Boston Mag Writer To Inquirer

Boston magazine senior writer John Gonzalez is heading to Philadelphia to write sports for the Inquirer, the Boston Phoenix reports. The paper also reports Gonzalez wrote a nice article on the “Inside Track Gals,” whoever the hell they are. Update: Read it. It is pretty good! I particularly loved this part: “‘I usually hold my breath when I turn to the Inside Track each morning,’ Senator Ted Kennedy writes in an e-mail, a canned comment indicating he does no such thing.”

Study Reveals: Boston College Not Near St. Joe’s

It’s been just a few weeks since St. Joseph’s decided to adopt Boston College as its football team so the kiddies have a football team to root for in the fall.

Well, the St. Joe’s campus is up in arms (well, not really) and today there are dueling columns in the school newspaper (The Hawk) about the subject. While the pro column makes the usual points — hey, cheap trip to Boston, which is “a very fun city” — but I’d like to look at the con column:

This convenience perspective is probably most effective in capturing the true absurdity of the idea. A quick search on Mapquest.com [apparently, this column was written in 1999 —ed.] shows that Boston College is located nearly six hours northeast of the St. Joe’s campus, a seemingly unreasonable and prohibitive distance for the program to succeed.

I can picture the St. Joe’s brass slapping its collective forehead about now. “Six hours! Why didn’t we look that up first?” Also, who needs to look up how far away Boston is? Okay, a better question: Who would admit to doing that?

Program offers a new sport for fans to enjoy [The Hawk]
Football is unecessary luxury for a small school [The Hawk]
[via Soft Pretzel Logic]
March 2: St. Joe’s To Combine Hawk, Eagle In Mad Experiment

Flushing Philly’s Troubles Away

Yes, folks, there it is. The eagerly awaited pay toilet on the north side of City Hall is here! Although the 25-cent flusher isn’t open yet — and is indeed guarded by a gate — we are all only a few days away from the toilet’s official launch.

The Daily News updates the pay toilet story today, making note of John Street’s amazing tenacity in making sure Philly has a pay toilet, and making sure it’s just outside of City Hall. So, y’know, if any Council members need to use it.

The toilet, though, isn’t even Philadelphia’s to keep. It’s a toilet on loan from Boston. Yes, Boston has six public pay toilets, but one of them was shipped down to Philly for a three-month trial run. (And it’s from a German company!)

There is, however, an emergency phone, in case you strain yourself while taking a shit. The toilet is from Wall Corp., which says it’s “the Mercedes-Benz of the street-furniture industry.” There’s a 25 minute time limit, after which the doors will just spring open. It’s only available during the day and also self-cleans in 50 seconds!

Is there anything this toilet can’t do? This being Philadelphia, the city’s Boston-loaned toilet won’t quite have the same luster as as the ones in Beantown:

Although Boston has a program to give tokens to homeless people to operate the toilets, the city will keep the 25-cent charge in place during the pilot period.

Hooray! Thanks, Mayor Street!

At your disposal, a new-age toilet [Daily News]
Oct. 20: Freedom To Flush (For A Quarter)