did Meatman ever go here?
In Dorchester, derelict vehicle given heave-ho
Bus called a venue for sex and drugs
By Mac Daniel, Globe Staff | March 3, 2006
After months of trying to get a landowner to clean up the lot around an abandoned church in Dorchester, city officials took matters into their hands: On Wednesday, they seized and removed an old bus on the property after receiving reports of drug- and sex-related partying inside the vehicle.
Residents praised the city for the intervention. ''We were kind of shocked that it was actually moved," said a neighbor, Harry Thompson. The bus, he added, had become part of the landscape. ''It's a wonderful blessing. You take it one little bus at a time."
City officials warned that they have just begun to get serious. If Alexander Freeman, 56, doesn't clean up the property in the next several weeks -- including overflowing dumpsters and an abandoned dump truck with a fully loaded bin sitting idle at 155-159 Norfolk St. -- officials said they will place a lien on the property around the church. The process, rarely used, has been called ''clean it or lien it."
City records list Freeman as a pastor and owner of Deliverance Faith Tabernacle Church. He has been in the city's sights since August, and a warrant for his arrest was issued in February.
Freeman has been accused of failing to show up in court after being charged with fire code and safety violations in August 2005, related to property conditions.
But despite this latest salvo from the city, Freeman ''doesn't want to be found," said a Boston Inspectional Services spokesman, Darryl Smith. Calls to numbers listed for Freeman were unanswered yesterday.
The Inspectional Services office is not alone in its interest in Freeman. Boston Fire Department officials also want the property cleaned up; they have ruled that the site was a fire hazard.
City officials said they believe the former charter bus, a 50-foot coach about 30 years old, with its front windshield blown out long ago, had been bought to transport Freeman and his congregation, though neighbors said they were uncertain if it ever ran. Well after the church dissolved about 1995, neighbors began complaining about activities inside the abandoned vehicle.
After taking the case to court in August, the mayor's office, a neighborhood response team, and Inspectional Services moved in Wednesday to haul the bus away.
And if the bus is not claimed in the next several weeks, it will be destroyed, Smith said. Its condition makes it an unlikely candidate for the city's periodic auctions of impounded vehicles.
The inside of the bus was strewn with condoms, needles, blankets, and sex toys, officials said. ''It was being used for some illicit activities," Smith said.
''It's completely gross inside," said Jackie Wuestefeld, president of Blue Hills Towing in Quincy, which towed the bus.
The bus has ''just been part of the landscape," said Thompson, a member of the Franklin Field South Neighborhood Association, a community group. ''Every once in a while you'll see debris will just pick up there."
Thompson said that despite setting up security cameras outside his home, he never noticed drug activity on the site but did notice people going in and out of the bus. ''I thought they were fixing it up," he said.
Smith said city officials will continue to try to bring Freeman to court on a warrant issued Feb. 6. He also faces having the city place a lien on his property. ''It's the last resort," Smith said, ''but he keeps evading the law."
the economics of prostitution
last month's Forbes had an article on earnings of sex workers over the years (but omits the obvious issue of where all the earnings go)
[url]http://www.forbes.com/2006/02/11/economics-prostitution-marriage_cx_mn_money06_0214prostitution.html?partner=netscape[/url]