My wife just delivered at Mt. Auburn. We used the midwives at Atrius / Harvard Vanguard of Cambridge (the practice on Cambridge St) and worked with Lucia Ma throughout her pregnancy, and she was fantastic.

The nurses, midwives, and OB staff who were working during Leah’s labor & delivery were fantastic. She ended up needing to go to a c-section at the last minute (not quite emergency, but very close) and the OB on duty, Dr. Antonellis, was fantastic & provided kind & excellent care when we had to switch to surgery.

He doesn’t do violin work AFAIK, but Gian Pangaro, located near Davis Sq might still be able to do this, or refer you to a luthier who can.

I had him do a full setup on my double bass a few years ago, he did great work!

+1 to Dick Robasson, the tailor at Keezer’s / Le Couturier. He’s also the owner! He’s my go-to guy for tailoring. He bought Keezer’s a few years ago, and merged his tailoring business with it & moved both to the current Mass Ave space near Porter.

As for “how close do they get”, the answer is “very”, but don’t be alarmed. Mr. Robasson is quite professional & very kindly.

Agreed! I’m not aware of any sensor usage, but also don’t know if there’s any policy against sensor usage. Enforcement cameras remain illegal in MA however.

I mean, you’re giving them a pass.

You’ve been hot all over this set of comments, lambasting folks sharing that they break some laws in an attempt to be safer while cycling.

Saying “ugh scofflaw cyclists” while not even once acknowledging the reality of driver behavior as far worse is disingenuous.

Also, you keep referring to a bicycle as something antiquated & unsafe, which has its own negative connotations.

I’m hardly a vigilante; I ride a step-through & wear street clothes when I bike places.

Nobody, no matter how they get around, should be punish-passed or otherwise deal with abuse for going places, and yet this regularly happens to many. Hell, I’ve been punish-passed while driving a car.

Your entire argument was “cyclists should obey the law”.

So why do drivers get a pass?

Y’know, lemme ask this another way: would any of the behaviors I’ve described be acceptable if I were driving my car?

Would someone speeding around me, crossing the double yellow, b/c I was driving the speed limit, be acceptable, much less legal?

Would someone speeding at all, just because, be acceptable or legal?

Because that’s my issue here.

I obey far more moving vehicle laws than most drivers. I never speed (because I can’t! I can’t go that fast) and only rarely disobey a red light to cross when I deem it safer than waiting for cars to be allowed to move.

You can absolutely speak to the speed in Cambridge: the citywide speed limit is 25, but most roads are 20 MPH.

The whole point of my actions is to be safer. If there’s no bike lane, I need to take the main lane to be safe from being doored by drivers getting out of parked cars, which is a far greater risk than moving traffic behind me.

I’m also legally entitled to the entire lane.

Drivers speeding is a near-constant. So again: it doesn’t matter if I take the lane and am going 20 MPH myself, nobody driving should be conflicting with me b/c they shouldn’t be going faster than me.

Said another way: being directly in front of a car is the safest place I can be if there’s no bike lane. I’m at my most visible directly in front of a driver. If I’m to the side? Less visible, and in the door zone for parked cars.

It’s not a game of chicken when we’re all going the same direction.

You’re misunderstanding my point, which is that I can obey every law to a T, and I will endure drivers flagrantly breaking laws in ways that society has decided are completely acceptable.

So if we’ve all decided road laws are optional as a society, why am I being held to a higher standard as a cyclist, even though my behavior is far less risky than a driver?

Are you aware that there’s no such thing as “blocking the road with your bicycle”? It’s been mentioned elsewhere in the comments, but if there’s no bike lane, cyclists are legally entitled to the entire main travel lane.

So your point here is invalid. Also, if I’m going 20 MPH, there shouldn’t be any conflicts, since I’m going the speed limit.

So I can’t be “blocking a car lane” since I’m traveling at the legal speed limit.

If a car is going faster than me, they’re breaking the law, which is the very thing you’re railing against, and doing so in a fashion that’s far more dangerous & deadlier than if I break the law on my bike.

The difference is when I break the law while cycling, I’m increasing my safety. If it isn’t making me safer, I’m not doing it.

Until we fix the normalization of scofflaw driving (it’s not enforced many times b/c the enforcers consider those behaviors normal & act the same way, even when they’re working a shift doing enforcement).

I’ve had folks scream at me for obeying the law while cycling, punish pass me b/c I’m going to the speed limit (20 MPH) and am in front of them, and lots more antisocial, dangerous, & sometimes illegal behavior.

Pointing at scofflaw cyclists is a distraction & takes away from the need to solve the much more pressing and more dangerous illegal & antisocial behavior most drivers exhibit.

The policy is that there are no “beg buttons” for pedestrian crossings, except at mid-block crossings, to ensure pedestrians always get an opportunity to cross during each light cycle.

This very thing happened to me this past weekend on Cedar St walking up to Highland Ave.

Because thanks to how cars are constructed, you can’t see if nobody is coming in all directions, all the time.

I’ve nearly been right-hooked plenty of times while crossing a street on foot by a driver who didn’t even bother looking to the right while waiting to turn.

That happened just this past weekend while I was walking up Cedar St to Highland Ave with my pregnant wife. Had they been a little harder on the gas pedal we’d be injured or dead right now.

I see folks blow the crossing at Cedar & the Community Path daily, and they can very clearly see folks on the Path coming up to the crossing.

Common sense quite simply doesn’t exist when driving for a host of reasons, so the smartest thing is to heavily regulate the most dangerous behaviors, even if it seems foolish sometimes.

And there’s nothing that says motorists are allowed to routinely break the law in myriad accepted ways, yet we know these things are fully normalized:

• Going 5–10 MPH over the speed limit
• Rolling through stop signs
• Making right turns on red even when it is clearly posted to be illegal
• Using a handheld device (e.g. phone) while driving
• “Punish passing” a cyclist (i.e. passing closer than 3 feet)

Compared to the above, the traffic violations that a cyclist can commit aren’t even close in terms of potential and actual harm done.

So if anything, general license to routinely break traffic rules is not only common, but well accepted in the US.

Since my breaking some laws as a cyclist keeps me safe, while others breaking the law as a driver leads to people being hurt and killed, we need to recognize that these two kinds of law-breaking are not the same.

Geometry alone dictates that replacing car use with other ways of getting around is how we welcome more people to Cambridge & nearby.

You can provide for more people if they walk, roll, ride a bus, or ride a train, than if they drive, simply because you need far less space per person for those non-car ways of getting around.

Removing car infrastructure in favor of other modes means providing for more people, not fewer.

If you’re concerned about substance use, you should focus on the package stores nearby, since those are a greater source of harm than cannabis and are far less regulated.

There’s 5 liquor stores within a few blocks of this location, which will have similar hours to this dispensary.

If you’re concerned about weed but not booze, you need to rethink your concerns.