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Uber/Lyft rates have come back down to earth a bit in my experience. And I actually still see plenty of people on the T at night. At least where I'm usually traveling on Blue/Green/Orange. Not rush hour crowds, but still hardly empty. Still, Uber definitely has a lot of appeal. Not just in terms of time savings or safety, but cost savings when you're not traveling alone. A group of 4 is going to spend around $10 each way on T fares between say Harvard and Mission Hill. It'll take them between 30 minutes and 45 minutes depending on the method they use to get there (66 bus is faster and cheaper than Green->Red, but many people avoid the bus). The same distance can be covered in 15 or so minutes in an Uber that can cost anywhere from $12-20. A single person may have to struggle to justify the difference in cost, but for a group of friends it's almost a no-brainer.
Not sure what you mean by "understood or knew about it". It was no secret, and I always knew about it even though I don't recall ever really using the service
People file civil rights complaints over all sorts of things, especially with any cuts to public transit service. Common sense says that they will disproportionately hit disadvantaged folks harder, that doesn't however mean that the cut service was feasible to operate.
And what does Smith mean by "late night rides"? Like I said, the trains always seem pretty empty after 11pm. Maybe it's different on the B line with all the students, but that would probably be the one exception. Riding the T out to the night spots just isn't ingrained in our mindset here.
I mean- if you look at any comment section regarding this the #1 complaint is people did not know about it.
400,000 late-night rides is 400,000 late-night rides. What's the confusion? How can you really say what "our mindset" is? It's a Metro of 4.9M people. Clearly, you and I have never had the same mindset. Many college kids do take the T out and so do people who go out in Seaport.
Uber/Lyft rates have come back down to earth a bit in my experience. And I actually still see plenty of people on the T at night. At least where I'm usually traveling on Blue/Green/Orange. Not rush hour crowds, but still hardly empty. Still, Uber definitely has a lot of appeal. Not just in terms of time savings or safety, but cost savings when you're not traveling alone. A group of 4 is going to spend around $10 each way on T fares between say Harvard and Mission Hill. It'll take them between 30 minutes and 45 minutes depending on the method they use to get there (66 bus is faster and cheaper than Green->Red, but many people avoid the bus). The same distance can be covered in 15 or so minutes in an Uber that can cost anywhere from $12-20. A single person may have to struggle to justify the difference in cost, but for a group of friends it's almost a no-brainer.
Oh that's not bad. I pay $50 for a Lyft that goes 27 miles here, split two ways. after the bars close at 2am. Thats not bad actually. I thought it would be wildly more.
Reflecting on this older post. How long has Boston's Nightlife Czar Corean Reynolds been collecting a paycheck? and who has heard her name since they named her that ? Is there any place to check on what projects and initiatives the tax payer funded salary is getting for their money?
Reflecting on this older post. How long has Boston's Nightlife Czar Corean Reynolds been collecting a paycheck? and who has heard her name since they named her that ? Is there any place to check on what projects and initiatives the tax payer funded salary is getting for their money?
According to her LinkedIn profile, she's still in the position. Agree, talk about a fluff role!
A new local-owned, black-owned nightlife venue is opening in Cambridge called DX Dunster. On Dunster Street. Per my Instagram feed it's already been hosting celebrity meet n greets, private smoking events, and a weekly club night.
Larry Ward, a former Cambridge City Councilor and Sean Hope, owner of a dispensary in Cambridge, own it.
Event space Dx @Dunster will open next month in Harvard Square at the former location of John Harvard’s Brewery & Ale House.
The entertainment venue, located in the Harvard Square shopping center known as The Garage, will boast video screens, an audio system, and a bar. The space is prepared to host private events, corporate functions, and live entertainment.
Dx is owned by Cambridge attorney and entrepreneur Sean D. Hope — who also runs Cambridge dispensary Yamba Market — and former Cambridge City Councilor Larry Ward.
The opportunity to start Dx arose during the Covid-19 pandemic, when the mass closing of restaurants opened up several spaces in Harvard Square to new commercial tenants.
Hope said his venture is part of a new wave of businesses to revive the area’s entertainment scene post-pandemic.
“We really wanted to be part of that renaissance of Harvard Square,” Hope said in an interview.
Ward added that with the recent influx of national brands to Cambridge’s downtown, the city is at risk of losing its “charm.”
“We want to be a part of making sure that the local scene stays alive,” Ward said.
Hope and Ward have known each other for a long time, but they said this is their first time working together on a venture of this scale.
“We sort of see things from a very similar lens, but we come from very different backgrounds,” Ward said.
The duo's differing experiences have allowed them to overcome logistical hurdles including lengthy licensing processes and getting up to code, they said.
“The biggest challenge is just getting in there and really bringing something to the people that they want,” Ward said.
However, Hope added that he sees the challenges facing businesses in Harvard Square, such as Covid-19 and high recent prices, as a source of potential.
“They created a lot of hardship, but they also created opportunity,” Hope said.
Going forward, Hope and Ward hope to expand the business into a broader enterprise focused on entertainment. In addition to the event space, this could include adult gaming as well as virtual reality experiences in the Garage.
Tying together this vision for an entertainment complex is the
Hope said the name “Dx,” which stands for “Destination x,” ties together his vision for an entertainment complex: The “Destination” is the space that the business provides and “x” is the variable that “allows you to insert your own experience.”
He added that behind his plans lies a “passion for placemaking,” or the practice of building a forgotten spot into something new.
“The design, the spacing, the ethos, you know — the little touches is what makes it a place, as opposed to just an empty box,” Hope said.
For more than a year now, Stephen Rosenberg, Lukas McCarthy and Jhayson Hardy have been building a novel kind of Boston club: A place that would play hi-fidelity music, but at low enough volumes where you could still have a conversation, through hand-built and vintage sound components in a venue that would be a "safe space" for everybody from members of the LGBTQ+ community to people with mobility issues to just people who want a place to hang out or even do school work during the day.
Looking on LoopNet, which lists available commercial space in the Boston area, they found the perfect spot: A former club in an old garage and office building on an Allston side street that was both large enough for what they wanted to do - it could hold 250 to 350 people - and could be re-molded to their specs.
Equally attractive, its owner already had a liquor license he could sign over to them - important because while the main focus would be on the music and social connecting, liquor sales would provide enough of a revenue boost to make the place sustaining, to attract investors, even, they said in a recent interview at Lulu's, a couple blocks away from the space.
Sound Logic, already known in Boston hi-fi circles for their shows, signed a five-year lease and began renovations - and lease payments - for their planned Sound Logic Social Club.
Rosenberg, who has a background in construction in addition to a love of speakers, has been overseeing creation of a "listening bar" - a venue built around hi-fi music, often from old-school vinyl, played through vintage speakers or equipment he and his partners are building by hand. The goal is to open up the mid-range of music and sounds, music that is meant to be "listened to and enjoyed," sound that is lost in the typical club environment built around pumping out body-vibrating base and ear-piercing high notes, he said.
Along with that would come a calming design meant to encourage people to hang out. The club would have no traditional beefy scowling bouncers, they said, but would instead have staffers - employed by the club, not a third-party company - trained in de-escalation to help defuse any problems, and who, at the end of the night, would help escort patrons to their rides.
Restrooms would be gender neutral; Rosenberg said they'd already begun working making one completely ADA compliant. Sound panels would help ensure the music doesn't escape the club and bother neighbors.
And for all the alcoholic beverages they hope to sell, they're also planning a menu mocktails and soft drinks. They added there will be no VIP section, no bottle service, no attempts to gin up a reputation as a place to be by creating long lines outside by slowing admission.
They'd gotten far enough along on construction that they'd begun looking for employees, and chronicling their project on their Instagram page.
But now they're paying rent on a space that might not be able to use because it turns out that the liquor license is at least temporarily, and possibly permanently, unavailable - suspended by a Boston Licensing Board tired of dealing with repeated shootings and gun battles at what was until last year the Garage nightclub. The board has planned a hearing in May on permanently revoking the the club's liquor license.
Hardy, Rosenberg and McCarthy said that Garage owner Alex Matov told them he wasn't using his liquor license because he planned to knock the whole building down to replace it with a 349-unit apartment building, but that he'd been unable to start work because of increases in interest rates and construction costs, so he figured he'd rent out the space to a new operator until the financial picture changed. In fact, their lease contains an extension clause that is subject to cancellation should Matov arrange the financing to re-start his apartment plans.
But they say what Matov didn't tell them was that even as he was going through the BPDA and zoning-board process to win approval for apartments, he was having his liquor license suspended by the licensing board - twice in just a few months.
The three said they only found out in October that the Boston Licensing Board suspended its liquor license indefinitely in May, 2022, after the latest gunfire in its parking lot.
"We had no idea," Hardy said.
That gunfire, in which nobody was injured, came just a couple days after the board had agreed to let the club re-open for the first time since November, 2021, when two people were shot, one in the face, outside the club - an incident that came after several other gun-related incidents at or next to the club dating to at least 2016, after Matov transformed what had once basically been a somnolent dinner spot for Russian emigres into a louder hip-hop club.
Board members were irate not just because of the gunfire but by what they considered a failure by Matov to cooperate with police by handing over any video the club might have - which he apologized for and blamed on what he said was the one guy having access to the surveillance system not being around.
Then, last month, came another shock: After Matov initially told the licensing board he would sell the liquor license and would have no say in its use, he returned to the board about three weeks later and said no, he would retain ownership of the license, and would instead basically lease it to Sound Logic, surprising not only board members, but one of his own attorneys.
The board, which has made it clear it no longer trusts Matov - police say they have still not gotten any video from the November, 2022 incident - said, no, they're not going to allow him to have anything to do with a license at that location. They voted to wait the required six months for a revocation hearing to take away the license and give it to somebody else, in a city where full-liquor licenses are now in such short supply they can go for $600,000 on the open market.
That leaves Sound Logic in a pickle, one on which they say they've already spent $500,000: If the board does revoke Matov's license, there's no guarantee they would get it - the board could decide to grant it to any of the numerous other applicants it has already approved for liquor licenses even though it had none to give out.
For now, the three are slowly continuing their renovation work, using material they'd already purchased before they learned about the status of the liquor license.
Massachusetts Liquor License corruption will dead this amazing venue before it begins
Thanks for these. without reading through all that text, are you saying she was involved with these projects?
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