The worst ad in Boston?

This is the corner of Dot Ave and Crescent Avenue on the side of a newly expanded building. It's been up a few months and every time I see it I shudder. It's a nice building with a courtyard garden open to Crescent Avenue and balconies for most of the units. I watched the contractors over the past year and they seemed to be doing quality work, as well as this layman can tell. It is a nice building and a nice addition to the corner.

It will be nice to have new people living in this nook of Dorchester, but if they are like this clown then the realtors will have some explaining to do. I have an extensive collection of neckties, and I'm happy to wear them, but I'm not as slap-happy as this chap seems to be. I'm not going to take umbrage at yuppifying the neighborhood. A little more disposable income washing around Dot Ave will be good for business. I am dismayed that this two-story poster has been erected in an area that is made up of old, working class Irish families, newcomers of Vietnamese descent, and students of all nationalities and backgrounds scraping by to pay thier tuition. I haven't met anyone yet who is studying to spring off to work dressed like this model of success. It chills my marrow to think what his soul-killing profession might be.

Overpaid cubicle drones have staked enough claims to Boston real estate. Dorchester has remained relatively free of the contagion. Is this the face of things to come? Is gentrification creeping southward by way of the Red Line's vector?

The DNA Lofts seem to be offering to change this stretch of Dot Ave's DNA. It is two or three blocks from the JFK/UMASS T station. You see three flags regularly displayed between Columbia Road and Savin Hill in this order of popularity: Vietnamese, American, Irish. You don't see a lot of guys like the one on this poster at Tom's Barber Shop or in Gene and Paul's Meats, or in the Bubble T Zone, or or the Ba-Le Bakery. Maybe we will soon if this advertising works.

This ad implies that schlubs and ubermenschen like this fop can remake whatever well knit landscape in which they land. I prefer to think this neighborhood has deeper, interconnected roots that cannot be pulled out as easily as a day trader knots his tie. This advertisement is like a raven landing on your windowsill, a portent of troublesome destiny brewing beyond your control. Don't let the smile fool you, You will be priced out of your apartment when these troops invade with enough critical mass to take control. It has happened before in Boston. Some people welcome it, some dread it. No one moves to Quincy happy.