CBD, Canal Street, Tulane, etc.

Between Coliseum and  Camp Streets: Neutral Ground.

I was talking to a woman today and I asked, "Were all these tall buildings occupied six years ago?"

"No," she answered.  "They were empty when the levees broke."

"Who would build a skyscraper and abandon it?" I asked.

"These were built during the oil boom in the 70s.  When the 80s came, the companies moved out of town.  The last were gone in the early 90s at the latest."

That's a lot of architecture to just get up and abandon after building it.  It also explains why renovations aren't proceeding swiftly.  The buildings were empty to begin with.  They look like they were built in the 70s.  These would be unloved, ugly buildings even if they were humming with activity.

It makes me wonder:  A real estate market seemed so hot that developers erected these office towers but it left behind husks a mere ten or twenty years later.  So quickly that the Central Business District and O'Keefe Avenue and the area around Tulane Hospital seem like parts of a ghost town.  What went wrong?  What went so wrong that something new was abandoned so quickly.  What went wrong that the money moved to Houston, from what I understand.  Houston?  I wouldn't bring a dog to Houston let alone a corporate headquarters.  Maybe that's why I write a blog rather than run an oil company.  There are worse fates.

Orange you glad

I was on the Orange Line around 1:00 (PM, naturally) wondering what to do with my afternoon. I'm tired of the dash and flash of modern life, the little gadgets, the virtual everything, the constant connection and interuption and stimuli. I'm just on the Orange Line, happy to be riding those analog rails, knowing full well that my day will end in digitization and high definition.

Then it hits me. The answer is all around me staring me in my twenty-first century face. The chat room is full and my buddy list can do well enough without me for awhile. I should power down and pucker up. I should deliver the original instant message. I should buy a pack of gum and make some face time.

Thanks for the suggestion Dentyne! The lady of the house is happy I took your advice.

Resistence is Futile

We are sure that in as geek-heavy a city as Boston this observation has been made before but this is an acromymn that bears repeating. The Borg are a race of sentient machines that devour organic life in thier path for thier own, group-think purposes in the Star Trek mythos (the Next Generation). The letters arrange quite nicely if a Bostonian travels from Wonderland to State Street to Downtown Crossing to Park Street Station for a trip out to Riverside.

Blue-Orange-Red-Green. B-O-R-G.

Of course life lived pressed close to the flesh on the MBTA is more free and lively than that conjectured in sci-fi telenovelas. Isn't it Charlie? If there can be a Silver Line, can there be more than one Borg?