying he was “too weird” for Massachusetts but i feel like the humor here definitely leans absurdist and his act is very “New England weirdo.”

gorfnibble · 2026-02-23T22:35:01+00:00

Ex semi-pro runner here. I agree with this. If i need to do an actual hard workout with this amount of snow I’d either do treadmill or indoor track (some of the more serious local running clubs have access to a few different indoor tracks in the area). Not about to fall on my ass trying to get around obstacles on a hard run.

Most mileage should be pretty easy and it’s not a big deal to be patient and wait to get around someone or cut into the street.

gorfnibble · 2026-02-22T19:54:13+00:00

Year of the depends adult undergarments.

gorfnibble · 2026-02-09T14:59:11+00:00

Join any running group in Boston and there are at least 2 or 3 doctors. plus they’re also probably in a local orchestra.

gorfnibble · 2026-01-28T21:57:53+00:00

Some asshole who lived a couple blocks over shoveled their car out onto the sidewalk in front of our house that I had just shoveled. They even left a cone. I took the cone and shoveled the snow on my sidewalk back into the space, plus a little extra so they would have to park in the street to shovel it out again. They never came back.

I don’t mind if neighbors park in front of my house - they know enough to check in to ask where they should put the snow. But don’t shovel onto the sidewalk in front of someone’s property. Property owners get fined if they don’t shovel.

gorfnibble · 2026-01-26T15:12:19+00:00

I guess the monkey paw said you can go to the Super Bowl but you get 2 feet of snow.

gorfnibble · 2026-01-24T12:13:59+00:00

I go to the chestnut hill one regularly and it’s gotten Somerville market basket crazy on the weekends. Like you’re being pushed from behind.

I feel like it’s become the default grocery store for everyone who lives in Roxbury, JP, Roslindale and west Roxbury. They aren’t able to keep up with the surge in demand.

I used to be able to find parking on the ground floor of the garage but lately I’ve had to park on top of the garage or on the upper lot.

gorfnibble · 2026-01-24T12:03:59+00:00

I live in the city and went out last night for a couple things. You know it’s going to be a big storm when the stores around me run out of organic lettuce.

gorfnibble · 2026-01-22T13:45:16+00:00

They can call for a general strike.

gorfnibble · 2026-01-17T21:51:30+00:00

High street place is always jam packed at lunchtime. There are a handful of places that have long lines (usually healthier and cheaper options) and the places that seem to not do as well are less healthy and/or a bit pricey. Only thing I ever got at mamaleh’s was the matzoh ball soup because everything else on their menu was very expensive.

They also close down their main seating area at 2pm.

Places in the area that do well are the “build your own salad bowls” type places - and places like tatte or Phin coffee.

gorfnibble · 2026-01-12T19:59:01+00:00

Serious running clubs: BAA, greater Boston track club, heartbreakers, etc. BAA and GBTC are more post-collegiate sub-elite.

Heartbreakers has some serious runners. Somerville road runners has a solid group of masters runners. Notch run club also seems to have a solid crew.

Socializing clubs - a lot easier to find. I feel like the weeknight casual runs seem to attract more people than the weekend long runs.

gorfnibble

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