RIAA and Cambridge Cops Raid Central Sq Videos

Central
Square, Cambridge has always represented the sleazy underbelly of the
city, a dark doppleganger to brilliant Harvard Square just down Massachusetts
Avenue, and awash in unwashed street people, cut-rate liquor stores,
cheap bars, adult video stores, check-cashing outlets and state agencies
and offices serving people too down-and-out or unsightly to be seen
in the swankier zip codes of Cambridge.

When the Dowbrigade was an undergraduate he
used to frequent Charlies Tap in Central, one of the cheapest of
the neighborhood
watering holes, where 35 cents would still get you a small,
less than completely hygenic glass of generic draft beer. Even down
and out, with a pocketful of change one could still put on a buzz
at the Tap. At
night,
Central
Square is transformed into a hard-edged clubbing crossroads, where
cheap rents have attracted a variety of exotic restaurants and new
wave, techno-house, glitter-goth, gay and ambiguous nightspots which
feed off of each other and create a low-rent, liberated atmosphere
hard to find elsewhere.

Considering the third-world, alternative-economic
circus going down in the area it should come as no surprize that the
RIAA goons have dropped a dime in the Square to the Cambridge Police,
who swooped down in a raid on two outlets selling questionable CDS
and DVDS.

The label on the case said "Master
and Commander," but something wasn’t kosher. The plastic was
grocery store quality, like the stuff used to wrap barbecued chicken.
The cover had the vibrancy of a homemade brochure. Words were blurry.
The price was negotiable.

But now the Russell Crowe movie, which opened Nov. 14 and is still
in theaters, is off the shelves here, the result of a Cambridge police
bust on Monday at two Central Square stores peddling thousands of
counterfeit CDs and DVDs.

Detectives said yesterday that they were tipped off by investigators
from the Recording Industry Association of America, whose agents
have fanned out across the country in an effort to quell the booming
sales of bogus CDs.

Incidently, the video store in the photo (by the Dowbrigade) is
NOT one of the ones raided by the cops. The building reflected in
the window is the Central Square Post Office.

from the
Boston Globe