Word: porter
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Authority (MBTA) descriptions of the extension of the Red Line are artfully simple: "...five years of blasting, drilling, scooping and building will become another ten minutes of commuting." That will be in the spring of 1984, when the first Red Line cars venture beyond the Harvard Square station to Porter and Davis squares and to the Alewife area, bringing subterranean transit to the edge of the city...
...Porter Square merchants say the extension will probably improve their business. "The Red Line has created a focus on the area that didn't exist before," says Simon E. Shapiro, chairman of Mercants on the Line, a businessman's association formed through the MBTA two years ago. The increased public transportation to the square will ease the ongoing expansion of North Cambridge, Shapiro says, adding, "This market is really an expansion of Harvard Square and the congestion there." In fact, Tags True Value Hardware, Shapiro's workplace, is eventually planning to expand to three times its present size, he adds...
Peter Pilat, manager of Kresge's in Porter Square, agrees that the subway may bring financial benefits to the area, though he warns that the merchants' dreams could backfire if local residents use the subway system to travel into Boston to shop. "Right now the subway is hindering business because of the blasting," he says...
Furthermore, Porter Square doesn't have much more room to develop commercially, and the development that is planned--mostly offices and apartments--would probably happen regardless of Red Line expansion, Danehy says. Cambridge merchants are "interested in increasing business, and not looking at other factors," he adds...
Company numbers come off the strongest. The cast of five dance and sing best when all together. Porter's "Too Darn Hot" is the most successful number in the show. The choreography is smooth, the performance fairly polished. The women's trio in "I Can Cook, Too" evoked loud laughter, as did the men's equally amusing rendition of the song in a modern parody of the 1944 Bernstein classic. After Hours could use more of this kind of innovation...