No Mayor, No Less

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Or

What's all the Hub-bub, Bub?

Thomas Menino, the longest serving mayor of the greatest city in America, has died of cancer at the age of 71. The accidental mayor took office in 1993 when Ray Flynn was named Ambassador to the Vatican and Menino, as President of Boston City Council, automatically ascended to the throne. He then steamrolled through 5 landslide re-elections. Though not a grand visionary, no one loved the city more, and he proudly called himself a “people-loving urban mechanic” as devoted to fixing the little things like potholes and parking that can make city life irritating as to recruiting new business to the city. Financially and fundamentally, the city flourished under his reign. After ascending to the mayor’s office, he promised to appear on Neighborhood Network News, a shitty low-rent community affairs TV show populated by two professionals and an ever-changing coterie of inept interns, once a month as long as he was mayor. I don’t know how long he kept that promise, but for the two years I was one of those interns, once a month the affable, if somewhat unintelligible, mayor good-naturedly endured cameramen moving at the wrong time and producers forgetting to hit record to talk about local issues to the 4 people tuning in. Other highlights of his tenure included telling architecture-obsessed Boston University President John Silber that the façade of a hotel the university had built was too ugly and had to be replaced, boycotting Boston’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade for its ban on LGBT involvement while marching in the city’s Gay Pride Parade, and after leaving the mayor’s office, teaching Political Science at BU. Last year, on the day of the Boston Marathon bombing, he left the hospital against his doctor’s advice to attend the first press conference and coordinate search efforts, then rose out of his wheelchair, the pulpit obscuring his catheter, 3 days later at an interfaith service to comfort his beloved city.