Published June 18, 2010
Solstice isn’t until next week. But Radio Boston’s Friday news in review roundtable regulars were already in a summer mood today when they shared their favorite stories of the week.
Peter Canellos, editorial page editor of the Boston Globe, whetted my appetite for some street food on the Greenway. There’s been debate over whether to require local-only food, or to bring in the tried-but-true kid-friendly hot-dog vendors. Canellos thinks they came up with a good compromise: Ethinic food carts. Put a little spice into downtown Boston where Irish pubs currently dominate. (No offense to my Irish friends. And anyway, I’ve been told that curry is so popular, it’s become the national dish of your neighbors across the Irish Sea.) I’m hoping for kebabs, burritos and sushi. Yum.
If you’re wondering what to do with all those boxes of bottled water you bought when greater Boston was under its boil-water order, Alison Lobron of Commonwealth Magazine suggests heading out to the Cape. Falmouth was put under a boil-water order on June 16 when high levels of coliform bacteria were found in the local water supply. Alison says you can enjoy a weekend on the Cape, use up all that bottled water, and maybe even help out a local who doesn’t relish the idea of cart-to-cart combat over supplies of water at the grocery store.
My hubbub takes us south of the border, to Newport, R.I. The Cliff Walk there is one of my favorite summer strolls. Beautiful views, crashing surf, peeks into the lawn parties of the ostentatiously rich. Oh, and what about the fence? It’s not there yet, but a recent Rhode Island Supreme Court ruling has prompted talk of fencing off much of the Cliff Walk. In April, the court ruled that Simcha Berman of Brooklyn, N.Y., could sue property owners after the ground gave way under his feet on one section of the walk. The fall left Berman paralyzed from the neck down. The court found that Newport had long been aware of the Cliff Walk’s “latent dangers,” including erosion on the trails. So now, the possibility of putting up more fencing is the talk of the Walk.