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Junior Mint factory
The Tootsie Roll company now owns it, but what they make there is Junior Mints. You can smell it when you walk around the area.
Exclusively?
I sublet a place directly next to the factory in the early 2000s. I could almost knock on the factory windows from my bedroom if my arm was a bit longer.
When they made junior mints the place smelled AWESOME. But that was only once a week. Other days the place would smell like burnt sugar or substances that weren't as nice.
More Synergy
The Junior Mint episode of Seinfeld was written by someone who went to school at that institution about a mile west of here.
Interesting guy!
Went to Harvard, wrote a bunch of Seinfeld episodes, then 20 years later went back to Brown for an MD, is now a psychiatrist for the Navy.
That factory also makes Charleston Chews and
Sugar Babies, according to Wikipedia. (On a less sweet note, one of the original co-founders retired from the candy business to form the John Birch Society.)
I recently read that frozen Junior Mints are good; I intend to test that. Charleston Chews are *only* good frozen, in my camp.
That truck is toooo long!
About 2 "ootsies" too long I'd say.
guerilla marketing campaign?
I mean, free publicity right here....
Trucks this size have no place...
.... on city streets. This is one reason why.
Safety of pedestrians and other street users is an even more compelling reason to restrict theses behemoths to unloading zones at city perimeters, like more sensible cities do.
They'd have been fine if they'd gone a different way
There are at least three better ways than this for a truck to reach the Tootsie Roll factory's loading dock from northbound Mass. Ave.
Fine? Sure.
If this was a driver who didn’t hit, scare or disturb anyone while thundering down Mass Ave.
But there is now way of knowing what might have been.
Lee Hates The Working Class
Lee wants to see jobs done mostly by immigrants thrown out of the city because of the size of the truck.
He wants the Junior Mint factory to go someplace like Southborough so all those people here will be without a job because he scarred of the big trucky wucky that goes to the factory which has been in place for 75 years+ when this was a mostly industrial area.
John Costello hates people in general.
Especially those who walk, ride or drive on Mass Ave.
John Costello also seems to have a weird attraction to Lee.
Tootsie Roll Truck Drivers and Immigrant Candy Workers....
are people too. Don't ever forget that. They work. They provide, and Cambridge has exceptions for trucks like this in the community because they give skilled jobs to people who are generally escaping from lousy economic and or political situations. You are like the person who puts a BLM sign on their lawn but thinks that affordable housing might be bad for the community. All talk about your righteousness and no substance to back it up.
If you want suburban cul-de-sac life and be all safe and not scrape your knee, move to Deer Meadow Estates in some place like Westford or Holliston.
Clueless about job creation, aren’t you.
An 18 wheeler driver generally lives out of state and takes jobs away from those who would do safer smaller deliveries.
I bet this truck was dropping off a cup of sugar.
Stay away in your south shore hidey hole, ruminating ancient memories and keep pretending you have a clue about city life.
The Great Sugar Cane Fields Of Tyngsborough?
Is that where the sugar comes from. Down at the plant by the river? Wouldn't it be great if they could deliver it by tandem bikes? That would be great.
You would kill working class jobs to make your Toonie Potemkin Village.
Clueless about the point of this truck, aren't you.
Tootsie Brands manufactures candy in Cambridge. This truck wasn't dropping off or delivering anything to Cambridge. This truck was picking up candy made by factory workers in Cambridge.
That's the thing about manufacturing -- at some point, the goods produced have to be picked up. Since rail isn't an option, you need trucks. And it's generally more efficient and less disruptive to send a few big trucks to pick up goods from a factory than a bunch of smaller trucks.
Less disruptive to who?
Not the CEOs who don’t live in the neighborhood.
You have no idea what was being delivered or picked up. You can’t make candy out of thin air. That’s another thing about manufacturing.
There is nothing more efficient about sending 18 wheelers into neighborhoods. It just cuts labor costs. Doesn’t cut fuel costs or costs to the health of those breathing in the fumes. It doesn’t cut repaving costs to the city.
DD regularly sends an 18 wheeler to block half my street crosswalks, garage exit, plus the building entrance just so they can drop off two rack piles of donuts. All of which would fit in a small van. Then they sit and check Facebook till the metercheckers chase them away.
You Poor Child
How do you live with all this pain? Those dastardly CEO's and their evil trucks.
I've heard less hysterical fits from 3 year olds not getting the toy that want at the store than you complaining how the urban environment doesn't fit exactly the way you want it.
The last candy factory in Cambridge
which used to have many. I'd like to keep it. Under various different ownerships, it has been there long before anything else around it other than MIT.
You two...
...deserve each other.
Go Give More Rachel Maddow Hung Out Here Tours In Your Town
Stick to Moo Country. Thanks.
Awwwww
Is that the sound of a hit dog hollering?
That throbbing vein in your forehead goes well with your bilious misanthrope's complexion, John.
You two ...
... need to get a room.
John and Lee are both wrong
I know why the truck got stuck. I drove through this part of town on my way to Target yesterday. The normal entrance for trucks to access the Junior Mints factory is on Windsor Street. Eversource had opened up a work site on the block of Windsor Street that connects to Mass Ave and was detouring cars. The truck’s only alternative was to use State Street, which has a fairly sharp turn at the place where the photo was taken.
FTR I have strong political opinions myself; as a frequent pedestrian in the area of Mass Ave/Central Square, I both hate semi trucks on our city streets and I am stridently in favor of immigrant rights. But sometimes it’s not a political issue... sometimes it’s just utility work and bad luck.
Someone supports low density development
I mean, you want foodstuff manufacturing moved away from where people live, even though it is a relatively clean manufacturing process.
But hey, I guess if you want more people driving to work rather than taking public transit or, heaven forbid, walking to work, saying that the Tootsie Roll people shouldn't be in Cambridge is a logical conclusion.
Jingle
♪ Whatever I think I see.. becomes a Toostie Roll to me ♪
Right turn from Mass Ave to State Street, ouch
That's a nasty tight turn.
To reach the loading dock, the truck should have earlier turned right onto Windsor Street instead, or failing that, onto Village Street, or as a last resort, onto Main Street at Lafayette Square.
But but but but ...
THE GOOGLE SAID TO GO THIS WAY!!!!
Never mind that 18 wheelers have been servicing that complex for the 37 years that I've been around, mostly without incident.
Do they not teach navigation when people go for their certifications?
“mostly without incident”
Yeah, let’s just ignore the public health risks. The costs to the city to maintain roads. The safety risks to pedestrians, cyclists and drivers of more city friendly vehicles.
In 37 years a lot of things change.
This is just like those ding
This is just like those ding-dong arguments from people who move next to a farm, then demand it change because they don't like the smell of farm animals & say it doesn't "fit with the character of the neighborhood". They've been there decades before some pharma and tech dweebs, deal with it.
Green Acres was a sit com, dahling.
Central Square has been residential for longer than the factory. As if past uses mattered. Deal with that. Times change even if you don’t.
Industrial from the beginning
The south side of Main Street in this area was landfill in the former marshes of the Charles River, and the first buildings there were industrial. The 1873 atlas shows two different "bacon works", a sewing machine factory, a foundry, and machine shops. The north side of Main St., west of Portland, was residential; but much of the Tech Square site was a soap factory until after World War II.
That part of Central Square
That part of Central Square is not residential. It's industrial gradually converting to lab/office, with restaurants and retail on some ground floors, and a few residences here and there.
And manufacturing has been happening in Cambridge
Since long, long before you were born. That's why most of the houses were built in the area, to house the workers in said factories.
Precisely my point.
It has long been a residential neighborhood.
Do try to keep up.
Citations needed
You have zero comprehension of historic land use in the area.
Back when people didn't have cars, they lived near the mills and factories they worked in. There was simply no concept of "residential area" until the 1920s, and then only for the wealthy and upper middle class moving into former farmland that they could drive their cars to or access using one of the newfangled street cars.
Speaking of land use ...
It has long been an industrial neighborhood
You kind of missed that. The industry brought the people who became residents of the area.
How long you been round here?
I am WELL AWARE of the public health impacts of the flawed transportation system, dear. I've authored and reviewed studies on it both in current and former employment as an epidemiologist and currently work with communities working on health equity.
But this was a preexisting use of the area, which provided working class employment and housing for immigrants and people of color for generations. How convenient that you are so fully ignorant of the public health impacts of gentrification in former redlined "C and D" areas. Perhaps you should look into the work that the University of Richmond is doing to that end.
You clearly like to dabble in making pronouncements about public health when it suits you, but you lack the wholistic understanding or technical acumen that such requires. Are you going to enroll in one of the many programs in the area? Or just keep your partial understandings to yourself.
LOL!
How dare I be ignorant of the enormous self importance of the Great Swirly One!!!
True to form
Lee gonna Lee.
Junior Mints?
Those can be very refreshing.