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Stolen – The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
If you live in or around the Boston area, and have NOT been to The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, you are missing out one of the most amazing cultural experiences around. Nestled in the Fenway, the ISG museum is an eclectic mix of priceless art works with a unique layout and a not-to-be-missed breathtaking courtyard at the center of the small building.
To top it all off (in case you are unaware), and to add to the mystique and wonder of the museum, the ISG is also the site of the greatest art heist in American history. In 1990, two men posing as Boston Police officers entered the museum, and with them (and possibly others) soon left nearly $300 million worth of art, all of which still remains missing and the case still unsolved.
Much has been written about the case, and many have speculated who is involved with the missing art, from local crooks to the IRA, but one $5 million reward and 17 years later, no one has come close to cracking this case.
For a closer look at the art heist, I have to recommend one of the best documentary films I have seen in some time, called Stolen. The film follows the unbelievable art detective Harold Smith on his quest to crack the case, and weaves an equally unbelievable tale of impossible leads and heartbreaking dead ends.
The film will be featured on March 20th by the PBS series Independent Lens, and I can’t recommend this enough. For an unbeatable experience, catch the film when it airs later this month, and then as soon as you can after, hit the museum for the perfect one-two punch. After getting the back story on the heist, you will enjoy this stunning museum even more than you would have otherwise.
Frozen Wasteland
I know I pointed this out the other day, but it warrants a follow up. As I mentioned previously, most of the side streets in Boston (particularly in the Allston/Brighton area) were completely unplowed, unsanded, unsalted, and generally left untouched by city workers during this past ice/snow storm last week. How this happens, I am not sure. Did the city just not feel like plowing? Did they think that the slushy combo didn’t warrant the effort? Did no one at the DPW realize what was going to happen when a slush/ice storm is followed by a week of single digit temperatures, and streets go unplowed?
As a result of this complete negligence, the side streets here are complete chaos. The roads are treacherously narrow (more narrow than usual) with solid ice down the middle and slim sets of clear spots for tires on either side of said ice. And then there is the parking situation. Not only have 30% of the available street parking spots disappeared as a result of the snow and ice, but the lack of plowing and salting has created 6 inch ridges of ice that lock the parallel parked cars into place along the curb. To get out (if you can), you need to free your wheels from the ice, and then try and smash over a solid cement-like ridge to get into the road. Given the low ground clearance of most cars, this proves to be an extraordinarily difficult task, and many cars end up half in their spot and half in the street, spinning wheels suspended above the nearest patch of pavement. And again, that’s if you can even get out. Walking around the streets here, it is a chorus of spinning wheels, as dozens of cars helplessly try to extricate themselves. I personally helped to push two cars out yesterday, and gave up on another which has sat stuck in place since the 14th (4 days), unable to get over the ice wall that holds it in place.
Even with my all-wheel drive, things have been dangerous around here. Every time I come and go from my apartment, it is a white knuckle adventure, and my car and those cars around me are at risk.
The City of Boston and those plow contractors that were out on the night of the storm (which literally were riding around with their plows up during the height of the storm) should be ashamed of themselves, and at the very least, there should be some free tow services offered to the legions of stuck people that are only stuck because of the city’s lack of street clearing.
No Plows In Brighton
Saw this on Universal Hub, and realized it wasn’t just my neighborhood that has completely frozen over sides streets. This morning’s roads in the inner regions of Brighton were completely and totally untouched by plow, sand, or salt, leaving a carnival of bewildered twenty somethings attempting to free their cars with pick axe’s, only to spin helplessly in the frozen ice/snow piles that encased their wheels. Good times.
If this was our first “major” storm of the season, shouldn’t we have an ass-pant-load of snow removal budget surplus to…ya know…clean up the snow?