A kid's best friend

Jada modeling "It's Pooch"

In addition to managing operations at the Amherst Boys and Girls Club in town center, directing the Amherst July 4 Parade & 9/11 Commemoration ceremony, sketching hilarious local political cartoons, former FBI agent and native born 5th generation Amherst resident Kevin Joy is now a fledgling merchandising mogul.

Kevin Joy with "It's Pooch" on the racks at Amherst downtown institution, Hastings.

"It's Pooch" is Joy's answer to "Hello Kitty" and sure to be a hit with folks who prefer dogs over felines. Sketched at the request of his young daughter, the shirts are already a hit with kids (mine for sure) and Joy also reports he sold out of them at the UMass Campus Center to college aged women as well.

Joy plans to place the image on toys, hats, lunch boxes, fridge magnets, etc, and will work with local charitable organizations to help raise contributions via shirt sales.

Maybe dog lovers attending the Conservation Commission meeting this evening at Town Hall should wear them to show support for maintaining the now endangered off leash pooch policy at Amethyst Brook Conservation area.

Hastings: Open every day since 1914 (yes, during recent power outage)

Lights On The Common 9/11/11. Photo by Greg Saulmon, MassLive

Kevin Joy can be reached at (413) 695-1725

Let the Party House crackdown begin!

Phillips Street

Now that the town has hired a new building inspector for health safety code enforcement lets put him to work--especially now that the our state Appeals Court today upheld (CITY OF WORCESTER vs.COLLEGE HILL PROPERTIES, LLC,) a Superior Court ruling enjoining landlords in Worcester from renting to more than 3 unrelated persons per house without a "lodging house" license, which requires an expensive sprinkler system in the premises.

The sagacious court found, "we have no doubt that four or more unrelated adults, sharing housing while attending college, is not an arrangement that lends itself to the formation of a stable and durable household." Indeed.

Sooooooooo, let's start enforcing Amherst's slightly more generous bylaw banning more than 4 unrelated persons from living under one roof.

And let's start with the slummier neighborhoods, like Phillips Street. We are hitting rowdy students where it hurts--their pocketbooks--with $300 noise, nuisance house and open container fines, why not treat irresponsible landlords the same way by reducing the number of sardines they can squeeze into a single dwelling at a fairly significant cost per head?

City of Worcester vs College Hill Properties. Appeals Court ruling 11/8/11

Party House runner up

The Enchanted Forest: 83 Morgan Circle

Nestled in a fairly solid, not-yet-overtaken-by-students residential neighborhood, 83 Morgan Circle made the police report this past weekend for the first time since last March . That may not sound like something to celebrate, but last year this address was party central, earning my "Party House of the Semester Award" for their repeated shenanigans.

Police responded early Sunday morning (1:45 AM) to a call complaining about a "loud party". When police arrived resident Ryan Good promised his remaining guests would "keep the noise down." Fair enough. APD issued a written warning.

Ryan Good's name did not show up last March when residents at 83 Morgan Circe were sited for the fifth separate occasion. So maybe we have had a turnover this fall with all new housemates who are not quite as outrageous as the Bad Boys who lived there all last year, but not exactly Mother Teresa types either.

Which makes you wonder what kind of background check the property owner does before turning over the keys to the front door?

Interestingly the house at 83 Morgan Circle is co-owned by Stephan Gharabegian who also owns almost half (4 of 9) the, errrr, dwellings on Phillips Street, arguable the worst slum in town. Which is why I dubbed him "King of the decadent street." One of the four he owns includes 33 Phillips Street, where white, pretty boy rapper Paul Markham proudly resides.

Mr. Markham's anthem "Welcome to The Zoo" perpetuates the party atmosphere that feeds the machine built around alcohol. Perhaps Markham will change his tune when some kid dies due to alcohol poisoning.

Former Amherst College Pres Tony Marx busted for DUI (driving a company car)

Town Meeting supports development measure

The canary in the coal mine briefly quivered, but survived, as Amherst Town Meeting passed article #5 by a 90 to 67 vote, providing $40,000 for a "housing market study" of the entire town, but mainly used to promote the ailing Gateway Corridor Project, a joint development effort Amherst started last year with UMass and the Amherst Redevelopment Authority but now pretty much a town project.

Fortunately, tonight's marketing study article required only a majority vote. Article #17, Form Based Zoning, also a pro development measure somewhat connected to the Gateway Project, will require a two-thirds vote.

And none of the No voters from this evening are going away.

Unfortunately.

Free at last

Spring Street Parking Lot noon today

Pssst, don't tell anyone but the spiffy new Spring Street Parking Lot in town center is FREE until the DPW paints numbers in the parking spots and the fancy new ticket machine is fully installed, sometime later this week.

Meanwhile about 50 yards away, state authorities (MEMA, DOT) park wherever they darn well please.

No" commercial loading or unloading" taking place; and they were still there a half hour later

Party House of the Weekend

655 Main Street, Amherst (anybody know a good house painter?)

With power and transportation restored to most of Amherst, and the weather back to whatever is considered normal for early November, and pent up demand bubbling over from last weekends devastating storm, The Usual Suspects returned to party mode. Besides, it was "Homecoming Weekend" for UMass, our largest provider of Party House patrons.

655 Main Street is not exactly a repeat offender, although I did award them a "Party House In The Making" last Spring. Welcome boys, you have now made the Big Time.

And they must have done something to tick off responding officers as all the inhabitants received both noise and nuisance house citations ($300 each ticket $600 total per perp).

1:10 AM (early Sunday morning)

Noise Complaint 655 Main St

Arrested for noise and nuisance house:
Christopher Osepowicz, 58 Greenleaf Drive, Northampton, MA, age 21
Peter Grazul, 50 Saddleback Road, Mashpee, MA, age 21
Michael James Farrell, 5 Hope Ave, Foxborough, MA, age 21
John Daniel Donovan, 77 Forest St, Middleton, MA, age 21

Arrested for Open Container Alcohol and Underage Drinking:
Shawn Michael O'Donnell, 456 Homestead Ave, Holyoke, MA, age 20

Owner Card for 655 Main St

Top of the morning!

McMurphy's Uptown Tavern 11/5/11 9:45 AM

Over 50 patrons were already lined up alongside McMurphy's Uptown Tavern entrance at 9:45 AM this morning awaiting a 10:00 AM opening. Yes folks, McMurphy's is a bar.

And even though the owner and manager described to our illustrious Select Board (acting as Liquor Commissioners) two weeks ago the customers they expected at this event to be "a little bit of an older crowd" they look, umm, kind of young to me.