♫ Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale,
A tale of a fateful trip
That started from this tropic port
Aboard this tiny ship.
The mate was a mighty sailing man,
The skipper brave and sure.
Five passengers set sail that day
For a two hour tour, a two hour tour. ♫
"Casino is phase one of ‘the entertainment district in the Northeast,’ exec says" by Joshua Miller Globe Staff, June 21, 2019
EVERETT — The two-hour tour offered a view of the casino, with its more than 3,000 slots whirring under red Venetian crystal chandeliers, ATMs close at hand. Its 143 table games and 88 poker games were idle, but will begin accepting bets on Sunday morning.
Reporters were whisked to a lavishly appointed top-floor suite, with its own private fitness room and a sweeping view of the Boston skyline. Tour guides gave journalists a peek into the nightclub, Memoire, filled with nearly $2 million worth of pulsing light and sound equipment, 20 VIP tables, and a cover charge of at least $40 for non-VIPs, and the casino offered a look into several of the restaurants and bars on the property, including the craft beer pub, adorned with a listing of each local beer with its category, name, brewer, alcoholic content, and distance from Encore — “Saison, Working Class Hero, Cambridge Brewing Co., 4.5 percent, 2.4 miles.”
Then there was Mystique Asian Restaurant & Lounge, the 640-person venue which offers sushi, robata, and drinks from standards to more unfamiliar entries like Sir Inks a Lot, a combination of Grey Goose, Grey Goose Citron, cassis, lemongrass, yuzu, and Moët Impérial champagne.
Available to reporters after the tour was a spread of eggs, smoked salmon, white chocolate bread pudding, and pepper-crusted Angus New York steak.....
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Don't mean to spoil the fun, but.....
"Is Northeast’s casino market saturated? Catskills resort is a cautionary tale" by Mark Arsenault Globe Staff, March 18, 2019
MONTICELLO, N.Y. — There’s nothing obviously wrong with Resorts World Catskills, the 13-month-old casino tucked among forests and rolling hills about two hours north of New York City.
The hotel rooms are big, the views nice enough. The casino is packed with Las Vegas-style table games and a couple thousand shimmering slot machines. Parking is easy, the staff friendly; everything is spick-and-span and there’s a dining option for any budget.
So why is the billion-dollar casino struggling so mightily, falling so short of revenue projections that some experts are already questioning its long-term viability?
And we got to the table late.
“They’re in trouble,” said New Jersey casino consultant Alan R. Woinski, the president of Gaming USA Corp. “They built something thinking all these people who used to go to the Catskills would come back.”
A generation ago, people probably would have, but casinos have sprung up across the Northeast, transforming the competitive landscape and offering cautionary examples for Massachusetts, where the state’s second big casino is due to open in June.
“The Northeast market has been saturated for a while,” said Woinski. “It comes down to too many casinos going after the same customer.”
In Massachusetts, the MGM casino in Springfield is also running behind revenue estimates since opening in August, though the numbers improved last month. The giant Connecticut tribal casinos, Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun, are down substantially in slots revenue from their peaks before the Great Recession. Despite some rebounding in recent years, in fiscal 2019 both Connecticut casinos are running behind the prior year’s pace, according to numbers tabulated by Paul DeBole, a Lasell College professor and gambling specialist.
Can't help but wonder if the income inequality has something to do with it.
Competition in the Northeast market will tighten again with the addition of Encore Boston Harbor, a $2.6 billion resort in Everett, with a gambling floor big enough to park jumbo jets.
The crowded market and lower-than-expected revenues — and the taxes they generate — may require a resetting of expectations for the casino industry and could serve as a red light warning against further expansion in the Northeast, specialists said. Expansion remains on the table in Massachusetts.
Resorts World Catskills — about a four-hour drive from Boston and 2¾ hours from Springfield — is deep in the woods at the end of a long, winding boulevard that gives a sense of seclusion. It would be dwarfed by a Foxwoods or Mohegan Sun; the scale is more in the neighborhood of a rural MGM Springfield. Twenty years ago, such a Catskills casino resort probably would have been a hit, Woinski said, but the so-called Borscht Belt is not the tourist draw it once was, and the Northeast’s gamblers are now overwhelmed with options.
Resorts World Catskills did not respond to a request for comment. The company has said in the past that its gambling revenue cannot be accurately analyzed before the opening of an adjacent family resort and water park and a new golf course.
In the beginning of East Coast casino gambling, there was only Atlantic City, where the first casino opened in 1978. The New Jersey vacation city peaked in 2006, with a casino gambling market worth $5.2 billion a year, before competition began to bite into its business. By 2015, the Atlantic City market had been chopped in half, to $2.6 billion; new Internet and sports gambling measures helped bump revenue up to $2.9 billion last year.
Trump got out just in time.
Woinski, who is based in Paramus, N.J., said the drive is a bit more than two hours to Atlantic City, which was once the only game around. Now, though, he is roughly the same distance from SugarHouse Casino in Philadelphia and Mohegan Sun Pocono. He’s even closer to Sands Bethlehem in Pennsylvania and Resorts World Catskills. And then there is the Empire City Casino in Yonkers, N.Y., a mere 30 minutes away. So which one is he most likely to visit?
“Gamblers will go to the nearest machine,” he said. “That’s just the nature of the beast.”
The Northeast’s market has evolved substantially since Massachusetts legalized casino gambling nearly eight years ago.
Was it that long ago?
What might this changing landscape mean for Encore Boston Harbor? Wynn Resorts has long enjoyed one of the most loyal and coveted customer bases in the industry, Woinski said, and Encore will be a beautiful property. “But they’re still opening into a very complicated and saturated market,” Woinski said.
Encore is a “wild card,” DeBole said, because “the company’s business model is predicated on bringing in a lot of high rollers from all over the world.” It’s an open question: “Are these people going to come to Everett? Or do they just want to go to Las Vegas?”
A Wynn Resorts spokesman declined to comment.
A former state Senate president, Stanley Rosenberg, one of the architects of the Massachusetts casino law, said that “it’s too early to start wringing our hands and worrying that there is something wrong here.”
That will come as the lo$$e$ mount.
MGM’s revenue will grow as it learns its market and fine-tunes its promotions, he said, just as revenues grew at the Plainridge Park slots parlor in Plainville, which opened in 2015. He expects Encore to undergo a similar ramp-up.
“They can all make plenty of money even if they’re not hitting their [projected] numbers,” he said. “The measure is not only how big the take is, or how profitable the entity is. The question is, are they making enough money to be viable? To give customers a good experience? To employ a lot of people and greatly increase economic activity around the facilities? MGM Springfield is already having a remarkable effect on that city.”
In Southeastern Massachusetts, Rosenberg said, the gambling industry is capable of figuring out whether the market can support another casino resort.
“Nobody is going to propose spending a billion or hundreds of millions of dollars in a facility unless they believe they can make money at it,” he said.
Oh, no?
He spent too much time on Beacon Hill.
Les Bernal, director of the anti-casino group Stop Predatory Gambling, said lower-than-expected revenues demonstrate that regional casinos “never deliver what gambling lobbyists promise. They overpromise their revenues to get the Legislature and the public to rationalize bringing in this predatory industry.”
Yeah, let the dissenters have the afterthought paragraph and last word.
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Too late because it's Wynner take all in Ma$$achu$etts.
Unless you want to bet on the game:
"New Hampshire and Maine could soon approve sports betting" by Andy Rosen Globe Staff, June 21, 2019
The sports betting market in New England is about to get more crowded. The Maine Legislature this week passed a bill to legalize wagering on athletic contests, just days after neighboring New Hampshire’s lawmakers approved a similar measure.
The bills are awaiting final action by the states’ respective governors. But if they become law, both states could have programs operating next year. Rhode Island last year became the first New England state to accept sports wagers.
Sports betting remains illegal in Massachusetts. Republican Governor Charlie Baker has proposed a measure that would allow wagering on professional games online or at the state’s casinos, but legislators are not expected to decide on the issue before the fall.
Means no betting on the Patriots, then.
“We’re always monitoring what states around us are doing, realizing that we do have a gaming industry in Massachusetts, and we want it to remain competitive,” said State Representative Ann-Margaret Ferrante, a Gloucester Democrat who is co-chairwoman of the legislative committee considering sports betting. “However, the top priority for the committee is to make sure that the bill is the best it can be for the people of Massachusetts.”
Yeah, $ure.
If they meant that, they wouldn't be working on a bill at all.
The legalization of sports betting appears all but certain in New Hampshire, where Republican Governor Christopher T. Sununu is a supporter of the measure that lawmakers approved. Maine’s Democratic governor, Janet T. Mills, has not taken a position on the bill that passed in her state.
About a dozen other states have rolled out sports betting in the year since the US Supreme Court invalidated a law that confined the practice to Nevada.
Both the New Hampshire and Maine bills would allow gamblers to place bets online and at in-person gambling sites.
New Hampshire would allow 10 brick-and-mortar sports book sites around the state, which could be restaurants or other types of entertainment facilities.....
It will be like a Keno corner!
--more--"
There won't be any basketball or hockey games to bet on until fall. Only baseball.
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♫ The weather started getting rough,
The tiny ship was tossed,
If not for the courage of the fearless crew
The Minnow would be lost, the Minnow would be lost. ♫
"Did a bad plan save this Mount Washington hiker’s life?" by Billy Baker Globe Staff, June 21, 2019
Authorities reported that 80-year-old James Clark was showing signs of hypothermia, but he does not believe that is true. Doctors at the hospital where he was taken later told him he was suffering from rhabdomyolysis, he said, a dangerous condition in which muscles damaged by injury or severe exertion dump toxic material into the bloodstream, threatening kidneys and other vital organs. It was not a condition he had had before, he said.
Clark said he had been researching the Mount Washington hike for a year and was wearing five layers of clothing. He said the temperatures were cool but not cold.
The brothers, who successfully summited and hiked back to the base on another trail, alerted authorities at 7:45 p.m. when they had not heard from Clark. A rescue team from the Appalachian Mountain Club’s Hermit Lake Shelter was the first to locate him, just above the Alpine Garden Trail junction, and bundled him in warm clothing and a sleeping bag.
Fish and Game officers hiked to them, and rescuers carried him 1.7 miles in a litter to the Auto Road, where at 5 a.m. an ambulance took him to Androscoggin Valley Hospital in Berlin.
“Whatever they want to bill us for the rescue is fine,” Clark said. “I have no problem with that. Those people who came for me were amazing. They were so nice and understanding. I can’t thank them enough.”
He said he can also understand the frustration of state authorities, who responded to two deaths in the White Mountains — including a woman on Mount Washington — in the same 24-hour period when Clark was rescued. “They’ve got to warn people to prepare more carefully and plan more carefully, and I’m sure they’re feeling: ‘What can we do to put a stop to all these people running into danger?’ ”
Titanic chivalry alive and well.
As for the decisions that led to him being alone, he still believes it was the right plan, and the only reason he is alive.
“If my grandsons had been with me, there was nothing they could have done without cell reception. They couldn’t have carried me, so they would have been forced to make a dangerous dash for the summit in the dark, and it would have ultimately taken longer for rescuers to get to me. If anyone is at fault, it’s me, not the boys. They didn’t do anything they weren’t told to do, and they did not hesitate to call when they did not hear from me. We made some mistakes, but ultimately the way that we did this is what saved my life.”
Clark said he has hiked hundreds of mountains in his life and has remained remarkably active for his age, but after this scare, he thinks it may be time to give up hiking.
“I probably should have done it before now,” he said. “And that’s OK.”
Authorities don’t see it quite that way and announced they are considering criminal charges against the family, the teenagers and their grandfather, as well as a hefty bill for the rescue.
Authorities have yet to announce whether they will charge or bill Clark and his family.....
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Just lost his balance is all.
Good thing he wasn't out at sea:
"Right whale found dead had been studied by researchers for decades" by Danny McDonald Globe Staff, June 21, 2019
The North Atlantic right whale that was found floating dead in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Canada on Thursday was a female whose movement and offspring had been studied by researchers for decades, according to a statement from the New England Aquarium.
The whale, known as #1281 or “Punctuation” because scarring on her head looked like dashes and commas, was first photographed in the Great South Channel in 1981, and was sighted more than 250 times throughout the Eastern Seaboard of Canada and the United States, the statement said.
The North Atlantic right whale is among the most endangered animals on the planet, and Punctuation’s passing marks the second death for the species this month.
They couldn't revive the first one.
“All right whale deaths hit hard, but this one is particularly devastating to the population — she was a reproductive female — and to researchers who have studied her for nearly 40 years,” the aquarium said in a statement.
I'm sure they felt like they knew her personally, and it's sad.
Researchers hope Punctuation’s body can be brought ashore so that a cause of death can be determined. Understanding what leads to the deaths of right whales is “essential to evaluating and improving management and conservation efforts aimed at saving this species,” according to the aquarium.
Punctuation had scars from five separate entanglements and two small vessel strikes, authorities said. She had eight calves, her first in 1986 and her last in 2016. One of her calves was struck and killed by a ship in 2016.
Another of her offspring, as well as a grand-calf, suffered severe entanglements that led to the death of one in 2000 and the disappearance of the other in 2001.
Global warming made 'em do it.
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Or maybe it was the tide:
"Red tide halts shellfish harvesting off parts of Mass. coast" by Maddie Kilgannon Globe Correspondent, June 21, 2019
Shellfishing is banned until further notice in more than a dozen communities along the Massachusetts coast after a potentially deadly toxin was found in a variety of shellfish, state officials announced this week.
The toxin, Paralytic Shellfish Poison, commonly referred to as “red tide,” can be fatal if ingested in soft-shell clams, blue mussels, ocean quahogs, carnivorous snails, and other bivalve shellfish.
Red tide does not pose a threat to swimmers and beachgoers, officials said.
The ban comes just before what is expected to be a banner beach weekend at the start of the summer, which normally sends hordes of beach-lovers to the coast.....
It's a “double-edged sword,” what with the “immense health risk and huge impact on the industry.”
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The prime suspect:
"Prosecutors will not seek criminal charges in the tragic death of 14-year-old Ryan Hazel, who was fatally mauled in May by five dogs he regularly cared for in Dighton, authorities said Friday. The announcement from Bristol District Attorney Thomas M. Quinn III’s office capped a wrenching case that left residents shaken and resulted in the euthanization of the dogs....."
It's food to survive on the island.
All the ca$taways are on the $ame page:
"It’s true: Environmental and business groups are on the same page" by Jon Chesto Globe Staff, June 21, 2019
Can the state’s leading environmental and business groups reach common ground and lay down their arms?
Unlike Lord of the Flies.
Sure seems that way. Former antagonists Environmental League of Massachusetts and Associated Industries of Massachusetts have joined forces for a greater good: improving public transportation while curbing greenhouse gas emissions.
One of the last times we saw these two publicly engaged, they were in a war of words over the future of solar power in the state.
Now, they’re on the same page — literally.
AIM and ELM cosigned a letter to Governor Charlie Baker on Thursday that offers guidance and support as state officials help hammer out a regional cap-and-trade system for transportation fuels. The letter was sent to coincide with a multistate meeting in Boston regarding this nascent program, dubbed the Transportation & Climate Initiative, and circulated among the participants on Friday.
AIM isn’t the only business group involved. Two other influential associations also signed: the Massachusetts Business Roundtable and the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation. Ceres, a Boston nonprofit that helps companies promote climate-friendly agendas, is also on board.
I can't think of a better rea$on to be again$t it then.
The letter is a year in the making. Not long after taking over as president of ELM in 2017, Elizabeth Turnbull Henry reached out to key business groups and started informal monthly meetings. Her predecessor, George Bachrach, would sometimes spar with business interests in public, over clean-energy issues in particular. Turnbull Henry has taken a decidedly more collaborative approach, hoping to turn enemies into allies.
Let the Iran talks begin!
There’s a good reason these groups came together. The state’s creaky transportation infrastructure often feels like it’s on the brink of collapse, with the recent Red Line derailment just the latest example.
Hmmm.
The timing of the derailments get more suspicious with each passing day, and there is going to be “a lot of frustration, a lot of anger, with fare hikes kicking in soon.”
Executives and their employees grow ever more fatigued by all the traffic jams and late trains. It’s a big competitiveness issue. Without a more reliable transit and road system, every new corporate expansion could make it that much tougher to land the next one.
The details of the proposed cap-and-trade program are still being worked out. Officials in roughly a dozen Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states see it as a way to curb greenhouse gas emissions in the transportation sector. Wholesale fuel providers would buy emission allowances, much like power plant owners have done for a decade under the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. Prices at the pump would probably rise as a result, but it wouldn’t require legislative approval in Massachusetts the way a straightforward gas tax increase would.
In other words, it's a way to pickpocket your wallet without you even knowing.
This new system could potentially bring in hundreds of millions a year in new revenue to Massachusetts. The letter signers would like to see this bounty go to improving public transit, alleviating road congestion with carpooling and “smart tolling,” and supporting electric vehicles.
PFFFT!
Carbon credits, get your carbon credits!
Don’t be too surprised to see the business groups’ support. They previously backed tying gas tax hikes to inflation, and unsuccessfully fought a ballot question in 2014 that ended up stripping away those automatic increases. The region’s transportation needs have only grown since.
The corporate attitude toward climate change has shifted, too. Back then, the discussions at the Massachusetts Business Roundtable’s energy committee were largely focused on the high cost of electricity. Roundtable executive director JD Chesloff says climate concerns have since become equally important.
Happened about the $ame time they $aw the pile of money that could be created, literally, out of thin air.
Business groups don’t see TCI as a silver bullet to solve the state’s transportation woes. They have been brainstorming, separately from the ELM meetings, about a range of potential revenue sources. Eileen McAnneny of the taxpayers association says reforms remain important, too. Throwing money at a broken system, she says, isn’t the answer.
It's more like a tortoise.
The Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce is helping referee those brainstorming sessions. The chamber has also been meeting with ELM, but didn’t sign the letter because it wants to complete its sessions first. The chamber says it sees TCI as an intriguing way to influence behavior through pricing but it also needs more info about how the money would be spent.
Yeah, they are really impartial.
For ELM and its counterparts in the business world, this letter represents an important first step together, but it won’t be the last. ELM knows that solving problems as tough as climate change and congestion requires as many allies as possible.
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{@@##$$%%^^&&}
♫ The ship set ground on the shore of this uncharted desert isle
With Gilligan
The Skipper too,
A millionaire and his wife,
A movie star
The Professor and Mary Ann,
Here on Bo$ton Globe's Isle. ♫
Some of their favorite episodes were:
How to Be a Hero: Gilligan is jealous of the Skipper when he saves Mary Ann from drowning, but he may get his chance to be a hero yet when a headhunter takes the other castaways prisoner.
Gilligan's Mother-in-Law: A native chief's daughter comes to the island with her family and wants to marry Gilligan, but first he must pass the "marriage test"--which becomes more complicated when another suitor arrives and challenges Gilligan for her hand.
Plant You Now, Dig You Later: Both Gilligan and Mr. Howell lay claim to a treasure chest that Gilligan dug up while working for Mr. Howell. The professor offers to settle ownership once and for all with a trial.
Where There's a Will: Mr. Howell names the other castaways as beneficiaries in his will, but he then fears they may be trying to kill him for their inheritance, when in reality they are throwing a surprise party for him.
Nyet, Nyet, Not Yet: Two Soviet cosmonauts land on the island, way off course from their target. The castaways hope to leave the island with them when they call their submarine, but the cosmonauts have other ideas.
The Little Dictator: A Latin American dictator is exiled to the island, and he immediately declares himself dictator of the island, with Gilligan as his puppet leader in training.
That last one is a historical classic.
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Time to role credits:
♫ So this is the tale of our castaways,
They're here for a long, long time,
They'll have to make the best of things,
It's an uphill climb.
The first mate and his Skipper too,
Will do their very best,
To make the others comfortable,
In their tropic island nest.
No phone, no lights, no motor bikes,
Not a single luxury,
Like Robinson Crusoe,
It's primitive as can be.
So join us here each week my friend,
You're sure to get a smile,
From seven stranded castaways,
