2006-05-25 - 11:03 a.m.
Nya and I went to Boston this weekend for a wedding. I�ll talk more about the wedding itself later, but for now I just wanted to record my feelings about going back to the city I lived in for most of my adult life. I was at Harvard in 1992-93 and 1994-95 (in 1993-94 I lived in San Francisco). Then I bounced around Cambridge, except for fall 1996, when I lived with L. in Boston and September 1997, when I squatted in an abandoned building on the Jamaica Plain/Roxbury line (near Jackson Square).
In fall 1998, I moved to Boston�s North End. I lived in two different apartments and generally acted somewhat responsibly until I went to Brown in fall 2002. And in 2003-04, I again lived back in Boston with Alithea (in the West Fenway) and commuted to Brown. Why didn�t I move to another city? Well, it�s not like I wasn�t having a pretty good time where I was. And what other town would I move to? It�s not like a job prospect was pulling me elsewhere. The New York City I grew up in, the place of grit and All in the Family was fading away, replaced by glamour and Sex & the City.
So, I pretty much spent ten years total in Boston. I guess I saw several different versions of �Boston� � Cambridge was very different from the North End was very different from the West Fenway. And there are still numerous neighborhoods I never spent much time in. Allston �Rock City� (a student- and post-collegiate ghetto if ever there was)? Don�t really know it. Tony Back Bay and Beacon Hill? A bit out of my price range. The South End (gentrified largely by �GUPpies� over the 1990s? I just didn�t hang out there.
Likewise, I didn�t visit Brookline�s relatively ritzy Coolidge Corner much either, where Nya and I stayed at our friend from high school�s spiffy condo. I wasn�t totally unfamiliar with it; I sometimes went to an arthouse cinema there. And I knew it was nice enough that Nya would want to see it, so we walked around a bit on Friday afternoon and got dinner at this crepe place. Then we went to Faneuil Hall to attend the pre-wedding night at Sam�s Caf� (which I think is supposed to be Cheers).
To get there, as I feared we�d have to, we took the Green Line �T�. The new, more-accessible cars apparently are in service, but your train only has those cars about half the time (at least on the C branch running through high-end Brookline; maybe it�s even less on other branches). The rest of the time, you get the old-school cars with ridiculously steep steps that require a manual, medieval-looking lift to enter. Fortunately, we always left for our trips early enough that I could let the not-very-accessible cars pass by and wait for a newer train.
They�re still not quite as efficient as they could be. The driver still has to get out, open the center door, and turn a key to let down an entry ramp for you. But that�s better than the alternative. We watched a woman in a wheelchair board one of the older trains. It�s an absolutely ludicrous process. The driver got out of the train, he and another worker went down to the other end of the station, and noisily rolled back the metal lift platform. Then the woman in a chair rolled on and the driver pumped a pedal with his foot and turned a crank with his hand to raise the platform to train level.
The whole elaborate process took several minutes. It had to be humiliating for the woman it was done for (although maybe she�s used to it). The workers asked if I needed to be raised too. I told them I was fortunately waiting for another branch. I would have said that even if it had actually been my train rather than suffer the indignity. I was bitching to the friend we stayed with that the disabled boarding process with these siege-tower lifts is highly labor-intensive and seems quite cost-inefficient.
He pointed out that it�s really very cost-efficient. If you fill the technical letter of the law by providing a method of access, but make it incredibly roundabout and embarrassing, no one will want to use it. Then you can feel justified about having a ridiculous accommodation method because so few people use it anyway. QED. That�ll certainly keep the costs down. Thank God, as Nya observed, I don�t live in Boston anymore. Many corners don�t even have curb cuts. I�d say that�s because they�re all historic and maybe Sam Adams once tripped there. Except most of the built environment dates from much later and things like sidewalks have to be replaced every so often anyway.
A word about accessibility: it�s just my fucking fair share. People like me simply don�t get to take advantage of a lot of public benefits that tax money goes to finance. Someone with limited motor control in their legs to hit the brakes (or someone who�s blind or with any of numerous other disabilities) can�t drive and gets no benefit from federally subsidized gas or from the Interstate highway system or from any number of ways the environment is shaped through public funds to mesh with able-bodied people, but not them. Trust me, half-fare for disabled riders on the bus is a small public cost for this.
On Saturday, we walked through the Fenway to go to the church the wedding was at (if you know the area, from the St. Mary�s C-line stop through Audubon Circle and the West Fenway across the Fens and across Huntington Avenue to near Wentworth Tech). It was funny crossing Boylston St. In the summer of 2003, I worked a lot with the Fenway Community Development Corporation studying why the hell this street, which cuts through the middle of a quiet residential neighborhood, seems like (and is driven on like) a short strip of highway.
It�s only like a half-mile stretch of road and yet there are no less than 5 gas stations and several drive-through restaurants. The general consensus was that people drive the street at highway speeds because it sure looks like a highway. I ordered a whole mess of property records from City Hall for the parcels bordering Boylston St. and determined the percentage of the land devoted to �automobile usages� like parking lots and gas stations (I forget the exact number, but it was north of 60% � this has lowered a bit recently since a vast parking lot was developed into a large apartment building between Park Drive and Kilmarnock.)
We stopped for a burrito along the way at El Pelon Taqueria, around the corner from my old place. May I say that Peterborough St. by Kilmarnock has a whole series of the best cheap restaurants in Boston (also check out the great Thai food of Rod Dee). In nice weather, they have a whole strip of wooden picnic tables out in front, shared by all the neighboring restaurants. Nya said it was one of the best fish burritos she�s ever had. It felt so good, so right, sitting in a place that was familiar and comfortable with the love of my life.
We went across the Fenway, crown jewel of Frederick Law Olmstead�s �Emerald Necklace� of Boston parks. I wanted to stop in to the Kelleher Rose Garden, but it was locked and the roses weren�t in bloom anyway. But the Fenway is simply gorgeous by itself, even without roses. Then we went to the wedding ceremony (about which I�ll write later) at this stunning Greek Orthodox cathedral near the campus of the Wentworth Institute of Technology with its new buildings that were still under construction when I lived nearby.
On Sunday we went to a post-wedding brunch at ye olde Union Oyster House. It�s supposedly the oldest restaurant in America and it lays on the ye olde schtick pretty thick. I lived right nearby for over four years and yet I never went. Doesn�t seem like I missed much. Afterwards we went just across the way to visit my old stomping grounds, the North End. It was so weird to see the area in front of Hanover and Salem, the main streets, without an elevated highway looming overhead. It was recently torn down as part of the Big Dig. (Now that the Dig is wrapping up, what will they waste money on next?)
We walked up Hanover Street so Nya could inhale the ambience (just in case all the green/white/red bunting doesn�t drive it home, restaurants blare Puccini from outdoor speakers so you�re clear that you�re in Italo-American Disneyland). We got cannoli at Mike�s Pastry. It�s a big tourist trap and I personally preferred Modern Pastry across the street, but they put out a bigger spread of pastry choices and turn up the atmosphere. I wanted Nya to get the full effect. For only a few bucks, I could even overlook the mediocre cannoli that weren�t fresh filled.
We went past the two apartment buildings I lived in before we went home. One had a citation for a trash violation on the front door. (This wasn�t terribly surprising as it�s owned by an old-school yutz who used to make me pay my rent � cash preferred � in person at a pizza parlor he also owned.) Fourth-floor walk-ups in both; I couldn�t really do that now.
Here�s the thing: I don�t miss Boston. It served me well and took good care of me when I needed it. But its time has passed. I especially don�t miss the North End. It was so suitable as a home only at a certain age. When I moved there, I was 24. The touristy glitter and hustle-bustle was appealing to me as a mid-20s youth. I tweaked quickly to the fact that most of it was shuck and jive intended to separate consumers from money, but I liked it still. I even got some use out of nearby Faneuil Hall, a tourist mecca. I�d sometimes go there to feel like a superior insider and laugh at the out-of-town rubes.
There were aspects of it I disliked even at the time. The fetishization of the urban lifestyle that I had always lived in, for example. Once I was hanging out on the Prado, a small park/mall off Hanover St. right behind my house. Some tourist was taking a photo of the back of my building. What the hell is photo-worthy of that view, I thought. Then the guy called his wife over and they pointed excitedly at someone�s laundry on a line between the windows. Ah, I got it. How exotic. How �big city�. I guess they don�t have clotheslines where he�s from.
I got my first taste of this early. Shortly after I first moved to the neighborhood, Jake visited me. One night, we were coming home quite stoned and fumbling with the keys to my front door. An entire socks-and-sandaled family of tourists with Southern accents approached (I still don�t understand what they were doing out so late or on my not-very-touristy street).
�Hey, �scuse me! You mean you boys just walk home from the bar to your house?�
Jake started to explain that we were just stoned and hadn�t come from a bar, but I cut him off.
�Uh, yeah.� Damn it, why won�t the key fit in?
�Well I�ll be! Ain�t that the darnedest?�
I got the key in and we spilled in the door.
It only really hit me the next morning. Where they were from, a bar was a place you drove to. Then you drove home. You drove everywhere. Walking? How quaint. I�d been Exhibit A of �How Big City Life Works� for an audience of non-urban Americans. It seemed that that sort of thing was just going to come with the territory of living in a downtown neighborhood visited by a lot of tourists, who came to see colonial landmarks like Paul Revere�s house and Old North Church (of �one if by land, two if by sea� fame). And the old Italian section!
Ah yes. I may have hated that most of all. I grew up in southern Brooklyn with Italian neighborhoods everywhere. I am in fact half Italian-American myself. It�s not a big deal to me. But it was to visitors to the North End. Not just the out-of-towners but the suburbanites and people from elsewhere in Boston who descended on Hanover St. restaurants every night, adamant about getting a taste of Authentic, Old World cuisine. They insisted on maintaining the myth that the North End was still the old Italian section, even though most of the old Italians themselves had moved out to the suburbs a good 15 years before.
I can�t wait until an African-American area like Roxbury gets the same cachet. Until restaurant patrons there say the same stupid things I heard from diners soaking in the �exotic� white ethnicity of the North End. �Hey, lets get dinner at this great little place I know in Dudley Square [on Hanover St.]! They have absolutely the best chicken and collard greens [marinara]!� �You know, I�m part African-American [Italian] on my mother�s side!� �Ooh, I think that guy has a gun in his pocket! I bet he�s a �gang-banger� [Mafioso]!� But I can�t imagine any other culture having its worst dysfunctions celebrated in the same way.
Once a friend of mine (the guy who threw his girlfriend in the trash) asked what proportion of the neighborhood was still Italian.
�Oh,� I said, �maybe a quarter. There�s a lot of old people in senior housing. You can�t expect them to move; they�ve lived here their whole lives. And some, uh. Characters.�
�Characters? What do you mean?�
�People like Mario, the old guy who sits out in front of the VFW Hall all day with a bottle of booze. Or like Sal, my landlord�s chore boy. Although actually he�s over 40. He still lives with his mom, except sometimes when he sleeps in our basement. Once I came home at 6AM and found him standing in the middle of the street. I asked what he was doing out so early. He said he was meeting a girl. What, there in the street? No, he protested! Over there in the parking lot!�
My friend chuckled.
�They�re losers. No, wait. I feel bad I said that. They�re nice folks. I don�t mean to call them losers.�
�No, that�s fair. It�s really not so much that they�re losers but that they lost. As in � the game is over and I�m sorry but you�ve lost.�
Yeah. Unfortunately, that seems about right. Whenever there�s a demographic shift, some people are inevitably going to be left behind.
Why isn�t this change celebrated? An ethnic group succeeding and moving to the suburbs, that seems like a positive development to me. Why was I (and people like me) generally cast as the villain? The tragedy of gentrification: Geoff personally kicked Nonna out of the apartment she�d been living in for forty years and adamantly demanded that the landlord charge him triple the rent! Uh sorry, that�s not quite how it played out. I�m sorry that central-city living became desirable again and the North End is adjacent to the downtown core. But I didn�t make this happen and I didn�t raise Grandma�s rent (the landlord did).
So maybe the North End served me well at the time, but I don�t think I�d want to live there now. Same with Boston generally. I just don�t have the time or energy to figure out where the curb cuts aren�t.
� 2006 Geoff Gladstone
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