Smart Boys Live in Dorchester, Mass.
Smart boys live in Dorchester, Mass. They live there and learn there and they fall in love there. Mothers tell their sons that if they don’t clean their plates they won’t be able to play on the puddingstone after dinner. Dorchester boys study hard between bouts of playing in the parks. They do their homework and they work around the home. Many hands make light work in Dorchester, Mass. Chores make a smart boy whistle. Time flies when you are having fun, and Dorchester is the part of Boston that is freewheeling and carefree while being sober and thoughtful.
The prettiest girls live in Dorchester, Mass. They grow into the prettiest women in Boston. Great ideas are hatched in Dorchester and great inspiration is also. The neighborhood is composed of free verse without words. The people turn the art of living well into opera. People in Dorchester have strong lungs and broad shoulders. They can carry the high notes as well as they carry a tune, their toils, and their troubles with a shrug and a boast. They do it all with good cheer. Where people are happy, good things come without waiting. Life is a cabaret.
You don’t have to be a genius to stand out in Dorchester. Plenty of regular fellows get along very well. It doesn’t hurt to be bright and it doesn’t hurt to be honest. When you live in Dorchester, you have arrived. The welcome mat is always out, the porch lights are on, and neighbors keep an eye on one another. If you fall, you will be picked up.
Dorchester is called the Dot but it is more than a dot on a map. It is a big, varied place full of surprises where expectations are more than met. Cups spill over. There is plenty to do and there are plenty of plump, juicy berries to pluck off the bushes. Smart boys live in Dorchester. They launch careers, make a living, and marry pretty girls who become pretty women married to smart men. Love makes a community, even if it is only two on a mattress. Dorchester is full of mattresses in the sleeping quarters of its triple-decker apartment blocks.
Few thoroughfares run straight or long in Dorchester. Much like the course of any individual life, a route through Dorchester is full of one-way streets and dead ends and private ways. Dot Ave is an exception. It runs straight as a plumb line from downtown Bean Town, down Dorchester’s spine. It runs where it counts and pauses when it must, with a steady aim and a singular purpose, to the banks of the Neponset River where Boston ends and Milton begins. It is paradise found. Dot Ave progresses through physical space the way Dorchester’s spirit courses through history, undeterred from its target, a chain linking two anchors. Lower Mills is as bittersweet as baker’s chocolate. N’orchester is a hub of bustle and tongues.
Bright babies are born in Dorchester. They are the apple of their mother’s eyes and the twinkle in their grandparents’ eyes. They make proud papas weak in the knees. Good children are raised in Dorchester. They grow into responsible citizens. There is no handshake like a Dorchester handshake. Cash paid to a Dorchester native is money well spent on a job well done. The proof is in the puddingstone that juts in boulders out of the soil. Many pebbles can cohere. These are people who believe in being straight while allowing for natural deviations. They are on the level. When you deal with a man from the Dot you can be sure all the T’s will be crossed in red and there’s no fine print.
The best things in life are free. Dorchester is affordable. Smart boys live in Dorchester and they don’t regret it. They thrive in Dorchester. Smart girls do too. So can you. The Dot hits the spot more often than not. When you’re hot, you settle in Dorchester, Mass. The breeze of Dorchester Bay is refreshing.
Whalehead King has made his home in Dorchester, Mass., Boston’s biggest, most diverse, and best neighborhood. He views it all with a child’s eyes, full of wonder and delight. There is plenty to seduce a proper gentleman with an open mind and an open heart to succumb to Dorchester’s charms. Mr. King has designed a line of tee shirts that celebrate Boston, the MBTA Red Line, and Dorchester, in particular. He writes about Dorchester and he celebrates the many marvels he stumbles over. Whalehead King thinks the Dot is tops! If you do too, you should join the parade. All abooooard…Last stop: MATTAPAN.
www.whaleheadking.com
www.zazzle.com/whaleheadking
www.bostonnow.com/blogs/whaleheadking
Balaenius Rex!
Friday, November 09, 2007
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
A Slipstream Through Traffic
Our hero, on the littlest Ninja in Boston, slips through gridlock like a hot knife through butter. It is like Whalehead King, always known as a slippery character, has rubbed warm olive oil on the farings of his motorcycle to be able to flaunt traffic laws and conventions. Remember: in Massachusetts, lane splitting is legal. It is good to be eisw on of the littlest things on the road. All those scooterists and bicyclists are onto a secret, Whalehead King just does it a little bit better.. It may be a fallacy of numbers, but for now everything is working just A-okay for two-wheeled commuters. All you lemmings in your cars shouldn't get any bright ideas to spoil it for the rest of us who don't cotton to your climate-controlled ways.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Dot Update
Our man on the Dot has been busy. Check out the local news page of bostonnow.com to read his commentary on his newly adopted community on the right hand side. Forever out and about, even in a little smidge of Boston, Whalehead King has his eyes and ears and heart open and his wet finger in the wind.
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
Malibu Beach, Dorchester, MA
Malibu Beach is a bit of bay sandwiched between a stretch of six-lane Morrissey Boulevard and a fraction of eight-lane Interstate 93. It is a sandy stretch that surrounds a shallow body of water that has about twenty feet of extra beach at low tide. It isn’t the most romantic spot, but when love is in the air it is the perfect place to take a walk with a significant other and pitch woo.
Nothing about Malibu Beach resembles California except that there is air and water and sand and traffic. After dusk, the water sparkles with the refracted light of street lamps that line the highway and Morrissey Boulevard, headlights and taillights of passing cars stuck in traffic or zipping by, and the antique lamps that limn the walkway that circles three quarters of this inlet. The sidewalk that runs parallel to the beach is a linear park, part of the Boston Harborwalk’s Dorchester branch. Malibu Beach is part of the Savin Hill neighborhood’s many amenities, easily walked to from the T station on the Red Line or accessed by driving down Savin Hill Avenue, turning at Playstead Road and parking in the lot at McConnell Park.
The elbow where Playstead Road bends into Denny Street is a good place to start a romantic amble when the sun goes down. Intramural leagues use McConnell Park for Little League and softball games late into the night. Some games don’t start until after 9:00PM on weeknights. The play is high-spirited, well-mannered and orderly. Catch follows fly which leads to a tag or a run and everyone cheers, “Well done,” no matter which team is ahead. Sportsmanship, above all, is the goal of these contests. The powerful halogen bulbs suspended high over the diamonds light the fields as brightly as day but with deeper, more dramatic, crisp shadows. You can lean against the waist-high chain link fence and watch the good-natured clash of competitors go on for nine innings or just for half of one. A small dose of good clean fun refreshes one’s faith in the human spirit.
Between the parking lot and the beach is a playground where young families gather to enjoy the swings and slides and monkey bars. Toddlers and adolescents mingle with adults and everyone keeps an eye on everyone else. It is forums like this that produce cross-generational connections and where the blooms of youth are tendered under watchful, experienced eyes. Fights rarely break out and when they do, this is an area that polices itself. No blood is shed, no grudges are nursed and parties shake hands after a disagreement, agreeing that the other has a point and that fisticuffs or worse are not the best means to settle a dispute.
A little to the east of the playground, across a sidewalk and up a slight rise, is a monument to Savin Hill, which used to be called Rock Hill. The geographic formation formerly known as Rock Hill is just up Denny Street and a right turn on Grampian Way, which is a road that surrounds Savin Hill in an inner loop. A little to the east of the playground, across a sidewalk and up a slight rise is a boulder of gray rock surrounded by a cast iron, barred fence with spikes on top of the bars. This fence is forty-one inches tall, so it is more ornamental than forbidding. Anyone who wants to touch the rock can climb the fence if he or she is mindful of their crotch. Not many people climb the fence. There is no plaque or nameplate within or without the fence. There is story cast on a bronze plate that describes the reason this rock is so important it deserves to be set apart and protected from its surroundings.
From outside the fence, one admits the rock is noble and honorable and worthy of its special esteem. It is a piece of geology older than Shawmut. It is strong and true to its self. It rests contently, as only stone can, unmoving from its seat of respect within its stately, cast-iron fence. The rock accepts gazes of admiration from those who stop and wonder why such a large lump of puddingstone, as impressive as it may be, should be fenced of in such grandeur as if it were a statue of George Washington. Observers who do not know the rock’s history assume it has historical significance. They are right.
The rise on which the rock sits runs in a ridge next to the beach. There is a sidewalk along the ridge through the side yards of neighbors, and there is a sidewalk about five feet lower alongside, near where the sand starts. Where the two sidewalks converge there is a public bubbler pumping pure Boston Ale for the thirsty.
Be careful. The pressure in this bubbler is high. The spigots spout streams of transparent refreshment over the basins and onto an unwary drinkers pants right where they would prefer not to have a wet spot. The water out of the bubblers is cold and fresh, without impurities and plump on the tongue with full-bodied flavorless flavor. It is drinking water at its best, cleaner than clean, and it is part of the public supply available to all for free.
There are benches along the sidewalk that follows the contours of Malibu Beach. They are regularly spaced at convenient intervals for strollers who want to rest their dogs and enjoy the view. Most people sit when the drawbridge that spans the mouth of the cove opens to let boats moor at the Dorchester Yacht Club. The bridge goes up and halts traffic on Morrissey Boulevard, stopping cars for a mile at minimum and the edge of Malibu Beach is lit with brake lights like a halted parade of ladybugs.
Couples take their ease along Malibu Beach in the lazy fashion of people who have nothing better to do. People come here to spend quality time with their significant other in a place where the ugly infrastructure of civilization comingles with nature. The cove is surrounded by high-speed roads and major automobile arteries. There is nothing picturesque about Malibu Beach but the beach. Sitting on a bench, enjoying the horizon, you are reminded that you are in a city, a member of a human community full of commotion and distractions. You are confronted by two types of endless tides: the highway and the surf.
The susurrus of wheels whizzing on pavement and the low, lazy slap of Malibu beach’s weak-fingered waves makes the perfect, unobtrusive background noise over which to whisper poetry in the dark. The antique street lamps that stand between pairs of benches along the walk bathe the concrete paving and the benches in a welcoming glow. They erase imperfections and paint faces ideal. The ambient soundtrack, the ambient light, the scent of ocean, good company; forces converge to make romance bloom and honeymoons sweet.
You can see scores of couples arm-in-arm every evening along Malibu Beach’s promenade. Their heads are leaned close together past where their shoulders touch. They use their free hands to caress their companion’s midriff or cheek. They whisper and quietly chuckle in response. They mind only the business that exists between them. A couple will invariably stop at bench. They will sit closely together, nuzzle, kiss, look out over the water, cuddle closer and kiss again. The most common words overheard at Malibu Beach are, “I love you.”
Nothing about Malibu Beach resembles California except that there is air and water and sand and traffic. After dusk, the water sparkles with the refracted light of street lamps that line the highway and Morrissey Boulevard, headlights and taillights of passing cars stuck in traffic or zipping by, and the antique lamps that limn the walkway that circles three quarters of this inlet. The sidewalk that runs parallel to the beach is a linear park, part of the Boston Harborwalk’s Dorchester branch. Malibu Beach is part of the Savin Hill neighborhood’s many amenities, easily walked to from the T station on the Red Line or accessed by driving down Savin Hill Avenue, turning at Playstead Road and parking in the lot at McConnell Park.
The elbow where Playstead Road bends into Denny Street is a good place to start a romantic amble when the sun goes down. Intramural leagues use McConnell Park for Little League and softball games late into the night. Some games don’t start until after 9:00PM on weeknights. The play is high-spirited, well-mannered and orderly. Catch follows fly which leads to a tag or a run and everyone cheers, “Well done,” no matter which team is ahead. Sportsmanship, above all, is the goal of these contests. The powerful halogen bulbs suspended high over the diamonds light the fields as brightly as day but with deeper, more dramatic, crisp shadows. You can lean against the waist-high chain link fence and watch the good-natured clash of competitors go on for nine innings or just for half of one. A small dose of good clean fun refreshes one’s faith in the human spirit.
Between the parking lot and the beach is a playground where young families gather to enjoy the swings and slides and monkey bars. Toddlers and adolescents mingle with adults and everyone keeps an eye on everyone else. It is forums like this that produce cross-generational connections and where the blooms of youth are tendered under watchful, experienced eyes. Fights rarely break out and when they do, this is an area that polices itself. No blood is shed, no grudges are nursed and parties shake hands after a disagreement, agreeing that the other has a point and that fisticuffs or worse are not the best means to settle a dispute.
A little to the east of the playground, across a sidewalk and up a slight rise, is a monument to Savin Hill, which used to be called Rock Hill. The geographic formation formerly known as Rock Hill is just up Denny Street and a right turn on Grampian Way, which is a road that surrounds Savin Hill in an inner loop. A little to the east of the playground, across a sidewalk and up a slight rise is a boulder of gray rock surrounded by a cast iron, barred fence with spikes on top of the bars. This fence is forty-one inches tall, so it is more ornamental than forbidding. Anyone who wants to touch the rock can climb the fence if he or she is mindful of their crotch. Not many people climb the fence. There is no plaque or nameplate within or without the fence. There is story cast on a bronze plate that describes the reason this rock is so important it deserves to be set apart and protected from its surroundings.
From outside the fence, one admits the rock is noble and honorable and worthy of its special esteem. It is a piece of geology older than Shawmut. It is strong and true to its self. It rests contently, as only stone can, unmoving from its seat of respect within its stately, cast-iron fence. The rock accepts gazes of admiration from those who stop and wonder why such a large lump of puddingstone, as impressive as it may be, should be fenced of in such grandeur as if it were a statue of George Washington. Observers who do not know the rock’s history assume it has historical significance. They are right.
The rise on which the rock sits runs in a ridge next to the beach. There is a sidewalk along the ridge through the side yards of neighbors, and there is a sidewalk about five feet lower alongside, near where the sand starts. Where the two sidewalks converge there is a public bubbler pumping pure Boston Ale for the thirsty.
Be careful. The pressure in this bubbler is high. The spigots spout streams of transparent refreshment over the basins and onto an unwary drinkers pants right where they would prefer not to have a wet spot. The water out of the bubblers is cold and fresh, without impurities and plump on the tongue with full-bodied flavorless flavor. It is drinking water at its best, cleaner than clean, and it is part of the public supply available to all for free.
There are benches along the sidewalk that follows the contours of Malibu Beach. They are regularly spaced at convenient intervals for strollers who want to rest their dogs and enjoy the view. Most people sit when the drawbridge that spans the mouth of the cove opens to let boats moor at the Dorchester Yacht Club. The bridge goes up and halts traffic on Morrissey Boulevard, stopping cars for a mile at minimum and the edge of Malibu Beach is lit with brake lights like a halted parade of ladybugs.
Couples take their ease along Malibu Beach in the lazy fashion of people who have nothing better to do. People come here to spend quality time with their significant other in a place where the ugly infrastructure of civilization comingles with nature. The cove is surrounded by high-speed roads and major automobile arteries. There is nothing picturesque about Malibu Beach but the beach. Sitting on a bench, enjoying the horizon, you are reminded that you are in a city, a member of a human community full of commotion and distractions. You are confronted by two types of endless tides: the highway and the surf.
The susurrus of wheels whizzing on pavement and the low, lazy slap of Malibu beach’s weak-fingered waves makes the perfect, unobtrusive background noise over which to whisper poetry in the dark. The antique street lamps that stand between pairs of benches along the walk bathe the concrete paving and the benches in a welcoming glow. They erase imperfections and paint faces ideal. The ambient soundtrack, the ambient light, the scent of ocean, good company; forces converge to make romance bloom and honeymoons sweet.
You can see scores of couples arm-in-arm every evening along Malibu Beach’s promenade. Their heads are leaned close together past where their shoulders touch. They use their free hands to caress their companion’s midriff or cheek. They whisper and quietly chuckle in response. They mind only the business that exists between them. A couple will invariably stop at bench. They will sit closely together, nuzzle, kiss, look out over the water, cuddle closer and kiss again. The most common words overheard at Malibu Beach are, “I love you.”
Monday, September 03, 2007
The Whale Tosses Its Tail
Whalehead King has beached in Boston. He has landed in North Dorchester, just south and inland of Columbia Point. He lives on Sydney Street in Fourth Haven, Dorchester, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A., Planet Earth, Solar System, Milky Way.
One thinks cosmic thoughts surrounded by Vietnamese Buddhists on a sultry, Dorchester night while they stain the bare lumber bannisters that border thier front steps. Plastic boddhisatvas are glued to car dashboards and hang from rear-view mirrors. So many souls along Sydney Street are considering their karma, everyone else is drawn in the whorl. Sydney Street is a quiet, contemplative street.
One thinks cosmic thoughts surrounded by Vietnamese Buddhists on a sultry, Dorchester night while they stain the bare lumber bannisters that border thier front steps. Plastic boddhisatvas are glued to car dashboards and hang from rear-view mirrors. So many souls along Sydney Street are considering their karma, everyone else is drawn in the whorl. Sydney Street is a quiet, contemplative street.
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