Friday. Good morning. It’s Leonard Nimoy Day.
Under Massachusetts law, any home that was the site of a homicide, suicide or other violent act can be resold without the owner having to disclose that fact to a potential buyer. That same law also, strangely, allows sellers to maintain their silence on any resident ghosts on the premises.
Boston’s restaurant grading system was supposed to mimic New York’s system, where grades are placed in the window to give customers confidence that the conditions inside are sanitary. In New York you see a lot of A’s, a few B’s and also some ‘Grade Pending’ cards. The latter can be posted if, after an inspection, a restaurant gets a B or a C grade and is cleaning up pending another inspection. Locally, Colman Herman looked at how Boston’s system is working, particularly in Dorchester. What he found was not encouraging.
A number of well-known Dorchester restaurants failed their most recent health code inspections, including the Lower Mills Tavern, Lucy’s American Tavern, Starbucks, Bowery, and Wahlburgers. All of them failed prior inspections as well.
Not good. Even the cafeteria at UMass Boston has had multiple failed inspection. But somehow all of the restaurants in Dorchester, even the ones with repeated violations, have posted A ratings in their windows. Something seems to be broken here.
It’s one ship vs. the entire global economy. Who you gonna call?
Coronavirus case numbers are ticking up in the state. I’d hate to see another wave but it looks like that’s what’s coming.
And a newspaper in Kansas City printed a blank front page as a warning of what could happen if readers and advertisers don’t support their local papers. It won’t work. The Globe has been offering an essentially empty Metro section a few days a week for quite a while now and I don’t think anyone’s even noticed.