Electrical Fire at Furniture Store in Brighton Center

Traffic along Washington Street in Brighton Center, including buses 57 and 501, were all stopped up this evening due to a small electrical fire in the rear of the Europe Today furniture store at 380 Washington Street.

Steve MacDonald, Public Information Officer for the Boston Fire Department, said that the fire appears to have been caused by a water leak that shorted out some old wiring. The fire was contained to a wall towards the rear of the building. BFD responded to the one-alarm fire and reports no injuries. Traffic should be opened up by 6:15 pm or so.

Changes to Businesses in Brighton Center and Oak Square

New Pharmacy. PharmaLife, a small "chain of friendly neighborhood drugstores," has opened at 367 Washington Street adjacent to People's Bank. While the neighborhood might not seem to need another pharmacy -- CVS is down Washington Street a few blocks -- the new pharmacy is effectively a small replacement for the former Rite-Aid (nee Brooks) Pharmacy whose roof partially collapsed under heavy snow in December, and is currently being torn down.

The pharmacy replaces a store-front church that had occupied the premises for a few years.


Pigs Rumored to Be Flying About. Rumor is that When Pigs Fly is considering opening a retail bakery store at the former location of Open Doors -- the flaky, new-age bookstore/gift shop/masseuse -- at the southeast corner of the Brighton Center intersection. Yes, this is just a rumor, and it sounds like it is less than at 50/50 chance at the moment.

When Pigs Fly is a Maine-based bakery that provides high-end baked breads to many area supermarkets and has four retail stores. Its only store in the Greater Boston area is in Davis Square, Somerville. One block away from the site are Daniel's Bakery (under new ownership) and Athan's (a bakery and restaurant).

While I enjoy good bread, including baking loaves at home, I cannot imagine what their "Mango, Pineapple, Raisin, with Toasted Sesame and Ginger" bread tastes like... particularly if spread with "cranberry onion hot pepper jelly." Ewwwww.


Smoken' Joe's Blues Brunch. Smoken' Joe's at 351 Washington Street recently obtained a temporary entertainment license and appears to be having some kind of Sunday blues brunch (starting last week).


Ray's Grill -- Family-Style Restaurant. The owner of Jasmine Bistro, a higher-end Hungarian restaurant in Brighton Center, is opening a family-style restaurant in Oak Square at 2 Tremont Street called "Ray's Grill." The location previously housed a pizza joint. No word on whether or not the owner will pursue a beer/wine license for the new restaurant.


From Soho to Brighton Beer Garden. The owners of Soho are changing its name to Brighton Beer Garden, along with physical changes to the place (which have already begun). They have applied to extend their liquor license from 1 am to 2 am, but I hear that the Licensing Board is unlikely to award that (if they haven't already rejected the application); the Mayor's office opposed the application. As far as I know, only the Stockyard Restaurant at Brighton Landing and The Last Drop in Oak Square are licensed until 2 am.

Brighton Rite-Aid Wall Undergoes Partial Collapse

Back in December, the roof of the Rite-Aid Pharmacy on Market Street in Brighton Center collapsed due to heavy snow.

The walls of the building, particularly the southern one, were in danger of further collapse, so exterior scaffolding was installed outside the eastern wall; the southern perimeter was also fenced off. The theory was that, if the southern wall collapsed inwards, the eastern wall could potentially buckle outwards towards the sidewalk on Market Street.

I've seen the southern wall buckle more and more over the last few weeks; it has now partially collapsed, exposing some of the insulation. While I'm not an engineer, it nonetheless appears as though there is little danger of the eastern wall falling outwards: the scaffolding appears to be working as intended.

By not bringing in a wrecking crew to demolish the building, the owners have probably saved five minutes of demolition charges by letting gravity (and additional snowfall) take its toll on the building. I think it's high time for them to move on and clean up this mess.

I say: "Mr. Rite Aid, tear down this wall!"


UPDATE (3/10/08): photos by Colleen Salmon are posted over at the "AllstonBrighton2006" google group. Here's one:

Update: Market Street Looks Fully Re-Opened Tonight

This evening around 10 pm, Market Street southbound had some cars travelling on it. Maybe this means that it will remain open in the morning.

The MBTA is no longer showing service advisories for bus #86.

Hopefully, Wednesday morning we won't have gridlock for a six-block radius around Brighton Center like we've had Monday and Tuesday. At one point on Tuesday morning, one detour route, southbound Foster Street, was literally backed up bumper-to-bumper all the way from Commonwealth Avenue to Washington Street.

The massive traffic jams and gridlock experienced in the Brighton Center area these last two days is one indication of how the transportation infrastructure around here has been stretched to its limit. One little road closure (southbound for two blocks of Market Street) has caused a ripple effect on the traffic patterns all around the neighborhood up to a mile away.

Time to bring back those streetcars to discourage people from driving on Washington Street.


Earlier: Brighton Rite-Aid (nee Brooks) Pharmacy roof collapses.
Bus #86 re-routed.
Southbound Market Street remained closed until completion of work to shore up walls from further collapse.

S&M Prostitution Dungeon Unearthed on Leicester Street

Ummm... not your usual story in the Police Blotter: an S&M dungeon being used for prostitution on Leicester Street in Brighton Center, according to the Boston Herald and the A-B TAB. In true Herald fashion, the article provides a complete price breakdown.

How Walkable Is Your House's Location?

There is a cute little gadget on the web: a site that will take any street address and calculate the "walk score" for it, i.e., how "walkable" your location is. Scores are 0-100, with 100 being the most walkable location imaginable and 0 being the North Pole.

It factors in the distances to the nearest parks, grocery stores, libraries, etc.

The Global Center of Universal Brighton Centered-ness, not to be confused with Brighton Center itself, gets an 88. That's why my wife and I wanted to live in a place like this: she commutes to work on the bus (hates driving rush hour with Masshole drivers), I bike to work, we both walk whenever possible to shop for daily things. Brighton Center itself gets an identical score of 88.

Harvard Square: 97. Our old address near Central Square: 98. Cleveland Circle: 97. Walden Pond: 15 (Thoreau would be proud).

Courtesy of Newton Streets and Sidewalks.

Bad Traffic Circulation is Good for the Neighborhood: Bring the Streetcars Back to Washington Street

The Urban Man on Los Angeles radio station KCRW writes in "The Joy of Poor Circulation" that lousy traffic circulation is just what is needed to make an area a good neighborhood.

The olden days had people walking around their neighborhood making it feel personal, but lots of efficient traffic flow puts people into cars driving to Costco:

On Monday you walked around the block for coffee and croissants, down where narrow streets filled pleasantly with a confusion of people and cars. There you idled in front of a flower shop and popped into a tiny market for apples, where you joked with the beautiful cashier.

Then lo, Tuesday morning you step out your door and find that someone has widened the street and added an onramp. At the end of the block, an Office Depot looms.

Just like that, romance flees. Soon you're driving to Costco for apples and croissants. Soon, you forget the beautiful cashier.

Instead of having wide boulevards with many lanes of efficiently moving traffic, people stuck in lousy traffic on overburdened streets begin to think about walking, riding bikes, and using mass transit. And the neighborhood is all the better because of it.

Brightonians have been complaining a lot lately about the horrendous traffic that is building up on Washington Street between Oak Square and the Police Station. It's so bad that 3-5 cars are regularly stuck in gridlock-mode in the middle of the intersection of Foster Street and Washington Street.

The Urban Man thinks that bad traffic is good, so let's apply his arguments: keep Washington Street one lane in each direction, have no dedicated left-hand turn lanes, install lots of raised crosswalks, make it one-way in a few places, set the traffic signal programs on "random" (so that some unlucky cars have to wait several light cycles), and plop a trolley line right down the middle of the street...

...But wait, the street used to have the trolley, so let's bring it back! Brighton Center might then return to feeling like a neighborhood instead of way station for Newton commuters. Wouldn't the return of the streetcar be a beautiful sight?

(1964 photo from Brighton Allston Historical Society)

Smoken' Joe's Restaurant Opens in Brighton Center

The Brighton Center eatery Seoul Food closed around six months ago and has been replaced by a barbecue restaurant, Smoken' Joe's. There seems to have been some confusion about the joint: The Redstar Perspective thought the restaurant was to be part of the "Smokey Joe's BBQ" chain, but that is not the case. This is the only such restaurant by the owner.

Normally, I would be worried about a restaurant with an obvious misspelling in its name ("Smoken'") and elsewhere in its material ("barbeque" is a sign of non-Southern origins, who prefer "barbecue" and never "BBQ"). But it is nice to have an alternate kind of food in the neighborhood, particularly with so many take-out Chinese eateries, pizza joints, and pubs.

I hesitate to review a restaurant a few days after it opens, because of all the disorganization that you'd expect in the first few weeks. But the family was up to barbecue on a recent night, Smoken' Joe's got a liquor license (presumably from Seoul Food), and the stars were aligned. The service aimed to please, but was a bit frazzled probably because they are still working out the kinks.

The menu is straight-forward and simple. Most diners will focus on a few options: pork ribs (three sizes), beef brisket, or half chicken all grilled on their big smoker, or fried catfish. All have spice rubs before cooking, but without hot spices that would make them inedible by the young. Instead, you get a choice of six sauces for dipping, ranging from mild Alabama white to Memphis hot. Each dinner gets the choice of two sides, which can include a salad, and prices are $10-14. No wide-ranging, over-the-top menu here -- just barbecue and sides.

The beers on tap are well-chosen: two kinds of Samuel Adams, two kinds of Harpoon, Anchor Steam, and Budweiser. Well, all except for one. Delicious, fresh-squeezed lemonade has just enough sugar to keep your face from puckering.

The cornbread portion is small but its quality Southern-authentic: browned on the outside because its made in a cast-iron skillet, full of real corn flavor (the corn meal isn't cut with flour), and absolutely not Yankee-sweet. Butter wasn't served alongside, but the server insisted it will in the future.

The side salad greens were all romaine, and a healthy portion, but the Italian-style dressing overly salted (even for my taste buds).

The pork ribs were tender, juicy, and well-seasoned. They are dry-rubbed and smoked, but not basted, in the "Memphis Style."

The barbecued half-chicken had a tasty rub on its skin and moist meat throughout, including the breast. The thigh meat literally fell off of the bone. On first blush, a half-chicken might seem a large portion, but they use the smaller, younger kind, so few will consider it too much..

The collard greens were nearly au natural, the way I like them, but Dear Wife prefers a stronger flavor of ham hock. Green beans were delicious for old and young alike, having a delicious flavor she couldn't pinpoint.

The restaurant doesn't yave a children's menu yet, which they expect to add soon. But you can just order a larger set of ribs (or pull off the drumstick from the half chicken) and order an extra side -- like the homemade macaroni and cheese -- and the little ones will be happy.

The restaurant has no desserts yet, but is working out an arrangement to have fresh pies (nothing day old) in the future.

We'll certainly go again.

Brighton Center: Beginning of the End?

The Redstar Perspective blogs on how Brighton Center -- in particular the Brighton Main Streets district -- appears to be going downhill in a hurry. I'll leave it up to the reader whether or not they agree with the blogger's opinions (such as intense hatred for Smokey Joe's BBQ).