The Malden Observer brings us this heartwarming story about love, laughter, "peeping and other illicit activities". Apparantly there is a world-class "cruising" bathroom in Malden City Hall. Yeah. Read on:

The men’s room at Malden City Hall has earned high ratings on a Zagat-style, gay meet-up Web site, prompting city councilors Tuesday to call for the basement lavatories to be closed indefinitely.
Mayor Richard Howard, however, overruled the decision Wednesday, and the bathrooms remain open.
The Web site "Gay Universe" rates sites all over the U.S. for male-on-male sexual meet-ups, and the Massachusetts section lists some of the most public parks and beaches, prominent malls and department store bathrooms all over the Boston area. In addition to Malden City Hall, an unnamed public park on Fellsway East is named, along with public places in Medford and Somerville.

Why is the mayor so concerned with keeping it open?

We'd love to see pictures from inside the bathroom in question, and we might even be persuaded to pay a small sum for them.

Update: The Observer actually had pictures already, thanks.

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Yeah, we're back, and while we were away Boston turned into a label-whore's dream. In the past week we've been pleased by updates on the Nordstrom's coming to Boston:

But we've been trying so hard to get into Boston. We have some loyal customers here, and when Simon Property called us two weeks ago and asked if we'd come, I just thought as partners, it was the right thing to do.

and by a piece in the Herald about high-end shopping in Boston, including our newest obsession, selvedge denim:

Riccardi got Nudie - but covering your eyes would be a big mistake. Nudie denim company hails from Sweden and is known among jean connoisseurs for their use of Selvage raw demin.

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Posting has been lacking because we're in Japan. There will be more pictures forthcoming, but here's one to tide y'all over.

Ueno is a section of Tokyo that has a sort of outdoor market. It's supposedly a leftover from the post-war occupation, when it was a black market, but now it's food, clothes, and other stuff — lots of brand names at decent prices. I was interested in going there because you can find Japanese denim (the best in the world), brands you cannot find in the states. But we saw this Boston sweatshirt outside of a western clothing store. There was a 50 Cent concert playing on an LCD TV in the entrance to the store.

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Adam Gaffin, also known as AdamG of Universal Hub, writes for the Globe. Back on January 29th, in his regular blog roundup column, he quoted a bit (well, okay, a good-sized chunk) of dialogue from a post made by our BWP bethren, T-Rage. But didn't link to them — in fact, out of the 5 blogs he cited, he only linked to one. What's the deal? We remember of the whole Globe-not-linking, Globe-linking-in-appropriately discussion (and the weird link, not to Steve Garfield's blog, but to a Google URL which redirects people to his blog — what's up with that, too?). It seems Adam should be asked about his linking choices, too.

And while we're on do what I say, not what I do, let's refer to something Adam said a few months back about the product-mentions-on-blog-for-pay issue:

But I don't take money to write blog postings about particular companies or issues. Every opinion with my name on it is, however mangled and poorly thought out, my own.

And then let's refer to this post — and yes, we know Adam didn't write it, but UH is his blog, right?

We like Universal Hub, and Adam is a good writer and seems like a good guy, and that's why we're interested. So, Adam, care to respond? Inquiring minds would like to know.

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We were waiting for a way to tie in the day-after-Valentine's glow with some current events, and providence made that easy for us this morning. The Globe reported that Wal-Mart has bowed to state pressure to begin stocking and selling Plan B, also known as the Morning-After pill. So by the power vested in us by BWP, we herby declare today, Feburary 15th, Morning-After Day. 'Cause when you get right down to it, when you strip off the Hallmark gloss and the chocolate box cellophane, thats what V-Day is all about right? Expressing love — romantic love, steamy hot, sweaty monkey-love. And sometimes, ill-planned passions call for a backup plan, a (nudge) Plan B. V-Day is the reason there are so many Scorpios, and trust us, a few less "mistake" Scorpio's isn't a terrible thing. But hey, we are one, so we can say that kind of thing.

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A week ago we mentioned the filming of a movie called "Stiffs" in the North End, but now we read that the Afflecks are coming to Boston:

Don’t breathe a word of this. Because nobody’s supposed to know. But word from La-La is that Ben Affleck will cast his bro, Casey, and “Mission: Impossible III’s” Michelle Monaghan to play the leads in his big screen adaptation of Boston writer Dennis Lehane’s “Gone Baby Gone.”
Affleck, making his mainstream directorial debut, intends to begin filming the kidnap thriller in Boston in the spring.

Thanks to a new tax incentive program, the Bay State is becoming everyone's favorite place to make movies. The Herald's Inside Track reports:

And speaking of movies, Dawson reports that there are eight big-budget productions currently scouting in the state thanks to the tax-incentive package that was signed into law in January.
“In my more than 10 years I’ve never had this many projects scouting simultaneously,” Dawson said. “I think this spring Massachusetts is going to bust open.”

That means that soon Boston will be just like that magical place they call "La-La", complete with dysfunctional insecure actresses and L Ron Hubbard clones. We. Cannot. Wait.

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Back when we used to read the dead-trees edition of the Globe on the train in the morning, we would read Brian McGrory's column most of the time, and it's not bad, but it's not exactly "good" either. Disgustingly inoffensive perhaps?

And this morning he fails to disappoint those looking for vageuly interesting fluff. He gently lampoons a growing "culture of rudeness, if not outright crudeness" (oh the word play is too much you clever dog you, crude and rude, get it? just one letter's difference).

But it's also given us something else as well: extraordinary impatience that flows into downright intolerance, edginess that morphs freely into hostility. It used to be that much of it was cloaked in the anonymity of electronic conversation, but increasingly, the vitriol colors even face-to-face encounters.

We're not even sure we really understand what that means, but we think he's telling us to be more polite, or something.

We flatly refuse this assertion and although we stick to our puritan guns against rampant vulgarity and boorishness, we must come down on the side of interesting. Politesse can be so boring.

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The New York Times deigned to step down from its ivory tower this weekend and let the world know that no longer does living in downtown Boston suck; in fact, it is "Suddenly Appealing." The article focuses on the leather and financial districts and the Rose Kennedy Greenway (you know, the wondrous park that will be built over the Big Dig), and is mostly pretty boring, save for this one painfully microcosmic bit:

Mr. Weintraub and other brokers estimate that already 75 percent of the upper floors are residential, after being sweatshops or less-than-prime office space for many years. Developers are rushing to convert whatever is remaining on the upper floors of the Leather District's buildings to condos.

We hereby retract any condemnation of gentrification as a bad thing and happily step in line with the "gentrification stops sweatshops" crowd.

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We're constantly surprised by the alarm in our otherwise stoic New England friends when they hear word of a "major snow storm" coming. People make plans to not leave the house, food is stockpiled, videos are rented, and a communal gasp is audible. And when the first few flakes fall they run around like Chicken Little, screaming about the sky falling and how we're all going to be buried under a mountain of snow by the killer blizzard stalking up the coast.

Come on people, this is New England, not Texas: a little snow is good for you. Especially since we gave up our cars, we've appreciated a good snow storm, and welcome the occasional blizzard, but this , my friends, was no blizzard. Sure some flights and school were cancelled, but we should all be used to this sort of thing by now. Logan only saw 17.5 inches of snow; that's not even two feet! The Celtics game went on as scheduled and no power was lost. No big deal.

So next time the weathermen start warning you of the massive snow headed our way, take a deep breath and just chill the hell out — you're a New Englander, you're built for it.

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We're feeling a bit lazy and the rest of the bloggers on our network are much more on-point today anyways, so here's a little roundup of whats going on around our neck of the woods:

• Dining Out Boston reviews Wild Willy's Burgers
• Muslim Bostonian's new writer shares a slice of his morning.
• T-rage continues to explore the much-raged-about backpack-on-the-T issue.
• The New England Geek coined a term…kinda.

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