America’s smallest big-city mayor Tom Menino is at it again, this time going after Niketown t-shirts.
From today’s Boston Herald:
Mayor Thomas M. Menino blasts Nike over dopey t-shirts
Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino is calling on Niketown to yank a disturbing display from its Newbury Street storefront, which boasts T-shirts emblazoned with pill bottles and sporting the words “Get High” and “Dope” — along with its signature “Just Do It” slogan.
Menino was walking along Newbury Street with his wife over the weekend when he spotted the T-shirts. One of them said “F Gravity.”
“I said, ‘This is outrageous,’ ” Menino told the Herald yesterday. “What we don’t need is a major corporation like Nike, which tries to appeal to the younger generation, out there giving credence to the drug issue.”
Giving credence to the drug issue? What the hell does that mean?
But more to the point: Why is Menino ragging on Nike instead of getting something done about things that really matter in the day-to-day life of Boston?
• Like reclaiming Downtown (Dresden) Crossing.
• Or letting Bruins fans watch Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals in the team’s arena, the way every other town in America manages to do.
• Or letting developers actually develop Boston.
• And how’s that bike-sharing program working for ya?
This is not to say that promoting drug use is a good thing. But leave it to the Back Bay Hysterical Society to police Newbury Street retail store windows, Mistah Mayah.
And concentrate on what really matters for the city of Boston.
Campaign Outsider 
“Or letting developers actually develop Boston.” Wow, you need to get out more often in Boston.
The issue Bostonians have, city-wide, is not that the city is too anti-developer — it’s that they are totally pro-developer.
The Filene’s hole now exists because the BRA approved, with nary a glance, the developer’s construction project and the demolition required to get it underway. All the permits were in place. What the BRA failed to do is any significant regulation — such as verifying that the developers, in fact, had any money. Remember that those construction permits continued to be in place for two years — long after the hole had been dug but no building constructed — until finally, with much hem-and-hawing, the BRA canceled the permits. The Filene’s hole is a result of under-regulation by a pro-development administration, not over-regulation.
Other examples abound across the city. See, for example, “Science Complex, Harvard”. Permits still in place, as far as I know.
Then again, Michael, there’s Don Chiofaro.
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