Flashbacks: Some final thoughts on the late Louise Day Hicks, Hubba Hubba's Bondage Barbie, and the twisted history of Emerson College's haunted dorm

DEATH OF A POL
5 years ago
October 31st, 2003 | Peter Kadzis looked back at the life of the late Louise Day Hicks.

"She was best known for her unyielding stance against court-ordered busing and her militant support of neighborhood schools. Unlike Boston School Committee members John Kerrigan and Pixie Palladino, brittle personalities who later supplanted her on the front lines of those opposed to busing, she was not, I believe, a racist. Yet many of her supporters were. Her slogan, 'You know where I stand,' skillfully allowed the public to project on to her what they wished. It is an uncomfortable truth that she never publicly confronted the darker passions of some those partisans. But she was a politician, not a saint." Read full Article

DOMINATRIX BARBIE
15 years ago
October 29, 1993 | Jon Seamans alerted readers to a new Christmas gift being sold at Hubba Hubba on Mass Ave in Central Square.

"Never mind who's been nice this year. For that naughty boy or girl on your Christmas list, head over to Hubba Hubba...and pick up an anatomically correct Bondage Barbie Doll ($35) with all the appropriate S&M accouterments: lace, fishnet, leather, and rubber fetishwear; whips; chains; body piercings; and blindfolded slave boys. 'I usually make all the male dolls submissive,' says doll-maker Fuscia. 'That's where they belong.' "

DORM FROM HELL
20 years ago
October 28, 1988 | David Bromley investigated the twisted history of a haunted Emerson College dormitory.

"Charlesgate was built as a grand fin de siècle hotel, with turreted bay windows that look out over the Charles and stables in the basement. The entry hall is slathered with glazed porcelain tiles of writhing nymphs and satyrs...

"The Great Depression being what it was, Charlesgate's clientele went downhill, and the building became a flophouse. According to one source, at one point fully two-thirds of it was inhabited by members of a demonic cult. At least two brutal murders were committed there...: one on the top floor, and a particularly grisly one of a young boy in the basement stables. Boston University bought the building to use as a dormitory, and during its ownership, a student committed suicide on a staurway landing. By the time Emerson College acqired Charlesgate, in 1980, it was a snake pit of spirits...

"The incidents were minor at first. A glass of water would slide across a table...

"Emerson then filled the building with a stream of students, many of whom just as quickly streamed right back out to the housing office with room-change requests, citing spiritual harassment by the wraiths who considered Charlesgate theirs. Whirlwinds...would spring up in the middle of a hall where all the doors of the adjoining rooms were closed...Open dorm-room doors would slam shut and lock, trapping the stuident inside the room...There were levitations on the seventh floor."

FILM SCHOOL
35 years ago
October 30,1973 | Myron Meisel, a first year Harvard Law School student, found work as an extra on a film being shot in Boston about a first-year Harvard law student. He later took in a sneak preview of the film...

"He enters, book in hand, from screen left. There can be no doubt -- not with that hair. The lumbering gait, and the patented poor posture. It is I, dragging wearily into the exam. I pass my appointed four seconds on screen, alone, until star Timothy Bottoms, in an obscenely energetic rush, dashes past me on his way in. I thought I was far more convincing in that single shot than he was. In fact, when I played the same scene in real life only days later, I thought I was still a lot more convincing. In my crowning, evanescent moment, I embodied more of the pure mythic 'Harvard Law Student' than I could ever hope to project amid the complexities of actual existence.

"Clearly, it was my best performance to date. Over succeeding months, as The Paper Chase was sneaked incessantly, I grew accustomed to well-wishing phone calls...As a humble extra, I hardly had expected such a showcase, and I even summoned up a crocodile disappointment when John Houseman beat me out for 'Best Supporting Actor' at the Atlanta Film Festival (he has a meatier part, and does rather more with it)."