The Dig - Boston's Only Newspaper
We pulled more than 1,000 words from the episode’s transcript, replaced (a minimal number of) dated terms like “horses” with more neutral or contemporary ones, and excerpted it below for you to have a good laugh (and/or cry) as you read this on an un-air-conditioned Red Line on the hottest day of the summer.
But even before North Korea was ruled by some certifiable madman or another, back when the North and South were united, the intrigue coming from the West—including here in Boston—was of a similar fashion, underlined by apprehension over perceived threats, however valid.
As tensions grew between authorities and socialist types, one infamous standoff in Roxbury in 1919 showed just how grisly things could get. At Monroe Avenue and Humboldt Street, activists and Boston cops fought hand to hand until police backup led to more than 100 arrests.
In order to make such a corridor for motor vehicles possible, housing would have had to be demolished. As the city saw in the West End and other neighborhoods, “the consequential displacement would affect thousands of longtime residents,” Vrabel said.
From textiles to technology, and the American House to Amazon
Flash back to 100 years ago, when the Spanish flu epidemic was similarly worrying Americans. With vaccine developments not nearly as ubiquitous as they are in 2018, many Boston-area doctors relied on pseudoscience and, out of both desperation and ignorance, said and did whatever they could to tame an ongoing public outrage about flu deaths.
An abridged trudge through Boston’s long, repetitive history of opiate abuse
Old Dirty Boston skips over the safe stuff and picturesque renditions of the Freedom Trail. As Botticelli explains in the intro, his book conjures “a place where you could find a parking spot if you needed it.”
