Tag: Marty Walsh

One Year Ago Today Tom Brady Broke Our Hearts

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I can’t believe it’s already/only been a year since Tom Brady officially announced he was leaving the Patriots after 20 seasons. Less than a week later Boston Mayor Marty Walsh officially shut down the entire city and so began the worst year of all of our lives. Coincidence? I think not. Since then so much has happened including the absolutely apocalyptic global pandemic, every professional sports league pausing and resuming games, we had perhaps the most virulent Presidential election of our lifetime, rioters stormed the Capitol, Zoom became more common than brushing your teeth, everybody is going on their 2nd straight birthday in quarantine, oh and Tom Brady won yet another Super Bowl except this time for a different team. That all happened in just the last 365 days.

I actually just finished the excellent Patriots book by Jeff Benedict, The Dynasty, and while it definitely does have a friendly slant towards the Kraft family, it still may just be the most complete historical retelling of the entire Tom Brady/Bill Belichick/Robert Kraft era in New England. Benedict’s book does a superb job navigating through all of the drama, hearsay, history, the highs and the lows of the past 20 years and it really is nothing short of amazing the levels of success this franchise reached.

“The New England Patriots of the Tom Brady era are in the pantheon of greatest sports dynasties. No team in the twenty-first century formed a deeper emotional connection with its fans–or aroused more passionate disdain from opposing fans–than the Patriots under Robert Kraft, Bill Belichick, and Tom Brady. Together they created a golden era of football that started in the year of the 9/11 terror attacks and continued for two decades. If the Patriots’ dynasty had behaved like its football predecessors in Green Bay, Pittsburgh, and San Francisco, the run in Foxborough would have ended much sooner, perhaps as early as 2010 or 2011. But Kraft’s biggest achievement as an owner was keeping Belichick and Brady together for so long. They needed each other to reach heights that had previously seemed unimaginable.”

Well put.

Here’s what I wrote a year ago today about Brady officially leaving the Patriots.

I can’t believe the day has finally come. Tom Brady is leaving the New England Patriots. Despite days, months, and even years of preparing for this it still doesn’t feel real. I feel like Cameron in Ferris Bueller’s day off right now: catatonic.

We all knew this day was coming, but it still sucks to see the end of an era. I don’t fault Brady, especially if he did get a massive payday somewhere else and the Pats offered him peanuts. Can’t blame the guy for wanting to make market value after taking discounts his entire career. Especially if the Patriots and Belichick wanted him to sing for his supper just to lowball him again.

Then? Then Brady immediately proved Belichick and any remaining doubters wrong as he won his 7th Super Bowl only this time with an entirely new team. It only made it crystal clear that if the Patriots had put a better supporting cast around Brady that he could still be an elite, championship winning quarterback. So yes, I still have a lot of hard feelings about how it all ended, but everything ultimately runs its course and that’s what inevitably happened here. If you are one of the few fans out there who blames Brady for leaving then I highly recommend you read The Dynasty because that guy gave everything he had, which led to a legitimately heartbreaking final meeting with Robert Kraft.

Tom Brady may be living it up down in Tampa Bay, but now and forever, that’s my quarterback.

The Boston Marathon Has Officially Been Cancelled

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The Boston Marathon has officially been cancelled for the first time in its 124 year history. The marathon won’t be held for the first time since 1897 and that is a shocking headline. Not because I am a diehard marathon guy (I did lead my track team in points senior year NBD), but because the Boston Marathon is an institution in this city. I don’t know if New York and Chicago feel the same way about their marathons, maybe because they are gigantic cities with multiple professional sports teams and a billion other things to do, but the Boston Marathon is a huge deal in this city and that was only magnified after the bombings in 2013.

It’s something that brings the city together every year, signifies the start of spring, and even lets us celebrate Patriots Day with a few beers at Fenway before noon.

I understand why Marty Walsh and the city are uncomfortable hosting an event that would pack a million people together in the streets. I wish they had waited a little longer to make the announcement, but maybe there was a drop dead date that would have made it impossible to wait. It’s already impossible to predict that everything will be good to go in September.

I’m a borderline germaphobe to begin with so I wasn’t going to be running out to the marathon this year either way, but seeing an event in the city like this would have helped bring some sense of normalcy back to our lives. For now we’ll have to look elsewhere, but it doesn’t seem like there are going to be any large events this summer or maybe even the rest of the year and that is crazy to type.

Obviously I’m fortunate to have the Boston Marathon being cancelled be one of my only coronavirus problems, but shit COVID really has just taken 2020 and broken it’s back like Bane.

To the runners that have been training for months and months to raise money for charity, honor a since passed loved one, or to just challenge themselves with an absurdly long run; keep grinding, it’s a marathon not a sprint.

City of Boston Cracks Down on Restaurants Along Parade Route

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Boston.com – Warm temperatures and sunny skies Tuesday brought a feeling of spring to the Patriots’ Super Bowl victory parade in Boston, but that didn’t mean restaurants along the route were allowed to open their seasonal patios.

Josephine Oliviero-Megwa, a partner with Ora Trattoriza at 653 Boylston St., found that out the hard way when three members of law enforcement stopped by the restaurant around 11:20 a.m…

Ora’s seasonal patio license runs from April 1 through Oct. 31, which covered the Red Sox’ victory parade, but not this one…

Boston police confirmed that five citations were issued to restaurants during the parade…

Now, Oliviero-Megwa has to go before the Boston Licensing Board, according to The Boston Globe. She said she doesn’t know if Ora will need to pay a fine, and, if so, what the amount would be.

To paraphrase old friend Rick Pitino, stuff like this makes the greatest city in the world lousy. Imagine the level of pettiness required to deem it necessary to issue these citations to restaurants on the day of a victory parade. Never mind the rampant underage drinking in the streets or all the two liter Rum and Cokes on the sidewalks. Ora opening the windows and pulling a few tables outside on a Tuesday in February is the real concern.

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As if inconveniencing thousands of working adults with a weekday parade weren’t enough, the City of Boston also decided to antagonize some small business owners along the parade route. God forbid a small business try to capitalize on some good fortune and make a few extra bucks during their slow season.

In the City of Minneapolis, bars usually close at 2 AM. When Minneapolis hosted the Super Bowl last year and the MLB All-Star Game in 2014, bars were able to stay open until 4 AM for the special occasions. Why can’t the City of Boston use some common sense and retroactively make an exception for victory parades on 60° days? Why must city leaders make doing business in Boston so difficult?

I’ve never had to go before the Boston Licensing Board, but I have argued parking tickets in person at city hall. My advice based on that experience is to just pay the fine. Don’t even give those humorless, insufferable bureaucrats the satisfaction of lecturing you. Hopefully the fine doesn’t totally offset the money you made on Tuesday.

I Am in a Race Against Time vs the Plastic Bag Ban in Boston

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CBS News – A Boston city ordinance banning major grocery store chains from providing plastic bags to customers went into effect Friday. The new law – enacted to help reduce pollution and clean up city streets – applies only to checkout bags, described in the ordinance as carryout bags with handles. Retailers can still stock recyclable paper bags, compostable bags or reusable bags and sell them for at least 5 cents, as long as the charge is advertised near the checkout location, according to the ordinance, signed into law by Mayor Marty Walsh last December.

I bring my lunch to work every day in a repurposed Stop and Shop plastic bag because I’m a man of the people. I’m also not 5 so I don’t own a lunch box. However, today I had a very, very sobering realization. Finished making my lunch, got all the essentials, I reach under the sink and realized I am running *dangerously* low on plastic bags. Like we are at DEFCON 1. The Mrs. has already transitioned our grocery shopping over to the reusable satchels that Big Grocery has been trying to force down our throats for years so there are no new plastic bags coming into my household any more.

What is a man to do?

Do I cave and buy an Avengers lunchbox like a child? Do I just haul my Yeti cooler around like I’m heading to lay some concrete at the construction site?

I am a man at a crossroads in his life.

Come to think of it, I did buy one of the reusable grocery satchels years ago, but it’s a Super Mario one because I really am an overgrown manchild. Might be a bit aggressive for carrying my lunch around though…

Boston Reverses Decision, Citgo Sign Will Not Be a City Landmark

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WCVB – Boston Mayor Marty Walsh said the city has reached a deal that will preserve the iconic Citgo sign in Kenmore Square, but will veto designating it a landmark.

“We are pleased to share that we have reached a long-term resolution that will preserve the Citgo sign and allow for it to remain in place in Kenmore Square for years to come,” Walsh, Citgo, Related Beal and Boston University said in a joint statement.

On Nov. 14, the Boston Landmark Commission approved giving the sign official landmark status. The city had 45 days to veto the commission’s decision. The deal recognizes “the significance that this sign has on our landscape in Boston, while balancing the opportunity for our horizons to continue evolving in future years,” according to the statement.

The designation would have protected the 60 by 60-foot sign that has stood in Kenmore Square since 1965 from any future development that would move the sign or block its view. The building at 660 Beacon St. on which the sign is mounted is not designated as a landmark. Developers were concerned what the status could mean for development in the area.

Welp that didn’t take long. The Boston Landmark Commission gave the famous Citgo sign city landmark status, which I blogged about last month, but that was a short lived designation. The status would have prevented all types of construction around the sign thats resided in Kenmore Square since 1965. Now the signs not going anywhere, but it definitely isn’t untouchable anymore. It seems like big business got into Marty Walsh’s ear as this new agreement all but guarantees that new condos, dorms, and other buildings will be built below, above, around and probably in front of the sign.

Before you know it, the Citgo sign is just gonna be a decoration in the middle of some rich guy’s house as developers build around the thing without actually removing it.

I realize it’s just a sign for a gas station thats basically gotten free advertising for decades, but it’s part of the Boston city landscape now. As I said previously, it’s in every famous photo, painting, and bad tattoo honoring the city. It should be a city landmark, but Boston has reversed field and shut that down for now.

Almost snuck it through guys!