New Orleans Voodoo

People walk down Esplanade Avenue every day.

New Orleans: a living, breathing city in which miracles only seem to blossom spontaneously.  The brass band marching down Barracks Street this evening has prepared for months for this unscheduled parade.  Only the uninformed are caught unexpected.  Only the neighbors come out to join in.

Gentlemen prefer New Orleans

Diamonds may be a girl’s best friend.  Ladies speak highly of pearls as well.  Gentlemen prefer New Orleans.

No matter his vice of choice or his fancy, a gentleman prefers New Orleans.  Redheads, blondes, brunettes... coquettes, matrons, schoolmarms... librarians, debutantes, shop clerks, attorneys... dark, light, pale, dusky... calloused, polished, silky, hearty, demure, boisterous, shy or crafty... blue-eyed, green-eyed, gray-eyed, brown-eyed, doe-eyed, flinty-eyed... soft or coarse... dull or sharp... no matter his choice of vice or fancy, a gentleman prefers New Orleans.  

Diamonds may be a girl’s best friend, but New Orleans, a city that glitters and sparkles during all hours of every given day, is full of Gulf oysters plump with pillows of succulent and slippery meat.  A man may talk to a woman’s cleavage rather than look her full in the face.  The hand is quicker than the eye and beauty is both fleeting and permanent.  Look around.

Serpentine New Orleans winds along the banks of the mighty Mississippi River.  It spreads inland along tortuous blocks sandwiched between dry ridges and moist canals, levees and sink holes... the lay of the land is less solid than it seems.  A day in New Orleans has made sinners out of nuns and it has made saints out of sportsmen.  A gambling man bets his life when he sets foot on New Orleans’s pavement.  Watch your step.  There are potholes and hurdles along the walkways that parallel New Orleans’ neutral grounds.

Baubles and bangles and buckles and beads catch the sun’s rays as it sets behind the East Bank.  No deposit is safe.  Shifting soils continually settle and resettle.  A visitor to New Orleans never knows where he or she stands.  A citizen feels more confident while being just as lost in the moment.  New Orleans is an continuously unfolding present.  There is never more than the weight of the past and future balanced on the fulcrum of this second.  There is never less than the chance to lose oneself in the parade that is New Orleans.  

Ladies love New Orleans.  Gentlemen prefer it.

Sticker symbolism

People have been asking me, "What are those stickers on the side of the Littlest Ninja?"  If you are new to the Dot Matrix, the Littlest Ninja is my motorcycle, a 250cc, 2006, blue Kawasaki Ninja.  Formerly the Littlest Ninja this side of the Charles River.  Now the littlest on the East Bank of the mighty Mississippi.

Here's what the Ninja looked like in Boston.  New stickers now, visible here.

This isn't entirely true.  The 250cc Ninja is Kawasaki's most popular bike.  I see them all over New Orleans.  I saw a few in Boston, but less often.  I always find it amazing to read that this is a best seller because every asks me about it, mistaking it for a larger 500cc.  "I didn't know you could get a 250!"  You can.  It costs about $3000 and gets 75mpg.  It's a nice commuter bike and it's very forgiving.  You can handle the twistys and keep up with larger bikes as long as you aren't racing.  Sometimes I think about trading up, but for the minimal upkeep and expense, I'll take my Littlest Ninja.  So far, so good.  I've gotten more than my money's worth.  It's got 22,000 miles on the odometer and it purrs like a kitten getting it's ear scratched when I pull on the throttle.

So, what are the stickers about?  On the right hand side from front tire to rear, they are:  One of Coop's voluptuous devil girl stickers, not the naughtiest of them but risque nonetheless.  The one on the right side is clothed in pink lingerie.  The one on the left is a mirror image except nude with one nipple showing.  There are also three flags on the right faring.  One is German, one is Connecticut, one is Louisiana.  This represents the composition of my household and where we now call home.  The Louisiana flag replaced the Massachusetts state seal over a year ago.

On the right side is the aforementioned naked lady.  Why devil women in states of undress?  These tend to get a lot of attention when I'm stopped in traffic.  Young men will hang their heads out the window and say, "I like your sticker."  I reply, "That's how I like 'em: big and naughty."  Not really but close enough.  There is also the logo for Air Hamburg Airlines, a carrier you probably never heard of.  I've never flown Air Hamburg except in my dreams.  On the Littlest Ninja, it often feels like I'm flying when I'm not stuck in traffic.  I like to think I am going to exotic locales, islands in the North Sea, for instance, even if I'm just headed to the supermarket.  That is an adventure of its own in its way.

So now you know.

Three guys and a ladder

A perfect example of how things are done differently in Boston than in New Orleans:

Let's say you're driving down a street in Boston that is lined with old, overhanging trees, Melville Avenue in Dorchester for instance, and the branches need pruning.  This requires the following equipment:  A cherry picker to get into the high branches, a dump truck to collect the refuse, a pickup truck with lights to block off traffic, cones and signs to demarcate the work zone.  Each worker will be assigned cups of Dunkin' Donuts coffee.

Besides a man with a saw in the cherry picker, there would be a couple of extra personnel, let's say three but more probably five, to staff the operation on the ground when the branches come down.  One man would do the actual work while the others monitor the coffee supply.  There would be one supervisor at all times to make sure everything goes according to plan and one additional supervisor to stop in and monitor progress.  Of course there would also be a police officer, officially there to direct traffic but his or her time will mostly be spent on a cell phone or just enjoying the shade while watching the progress.

We were driving down Prytania Street this morning in front of Touro Infirmary where such a pruning operation was going on the New Orleans way.  The whole outfit consisted of three guys and two ladders.  One ladder was 24 feet tall and the other was a 12 foot model.  One guy was the saw man, climbing up and down the ladders.  One guy collected the branches as they fell and stacked them on the sidewalk.  The last guy directed traffic while holding the ladders.

We passed again after an hour and the crew had moved a little further down the street.  There was no evidence of any accidents and work was proceeding apace.

What I saw this morning

3:20AM, Saint Charles Avenue, New Orleans, Louisiana.

The last streetcar rolls through the night along the neutral ground that separates inbound and outbound automobile traffic.  The car is brightly lit, its windows open to the breeze.  Every well worn, wooden seat is full with people either stoically sitting bolt upright, leaning together in tight, animated conversation, or nodding in the half dreams of the contentedly exhausted.  The headlight illuminates the grass as the wheels grate the rails.  The muffled sound of transit passes along the street, approaching and receding, moving.  Friday seeps into Saturday. Next car: one hour.

Taxi cabs inch along the pavement trawling for passengers lost and in search of a drive train.  Pedestrians walk the sidewalk, to and fro, woozy and enchanted in the early summer, pre-dawn humidity.  Seventy-five degrees Fahrenheit and balmy, the air is still save the intermittent chatter of cicadas and humanity.  Streetlights and neon dim all but the brightest stars that persist in punctuating the night sky.

Ice cubes sparkle and clink after three AM, bright spots of crystal in a warm gloom.  Talk winds down as some sleepy heads head bedways along elliptical routes.  A few stalwarts order another round as they wait for the next street car home.  The New Orleans night is quieter, not still, still not yet asleep.  The pulse has slowed, the murmur subsided but still going.  The night keeps flowing till daybreak and then it will quicken anew.

Settling in

I don't usually like to plug my other endeavors on the Dot Matrix, but as further proof that I am permanently relocated and committed, I have changed my role at examiner.com.  Instead of being Boston's Fringe Neighborhood Examiner, a title I never felt entirely comfortable with, I am now New Orleans' Parks and Open Spaces Examiner.  

As I commented on yesterday, I appreciate a smidge of structure in order to produce and I figured describing the many public parks and neutral grounds would be a nice track for me to follow.  I love to go out exploring and I am interested in the civic amenities New Orleans offers.  One of the first things I noticed about New Orleans' parks is that, unlike Boston, the mayor's name isn't plastered on every sign and umbrella and trash can.  Even much-maligned Mayor Nagin had more class and less hubris than Boston's Mayor Menino.  In Boston, you can't go anywhere without seeing Mayor Menino's name inscribed on some piece of infrastructure, no matter how humble.  I have yet to see newly installed Mayor Landrieu's name anywhere beyond the pages of the Times-Picayune.  I like that.  I like it a lot.

I could just write willy-nilly, whatever comes to mind, and that is often my modus operandi.  I've been known to think of the posts contained on the Matrix as jazz riffs; I rarely know where I am going to end after I start.  This whale-may-care attitude was compromised a bit when I took my motorcycle journey between Boston and New Orleans.  During the trip, I chronicled my impressions left over after ten hours of cross country motorcycling (first installment here).  That saga ended on May 7.  May 8 was my first fully fledged day in the Crescent City and it provided a leitmotif that I hope will stamp every following encounter between myself and the City Care Forgot.  

I feel remarkably carefree.  I am working part time in my field and doing some freelance work for pocket money.  I have little inclination to get into a daily grind, though I realize that is probably in the cards.   At the moment, I am content exploring my new surroundings.  My creative juices are churning, the sap is rising, the sky is the limit even when daily thunderheads rain on my personal parade.  The sun always comes out at storm's end and, while I get wet, I have yet to be dispirited.  

New Orleans is laid on fertile, alluvial soil.  It's climate encourages fecundity.  If am a seed, I will grow where planted.  I am from Connecticut and the Nutmeg State's official motto is "Qui Transtulit Sustinet."  Words to live by.  In English: "He Who Transplants Sustains."  I will be true to my roots in this new garden.  Louisiana's motto is: "Union, Justice, and Confidence."  I can live with that.  With Heaven's blessing, I hope to thrive.

And now, this essay has turned out not one bit as I originally intended.  Thank you for stopping by.   

New Orleans state of mind

I've been aware of both pre- and post-Katrina critiques of New Orleans culture and economy for a while.  The accepted truth is that it's a great place place to visit but not the best place to live in.  I guess I'll be both testing and, hopefully, disproving that hypothesis.  It seems like a better than good place for me to hang my hat and there are plenty of corroborative testimonies to back me up.

Let's say New Orleans has its warts, like most places and most people, and leave that at that.  It also has an undeniable charisma, which is more than most people or places can claim.

I stumbled across an article from three years ago by a former mayoral candidate.  There is no doubt this gentleman loves the Crescent City.  There is also no doubt for anyone with eyes to see that it has probably been a long, long time since New Orleans deserved its moniker "The City Care Forgot."

I'm not a man of strong opinions.  When I have them, I usually forget them in a day or two.  I intend to approach my sojourn in New Orleans with an eye toward citizenship.  I have a lot of learning to do as well as a lot of living.  New Orleans seems to be the best place to do both.  I identify the city's strengths with my strengths and I correlate its weaknesses with my own.  The two combined have always served me well so I figure the multiplier effect will be beneficial for all concerned.  Time will tell.

I'm not without a care in the world at the moment but I can't think of anything that's bothering me.  That, to me, is a New Orleans state of mind.  I have things that could worry me but I have no worries.  Strange and surreal and relaxing.  There are worse places to be, both physically and mentally.

Date Line: New Orleans.  Saturday, June 12, 2010 AD/CE, Quartedi, 24 Prairial CCXVIII, the day of Caille-Lait, (Bedstraw in English).

A last Boston bath

What would you do if you only had two weeks left in Boston?

I walked a few blocks from my house to Carson Beach and then walked the rest of the way along the tideline to Castle Island on the tip of South Boston.  I figure this will be one of the last times I'll be able to feel sand and broken bits of granite pebbles and shells under my bare feet.  There don't seem to be many (any?) beaches in New Orleans.

High temps in the air yesterday were seventy-two degrees bit the surf in Dorchester Bay was as bath-like as the late spring Atlantic ever is in New England.  I couldn't say it was cold.  Rather, it was brisk and refreshing.  It felt like home and in a month or two it won't be much warmer.  It felt like the beach from the halcyon days of my youth.  New England Atlantic: blue as a slab of gray steel and as welcoming as flint and puddleglum: may children forever play in your spray.

It is a far, far different and more sparkling world than that carved out by muddy Ole Man River.

At Castle Island I had a lunch of $1.60 hot dog's at Sullivan's and I walked around the fort and watched the airplanes coast down to landing across the harbor.

There are other things to do these last two weeks, but this was a pleasant thing to do to start ticking down the list.

Baby Love

I've never had to keep track of when the last was that a stranger called me "Baby" or "Babe" or "Love."  In  New England, this just doesn't happen.  Here in New Orleans, it happens two or three times a day during common exchanges.

I had lunch at Ted's Frostop on South Claiborne today.

Regular readers will know that I don't eat a lot of hamburgers, though I started enjoying them weekly at the Banshee before I left Boston.  I was a little hesitant to order a hamburger at Frotstop but the menu came to my rescue.  My lunch was red beans and rice for $2.99 and a large root beer.  The beans came with some kind of patty on top.  It wasn't meat but, rather, some kind of dark, spicy pancake.  Whatever it was, it was delicious.  I was there a little before noon so it wasn't crowded: me, a pair of cops, a couple of construction workers, and two chaps who looked like stock brokers. No women except behind the counter.  One of them called out to me, "Number Zero Six.  Here's your beans, Babe."

I looked at apartments today.  I asked the realtor after the second one if it was a typical apartment.  "There's no such thing as typical in New Orleans," she replied.  I chuckled and had to agree. 

For the same price that I'm paying in Dorchester, I'll be getting about a third more space.  The lady of the house and I were concerned that we have too many things.  We don't have a lot of furniture, but we've filled up the floor space of our Dot three-decker and neither of us can abstract how much a square foot contains without seeing it.  No worries ahead.

I've seen four different dwellings.  The first was a kind of little, stand-alone house in the back yard of a bigger building.  Nix to that one. The owner of the front house wanted all the yard to herself and was building a hot tub outside the renter's bedroom window.  The second was two stories at the front of the house with access to a long porch in back running along the former slaves' quarters and serving as a fire escape.  Thumbs up for the front porches on both floors.  That was on Terpsichore Street, named after the muse of dance.  

The third was in the rear "slaves' quarters."  It was a nice, if cramped seeming, space but  the porch (it was on the second story) felt very soft under it's peeling paint.  Not interested.  The fourth was half of a "double," that is half of a doublewide shotgun shack up in Riverbend.  That was really nice and I was torn because I like the Riverbend neighborhood and I liked the apartment, which has a skylit loft in the back room, but I would love to have an address on Terpsichore Street.  That, and the park in Coliseum Square is lovely.

We are going to look at some more on Thursday.  I followed the realtor between locations and she took me down a part of Prytania Street I hadn't been on before.  I now know where the Prytania Theater is.  My leader apologized after we arrived at the final destination.  She said, "I've never been on a motorcycle and I realize I just led you down some very bumpy roads."  I said it was no problem.  She saw me jostling around in her rear view mirror.  Maybe she heard me exclaim, "Jeez Louise!" over a particuarly bone-rattling stretch.

I went to library today to read the Yellow Pages.  Employment agencies don't do a lot of outdoor advertising in New Orleans so I wanted to see who could help me find a job.  If anyone needs a medical coder or biller or office manager, let me know.   I'll be available on June 11.

362 miles more: Close to Sunshine

It's a good thing I'm not in a rush.  I left Fort Payne, after taking pictures of the Alabama museum (the band, not the state) at 7:30 this morning.  At 5:30 this afternoon, I pulled into the town of Atmore, a stones throw from the Florida border.  This is my trip's penultimate day.

The timber industry is alive and well in Alabama.  I traveled through pine country for the most part and logging trucks were the most common vehicles on the road.  I passed one stack of tree trunks shorn of their branches that were piled into a spiral bigger than Boston City Hall.  The landscape is filled with evidence of forest management, both wild and tame.  I passed acres that had obviously been harvested and stands of trees that had obviously been planted in rows though they were a decade or so old.

Alabama is very pretty, like everywhere I've been, each place in its own way.  There were fewer houses than anywhere else along my route.  I passed through Montgomery, the capital, but otherwise I was in out of the way places and I was surprised not only by all the wood harvesting but by the factories I passed.  Some were textile mills and some were lumber yards, others I have no idea what they were; vast, corrugated metal buildings with cryptic names, some of them Chinese-seeming, are plopped in the middle of nowhere.

Barbecue restaurants are popular and convenience stores stock bags of locally boiled green peanuts next to the cash register.  The farther I go, the more people want to know where I'm from.  They say I have an accent.  I tell them I'm from Boston and the farther I go, the more flabbergasted the reactions.  "That's a long trip."  Yes.  "Welcome to the South."  Thank you.

Here are the counties I passed through:  I started in DeKalb and after that I passed through Etowah, Calhoun, Talladega, Coosa, Elmore, Montgomery, Butler, Conecuh, and I'm now in Escambia.  Here are some towns I saw:  Rainbow City, Talladega, Sylacauga, Weoka, Wetumpka, Sandy Ridge Georgiana. Evergreen, Castleberry, Brewton, Flowmaton, and Atmore.  Evocative names.  Beautiful places.  I wish I had time to explore them more and know them better.

Here's how I did for gasoline:  From Fort Payne, I traveled another 39 miles to Leesburg (84 miles total since the last fill up); I bought 1.45 gallons for $3.96 ($2.92/gal.  I pressed the premium button by mistake).  I traveled 104 miles to Rockford and purchased 1.26 gallons for $3.50 ($2.74/gal.  I had to pre-pay and three-fifty seemed a reasonable estimate).  99 miles later in Greenville I bought 2.19 gallons for $6.34 ($2.89/gal).  In Flowmaton, the odometer read 99 miles and I filled up with 1.34 gallons for $3.90 ($2.89/gal again).  I am now in Atmore and the odometer reads 34 additional miles.

Atmore is a nice little town.  Like many hereabouts, the train runs right along Main Street.  This is the first town where the commercial architecture reminds me of New Orleans.  The two story buildings like the bank and the hair salon have roofed balconies on the second floor and it is all supported by wrought iron gimcrackery.  Atmore is the county seat and I've learned that when a town has a county courthouse you can expect some life in it.  Towns left to their own devices tend to be shells of their former selves, a collection of empty storefronts built in the 1920s.  Atmore has a few restaurants, a coffee shop, a vintage movie theater (The Strand; Iron Man 2 opens tomorrow) and a few businesses beyond Dollar General and a gas station.

I'm about 200 miles from New Orleans, a straight shot along the Gulf Coast.  I may linger in Biloxi but if the past is any guide, moving from Point A to journey's end should take most of the day even without much dilly-dallying.

The mill's not grindin'

The mills in Dorchester aren't grinding.  They've been turned into apartments and some studio-residences reserved for artists.  The collapse of the local manufacturing economy wasn't a shipwreck for Dorchester, though it certainly hasn't always been smooth sailing.

There are still a number of small machine shops in business but no small factories that I can see.  The chocolate industry dominated Lower Mills for two centuries.  People may be making whoopie in Lower Mills but there aren't any confectioners.  All that's left are the beautiful Victorian factory buildings, which are a picturesque legacy.

Jobs around the corner from one's home would be nice but in the new economy, Carney Hospital provides the local jobs that are in demand at this point in the 21st century.  Medical Billers be warned:  If you want to live in Lower Mills because you think billing and coding jobs are available via Carney, they aren't.  All the billing is centralized with another hospital in the Caritas Christi system.  Carney operations get coded at St. Elizabeth's, far away and off the MBTA rail grid.    

This may be a good reason for medical administration folk to live in Brighton.  I haven't been to that part of Boston too often but it seems to be a good enough reason.  Of course, the location of jobs doesn't guarantee that practitioners will live within walking distance.  I don't think many doctors or surgeons live in Lower Mills.  I do think a reasonable number of barbers call Lower Mills home.

Dot block rebellion

Like many things, it's not entirely clear to me what's going on at Four Corners this Saturday (March 13) at 5PM.  Though the Four Corners Action Coalition has organized something they call a rebellion, it seems to be a more usual protest, albeit one that includes a walking tour and a multimedia performance art piece.

And that is what makes Dorchester one of Boston's more surprising places.  Better known for criminal transgressions, Dorchester is a place of remarkable creativity.  The neighborhood has been remaking itself continually since it agreed to be annexed into the greater metropolis. No one will be taking a duck tour to Four Corners anytime soon and not just because it's not near the water.  That doesn't mean it's not a vibrant community in which people tangle the weft of their lives into the woof of the surrounding infrastructure.

21 Bullard Street is located on the slopes of picturesque Mount Bowdoin.  While the neighborhood may have seen more spendthrift days, the community is alive and well and rallying.  If you are interested, and you should be, the tour starts at this address at 5:00 and ends at the same place.  Food, music, video and insight will follow.

Thanks to Boston Indymedia for the tip off.

Dot manners

Dorchester gentlemen are known all over Boston for their savoir faire.  Sometimes though, some mealy mouthed schlub from another neighborhood shows up and does his best to spoil Dot's well earned reputation.  Good women know Dorchester men are the pillars upon which Boston is held high.  They make attractive mates not just for their good looks but for their virtuous dispositions.

So I was at the Harp and Bard this evening when some pie-eyed rake who had a few too many Bud Lights under his belt leered at one of his fellow patrons and commented, as a kind of introduction, "You have nice breasts."  His Hyde Park accent was unmistakable.  If you closed your eyes, you would picture a young man who may grow up to be mayor of this city once he learns his manners.

The TVs didn't suddenly switch to static, but the conversation around the bar did come to a standstill.   In the sudden hush, one of the old timers at the corner by the lottery ticket machine spoke up.  "Stop right there, chum," he commanded.  "There are ladies present, as you obviously know.  We expect you to behave accordingly."  The rake glared and the other older gents at the corner stood up and shifted on the balls of their feet.  "Apologize," the old timer commanded, "Apologize and make your way home.  We don't cotton to tomfoolery or tom catting around Savin Hill."

The malefactor mumbled his apology and stumbled out onto Dot Ave, presumably to hail a cab.  A delegation from the corner made their way to the young woman's bar stool.  Tom doffed his cap and said, "On behalf of all of us, ma'am and the reputation of good men in Dorchester and Hyde Park, heck the reputation of all the good men in Boston, I offer my most sincere apologies and I promise such a rude compliment will never again be heard here in this room. It is plain to all who can see that your beauty comes from your eyes."

Thoroughly embarrassed by all the attention, the young woman thanked the dignitaries and asked them to return to their seats.

A tip of the fedora to Percy Trout for today's illustration.

Walking, eating, shopping

I checked out the book Boston Neighborhoods by Lynda Morganroth yesterday from the Mission Hill library.  For whatever reason, it was filed on the Military History shelf, right next to Naval History.

This is a tourist guide advising where to find picturesque walks, ethnic restaurants and reasonably eclectic boutiques that you can't find in suburban shopping malls.  The BPL edition is copyrighted 2002 and it's surprising how quickly it has gone out of date.  Not the feel for each neighborhood, but how many businesses have gone out of business.  Like any of these guides, it is a time capsule preserving what happened to be around when the author was observing.

Ms. Morganroth is an amenable observer.  Her observations in the South Boston/Dorchester chapter are accurate in spirit and she seems to have actually walked around and enjoyed the details of the neighborhoods.  She is spot on enough about Dot that she's inspired me to take a trip to Somerville's Union Square to see what I can see this weekend.  I always like to take the bus, after all, even if I don't do it as much as would be good for my soul.

Why I want Walmart

Dorchester lacks two things: a Walmart and a comic book store.  It lacks some other things too but I notice these two most often and for opposite reasons.

Walmart would mop up the competition in Dorchester the way it has killed innumerable small downtowns across the country.  Whatever snob appeal not having a Walmart lends to Dot, and there aren't a lot of snobs to appeal to, the combination of low prices and exhaustive selection would satisfy a need that is  only partially met by local, vest pocket storefront merchants.  Make is a Super Walmart with the supermarket/department store combo including organic produce...Dorchester doesn't have enough empty land for the parking lot to serve this big box.  That's probably part of what keeps America's biggest retailer away.

Say what you will about supporting Chinese industry, selling ticky-tacky crap that falls apart ,and undercutting small business people; the latter are doing the former two things but without economies of scale.  I'm know I wouldn't mind cutting out my trip time and/or gas expense to buy a shirt and tie in one box for $10.

The lack of a Walmart is a mystery.  The lack of a comic book store is a relief.

The nearest real comic shop is at Coolidge Corner as the crow flies, the kind of shop that has old issues for a dollar in boxes and offers last month's comics at half price, the kind of shop that sells nothing but comics, the kind of shop where the conversations are about whether Batman could beat Spiderman.  Dorchester doesn't have that kind of shop because Dorchester doesn't have a critical mass of fanboys with disposable income and nothing better to do than hang around the comics store speculating what the touch of a woman may be like.

There are college students in Dorchester and there are arrested adolescents, there are plenty of dreamers and there are plenty of readers.  What there aren't is many people who live odd niche hobbies that are supposedly cool.  There aren't a lot of people with too much time to fritter away.  There is room for fun and games in Dorchester and there is room for frivolity, but most of it is of the home grown sort, the communal sort: porch front conversations, stickball in the street, street wide snow shoveling parties, barbecues.  I don't want to paint it to Norman Rockwell, but it is family friendly.  

Coolidge Corner has a comic shop.  Harvard Square has two.  Allston Village has one.  Kenmore Square has one.  Newbury Comics is a different kind of store.  No real fanboy goes there for comics except as last resort, though it is good for collectibles.  Dorchester isn't like those places.  It's demographic skews older and harder working.

If Walmart did decide to locate a store in Dorchester I would welcome it with the caveat that a comic store would open next door to mix the good with the bad, and I'm not hinting which I think is which.  I plead neutrality to gentrification in whatever form it takes.  That said, I can't imagine a photo like the one above being taken outside the McDonald's in Codman Square.  That's pure Walmart and pure comic book fan convention.  I can imagine it being taken in front of the Corita Gas Tank, however.

Put Dot in your pipe

If you wanted to mix a fine tobacco and give it a name that conjures contemplation and reflection, what would you call it?

If you wanted to brand a lifestyle that commends thinking deep thoughts while getting one's hands dirty not only in the realm of ideas but in the real world of rusty sewer pipes, what word sums that all up?  I've got a ready-made label for you, Buster.  Where I live, we call practical philosophers 'Dot Rats.'  If Voltaire were alive, he would agree.

Thinking deep thoughts, dreaming big dreams, wrestling joy from the barbs lobbed by ill-tempered slingers and archers, hearing God Himself call out in the rumble of the last train of the day headed back to the yard an hour and a  half after midnight, finding joy in the details that pile up to make a passing day...Buddy, that's the Dorchester way.  It may be esoteric to some but to Dorchesterites, that's how they get along.  You don't have to be religious to catch Dot spirit.  You just have to have an open eye, an open heart, and an open mind while you trudge down the slushy, gritty, January sidewalk that borders Dorchester Avenue and Washington Street and Geneva Avenue and Morton Street and Morrissey Boulevard and Gallivan Boulevard and Norfolk Street and Talbot Avenue and Columbia Road and Blue Hill Avenue and River Road.

You'll get your questions answered in Dorchester, Bub.  We're talking about Dorchester, Mass.  It's a part of Boston.  It's Boston's guts.  It's the part of the city where Boston keeps its nuts.  Two-fisted poets call Dorchester home, the kind of of fellows who can argue you out of a debate and knock some sense into your thick skull at the same time.  They will drink you under the table while sharing their lunch bucket packed at home with an extra slice of humble pie in case they meet somebody like you.

Pipe smokers say it isn't the nicotine that makes their tobacco worth smoking, it's the flavor.  Dorchesterites say something similar about their neighborhood.  It isn't the kicks that make Dorchester memorable, it's the nuances and top notes that make living here something to savor.  You can have your cake and dottle in Dorchester.  You can put it in your pipe and smoke it.  Sitting on a bench in Dorchester, the world is a wonder to contemplate, all the pieces in place, all the world a stage, all the gears meshed in perfect alignment, no thread out of place, a matrix...a darned Dot Matrix.

Rough and tumble, hale and hearty, Dorchester perseveres.

Imagine...

Imagine there's no Dorchester...

Hyde Park, Franklin Park and Grove Hall all contain beachfront property.  The distance to Quincy is unbridgeable, the Red Line to Braintree runs, like the Blue Line, under water.  There's no Southie because South Boston used to be part of Dorchester.

Boston is really, really crowded.  There is nowhere for 100,000 extra people to live except spread around the other neighborhoods.  That's a lot of spreading, one sixth the population.  The West End is now as crowded as Scollay Square.

The city's supply of natural gas is all stored in Chelsea and Everett.  There is a gas tank in Chelsea that is painted in a mural signed 'Corita' with Ho Chi Minh's profile hidden in its brushstrokes.  The best Vietnamese food is found in Chinatown, of all places.  The Green Line has Boston's most attractive trolleys in service because there isn't a Mattpan High Speed.  

That Dorchester aroma

When someone says something smells like Dorchester, they don't mean it smells like urine in a back alley.  They don't mean it smells like surreptitious marijuana being smoked behind a cupped hand at the Mattapan T stop either.  They don't mean it smells like overripe garbage dumped in an abandoned lot on a street few people travel.  They don't mean it smells like gunpowder.  They don't mean it smells like a paper mill and neither do they mean to say it smells like a chocolate factory.  Fish guts, rat droppings, deep fat fryer drippings, mold, industrial exhaust, dirty diapers, rotten fruit, sweat...you can smell these things in Dorchester, but other aromas linger in the air as well.

I was in a bakery in Concord this morning.  An older couple walked in as I was buying a buttered roll.  The lady said to the gentleman, "It smells just like Dorchester here."  They were from Adams Village.

I was in Flushing, Queens a month ago, in a Vietnamese neighborhood, reading the menu of a local pho restaurant.  An elderly Asian couple passed me and pushed open the door.  When the air from inside hit their faces they exchanged comments I didn't understand except for the word "Dorchester."  I impulsively said to them, "It smells like Dorchester?"  The man gave me a big grin and a thumbs-up followed by a Victory sign followed by a vigorously pumping thumbs-up again.  "Dorchester, Mass. A-Okay! Best pho number one!" he said in reply as he walked into the dining room.

We were in Topsfield, Mass., just passing through, but we needed a restroom so we stopped at a pizzeria for a soda and the chance to rest and relieve ourselves.  While sitting in a booth, we overheard some fellow, teenaged travellers.  The girls were all giggling, saying it smelled funny in Topsfield.  The boys played along, "It smells like s**t," they guffawed.  The girls agreed but they also said parts of Topsfield smelled like nothing at all.  "It's either nothing or s**t," one girl said.  One of the boys chimed in, "This doesn't smell like Dorchester."

In Wewoka, OK, of all places, I was in front of the public library a few years ago, before I even knew Dorchester was part of Boston.  I was still living in Connecticut at the time.  I was taking photographs when a passer-by stopped me.  He asked me to take his picture while posed like he was sleeping on a park bench.   I agreed but I asked why.  "Because," he said, "This pure air in front of this fine library reminds me of Dorchester, Mass.  I don't know why because no Dot library looks like this, but the whole communal knowledge of Wewoka is stored in this building the way the best knowledge in Boston is tucked away in Dot.  Plus, the wind off the plains smells so pretty it reminds me of home."  I took his picture and a few years later I moved to Dorchester.

It smells good here.

H+B: Heart plus Beauty

The new Harp and Bard logo is simple in its charms. Geometry turned to expression. Typeface manipulated to express more than the sum of its parts. Granted, we are not talking calligraphy here and anyone at the design shops downtown would look down their espresso-smudged noses at this, but this is the kind of logo that displays thoughtfulness rather than the current fashion. A little native ingenuity.

Someone had to sit down and obsess about the letters H&B. He or she had to smoosh the letters together and then, in a flash of insight, see the plus sign that joins them. Some simple ruler and compass moves later, followed by an application of India ink and voila: the modern Harp and Bard.

We'll see you on Thursday for Karoake.

The Lech Walesa Bridge

Motorists reaching the butt end of Morrissey Boulevard will find that construction is in progress on the Lech Walesa Bridge. It's understandable if you may not have heard of this bridge. It's not really as prominent a landmark as the Tobin and the Zakim Bridges. Its not as attractive as the footbridge in the Public Garden. In fact, the Lech Walesa Bridge isn't picturesque at all.

I doubt anyone has informed the former President of Poland, a renowned anti-communist and labor organizer, that Boston is home to a bridge named in his honor. It's nothing much to look at. In fact, if there weren't repairs going on, few people would know they were crossing the Lech Walesa Bridge. Because there is commonwealth-funded construction, there needs to be a sign describing what is done and what political authorities are responsible for this feat of civic engineering. The sign has raised awareness of Poland's post-glasnost politics.

Before the repaving, everyone thought of this as the overpass to get from Morrisey Blvd to that annoying Columbia Road rotary.

What majestic geographic feature does the Lech Walesa Bridge cross? Mount Vernon Street, a potholed, utilitarian, urban artery that connects the Harbor Point Shopping Center (a Shaw's supermarket and a liquor store) with the back side of the UMASS Boston Campus. The views from the bridge are as inspiring as its architechture. Function followed form in this case. The Lech Walesa Bridge is no Zakim. Nobody earned any overtime designing this gem. It is a featureless, by-the-numbers, concrete overpass. It was probably named Municipal Overpass #633 in the design stage but some bright legislator got the idea in his head that it would serve as a fitting tribute to the President of Poland.

On behalf of Dorchester as a whole, I would like to formally apologize to Lech Walesa. His life, its struggles, its successes and the effect he has had, not only in Poland but on the world community, deserves better than having his name plopped on any piece of infrastructure that happened to be unnamed at the time. It was only fate that this overpass didn't have a name attached to it. The unintended slight is nothing compared to the Mikhail Gorbachev Sewage Pumping Station located in Lower Mills. The Nelson Mandela Storm Grate on Van Winkle Street is another example of a poorly considered honor.

Dorchester is home to a Ronald Reagan Dog Walk, the Winston Churchill Aluminum Can Drop-Off Center, and the Buzz Aldrin Community Compost Heap. Dorchester knows how to recognize greatness. It's just a little fuzzy on how to commemorate it.