
Lanterns and lions – and a few thousand people – celebrated on Town Field last Saturday for the annual Mid-Autumn Festival – a traditional Vietnamese event marking the harvest, performances, family, and the full moon.

Boston’s interim Parks Commissioner Cathy Baker-Eclipse was a guest at the Columbia Savin Hill Civic Association meeting to discuss planned improvements to one Savin Hill park and to discuss safety concerns at another site.

A celebrity chef’s re-branding concept for Savin Bar + Kitchen – which features prominently displayed photos of notorious Boston mobsters, including the late James “Whitey” Bulger and a sidekick hitman – is causing a stir in Savin Hill, where civic leaders on Monday voted to petition the business to remove the images.

The Strand Theatre on Columbia Road has hosted any number of shows over the decades from operas and rap icons to blues artists, fashion shows, and vaudeville acts. But lately, it has become a popular destination for Korean Pop groups—also known as K-Pop or the Hallyu Wave— as they make tour stops on their way across America.

When Jordy’s Men’s Store in Codman Square shut down operations about a month ago, the move marked the end of a family legacy that stretched back over several generations of a Jewish-American family led by the late Morris Silverstein.

The senior advisor to Mayor Wu who has been overseeing high priority construction projects at White Stadium and Long Island has left City Hall for a new job as deputy chief of special projects at the Boston Water and Sewer Commission.

There’s no shortage of foot traffic in Codman Square’s business district, but destinations have dwindled for shoppers as commercial vacancies have accelerated at a pace that has community stakeholders concerned.

UMass Boston’s updated master plan includes five construction projects, including a 5-story, 285,500-square-foot building to house its popular nursing school, which currently has classes and facilities in scattered locations across the campus in Dorchester.

Mattapan’s Canterbury Brook might as well be the Loch Ness Monster. Few have actually seen it, no one is quite sure if it’s real, and it disappears right after it appears.

One hundred newly sworn-in Boston Police officers began their assignments in districts across the city last Monday (Sept. 8) including at Area C-11 and Area B-3, the two largest districts covering Dorchester and Mattapan. Police commanders say the reinforcements are a welcome addition to a street force that has been slimmed down by retirements and promotions in recent months.

The West of Washington Coalition (WOW) held its annual BBQ Block Party on Aug. 16 on closed-down Norwell Street and on the vacant lot next to the MBTA Talbot Station.

Rising property tax bills – and the potential for budget disruptions – topped the agenda at Monday’s Columbia-Savin Hill Civic Association meeting where District 3 City Councillor John FitzGerald and state Sen. Nick Collins answered questions and offered updates to a group of about 50 people.

The Conservatory Lab Charter School, which has converted its old Lower School building on Hancock Street – once a nursing home – into a first-rate school facility, welcomed some 225 students, most of them from Dorchester and Mattapan, into their new digs last Tuesday morning in the kickoff to a new school term.

A renovated city-owned park in the heart of Codman Square is turning heads this week as the fences came down and residents celebrated its opening with a Labor Day community BBQ on Monday.

The Codman Square Farmer’s Market welcomed multiple farm stands, a cooking demonstration, and a group of aerialists who performed in Rev. Loesch/Wainwright Park on Saturday morning and afternoon as part of a program sponsored by the organization Dorchester Speak for the Trees.