July 1, 2009

Table of Contents
Home @ Roofscape
About Roofscape
@ Play

Bikeways
Beans About Boston
Bird N-E-W-S
Book Bag
Cityscape

Cookout
Coop Confidential
Funk Shui
Garden Gates
Garden Journal
Greenways
Kid'scape
Landscapes
Outerwear
Outside Office
Paths to the Past
Radio Roofscape
Roofscape News
Roofscape Realty
Roofscape Views
Rooftop Movie Night

Screenscape
Siteseeing
Skyscape
Soundscape
Starscape
Streetscape
Street Scene
Thought for the Week
Urban Myths
Wild Lives


Roofscape is devoted to the enjoyment and enhancement of the urban outdoors around the world. The magazine explores all aspects of outdoor urban living - nature and the environment, history and historic city walks, sports and recreation, gardening and landscaping, alfresco cooking and dining, outdoor living and work spaces, plus the sky and stars overhead.

N-E-W-S @ Roofscape

Roofscape soft-launched on June 1 and we're still doing buildout - scaffolding up, sawdust flying, wood shavings strewn everywhere, sparks flying; a combustible mix. Clearly we're a work in progress. The official launch will be on August 1. Thanks for your patience. It will soon pay off.

Are you a writer, photographer or visual artist with a passion for city life and the urban outdoors? We'd like to work with you. Get in touch ... contact@roofscapemagazine.com.

If you enjoy Roofscape, why not make it yours? Support us by making a contribution via Tipjoy. Whenever moved, simply click the TJ button in the nav bar to the left on every page in the magazine. We'll both feel the joy.


VIEWS @ Roofscape


Garden Journal  Roofscape Staff  Roofscape Garden Journal

Journal glimpses the world of Roofscape - our garden, lives, studio, loves, office and pets. Plus it's packed with photographs and images. You'll also get to meet our 350 garden neighbors, contributors and staff.

Radio Roofscape RoofTops DJ's Radio Roofscape 2

Get your rooftop, backyard or house party started with Radio Roofscape. Our sole mission, should you accept it, is simply to shake your thing. R&B, jazz, rock, house, hip-hop, soul, reggae, blues and gospel are all in the mix. Whatever it takes to rock your body and the party, power up your workout or make love.

Radio Roofscape 2 grooves too, but more intimately, down tempo. Chill with an eclectic mix of ambient, cool jazz, slow dance, minimalist, trance, world, aleatory, new age, dub, soundtrack, acoustic and folk.

Frankie Charles Thiesen Urban Myths

Then, one time in the summer, when I was working in my father's grocery store, this girl I liked came in. She lived right around the corner. Her name was Frankie.

Charles Thiesen has a new story, Frankie, of summertime tannning, awakening, longing and daydreaming.

Hawks on the Wing Stephen Bastide Bird N-E-W-S

"High over the city a pair of hawks is circling, riding a thermal rising from the sun-baked buildings and streets. Their cries are primal and unearthly, their flight effortless and elegant."

Red-tailed Hawks have become regular urban residents around the country. We're getting up close and personal with these magnificent birds looking at everything from from their dining habits and table manners to their sex lives and parenting style.


Riding the Rules Stephen Bastide Bikeways

In many places, bicycles have the legal status of vehicles with the same rights, responsibilities and governed by the same rules as all motorized vehicles on the road. The bicycle as vehicle is legal fiction, of course. Bikes have no parity - in terms of power, lethality, pollution and demand on city services - with the motorized vehicles that rule our streets. We're going to look how we really ride and safe strategies for 'riding the rules'.

Everyone Should Plant a Vegetable Garden Michael Felsen Garden Gates

When I graduated from college in 1971, I moved to Vermont to explore a simpler lifestyle. A few days after I arrived, a friend told me I had to plant a garden. City boy that I was, I thought he meant flowers. No, he meant vegetables - organic vegetables. And so my gardening life began. A Jamaica Plain writer and attorney makes a compelling case.

Pasta Puttanesca Vin Forte Cookout

Prostitutes' Pasta is cheap, fast and easy with a pungent perfume that you can smell coming at you from blocks away. This spaghetti dish with a tarted-up red sauce, sporting a scarlet name, escaped from the brothels of Naples.

On the Trail of Black History Stephen Bastide Paths to the Past

Paths to the Past presents walks back through history.

Our first offering, On the Trail of Black History, is a walking tour through time along Boston's Black Heritage Trail which winds its way around Beacon Hill, formerly the center of the city's African American community.

This is a fascinating, tragic and eventually triumphant tale which has never been fully told until now.

Come walk with us.


Beans About Boston Julia Child Mt. Whoredom

Old Beans


Question ... Mount Whoredom was, or possibly still is, located where in Boston?
Possible answers ... A - Beacon Hill. B - The Combat Zone. C - Merrymount. D - Lansdowne Street.

Correct Answer ... Mount Whoredom, as it's labeled on Colonial maps, was a small summit of the Tri-Mount up above what is now Louisburg Square on Beacon Hill. It was Boston's original red light district, an open air version, and the ladies of the night were mounted by the Continental Army, Redcoats camped on the Common and generations of the Puritan city's fathers and sons. The Mount was leveled and a covent built on the spot. The dirt was dumped in the Charles River and the Charles Street Meetinghouse built on the new land.

A young gardener Thought for the Week

Though an old man, I am but a young gardener.

Thomas Jefferson, from his 1811 garden journal.

Images ... Navbar: Muse of the Magazine, Old South Church, Boston. Top to bottom: Bongo in Squaresville, Boston. Red-tailed hawk and nestlings, by Thomas O'Neil. The African Meetinghouse, Beacon Hill, Boston. Sign at the Lucy Parsons Center, South End, Boston.