Interesting split decision in today’s Boston Globe sports pages over Baseball Hall of Fame balloting, which is currently underway.
Commissioner Emeritus Bob Ryan makes his position clear from the get-go.
I’m not voting for Bonds, Clemens, or Sosa
I am in possession of the toxic ballot . . .
Read the rest at It’s Good to Live in a Two-Daily Town.
Is it just the harddodging staff, or are Boston drivers much more lunatic about running red lights these days?
It’s not even a close call – cars that are hundreds of feet away routinely bust red lights without a second thought.
Granted, the traffic lights in the Boston area have clearly been timed by Joe Cocker.
Regardless, how about a Scared Straight on Red program in Boston public schools?
Can we get a witness?
It’s no secret that the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald inhabit entirely different political landscapes here in the Bay State.
Exhibit Umpteen: Their respective takes on who might succeed Sen. John Kerry (D-Reporting for Due-ty) if he gets what is widely regarded as a well-deserved nod for Secretary of State.
From Saturday’s Boston Globe piece by Glen Johnson:
A number of US House members, including Representatives Edward J. Markey and Michael Capuano, are also possible Democratic candidates in a special election . . .
Read the rest at It’s Good to Live in a Two-Daily Town.
The other day the hardlooking staff noted that Art Shark Damien Hirst had dumped his longtime partner Gagosian Gallery, which last year, as the New York Times Artsbeat blog reported, “gave Damien Hirst all 11 of its spaces around the world to show his spot paintings.”
Whose return on investment was, well, spotty – at least according to this Businessweek piece.
Now comes this follow-up Times piece:
Artist’s Exit Sets Back Gagosian Gallery
Just a week ago Damien Hirst, the famously provocative British artist, was at Art Basel Miami Beach, hanging out at the party at SoHo House for which Larry Gagosian, the superdealer, was a co-host. According to people who were there, nothing seemed amiss. But a few days later, on Thursday, Mr. Hirst stunned the art world by announcing that he was leaving the Gagosian Gallery, where he has been represented for 17 years.
It wasn’t the only piece of bad news Mr. Gagosian has received in recent days. It came a week after David Zwirner, the Chelsea dealer, said he was organizing a show of new work by Jeff Koons, a longtime Gagosian artist, and a day before The Art Newspaper reported that Yayoi Kusama, the Japanese artist, was “in the process” of leaving Gagosian. (On Friday night, a spokeswoman for the gallery said that it was “reviewing the parameters of our working relationship with Ms. Kusama.”)
And now the art world is reviewing the parameters of its working relationship with Larry Gagosian.
Oddly enough, it was the Boston Globe – not the Boston Herald – that ran this Scott Brown op-ed that was all about . . . him.
A pleasure and a privilege
FOR THE past three years, I have had the great honor and privilege of serving the people of Massachusetts in the Senate. Although I served for only three years, and losing this past election was disappointing, that disappointment is tempered by the great respect I have for the judgment of the people of this Commonwealth. To all the people of Massachusetts, I count myself in your debt, for the confidence you placed in me, and for allowing me to represent you . . .
Read the rest at It’s Good to Live in a Two-Daily Town.
The hardworking staff was perusing Friday’s New York Times when we stumbled upon (print style) this piece by Helene Stapinski about the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy on the Jersey Shore.
And then we saw this:
It’s a Wednesday night, a month after the storm, so the moon is full again, like it was when Sandy hit. I’m out with my best friend from elementary school, Marybeth McGovern, who watched the waters rise from her second-floor bedroom in Port Monmouth, a raft and oars at her side. The $75,000 damage to her home has her a bit depressed, but she’s ready for a night out.
We go to one of her favorite places in nearby Highlands, Bahrs Landing, the seafood shrine that marks the beginning of the Jersey Shore for many people. Frank Sinatra and the cast of “The Sopranos” have all passed under its famous giant lobster sign, which miraculously survived the storm.
Bahrs, built from a beached houseboat, got its start in 1917, feeding stranded sailors after a severe northeaster. Over the years the houseboat was expanded and raised up higher and higher, which helped save it from Sandy. Though the bottom floor was flooded, the rest of the place looks as wonderfully nautical as ever. When he answers the phone, Jay Cosgrove, the owner — great-grandson of the founders — does not say hello. He says: “Bahrs Landing. We’re still standing.”
Bahrs! In Highlands!
It wasn’t exactly Proust’s madeleine, but it triggered a wave of nostalgia in the hardwaxing staff.
We were the East Side Carrolls, eight of us living in a three-room apartment at 89th & 3rd in the Big Town. The rest of the Carroll Clan lived in three-bedroom apartments in the Hell’s Kitchen projects on the West Side.
But every summer we all joyfully migrated to the Jersey Shore, where the East Side Carrolls occupied a three-room bungalow (with two porches that doubled as bedrooms) on the Sea Bright side of the Shrewsbury River, while the rest of the Carroll Clan occupied bungalows on the Highlands side.
There was a thoroughly comforting symmetry to it all.
And an additional cheerful symmetry to our summers in the bungalow colony (at upper right) alongside the Sandlass Beach Club (an oral history of which is here).
There was the Shrewsbury River on one side of us, and the Atlantic ocean on the other.
As the hardswimming staff recollects, it was always high tide somewhere during those blissful summers.
Not to get all Proustian about it.
The hardreading staff noted a few hours ago that the BostonHerald.com homepage had the headline “Kerry in the crosshairs if nominated for state” right next to its coverage of the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy.
To its credit, the paper has now corrected that unfortunate pairing.
Homepage at 4:20 pm:
Sad, sad day.
(Originally posted at It’s Good to Live in a Two-Daily Town.)
BostonHerald.com homepage at 1:35 pm:
Of course, the Herald couldn’t know, when it wrote the “Kerry in the crosshairs” hed, what would transpire only hours later. But it’s a damn good argument to stop using gun references in headlines.
(Originally posted at It’s Good to Live in a Two-Daily Town.)
Call him Dimien Hirst. The British celebropop artist who made his bones with a shark carcass and a platinum human skull covered with 8,601 diamonds is now reaping skeletal returns on his artwork, as this recent Businessweek piece reported:
For all his celebrity, Hirst’s stock in the art market has experienced a stunning deflation. According to data compiled by the firm Artnet, Hirst works acquired during his commercial peak, between 2005 and 2008, have since resold at an average loss of 30 percent. And that probably understates the decline—judging from the dropoff in sales volume, collectors aren’t bringing their big-ticket Hirsts to market. A third of the more than 1,700 Hirst pieces offered at auctions since 2009 have failed to sell at all—they’ve been “burned,” in the terminology of the art world. “He has way underperformed,” says Michael Moses, a retired New York University business professor who maintains a financial index for art. “He has lots and lots of negative returns.”
So maybe it’s no surprise to the arterati that this news appeared in the New York Times ArtsBeat blog yesterday:
Less than a year after the Gagosian Gallery gave Damien Hirst all 11 of its spaces around the world to show his spot paintings, word comes that the bad-boy British artist will no longer be represented by Gagosian, where he has shown on and off for 17 years.
“We wish him continued success for the future,’’ a statement issued by the gallery, confirming his sudden departure, said.
On Thursday, Science Ltd., Mr. Hirst’s company, told the Financial Times that the gallery owner “Larry Gagosian and Damien have reached an amicable decision to part company,” adding that the artist would continue his relationship with the White Cube Gallery in London. But the question remains whether Mr. Hirst will look for another gallery to show his work in New York, where he has a large number of big collectors.
Except maybe not so much, if you believe the Businessweek piece.
Looks to the hardworking staff like the sharks are now circling Mr. Hirst, instead of the other way around.
That old Pontifox, Benedict XVI, was all tweetness and light yesterday as he took to Twitter to bless the faithful (over one million served so far).
Of course everybody’s reporting on the gala debut – except the Boston Globe. Its print edition had no mention of it – versus the Boston Herald, which splashed it all over Page Two . . .
Read the rest at It’s Good to Live in a Two-Daily Town.
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