My name is Nicole Apostola and I live in Worcester. I’m married with two kids. You can read my writing here and at wrcstr. You can also follow me on twitter.
You can follow the blog via RSS (posts; comments) and on Facebook; you can find a way to subscribe via email on the side of this page.
I serve on the Hope Cemetery Commission, which is just about the most minor order in the public official hierarchy one could imagine.
My favorite city services are:
- The library
- Trash and recycling pickup
- The parks
Other favorite things:
- Albert Southwick
- Return of the Mack (and many of its remixes)
- Roger Moore as James Bond
- Peter Davison as Doctor Who
I can be bribed to say something nice about you and/or your organization if you provide me with a case of Tab. Depending on the individual or organization, I reserve the right to up that price to two cases and a signed copy of Ian Hunter’s Welcome to the Club album.
You can email me with comments, questions, or suggestions as well.
—Frequently Asked Questions—
Do you have a comment policy?
I didn’t have one before, and now I do. Borrowed from another site, there are three basic rules for commenting here:
1. Be polite.
2. Be relevant.
3. Don’t suck.
Wait! I thought you were anonymous!
Yes, I was, mostly because I didn’t want to tick off my parents. Now that they know about the blog and aren’t too offended (yet; wait until I start typing up dinner conversations I have with them about Joff Smith!), there’s really no point in keeping up the anonymous facade.
Is Mike Germain really your favorite city councilor?
Good question. Germain is definitely less of a jamoke than I thought he would be, and I agree with him at least half of the time. There are aspects of his personal narrative that I find compelling. So I’d say the jury is still out on Mike Germain. If he holds my hand again, I think we’ll up the rating to “favorite city councilor of all time.“
Why do you love Albert Southwick so much?
What’s not to love? He’s intelligent, he continually informs the public about aspects of local history they would otherwise know nothing about, and, at age ninety-plus, he’s sharper than I will ever be.
Why do you only write about Worcester?
Well, sometimes I write about the library books I’m reading, albeit very infrequently, but I’ve found that the blogs I like to read the most tend to be focused on one or two topics. Difficult as it may be to believe, I do have other interests, but I don’t see this as the forum for those interests.
Is there anyone you won’t suck up to?
Yes, mostly people who don’t ply me with Tab.
Hey Nicole. Met you last week at the Earth Day Clean-Up volunteer dinner. Stumbled upon your blog while reading WormtownTaxi (I think), and thought I would say hello. Also, I appreciate your insights about the less-reported on aspects of Worcester, such as parks and waste pick up. Hope that your clean-up went well! The Crompton Park clean-up went great – lots of people, which resulted in the cleaning taking only an hour and a half, although we couldn’t clean up the field because it was in use. Hope to bump into you again. Take care.
your page was sent to me by a friend. I am a girlscout leader and am interested in having build-a-bear type party, but at our site. do you know of anyone with this type of program?
I could not even tell you where the nearest Build-a-Bear Workshop is. Sorry!
You know, if Worcester had blogging when I lived there I probably would have stayed put instead of moving to a community of less than 4000 west of you.
Alas, hindsight is 20/20.
But I’m still a Worcester fan who desperately hopes that the city FINALLY lives up to its potential (the way my home town of Somerville did–AFTER I moved out, of course!) and your blog and the others in the T und G article are a great way to Root! Root! Root! for the adopted home team from the sidelines.
Meanwhile, plans for my own hyperlocal blog (for a community which has to be TOLD what a ‘blog’ is, LOL) continue apace. I hope that my poor efforts amount to one-quarter of the great writing and reporting you have provided here about a town that, alas, I am no longer a part of.
Hi,
Saw Shaun Sutner’s piece in the T&G today. I didn’t realize that there were so many Worcester bloggers. Though my blog is not always about Worcester, I live in the city and my latest blog is all about the city. So I guess it(Patientsprogress.blogspot.com) should be included on your blogroll. I go into some depth on issues, write about people, and try to maintain certain language and storytelling standards.
George Pollock
P.S. The latest piece, about crime creeping into my West Side neighborhood, is uncharacteristically downbeat.
George -found your piece -(googleing crime creeping into my West Side neighborhood)-agree totally that things are worse in the last 2 years since your piece-area is being ignore and it’s looks like a war zone between chev dealership up to Chandler down to June with borded up store fronts-newly broken plate glass ,gang graffiti ,park being closed up when activities not going on , pawn shops,checkcashing business and “illegal asian bodyworks ” businesses increasing , problem bars given double liceanses etc ,etc Robberies at Honey Farm ,Brazian clothing store etc etc -I don’t see how the new Yogurt place can survive (I am sure they thought they were opening up beside a sub shop) but the only businesses that open up have to see an area that is thriving in the wrong direction.I have tried to be active ( but ignore by politicians ) but all I can see is that problems are being pushed over here when they could be nipped at the bud and the city is just expanding it’s problem areas.
I realize people are busy with other issues and some don’t care about things unless it’s in their own backyard but the city legislation should be accountable for this expansion of the new problem area .They should have learned how to not let an area disintegrate so that it competes with other areas for special police patrols etc.
I would like to see more people post about what they see
Greetings, Worcester folks. I’m a writer for The New York Times Magazine, though I live in Oakland, California, and I’m really interested in this PharmaSphere situation because I’m working on a piece about Oakland’s current efforts to figure out whether and how to license big indoor medical marijuana grows. I’m not concentrating on PharmaSphere, but as they seem to have plans in the medical marijuana area, I’d be interested to hear from anybody in your area who has thoughts, observations, etc. Feel free to contact me at gorneycynthia@gmail.com. Thanks, Cynthia Gorney
Hi..Do you have used tires that are 215/60r15? If so, how much per tire?
Check out Linder’s:
http://nicolecommawoo.wordpress.com/2010/12/21/cww-sams-pull-a-part-a-k-a-linders/
Used tires are often as cheap as $20 each, slightly more for the nicer ones.
do you have a tire sale going right now?
Not as far as I know!
Nicole,
I stumbled onto your blog as I was doing some research on illegal dumping. I wanted to mention an organization to you that you might find worth looking into. They are called “Let’s Do It World.” (http://letsdoitworld.org/) They are an Estonian initiative, and they are organizing a international cleanup this year. They have an app for smartphones that taps into a World Waste Map (http://letsdoitworld.org/wastemap) and allows people to geotag pictures directly from their smart phones while standing at an illegal dump site.
I enjoyed reading about the work you are doing.
Cheers-
Nichole,
As an urban geographer, and former Wo-Rat, I greatly appreciate the “Signs of Worcester” section of your blog. Please keep it going, as time allows.
One question I have is: has anyone from the City’s Sign Department or DPW ever contacted you- even informally about the problems your raise? Surely they know about your blog?
ps: Your blog inspired me to report various street-name sign errors here in the Emerald City (it’s confusing);
http://clerk.ci.seattle.wa.us/~public/img/Directional_post1962_100.jpg
They get corrected fairly promptly.