Hey, there! Log in / Register

Historic trolley at Boylston stop covered in graffiti again

UPDATE: Graffiti removed.

Transit Police say they are conducting "an active investigation" to find whoever sprayed graffiti on one of the two historic trolleys stored at Boylston on the Green Line.

In the Friends of the Mattapan High Speed Line Facebook group, one person posted photos of the graffiti on car 3295, the more rounded PCC car that is a cousin to the cars still in use on the Mattapan Line. She reports she saw the tagging on her way home tonight.

In 2014, a serial tagger was arrested on charges he wrote his graffiti name on the two cars, then left Boston after he promised a judge he would never do anything like that again.

After becoming a wanted man in both Cheyenne, WY and the San Francisco area for doing something like that again, he returned to the Boston area last year and was arrested after being captured on video scribbling on doors at the Forest Hills T stop.

The graffiti on the trolley today looks different from his typical style.



All they have to do is watch the videos from the cameras in the station to solve this one. How the vandals entered the area through locked gates is another question for the sleuths to solve. While they are at it the whole red line from North Quincy to the tunnel before Andrew is covered with full length murals by vandals who had to have ladders and probably a police detail and a flag person.

Great Idea if only there were cameras in there.

Boylston Station is a historic landmark, so adding ANYTHING to that station requires a ton of work and permission from the BHC. Its the only station without cameras, escalators, or elevators.

It also hasn't had a remodel since the 1940s. (unlike other stations along the GL that got a remodel in the 1960s and again in the 2000s)

Didn't know Boylston station didn't have any cameras. You would think that with all the shows downtown and the number of tourists that use the station and the historic trolleys the T would have its police force patrol the station and walk the platform once an hour.

Which law has higher precidence? The Historic Landmark law or the ADA? Because the ADA states that all "grandfather clauses" expire in 2020 (or so I've heard, maybe there are other exemptions I'm not aware of). But the Historic Landmark law preserves such places. So the two laws will be contradicting each other at the end of 2020. Will Boylston be able to stay open without changes, or will they have to at least install elevators (not necessarily escalators or cameras)? Or will they simply close it?

As for the vandalism, wihch has recently been cleaned, let's hope they get the guy.

I'd put good money that he did it.

Frickin' sociopath.

Different letter style.

MBTA should invest in some better fencing. Few years back one of the sections on that side rusted to the point it fell over. Vandals shouldn't be able to get over to those museum trolleys. Paint is bad enough. What happens if some moron does more damage with tools or worse?

When they catch the creep that did this they should have to spend months of community service cleaning stations.

Those cars are akin to museum exhibits. Why do we attract this sort of asshole? We've seen the BPL tagged, these train cars, and other monuments hit before. And just tagging? Not even something artistic? What the hell? So lame.


Too dark to catch the person. Boylston is where the sun don't shine.

The whole art form is just rich white kids from the suburbs or privileged backgrounds who post their pictures on Instagram now for likes. Much like anything else real in this world it is now a shadow of itself and total joke.


but im sure when YOU were younger that it was still authentic and real and meant something important.

Punk Rock was a marketing vehicle created by Vivian Westwood

Kid Rock was a spoiled, rich kid who's parents bought him a record company.

Rick Ross isn't a gangster.

And Beastie Boy Mike D grew up very very rich.

Nothing is special or authentic and nobody cares what came before it or how it matters.

You need to come to grips with that and move on, my man.

The Monkees weren't about music, they were about rebellion, about political and social upheaval.

There's some seriously talented work out there- let's not write it off because of one idiot.

Then they should do it on a canvas, not on walls and such.


were pooh-pooh'd by the art crowd too at one point.

Art is everything and everywhere, not to be confined and only admired from a tufted Chesterfield softer than a babies bottom or the stark halls of a stuffy museum.

It depends on which walls: check out Graffiti Alley in Central Square.

Painting on canvas is a johnny-come-lately compared to decorating walls; people were painting on walls tens of thousands of years ago. Or, if you don't like the Mesolithic, there's the Sistine Chapel.

justification. Graffiti is vandalism, no matter how 'talented' someone might think the tagher is.