Matt D. holds up his Magners Comedy Festival trophy, won this past weekend in Boston.

Cambridge comedian Matt D. has to update his bio: He won the Magners Comedy Festival last weekend.

The festival ran Wednesday through Sunday at five venues throughout Boston, bringing to town names such as Colin Quinn and Marc Maron (for a public recording of his “WTF with Marc Maron” podcast) and making some new ones — namely that of Matt D., who is soon off to Glasgow, Scotland, courtesy of the hard cider company to compete in the Glasgow International Comedy Festival starting March 15.

Onstage, Matt D. typically presents himself as mopey and nearly withdrawn, approaching the microphone with a sullen hesitancy that makes his acerbic one-liners land with deadly impact, then retreating to resign himself to part with another. His jokes often give a twist to a common phrase or situation: “Personally, I prefer gummy Pepsi bottles” was a recent offering. Or: “One of my plants just died after a long battle with me being lazy.”

The comedian (who accepted his trophy in a T-shirt with a flying pig design) spent several tweets thanking people who congratulated him and being generally modest (sample boast: “Thanks to Magners USA for throwing a great festival! Amazing experience. Also Nick’s Comedy Stop and Mottley’s Comedy for hosting the shows!”) prompting fellow comedian Ted Pettingell to tell him, “You already won, you can stop being nice.”

While Matt D. is a mainstay at local clubs such as the Comedy Studio in Harvard Square, his next show is Thursday at Foxwoods in Connecticut, the start of a three-night stand at its Comix Club. On Feb. 8, he’s back at ImprovBoston in Central Square.

Raj Sivaraman, another Cambridge comedian, offered his congratulations for the Magners win in the form of a suggestion.

“Hopefully he will use the prize money to buy a new shirt,” Sivaraman tweeted.

Bicycles in the Hubway rental program wait for riders outside South Station in Boston. Hubway is to arrive in Cambridge in the spring, with helmet-dispensing machines and a safety brochure. (Photo: John Dalton)

When 20 bike rental stations arrive in the spring, the City Council expects them to be accompanied by HelmetHub machines — helmet dispensers designed by a dozen Massachusetts Institute of Technology students — and a reminder of the rules of the road.

The councillors said so Monday in an 8-1 vote that may well have been unanimous but for Craig Kelley’s continued dismay over a possibly outsized priority being put on bicycle safety and rules enforcement. Recent council candidates James Williamson said during the night’s public comment period that the helmet dispensers should dispense a brochure with the bicycling rules of Cambridge. Councillor Minka vanBeuzekom offered a version of his idea (that the city “prepare a brochure on the rules of the road for dispensing with the helmets”) as an amendment to Henrietta Davis’ order seeking installation of the machines.

“I continue to be just amazed at how focused we are that someone renting a bicycle needs to study [the rules],” Kelley said. “I rented a car from Enterprise in Central Square the other day and they just looked at my license and sent me on my merry way … we’re not making anyone who rents a car acknowledge that they know it’s dangerous to text and drive. I get hit by cars probably once every two months, and I’m really getting tired of everyone looking at the rental program as a menace.”

The program, called Hubway (with naming rights going to New Balance, the Boston maker of athletic gear), debuted in Boston in July with 60 stations and 600 bikes. It was expected to make it to Cambridge in the fall, but the rollout there and in Somerville, which is expected to get eight rental stations, was delayed to spring. The system offers memberships for $85 a year, $12 for three days and $5 for a day; members get unlimited half-hour rides, with higher fees for longer trips.

The solar-powered dispensers have been described as costing $8 per helmet, with a partial refund if a helmet is returned.

Bicycle renters have to sign a form saying they understand the rules of the road. The council’s vote means those rules should be also available in brochure form, even if they’re not dispensed with helmets, so riders can brush up before pedaling away.

Tops in reported crashes

Bicycle safety and legal riding have been topics for months, thanks in part to Williamson’s campaigning and the city’s preparations for the coming of Hubway. Early in January VanBeuzekom noted Cambridge’s rankings among the state’s top 200 crash locations in an August report by the Massachusetts Department of Transportation. The report is limited — it tracks only reported, geocoded crashes between 2002-09 — but puts Cambridge in the top 10 multiple times for pedestrian and bicycle incidents.

The dramatic number of bicycle crashes is likely a natural result of what’s been called a 150 percent surge in bicycle use since 2002, to the extent that Cambridge was named the seventh-best bike city in the country by the League of American Bicyclists last year. By league figures, bicycle commuters make up 8.5 percent of the overall population.

Cambridge contributes two of the state’s top 10 pedestrian crash clusters (No. 3, with 94 crashes, is Massachusetts Avenue in Central Square; No. 6 is Elm Street from Davis Square nearly to Porter Square, and as such shares its 38 crashes with Somerville) and essentially is the list of top 10 bicycle crash clusters: It takes every slot but Nos. 7 and 8.

The No. 1 spot, shared with Somerville, is where Kirkland and Cambridge streets meet Beacon and Hampshire streets; the No. 2 spot is on Massachusetts Avenue in Central Square; the No. 3 spot is again with Somerville, at Massachusetts Avenue around Porter Square; the No. 4 spot is down Massachusetts Avenue toward MIT; the No. 5 spot is southeast of Harvard Square starting from where Massachusetts Avenue meets Mount Auburn Street; No. 6 extends from Norris Street along Massachusetts Avenue and across Route 16 into Arlington; No. 9 is on Massachusetts Avenue where it meets Memorial Drive; and No. 10 is on Broadway above Central Square. The number of crashes ranges from 106 crashes reported at the top spot to 22 at the No. 10 spot.

Travis McCready, executive director of the Kendall Square Association, rest briefly at a cafe at 1 Broadway, where he works alongside entrepreneurs at the Cambridge Innovation Center business incubator. (Photo: Catherine Nakajima)

The Kendall Square Association’s executive director, Travis McCready, met with Cambridge Day in late November to talk about the future of the square, with its innovation-industry offices and lab space often called the most innovative square mile in the world. The hourlong talk in a cafe at 1 Broadway, where he works alongside entrepreneurs at the Cambridge Innovation Center business incubator, showed McCready bringing to bear experience dating back to his education at Yale University and the University of Iowa; through his time as a corporate lawyer and at the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority, Boston Foundation and Harvard University; and into his ongoing work as a trustee of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, overseer at the Institute of Contemporary Art and director of the Boston Public Market Association. The below is an edited transcript of the conversation.

Kendall Square is just starting to pop with shops and restaurants, but if I were a business owner I would be nervous about opening there when Massachusetts Institute of Technology redevelopment will soon mean months of heavy construction. Are there thoughts of how to make sure Kendall’s growth isn’t stunted by construction scaring away customers?

No one is nervous about it. For me the question that keeps me up at night is if you take a look at any district across the country — Cambridge, Berkeley, Calif., it really doesn’t matter where — and you say that you’re going to open up 16 restaurants in two years, that is really, really aggressive. Because as you know, the first six to 18 months is when these new restaurants are at their most vulnerable. So I look across the landscape and I see Voltage and Abigail’s and all these other really solid restaurants and I wonder if we’ll be able to sustain the businesses to enable these entrepreneurs to grow roots so that nothing fails. If it fails because they’re producing a crappy product, shame on them, but I don’t think any of them are. So it behooves us as a district to do what we can to support the ecosystem so they have a constant flow of business.

Now, construction, I don’t really worry about that. That’s a good thing, that’s a really good thing. More people in the neighborhood, more jobs, more people on the street, more opportunity for people to be going out to dinner afterward, hitting breakfast beforehand, you name it, construction is actually a good thing. The next stage of evolution is how you create Kendall Square as more of a destination so we’re continuing to satisfy these restaurants, not just with the homegrown people but people who are coming to the area from Boston or from Somerville or what have you. That’s the new trick. If we can do that it’s smooth sailing.

Is there a continued pipeline of new restaurants?

Beyond the 16, I know of two other restaurants,  but I don’t know if it’ll be in six months, nine months or 12. That’s a new Italian restaurant in 1 Kendall I believe is going to be called Buca. And then there’s a quick-serve restaurant, a Qdoba, that Boston Properties will open at the Kendall T station. Then there’s a third player I can’t name who’s looking to open a restaurant — and if we can get him that would be great.

Has MIT promised to make sure there is good passage and way-finding for people getting off the T?

I’ve been doing this for 11 years or probably longer, and I think of that as being kind of rudimentary. They’re going to do it, they have to do it. I’ve dealt with Harvard and MIT and they do it. So that’s not even on my mind. That’s going to happen. MIT is motivated.

Do you have any sense how long that construction is going to last?

No. Naturally the phasing will depend in part on what else is in the pipeline when they get approval. If they get approval at the same time Alexandria real estate has something approved and they’re going after the same tenant base, they’re going to look at that and shift their phasing. You want to reduce the amount of time that you have a built product without any occupancy.  And everyone has their pound of flesh to extract from MIT, so who knows whether they’ll be able to file again tomorrow or in six months. It’s my hope that they get a chance to file as soon as possible, because it really could be an extraordinary project.

Is there anything so essential to a project coming to Kendall that not seeing it in a proposal would be a deal-breaker for you?

Fortunately, everyone is on the same page about what the deal-breaker is, and that is the ground floor. Some people call it community space, some call it shared space, some call it retail space, people use all sorts of terminology, but in their minds they all mean the same thing, which is that ground floor uses should be such that you have the ability to congregate, mix, mingle, meet in a nonproprietary fashion. You should have the ability to come and go, there should be something extraordinary about the space in terms of either technology or a landmark, some kind of use that’s iconic and reflective of Kendall Square. If MIT would come forward to propose, which they haven’t, that the ground floor look like 53 State St. or one of those office buildings in Boston’s Financial District which is just a massive lobby — dead project. That’s the fastest way to kill that project. We’re all smarter now and know that what this area really needs is a level of ground floor vitality and the ability to mix, mingle, bump and connect, whether it’s over a coffee or a good espresso or a Holyoke Center type of pass-through atmosphere.

The culture of Kendall

In every discussion about what makes a neighborhood, people want a grocery store. For Kendall, there’s so much talk about bringing in residential space, but beyond city councillor Leland Cheung, no official enthusiasm for a full-fledged grocery store to serve residents. What are your thoughts on its importance?

Since I’m a former lawyer I’m going to split a hair here and first say what I mean by grocery store: I don’t mean that thing they have in Harvard Square. That’s more of a quick-serve type of a specialty market. When I think grocery store I think of something like Trader Joe’s or Evergood Market on Mass. Ave. or Fresh Pond Market on Huron Avenue, a business model that has made its reputation and its connection with the community not on an extraordinary offering in variety but on an extraordinary ability to provide what the community wants in a smaller format, at the right price point based on the amount of available space. You’re not going to be able to go there and buy six kinds of olive tapenade, but you’ll get one great, local variety tapenade. And a great selection of six local beers, not 36. I think the property owners would agree that that kind of market is something that would be very helpful to have in Kendall. I don’t think anyone is interested in a Shaw’s, a Star Market, a big box. There’s no use for one.

Is focusing on more of a Trader Joe’s than, say, a Market Basket part of a branding for Kendall?

One of the great things about Kendall Square that’s emerging right now is that all of these restaurants that have opened, except one, are local entrepreneurs. There’s only one chain, and that is Champions. It’s a cultural phenomenon we should be proud of, and that is kind of thing that I would like to see extended to a market, a pharmacy, or anything else that opens up here in Kendall and part of the reason why I feel like there’s no need for a Shaw’s or Star Market. One, the residential demand doesn’t exist. Secondly, culturally, it’s completely opposite to what we have going on down here.

That seems to implicitly cap the amount of residential space that will be available.

People should be very careful with their expectations for the amount of residential space that you’re going to be able to have down here in Kendall Square, because I think there will be a natural cap. There’s an equilibrium to how it evolves, and you don’t want to cut the legs out from underneath the district by favoring too much residential in place of business and commercial use. People talk about there being a thousand units of housing in Kendall Square, built it now, build it now, but it’s unreasonable to build thousands of units right now. Not everyone would agree with my numbers, but everyone would agree in principle that Kendall Square is not a residential district, it’s a mixed-use district. The two philosophies would yield drastically different results, and what I’m very cautious of is no matter how much housing you build, there’ll never be enough. But no one disagrees that it would be great to have more housing where you’re down the elevator at your home, you’re walking past the farmers market and you have an a-ha moment and you’re at your office 30 seconds later.

Some might worry Kendall will be reserved for well-paid people in innovation industries while, for instance, all the affordable  housing goes in East Cambridge. Are all parts of the city for everyone?

I think there is an implicit understanding that there are five squares in Cambridge and each one is distinct. There’s an implicit understanding that we do death to a square by trying to transform it into one’s interpretation of another square. You kill Kendall by trying to transform it into Harvard Square. You kill Harvard by trying to transform it into Porter. There’s an understanding that each square has to have its own character. And you have to have a different formula for this live-work-play dynamic. Which is really what we’re after.

Visioneering

You talked about Kendall Square being a destination. Starting several years ago, Glenn KnicKrehm’s Constellation Center was supposed to be part of that.

This is the third conversation about the Constellation Center that I’ve had today. I’m so hopeful for Glenn and the center, and I wish him all the best and I’ll give him all the support possible. But I think that right now the community and everyone is waiting for some sign that the project is real. He’s done incredible amounts of work and stuck to his guns about designing the building from the inside out. I give him credit for being sort of an iconoclast about how that building gets built, but I also would be lying if I didn’t say that virtually every community or representative from every walk of life that I encounter is waiting for some sign that that project will get built. We meet every quarter or every few months, and I hear “This will be the perfect venue. I can’t tell you if it will be six stories high or four stories high, but I’m going to take the time to design the perfect venue.” That’s a much different conversation than people are used to dealing with. Even MIT came forward and said, “Okay, we’re going to build this at this size” and all that stuff. Glenn has stuck to his guns and has been having a conversation for nine years about the ethereal experience you will have when you’re in this venue and in this building.

So your understanding is that this is a perfectionist obsessing over design for nine years, not that there’s a funding issue?

I think the two are connected. I think Glenn is obsessing over design, and I think he wouldn’t disagree with that. Based on having done projects like this before in nonprofit settings, I can tell you that he’s probably having some difficulty raising the large-scale capital contributions that he needs to complete the project. But I think that once Glenn decides that the project is designed and meets his specs, once he gets going on having a different conversation with the funding community, this project could really be a home run.

What’s going on here that warrants more attention?

Two things: One is the former Edward J. Sullivan  courthouse building at 40 Thorndike St. — 22 stories, 600,000 square feet of space, right at the center of East Cambridge, North Point and the heart of Kendall Square. It’s a complicated project, a complicated asset, but that’s a great location, a great potential project, and it’s really an opportunity for the state and the city to do something incredibly interesting. It’s two blocks from Cambridgeside Galleria, two or three blocks from Alexandria Real Estate’s 1.7 million square feet along Binney Street, a seven-minute walk to the North Point green line stop, nine minutes to the heart of Kendall, you couldn’t script it any better. The only thing is the asbestos.

What’s your vision for it?

Mixed use. A layered mixed use. Just like a good flaky crust. The first couple floors would be some sort of community use, whether it’s a farmers market or it’s a meeting space for community groups or something like that. The next couple of layers would be incubator space like the Cambridge Innovation Center. The top few layers would be, I guess the term is, innovation housing. More housing for the graduate student who’s making only $40,000 a year or $50,000. It’s living here with a family and two young kids. That kind of thing, and do it in an interesting format between a condo and a dorm.

What’s the second thing?

The second is more philosophy than anything else and goes back to the question of equilibrium. What I love about working down here in Kendall is that everyone seems to be philosophically aligned on the ingredients of success. One of the thing we talked about was the retail element. The other thing people always talk about are the brand names — Pfizer, Google, Microsoft, Nokia — those brand names and how attractive it is to have those names down here. I think the messy middle that drives the brand names is entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship and maintaining enough space for them to want to be here, because you want them here. So that balance between Pfizer taking 180,000 square feet of space versus 18,000 entrepreneurs taking 10,000 apiece is the balance this community has to continue to be able to broker. That’s really critical.

Do you think the balance is right?

I think right now it’s good. We have, besides the CIC, four other incubators, so incubator space continues to be a successful model. At the same time I’ve talked to a couple clean-tech companies who have decided not to stay here because some of what they need — large industrial spaces, for example — are quickly disappearing.

Foreign relations

Where are we with the regionalization efforts Chung led a while back? There were already regionalization skeptics on the council and of course immediately after we opened ourselves up Boston seemed to act behind our backs to steal away biotech companies.

Leland’s effort was a good first attempt at regionalization just to establish that we can perhaps have relationships. The discussions that are under way are a little more nuanced: “Let’s collaborate on these items which are important to all of us and are about all our survival.” Transportation and transportation finance reform. Doesn’t matter if you’re Longwood, the Waterfront or Kendall Square, if our public transportation system is underfunded, run-down, broken, what have you, all three of those districts will fail.

For me, part of understanding the regionalization question is getting comfortable with who we are. The great thing is there are more people who want to be here than there is supply. Demand is far exceeding supply. Go back 30 years to when Cambridge Center was under development and Boston Properties will tell you that was not the case. Thirty years ago we were in the position that South Boston’s Waterfront is in now, which is that you have much more space than demand. They have to be really aggressive in terms of their marketing and price point to be able to get folks to occupy that real estate. They’re kicking our ass, there’s no way around it. They’ve got staff, money and they have money and they have money and they’re being really aggressive about wining and dining and flying all over the country and taking a look at different models in California or Research Triangle Park or Austin or what have you. “Gee whiz, I think on the South Boston Waterfront we should have a really edgy ice cream shop.” “I heard of one in Berkeley, let’s go fly out and take a look at it.” That’s the type of thing they do. Can you imagine the city manger authorizing that? That’s what they’re doing, and again I give them credit. But at the end of the day the business fundamentals are if you can get into Kendall, that’s where you want to be. If you can get into Harvard or Yale, why settle for Siena? Nothing against Siena, but if you can get into Harvard or Yale that’s where you want to be.

Speaking of public transportation, the state must have known it was ludicrous to pitch a Grand Junction commuter rail line to run through Cambridge without actually stopping in the city.

I think that the planners always knew they would have to stop in Cambridge somewhere, whether on Mass. Ave., closer to MIT or down here on Main Street, closer to Galileo Way. There were a gazillion ideas that hadn’t been fleshed out.

A message is projected onto a wall at Occupy Boston’s Camp Dewey late Thursday. (photo: mpeake)

With an eviction notice hanging for Occupy Boston’s Camp Dewey and the future of the movement in flux, here’s a suggestion for a way forward that could benefit literally everyone:

Take the energy that was going into The Boston Occupier newspaper (at one point called or expected to be The Occupy Boston Globe) and put it instead into Spare Change, the 19-year-old paper by and benefiting the homeless that is published by the Homeless Empowerment Project and run out of Harvard Square church offices.

Spare Change has some good content but is limited by the limited amount of interest people have in reading about the homeless. It could benefit by expanding its mission, both by being more practical (meaning directly useful to people beyond the homeless) and more urgent (meaning having news in it that matters directly to people beyond the homeless). That means being more about economic injustice in a practical and widely appealing way, which would bring more sales and possibly more advertising. The good news is that economic justice is a popular theme these days; the bad news is that the wider focus requires more expertise.

And the good news again is that this expertise is likely found among the energetic and idealistic people of Occupy Boston, which could use a print organ to speak more directly with people who don’t live online and get related tweets and video in real time. (And Occupy certainly wants to benefit the homeless, including those made homeless through the very specific kinds of economic injustice that have exploded over the past few years: debt, foreclosure, pension “reform,” market turbulence and so on.)

The content from Occupy websites can go into Spare Change, and the writers among Occupy can write directly for it on a variety of topics.

The final element to this, and another way to make Spare Change and Occupy practical and even more popular, is to make some of that content about cheap living in Boston. If anyone has advice about where to get the best, least expensive meals, goods and services throughout the area, it’s probably the homeless.

You could wind up with a Spare Change that’s one-sixth practical, buy-it-cheap news you can use; half Occupy content; and the remaining third homeless-specific content. That sounds more readable and more salable, meaning more profitable for the homeless Spare Change vendors who could badly use the money, than the current mix of 100 percent homeless-related content.

Then the unique human infrastructure of Spare Change can go to work. The paper has what no one else in Boston has now, not even the Metro (for which workers hand out papers silently and robotically): hawkers. People who already interact with passers-by to induce them to buy but can and should expand that to yell out what’s in an issue of Spare Change and draw attention to it. But they shouldn’t just be calling out, “Get your Spare Change here” or even “Get your Spare Change here, help the homeless”; they should be calling out the top, practical, urgent topics in that issue: “Get your Spare Change here! Mayors, FBI and Homeland Security may be conspiring against Occupy Wall Street!” (and “Five best breakfasts below $5! In this issue!”)

Theoretically, Spare Change and Occupy Boston have something no one’s had access to in quite a long time: town criers.

Occupy movements should be doing this everywhere there’s a paper for the homeless, if they’re not already.

The downside is that Occupy and the homeless could be inextricably jumbled in people’s minds, and that could work to the detriment of Occupy, given the perception of homelessness in the minds of the mass public — but that perception is itself an issue Spare Change and Occupy needs to address, since the economic-justice truth is that these days (and, really, always the case) anyone can be homeless, and more families and children are.

Even if its physical presence at Camp Dewey and Harvard Yard ends, Occupy can continue evolving into a political force, and a common media can be a way to do that.

Food Will Win the War is scheduled to play The Middle East on Sunday. (Photo: Nicole Cordier)

The name of Brooklyn band Food Will Win the War will tickle the memory of some disparate groups: For those around during World War I and II, it was a slogan used to inspire food production and conservation; for those who read The Onion’s AV Club site, it was a winner of “The Worst Band Names Of ’07” along with such greats as Gay Witch Abortion, The Hobbits of the Shire and Doofgoblin (which played on the same bill with Food Will Win the War in Charlottesville, N.C.).

But unlike Butt Stomach and Harmonica Lewinsky, Food Will Win the War is still around — in fact, is playing The Middle East on Sunday because it is touring behind the release of a new album, “A False Sense of Warmth” — and gathering great reviews.

Interview magazine touts its “dreamy pop sounds mixed with complex human emotions” in the November issue. Time Out New York calls the music “quietly elegant … with a moody intellectual streak.” And Michael Brodeur said in a Boston Phoenix review from just over three years ago that “Missing NYC’s Food Will Win the War would be a big mistake — especially if you like smooth, smoky, fine-tined, scaled-down fare à la Elliott Smith or Erlend Øye.”

If you believe Brodeur, the six-piece band (variously described as “alt-country” and influenced by Elliott Smith, The Magnetic Fields, Neutral Milk Hotel and the Pixies) plays late Sunday at The Middle East Upstairs, 472 Massachusetts Ave., Central Square, with 8 p.m. openers Kelley McFarling and Tallahassee, a Boston band claiming it is “without a doubt the only band fronted by a former NFL offensive lineman who gave up that life to pursue music.”

The album is on sale on iTunes or at Armageddon Shop, 12 Eliot St., Harvard Square.

Food Will Win the War’s Rob Ward recommends buying tickets ahead of time by clicking here.

The factoids, straight from Sage and the Cheung campaign:

According to preliminary results, Cheung earned more votes than any other candidate and surpassed the next closest candidate’s vote total by almost 20 percent.

Cheung topped the ticket in 10 of Cambridge’s 33 precincts.

Cheung achieved the broadest level of citywide support, achieving quota in 27 of 33 precincts in Cambridge — marking a triumph for the idea of Cambridge working together as a whole, not against itself as a collection of neighborhoods.

For the first time, a city councillor went from being the bottom vote-getter to the top.

Cheung was the most-ranked candidate, and ranked somewhere on 8,872 ballots, more than half of all cast. This was also over 1,000 more ballots then the next highest candidate, Tim Toomey (this refers to a candidate being ranked as a choice anywhere on a voters ballot, not just No. 1).

In addition to getting the most number one votes (2,017 or 12.7 percent of all valid ballots cast), Cheung also got the most No. 2, No. 3 and No. 4 votes.

Cheung got 2,096 No. 2 votes, well over the next highest, Henrietta Davis, who got 1,214 No. 2 votes.

Cheung was ranked first or second on 26 percent of all valid ballots (4,113).
Cheung was listed in the top 3 on 36 percent of all valid ballots cast (5,719). The next highest was Henrietta Davis, who got 27 percent.
Cheung was listed in the top four on 43 percent of all valid ballots cast.
Top five: 48 percent
Top six: 51 percent
Top nine: 54 percent
Anywhere: 56 percent

Cheung was the only candidate to be ranked in the top nine on more than 50 percent of all ballots, meaning he was the only candidate a majority of residents voted to the council.

Cheung was the only candidate to be ranked anywhere on more than 50 percent of all ballots, meaning he was the only candidate a majority of voters selected.

Volunteers and staff canvassed more than 15,000 houses.

Volunteers and staff made more than 20,000 phone calls to voters.

Update: Leland Cheung wrote Nov. 24, 2011, to say Robert Winters’ Cambridge Civic Journal should have ben credited in the press release for the data.

Anilia Cantave made sure she got to the Harvest Food Pantry early on a Saturday to pick up cereal, cooking oil, rice, and canned beans. She works as a nurse’s aide but rising food prices have hurt her budget. Cantave now gets a quarter of her family’s groceries from food banks such as Harvest, on Putnam Ave.

She is part of a growing group in Cambridge — 60 people came to Harvest that day. Like her, many are working women trying to feed their families on tight budgets. The Cantaves are not desperately poor — she and her husband have a house and own an SUV — but they also have two daughters, 15 and 22, and support her 84-year old mother. Cantave started coming to Harvest in 2009 when her husband, a taxi driver, lost his job. But even though he found work months ago, the family still shops at Cambridge food pantries every week.

“It’s getting harder and harder to find affordable food. Things that used to be 99 cents are now $1.50, $2,” Cantave said as her younger daughter, Anisha, loaded six or seven grocery bags into the trunk.

Many working Cambridge families such as the Cantaves struggle to pay their grocery bills, said Bill Hsu, one of Harvest’s head volunteers. Hsu has worked with the pantry for six years and keeps track of how many people show up every month. He estimates that the number almost doubled during the recession.

Other Cambridge pantries and food programs, which depend on charitable donations and government support, confirm that they have been much busier over the past three years. Emma Watkins, director of the Cambridge Senior Center, said the pantry there serves 100 to 125 more seniors per week than it did before the recession. The Cambridge Summer Food Program, a city initiative that feeds children during their school vacation, reported that it is served twice as many meals last summer as in 2010.

As demand increases, Hsu said, getting food has become more difficult for Harvest: “Funding is less, the cost of food has gone up and [consequently] we get less selection.” The Cambridge Economic Opportunity Committee, an anti-poverty agency that coordinates a network of a dozen local food pantries, agreed food can be scarce. Tina Alu, its associate director, said “there are times when our shelves are close to bare, especially in the winter when fresh produce is harder to find.”

“The recession might be over,” said Stacy Wong, a spokeswoman for the Greater Boston Food Bank, “but it doesn’t feel that way for a lot of people,” especially when they have to choose between buying groceries and paying for household expenses such as clothing, gas and medicine. The food bank, a charity group, gives food to more than 500 pantries, soup kitchens and hunger-relief organizations in nine Eastern Massachusetts counties, including Harvest and the CEOC’s network. A report last year by the food bank concluded that it serves approximately 8 percent of residents in the greater Boston area, a 23 percent increase since 2005. Wong expects that figure to keep going up.

Trouble ahead?

But an act of Congress — the Fiscal Year 2012 Agriculture Appropriations Bill — might make things even harder for the food bank, Cambridge food pantries and low-income families such as the Cantaves. On June 16, the U.S. House of Representatives cut the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s spending next year by $2.7 billion, a 14 percent reduction.

Three important national food assistance programs are on the chopping block: The Emergency Food Assistance Program is losing a quarter of its $246.5 million budget; the Commodity Supplemental Food Program will drop 151,000 people, mainly low-income seniors, according to Feeding America, a national hunger-relief charity; and Women, Infants, Children, which serves 9 million Americans, faces a cut of $685.7 million only a year after Congress slashed its budget by $504 million.

Kathy Mitchell is the director of Cambridge’s Summer Food Program, which relies heavily on federal funding. Between Aug. 1-5, Mitchell said, the program distributed 2,700 breakfasts, 3,300 lunches and 475 snacks at five city parks. Many of the kids are regulars, since in the summertime their parents can’t afford to make up for the cereal, sandwiches and salads schools provide during the academic year. An August 2010 study by the Food Research and Action Center, a national anti-hunger group, found that 30.7 percent of families with children in Massachusetts’s 8th Congressional District, which includes Cambridge, had trouble finding enough food in the past year (the national average is 23.4 percent).

Even so, Mitchell said the Summer Food Program faces a 56 percent budget cut for next year. That would mean laying off half her staff and giving away far less food than the program did this past summer.

Cambridge’s children aren’t the only ones at risk. The Cambridge Senior Center’s pantry in Central Square serves 200 senior citizens a week, like Harvest giving out canned and dry goods. It also distributes meat and dairy products, which are harder to find. The seniors who visit the center are usually retired, many with health problems and some supporting grandchildren, and since they tend to live on fixed incomes, the increasing cost of food has been especially devastating. Watkins, the center’s director, hadn’t yet heard of the legislation moving through Congress but expressed shock when she learned of its details: “I can’t imagine why this particularly vulnerable population is where the cuts are being made.”

U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston, a Georgia Republican, said food aid has been cut to “below pre-stimulus, pre-bailout levels” while ensuring federal agencies have necessary resources, but Cambridge food charities call that contradictory, since food needs have in many cases doubled since before the recession. (Photo: Bruce Tuten)

Defending the bill on the House floor, Agriculture Subcommittee Chairman Jack Kingston, a Georgia Republican, said, “We have taken spending … to below pre-stimulus, pre-bailout levels while ensuring [federal agencies] are provided the necessary resources to fulfill their duties. We have worked to root out waste and duplication.”

But Cambridge residents involved with pantries question the wisdom of reducing food aid to pre-recession levels. Even now, there is not always enough food to go around. To ensure every shopper gets at least a little, some pantries have limited clients to monthly visits. Others require proof of Cambridge residency. Many report crowds arriving hours before their doors open, and a few say there have been confrontations over cutting in line. Cantave, the Haitian immigrant, said she has left food pantries empty-handed many times in the past. And Alu points out that private donations won’t be able to replace federal funds: Charities are struggling too, and the CEOC has seen a worrying drop in donations from them.

Ross Fraser of Feeding America called the House’s cuts “pocket change, petty cash that will make no significant difference [to the federal budget deficit] but will significantly hurt the hungry … These programs work. They keep people from being undernourished and starving. Any attempt to muck with them is inhumane.”

Watkins believes many Americans don’t realize how much their hardworking friends and neighbors depend on pantries. She said some of the senior center’s clients are embarrassed to admit they get free food.

Alu agrees there are widespread misconceptions about who gets their food from pantries:  “People think these folks don’t want to work … that they are lazy. But they’re often working three jobs, part-time, and trying to raise a family. They used to shop at Shaw’s or Market Basket and come to the pantries when their paychecks ran out at the end of the month; now, they come to us for most of the month and spend their leftover money at supermarkets” when they have used up all their pantry visits, with many Cambridge food charity recipients heading out of town to stretch their funds.

If federal spending cuts go through and the economy doesn’t improve, Alu said, the CEOC and other pantries might not be able to stay open. In that case, what will low-income families in Cambridge do for food?

“I don’t know,” she replied.

(Graphic: Nick Nehamas)

Reps. Wolf, Tim Toomey and Jonathan Hecht had submitted an amendment in the House suggesting that a swap be found that would unite Cambridge while preserving the majority-minority district, Wolf said, and a comparable amendment was filed in the Senate by Sens. Patricia Jehlen, Sal DiDomenico and Anthony Petruccelli.

But the House amendment failed, Wolf said.

“Cambridge has been united in the 8th Congressional district — the new 7th — for at least 70 years. This was Tip O’Neill and Jack Kennedy’s district, with all of Cambridge at its core,” she said.

The redistricting will carve Cambridge in two — a central chunk being represented by U.S. Rep. Edward Markey as the 5th Congressional District and parts in North Cambridge and closer to the river being represented by U.S. Rep. Mike Capuano as the 7th Congressional.

In a proposed redistricting, almost all communities in Massachusetts are represented by a single person in Congress. Cambridge, though, would be carved into two districts.

Only hours after his reelection, city councillor Leland Cheung was back at work Wednesday, raising the alarm about a congressional redistricting that would carve Cambridge in two — a central chunk being represented by U.S. Rep. Edward Markey as the 5th Congressional District and parts in North Cambridge and closer to the river being represented by U.S. Rep. Mike Capuano as the 7th Congressional District.

The map was released Monday by state lawmakers’ Special Joint Committee on Redistricting of the Massachusetts General Court. But things are moving fast.

“We only have until tomorrow for the public to comment,” Cheung said. “This undoubtedly hurts our standing in Congress because we’d go from being one-seventh of a district to one-fourteenth.”

Capuano represents all of Cambridge at the moment in the 8th Congressional District — a structure in place for seven decades that allows the interests of Cambridge, Somerville and Boston to be handled as one. A change in population reflected in recent census figures brought on the redistricting.

“Parts of Cambridge will be represented by someone who also needs to balance the needs of Revere, Chelsea and other urban areas, and other parts of Cambridge will be represented by someone who also needs to balance the needs of Southborough and other suburban areas,” said Susana Segat in her CCTV blog.

Cheung noted that “Capuano has his district office in Cambridge for a reason” and said “residents need to know to weigh in.”

By passing around tips from Daniel Schlozman, chairman of Cambridge’s Democratic City Committee, Cheung is trying to ensure that. With the deadline of 2 p.m. Thursday, people are urged to tell lawmakers they want Cambridge kept whole in the 7th Congressional District by:

Contacting Mike Moran, House chairman of the Joint Redistricting Committee, at at (617) 722-2460 or michael.moran@mahouse.gov.

Contacting Stan Rosenberg, Senate chairman of the Joint Redistricting Committee, at (617) 722-1532 or stan.rosenberg@masenate.gov.

Supplying written testimony to the Joint Redistricting Committee at malegislature.gov/District/Contact.

Schlozman can be reached at daschloz@gmail.com or (617) 519-8555.

The tuition-free public charter school serves students in grades 7-12 from Cambridge, Boston and surrounding cities and towns.

There are open houses at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday and Dec. 14; and at weekend edition at 9:30 a.m. Jan. 7 for families interested in learning more about the school. “These events are a great way to learn more about the school’s educational philosophy, culture and mission,” said Justin T. Martin, chief communications officer for the school. “The open house events also provide a great opportunity to meet some of the faculty and staff, tour the school and get answers to important questions.”

CCSC is a tuition-free public school that accepts students on a first-come, first-served basis. School officials say about 35 percent of the student population come from Cambridge, 35 percent from Boston and the rest from surrounding cities and towns.

It opened “at capacity” this year, meaning all seats were occupied and a wait list for students was created.  To avoid a wait, families are encouraged by school officials to attend an open house and fill out the application during the first and second admissions cycles, held in December and January.

For information, click here or call Monica at (617) 354-0047.

This post was written from a press release.