The Dot Irish

Q: How many Dorchesterites can you fit in a bar room?
A: It depends on the length of the bar.

Dorchester is a neighborhood of bent elbows and loose lips. If there's a place for people to gather, they will do it in Dorchester. Build it and they will come, especially if there's beer on tap. Thirsts will be slaked and tongues will wag. Connections will be made and handshakes exchanged. By last call jobs will be divvied up, sub-contracted, and all that will be left is the work to be sewn up the next day. If there is something to be done, deciding how to do it was decided in a Dorchester bar.

Little things get done in offices. Insurance policies and leases get signed. Small money changes hands and small designs are completed at a desk that faces a plate glass window. Grand schemes are hatched on bar stools. Dorchester's bar stools are warm from a regular rotation of heated seats planted on thier padding. Talk circulates the way cigarette smoke used to before the Commonwealth imposed a smoking ban.

Dorchester isn't raucous but it is full of animated chatter. Dorchester breeds blarney and boasts delivered in a relaxed brogue. There is little to prove in Dorchester. The proof is in the blood pudding, in the bangers and mash. Like foamy beer, everything in Dorchester comes to a head.

I tested this premise tonight at Tom English's and the Harp & Bard on Dot Ave, and C.F. Donnovan's on Savin Hill Ave. I heard more words than two ears can hold. If the intentions come true, we will wake up to a shinier Boston come Friday.