Garden-variety humor and bribery

The old Boston Garden, built in 1928 and torn down in in 1998, three years after its successor arena, TD Garden, was opened.

New England Diary editor Robert Whitcomb and two fellow reporters from the Boston Herald Traveler were each given $50 to take to a Bruins game in The Garden in 1971 with which to bribe the police there to let us in although the fire-code-approved crowd capacity had long been exceeded when we arrived. The air was blue with cigarette and cigar smoke.

The bribes worked and wrote a scandal story about it, but the publisher, fearing retribution, killed the story.

TD Garden. Now, if they’d only connect by train South and North Stations it would be a lot easier for some of us to get there. The arena is built right over North Station. and it houses the Sports Museum of New England.

“The old Boston Garden seats, some of which are placed here, were, as we remembered not much fun to sit in. The museum displays a sense of humor, by placing one seat behind a pole, symbolizing the 1,895 such seats.’’

— Jim Sullivan, on the Sports Museum of New England, in the April 11, 2002 Boston Globe article “Take Me Out To’’