Aside from its people, Boston is a beautiful city. But it boasts one really, really ugly building: city hall. As an architectural vision of what the state actually is, I applaud the design. It's honest. But I already know how ugly and monstrous the state is, and I don't care to be reminded of it. Boston city hall is grosser than UMass-Boston, which appears as a series of red-brick AT-AT Walkers from The Empire Strikes Back. Dare I say that city hall is more vile than the Cambridge courthouse, a place whose facade also reflects its internal dealings. Now comes word that Thomas Menino, mayor of Boston since 1993, hopes to sell city hall and the accompanying land--located right outside Faneuil Hall--to private developers. This will give the city a windfall of income and do away with its most unsightly blemish all in one stroke. There is no downside. Given time, thirteen years in this case, even very dim people are capable of very bright ideas.

There’s a lot of truth in saying that Mumbles Menino is the dimmest of the dim. And, sadly, the fact that he’s a fourth term Mayor of the City of Boston pretty much tells you all you need to know about Bostonians as a sub-population of Massachusetts’ citizens as a whole.

To a person, there is nobody who has passed by or who has needed to enter Boston’s City Hall who is not struck by is coldness and ugliness. So it probably should go (along with the adjacent JFK Federal building) and make way for much more lucrative private businesses that will utilize the prime space as an extension of Fanuil Hall / Quincy Market.

But, this is less about Menino’s bulb brightening than it is about the “Menino” legacy. What Tommy M. lacks in brain power, he makes up for in ego (as seen by everything in Boston being plastered with his name) and whether it’s the new skyscraper he wants to build downtown or sucking up prime waterfront real estate in South Boston to build his new signature city hall, it’s all about Tommy.

And make no mistake, the $300M they get for the current real estate, will barely dent the $1000M it will cost to build a new palace for he and his current flock of fools.

Those are some hideously ugly buildings. The City Hall was clearly designed to be a fortress, completely riot proof. I wonder why the elected governors of the great state of Massachusetts would fear rioters?