Thursday, July 12, 2007

Boston Loses An Icon: Mr. Butch Passes Away

"Allston, Mass. -

Mr. Butch, the charismatic, dread-locked, “honorary mayor of Allston,” died this morning after an accident on his motor scooter.

Mr. Butch, whose real name was Harold Madison Jr., was traveling inbound on Brighton Avenue on his scooter around 8 a.m. at a speed close to 50 miles per hour when he appeared to lose control of the vehicle, fly over the handlebars and strike a light pole, witnesses told police. He was taken to Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, police said. He was 56.

As news of his death spread through the Allston Village neighborhood, friends remembered Mr. Butch as charismatic and friendly.

“That happiness was always there in him. That’s the only thing I ever saw of him,” said Toni Fanning, a friend of Butch who worked at Ritual Arts on Harvard Avenue. “I never knew him to be mean, I never knew him to be sad.”

Butch came into the public consciousness by hanging around the Kenmore Square area in the 1980s, playing guitar outside of the nightclub The Rathskellar (known as The Rat) and interacting with the local punkrockers who congregated there."

More at townonline.com

Mr. Butch's Wiki and Myspace

s g collins created a short film about Mr. Butch in 2002 called Searching For Mr. Butch. It's at postwar.nl (language NSFW)


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