Teenage riot | 5 years ago | May 25, 2001 | Carly Carioli swooned over new girl group Dream.

“Of all the current teen-pop groups, Dream are, like, completely my favorite. The four saucy, adorable 16-year-old white girls are executive-produced by hip-hop mogul Sean ‘P-Diddy’ Combs — Phil Spector, eat your heart out. And, in a move that seems calculated to bring Donnas-adoring rock critics to their knees, the girls have been photographed wearing New York Dolls and Ramones T-shirts. (Which has launched a trend: Kelly from Destiny’s Child has since been seen wearing a New York Dolls T, and Missy Elliott sports a Motörhead shirt in her latest video.) With Combs in their corner, the group benefit from, well, a dream team of collaborators: their current hit single, ‘This Is Me,’ was written by Steve Kipner and David Frank, the team responsible for their first hit, ‘He Loves U Not,’ as well as for Christina Aguilera’s ‘Genie in a Bottle’....

“The other day, all four members of Dream — Holly, Diana, Melissa, and Ashley — were getting their hair and makeup done in Toronto while preparing to make the rounds of Canada’s MTV-equivalent Much Music. Melissa, the demure blonde, took a few minutes from her busy schedule to chat. (‘We’re still in school,’ she laments, referring to the tutor who accompanies the group; ‘We won’t get out until June.’)”

Marriange of convenience | 10 years ago | May 24, 1996 | Ellen Barry witnessed a wedding ceremony held in the back of a tractor-trailer at Flynn’s Truck Stop.
“Bob and Bernice, neighbors for a dozen years, sweethearts for one, have cause to complain about certain aspects of this ceremony. For one thing, it’s happening in the back of a semi, evoking the uncomfortable memory of Bob’s first wife, Priscilla, who went into cardiac arrest two years ago in the cab of his tractor-trailer. For another, the chapel is not convenient to anything, unless you count the truck wash, the fuel pumps, the shower rooms, the CB repair shop, or the intersection of Routes 20 and 140. Then again, there are benefits, such as an abundance of parking. The bride and groom, for their part, appear satisfied. This is all part of the bargain when you get married at Flynn’s Truck Stop, where sacred unions come and go, but traffic is forever.

  “Among long-haul drivers, who have been refueling here since 1932, Flynn’s is known as a clean place. In its convenience store, Flynn’s sells the I ♥ JESUS air freshener right next to the GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS air freshener, and it prominently features the universal anti-truck-stop-prostitute window sticker: NO LOT LIZARDS. The store doesn’t stock the type of magazines that, as Bob Hazlett puts it, ‘are conducive to bringing on additional things.’ But the key influences are Chaplain Bob and Chaplain Bunny, who for two years have walked the length and breadth of their parish, fishing for souls in the parking lot.”

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Park city | 15 years ago | May 24, 1991 | Timothy Gower discussed the lives of parking meter maids in Boston.
“One thing meter maids insist isn’t part of their job ... is the need to satisfy a quota. ‘Yeah, people think we work on commission. We hear that a lot,’ says Morgan. ‘I tell ’em if I did, there’d be a lot more people tagged.’

“Fallo adds, ‘I tell them, “Yeah, if I write 15 more tickets tonight, I win a week in Hawaii.” ’

“By the end of this Monday night, they’ll be glad they don’t have a quota to meet. Morgan says that on his busiest night ever, he wrote 200 tickets; tonight, the two won’t write half that many combined. (Last year, there were nearly 2.1 million tickets issued in Boston, written by meter maids, the Boston police, and MDC cops.)
“The slow night gives the two time to trade stories about the parking public. The public may see the meter maid as a heartless menace, but the parking officer looks back at the city’s drivers with bewildered disgust. ‘People are just not very observant,’ says Fallo. ‘They don’t read the meters. Most of them aren’t in effect after six, some at five, and I still see people putting money in meters at 9:30 at night. I say, ‘You don’t have to do that,’ and they come back with, ‘Well I don’t want to get a ticket.’ ”

Idol chat | 20 years ago | May 27, 1986 | Jimmy Guterman monitored an early online celebrity chat with Barry Manilow.
“It’s amazing what one can do with a home computer. One can balance a neglected checking account, invade an alien planet, even write a bad novel. Or one can chat with Barry Manilow.

“Some background. The summit with Manilow, the master of middle-aged pap pop, fell under the auspices of Compuserve, a massive computer database into which thousands of computer users can simultaneously enter and receive information....