Bringing them back at night

The Shubert Theatre at the Boch Center, in Boston’s threatre district.

The Paradise Rock Club (formerly known as the Paradise Theater) is a 933-person capacity music venue in Boston.

Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com

I love the title. Corean Reynolds has been named Boston’s “director of nightlife economy,’’ by Mayor Michelle Wu, in a post-COVID bid to re-energize consumers to patronize the capital of New England’s entertainment and eating-and-drinking sectors.

Her duties will include improving transportation and law enforcement.

Ms. Wu, like some other big city mayors, is animated by the desire to make the city less dependent on office workers as the move to remote work has slammed the city’s commercial real estate sector. This must include getting more people to live in the city, some via the conversion of office buildings into housing (much easier said than done) and, say, turning some streets into pedestrian-only ways.

I’m sure that Brett Smiley, Providence’s new mayor, will be watching how it goes

Just be an ‘urban mechanic’?

Take care of this.

— Photo by David Shankbone

Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com

Providence mayoral candidate Brett Smiley, who has held high managerial positions in both Rhode Island state government and Providence City Hall, may well have chosen the right approach: Present himself as a  version of the late Boston Mayor Thomas Menino – an “urban mechanic’’ who focuses on the basics of local governance – snow plowing, filling potholes, maintaining adequate police and fire protection, addressing various neighborhood quality-of-life issues, such as noise (leaf blowers, loud parties, etc.) and graffiti, repairing schools and public buildings and so on.

He would, apparently, tend to stay away from implementing new social-engineering programs. Good. They are best left to the state and federal governments, which have far greater resources to pay for them, if they actually make sense at all. And remember that cities and towns are legal children of the state. And we  already ask such municipal employees as teachers and police officers to do far too much stuff – especially social work – that’s not in their core mission.

It’s too early to know whether Mr. Smiley has the fortitude, creativity, endurance  and political coalition-building strength to get elected, and if he’s elected whether he could engender enough loyalty and fear to bend city employees to his will, as Tom Menino was famously able to do.