Today the MBTA rolled out new Emission Control Diesel buses in the North Shore. The 70 new buses (23 in service now; more to come at the rate of 5 buses per week) will run 24 bus routes departing from the Lynn Garage. The routes serve about 26,000 customers per day in 12 North Shore communities: Beverly, Chelsea, Danvers, Lynn, Malden, Marblehead, Peabody, Revere, Salem, Saugus, Swampscott, and Wakefield. MBTA General Manager Dan Grabauskas said......

Boston's King of Boogie-Woogie With his long hair and white beard, Preacher Jack may look like a wild-eyed holy man descended from a lonely mountaintop. He's actually a living piece of boogie-woogie/rockabilly history who grew up and resides on the North Shore. Pounding the keys for fifty years, he may not keep a weekly residence at Frank's Steak House anymore, but Preacher Jack comes down to Cambridge & Boston every couple weeks to spread......

Update: Good Blotter news! Thank you, tipsters, for spreading the word. Police found Starsha Tupper through bank records, and she is safe, according to the Gloucester Times. --If you're a robber, and you're looking for the big bucks, where are you gonna go? Isn't it obvious? The Yankee Candle store! Some robber dressed all in black held up the Yankee Candle at Quincy Market yesterday afternoon. Boy, he must be a thug – he wears......

Just minutes after midnight The Departed took home two big awards. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences started handing out Oscar statues at around 8:45 pm (here on the east coast, much earlier for those watching it in Hollywood). The Departed was our local favorite and hit 4 out of 5. Alan Arkin, who won the Oscar for Actor in a Supporting Role, may have been good in Little Miss Sunshine but......

If you had a chance to look outside this afternoon you noticed something that we haven't seen this year: accumulation of snow. It was a wimpy snow dusting the Boston area lightly, a reported half inch or less in Boston and up to 2 inches in the outer suburbs, especially in the North Shore. The dusting today would have likely been welcomed with open arms if it had occurred on Christmas Day. Coming a......

There was a time and a place when Bostonist kept missing upcoming shows in the area because we were too busy to pay attention. Along came Tourfilter. A locally based website (now with worldwide reach) that allows us to take a look at upcoming shows based on the information provided by the venue. Each and every day they let us know who's coming to town, where they'll be, and which of our friends are......

The weather is gorgeous. Great day to hit Fenway for an evening match-up. Too bad we don’t have tickets. As is standard this time of year, we’ve got baseball on the mind. Well, baseball and the next challenge to same-sex marriage here in the Bay State. To be perfectly accurate the case the Supreme Judicial Court will hear today is about banning a ballot question, a question which would move to ban same-sex marriage. There......

Perhaps not a huge fan of Clay, Bostonist is a fan of the contest. We, and we think you, like free stuff and that feeling of being special. We were reminded today of the Bon Jovi show that we gave away a pair of tickets to back in mid-October (congrats Pyng, enjoy the show!). The concert sold out for the Garden pretty quickly, but looking out the window today we think there may be a......

Although the population of greater Boston probably doesn't think much about Assembly Square ("That's off 93, right?" "No, wait, it's off 28, isn't it?" Yes and yes), in Somerville it is ever on residents' lips and minds: "With but a few anchor mega-retailers," Somervillians muse, "a gleaming shopping Mecca might arise, nestled among humming highways and reaching into the wallets of Boston, Cambridge, Woburn, and - dare we say it - even Winchester!" It's......

Who is a rat is the question asked by North Shore resident Sean Bucci that launched his website, www.whosarat.com late last summer. The website has a stated mission to help lawyers and defendants find out information about the people who turned on them in order to call their credibility into question. According to the Boston Globe this Monday the site was recently used for revenge. A Tewksbury woman publicly proclaimed the identity of an alleged......