How to get strangers in Boston to talk to each other

Last night a friend and I, in defiance of Hub protocol, had a brief conversation with a stranger sitting at the next table in a restaurant. And all it took to spark this interaction was a zucchini-sized rat ambling through the dining room. "Whoa! That is one well-fed animal!" and "I wonder how many more they've got back in the kitchen" are not exactly Algonquin Club witticisms, but we've got to start somewhere if we're going to revive civic discourse. The only other thing that seems as effective in prompting Bostonians to talk with each other is a particularly garbled announcement on a subway train. ("What did he say?" "I think he said there's a broken spatula in the gazebo.") So thanks to the MBTA and Boston's vermin population for making this a slightly friendlier city. And no, I'm not going to name the restaurant. I have a policy of not selling out (OK, ratting out) places in Boston that serve dinner after 10 p.m. They're too precious to lose.

Mass transit porn

Charlotte's trolley system had a great opening day last week. From the Charlotte Observer's Steve Harrison:

CATS expects the state's first light-rail line will handle 9,100 passenger trips on an average weekday in its first year. Saturday, it handled 34,000 trips in the first four hours -- well above capacity -- and 60,000 by evening, CATS estimated. Trains rolled into stations with people standing nose to shoulder, often allowing only inches for new passengers to board. Riders waited as long as two hours at the I-485/South Boulevard station for free rides.

For photos of people who aren't jaded subway riders, click here. Except for the casual dress, this might be how people behaved when the first electric trolleys sped along Boston's Beacon Street in 1889.

I attended a conference in Charlotte a few years ago and found it to be a friendly city with some charming restaurants, but I was disappointed by the lack of pedestrians on downtown sidewalks. (There seemed to be a lot of indoor passageways among hotels, malls, and offices.) Maybe the light rail will help change that.

Naked Boston Bruins

No one at the Boston Globe can be surprised that this is their most e-mailed story of the day: "Along with non-nude portraits of several hockey players, [Kurt] Kauper's show features an homage to former Bruins center Derek Sanderson, who is painted standing next to his locker with his hockey stick -- and nothing else." (There's also a painting of Bobby Orr in the buff.) Not surprisingly, the Globe also implicitly editorializes that the "realistic" paintings are unfit for public view, since it crops each of the nudes above the waist. (If the Globe was somehow prevented from showing the whole paintings, it should tell us why.) Since neither Sanderson nor Orr posed for the paintings, their genitals stem from Kauper's imagination.

Liquor Land conquered by drug empire

Liquor Land, a veritable Ikea of inebriation for South End and Roxbury residents, will be transformed into another goddamned CVS drugstore after New Year's. David Abel reports in the Boston Globe:

...come January, after 68 years serving everyone from the homeless to college students to millionaires, the liquor store at Harrison Avenue and Northampton Street will close to make way for a CVS. "We used to hear gunshots all the time, but now it's safer, a nicer atmosphere," said [Jackie] Petrillo, 58, who co-owns the store and has managed it since the 1980s. "We worked for this day for so long, and now this? I just can't believe it." Adding insult to injury: It was her cousin, owner of the 75,000-square-foot building, who refused to renew her lease, opting instead for a negotiated deal with CVS.

The reaction among neighborhood activists is mixed, and Abel quotes one as saying, "It's no disappointment to lose a liquor store." Maybe a supermarket would be better on that site, but a CVS? I'll get my Nyquil fix elsewhere, thank you.

The enemy above

I don't think there's much chance of a fire or burglary in my apartment, but once in a while I look up at the three sprinklers and wonder if all my possessions are going to be soaked by a false alarm. At least now I know not to hang my dresses off them.

"What we need is a Starbucks"

The New York Times writes about downtown New Rochelle, but the headline could apply to my own neighborhood in Malden: "A Faded Downtown Gets Luxury Housing, but Retailers Stay Away." Reporter Elsa Brenner offers grounds for optimism:

One glimmer of hope comes from the Gnarly Vine and several trendy restaurants that have opened in a five-block radius in the heart of the downtown. “Often bars, restaurants and small boutiques are the first to signal that a change is actually taking place,” Mr. Beyard said. [Michael Beyard is with the Urban Land Institute.]

I'm hope that's true, since Malden Center has several new trendy restaurants, but I'm not so confident. New retail businesses seem to have a much tougher time in the Internet Age. Significantly, the Times story is vague about precisely what kind of retail stores New Rochelle hopes to attract. Bookstores, music stores, and old-fashioned department stores are dying everywhere, and houseware and furniture stores prefer locations with huge parking lots. But let's worry about that later. For now, Craig King, New Rochelle’s commissioner of development, has an idea shared by many of my neighbors in Malden:

“What we need,” he said, “are upscale boutiques, a Starbucks and some other more interesting shops that will generate more sales tax dollars for the city and give our downtown some real style.”

Your favorite movie sucks

Andrew Sullivan links to this observation by British actor Stephen Fry (ellipses mine):

I was warned many, many years ago by the great Jonathan Lynn, co-creator of Yes, Minister and director of the comic masterpiece My Cousin Vinnie, that Americans are not raised in a tradition of debate and that the adversarial ferocity common around a dinner table in Britain is more or less unheard of in America. When Jonathan first went to live in LA he couldn’t understand the terrible silences that would fall when he trashed an statement he disagreed with and said something like “yes, but that’s just arrant nonsense, isn’t it? It doesn’t make sense. It’s self-contradictory.” To a Briton pointing out that something is nonsense, rubbish, tosh or logically impossible in its own terms is not an attack on the person saying it – it’s often no more than a salvo in what one hopes might become an enjoyable intellectual tussle. Jonathan soon found that most Americans responded with offence, hurt or anger to this order of cut and thrust. ... Disagreement and energetic debate appears to leave a loud smell in the air.

Maybe I should move to Britain if I want to find a husband. In my experience, the best way to make a bad first impression in America is to criticize anything. It's considered especially bad form to accept an invitation to a movie, play, or concert and then point out the flaws during the post-performance coffee or cocktail. This is being "negative," even though dissecting the entertainment is often the most enjoyable part of an evening out.

I'm not attacking you if I politely say what I find objectionable about your favorite movie or band. I'm just assuming that you're more than eight years old.

My thermostat doesn't go to 11

It's getting colder, and I'm stuck with an efficient heating system in my new place. In every other place I've lived in, it was impossible to maintain a steady temperature during the winter. If I set the heat at 68, the furnace wouldn't kick in until it was about 62 (the alleged temperature reading on the thermostat, minus all the drafts coming through the rickety windows). But when the heat came on, it would stay on until the apartment was a toasty 80 degrees or so. I think that was because it took so long for the heat to make its way through the pipes. So when the thermostat said, "That's enough!", it took another half hour for the radiator to cool down. In my new place, if I set the heat at 68, it comes on before I notice any chill in the air, and it shuts off as soon I get the temperature I asked for, even if it only takes 30 seconds to get there. So I'm never cold, but I never get that redundant, completely wasteful blast of hot air that allowed me to kick off my blankets or walk around without a shirt for an hour or so in the middle of January. Before I'd start freezing again, of course. It's like I moved to Los Angeles or something. I want my four seasons, and I want them all in one day without having to leave the house!

I hate coffee, but I love Starbucks

Seth Gitell has a good column in the New York Sun about the trouble brewing for Starbucks, as rivals like Dunkin' Donuts and McDonald's get into the premium coffee market -- without the high prices and precious terminology ("grande" for small) of the Seattle chain. Unlike some left-wing anti-globalists, Gitell doesn't see Starbucks as evil, though he does write, "If Starbucks has been guilty of anything, it is its annoying, almost embarrassing, omnipresence." I agree on narrow aesthetic grounds. There are five Starbucks within a couple of blocks of my office, and it is tiring to see that logo, with its flagrant West Coast sensibility, on the gritty streets of Boston. At the same time, I'm grateful to Starbucks for its omnipresence. If the chain disappeared tomorrow, I doubt that more than two or three of its dozens of Boston sites would be turned into independent cafes. Most would stay vacant or become cellphone stores; it's just not economically feasible, given Boston's real estate market, for anything but a chain to operate businesses at which people can hang out on comfortable chairs for hours at a time. I never drink coffee (or any coffee-like drink) while walking around, and I never take coffee back to my office. The only time I have a Starbucks Peppermint Mocha is when I have time to relax on a piece of Starbucks furniture, preferably with a friend to talk to. That's why it horrifies me to think that Dunkin' Donuts or McDonald's could one day drive Starbucks out of business. With their harsh lighting and uncomfortable seats, those chains are designed for quick turnover. I can see why coffee drinkers who get it to go might get impatient with Starbucks and prefer to save a few pennies at a flourescent hellhole. But coffee drinking started out as a social activity, and I'd hate to see yet another place for public congregation driven out of existence at the hands of people who don't like to leave their cars or office desks. And I'm still waiting for a Starbucks in my new neighborhood of Malden Center. Don't worry, there are no independent cafes there anyway. All I've got are two Dunkin' Donuts, and they don't get my business outside of an annual craving for apple-flavored hockey pucks.

I'd better see flames next time!

My apartment building's fire alarm went off for at least the fourth time since I moved in six weeks ago. (I assume it's gone off a few times when I wasn't home.) This is an unexpected drawback to high-rise living, though I should have remembered it from my days in the Warren Towers dorm at Boston University. The alarm at home is even more intrusive than the one in my office. At least at work, I can't see the flashing lights or hear the "please leave the building" announcements from my little desk in a corner, and I can stay put until our receptionist sends an e-mail to everyone saying that, yes, we probably should head down the stairs. At home, I was once jolted awake at 3:30 a.m. by a female voice telling me that the "sound you have just heard indicates a report of an emergency in the building." It wasn't the alarm that woke me up, mind you; it was the shock of a female voice in my bedroom. (I guess they use women to deliver distressing news for the same reasons that women announcers are used in negative campaign ads.) I was already skeptical about the alarm system, so I took the time to get completely dressed, comb my hair, and put my wallet and cell phone in my coat pocket before carefully locking my door behind me. Sadly, just about everyone had the same idea, and I was not treated to the sight of my neighbors in semi-naked states or in embarrassing sleepwear. And the only real excitement was when we filed back into the building from the sidewalk and the guy in front of me tripped and fell over the suitcase-on-wheels that the woman in front of him was pulling. (It was black, and thus invisible in the dark.) The past two alarms have happened late in the morning when I was on vacation and thus not yet showered or dressed. Both times, I put on shoes as slowly as possible and waited for the alarm to stop so I didn't have to actually leave. My reasoning was that electricity was still working, so things couldn't be that bad. (There should be a manual method to let tenants know that the automated alarm shouldn't be ignored, like cutting the power or sending out bat-signals in the sky.) Anyway, the daytime fire alarms have dashed my dreams of becoming a full-time pajamas blogger. That, and the fact that I don't own a pair of pajamas.