Long stations for short trolleys

I wonder why the Green Line stations along Huntington Avenue are so long?  Was there really a time when three- and four-car trolleys plied between Lechmere and Forest Hills?  The underground stations have as much length so this systemic design must be for a reason.

The Red and Orange Line platforms are a perfect fit for their trains.  I haven't been on the Blue for awhile, but I assume they are likewise.  If I recall, Aquarium is very long, but they just bought some new Blue Line trains so the new models may fit now.

A two-car train is slow going down Huntington and South Huntington Streets as it is.  I can only imagine the effects on traffic of a four-car model going through Jamaica Plain.  Not that it wouldn't be good.  I'd visit JP more often.

Thanks to Dr. Hermes for today's illustration.

Field's Corner upskirt re-design

The Obama administration has just released funds for a shovel-ready redesign of the Field's Corner station on the MBTA Red Line.  Official details are reportedly scheduled to be released next week, but an anonymous source confirms that MBTA engineers, under direct orders from the Governor, have studied a Japanese prototype design and green lighted the project for immediate construction.

An anonymous source from the Governor's office confirms. "We're behind this all the way.  It will create jobs, not only in traditional construction trades and for unionized track layers and electrical switchmen.  There's a big fiberglass fabrication budget that goes along with this design.  The benefits are enormous."

An anonymous source at the MBTA stated, "While Field's Corner is one of the system's newer stations, this represents a serious visual upgrade that will focus interest on the Red Line's lesser used branch and increase tourist ridership.  The 'gawk-factor' alone is expected to increase ridership between JFK/UMASS and Ashmont by 30%. "

An anonymous source at a local Dorchester redevelopment agency said, "This is the best news Field's Corner has had in years.  It's a cheeky project that emphasizes that Dorchester is not just about working for a living but also about having fun while you're doing it."

An anonymous operative from the Mayor's office wanted to be kept off the record until the Mayor released an official opinion.  She did scribble the following on a napkin: "If it is already decided, His Honor supports it and his involvement will be traced back to its roots accordingly."

So, what's the new design?  You saw it here first.  Special thanks to the MBTA engineer who leaked this brunette bombshell.  

A tip of the fedora to Dr. Hermes for providing the photographic evidence that such a thing can exist.  Some people would say something like this could only exist in Japan.  If the MBTA has its way, it will be in Field's Corner by the end of 2013.  That's assuming the federal stimulus package doesn't run out of funds.  Pure Dot magic.

Obsessions

Mrs. Eufalia Lindsay told me the following story.  She and her son have been undergoing counseling for a reason I am not privileged to know because it isn't really relevant.  Mrs. Lindsay attended group therapy sessions at a large area hospital until she decided to quit last week.  Two other area mothers were also undergoing this therapy and Mrs. Lindsay reports they've discontinued treatment as well.

The psychiatrist sat in the middle and addressed each of the mothers and their children, "You all have obsessive desires and you have subliminally grafted your personality disorders onto your children." he said.

The psychiatrist first addressed Patient A and her daughter: "You have a fixation of food," he told the chubby lady from Lower Mills, "This is why you named your daughter Candy."  The girl looked up at her mother and asked, "Is that true?"  The mother said, "No."

The psychiatrist turned to Patient B and her daughter: "You are fixated with money.  You called your daughter Penny because you can't think of anything but money."  This family lives on Jones Hill and the mother walks every day from Jerome Street to the Upham's Corner rail station passing Sovereign Bank, Bank of America and Citizens Bank.  Penny looked down at her feet.  "You do say we can't afford things, Mommy," she said.  Her mother glowered at the psychiatrist and said to her daughter, "We can't afford a pony but we're not hurting."

Mrs. Lindsay had heard enough.  Before a snap, quack diagnosis could be applied to her, she took her son's hand.  "Come now, Dick.  It's time for us to head home," she said.

Mrs. Lindsay and her family live on the street that runs parallel to Shawmut Station and, like the other mothers, she does have an obsession.  It is an obsession with her surroundings.  It is an obsession with Dorchester.  The Lindsay family gets it mail delivered to their address on Nixon Street.

Boston's best pho

Overheard outside Wagamama in the Prudential Center...  An ebullient, slender, middle-aged woman with short-cropped, blond hair was rubbing her midriff while carrying a Vineyard Vines shopping bag.  Her companion was a sullen, doughy twenty-something.  Their looks were similar enough that a mother-daughter assumption is justified.

Mother:  "That was the most delicious noodle soup.  I don't know where you can get such good soup anywhere else."  She patted her small paunch while she said this.

The daughter rolled her eyes, looking downward in the direction of Olympia Sports:  "There are a dozen places in Dorchester.  Hell, half a dozen are in Field's Corner."

Mother:  "I've never been to Dorchester."

Daughter:  "You don't even know the Red Line goes past South Station."
  

Two Dorchesters

I've been thinking about a statistic I read in the Globe recently.  I'm not going to look it up or link to it because it's a stat that's already been stuck in my mind.  How accurate it may be, I haven't researched, but some variation is part of common, ingrained perception and, quite likely, part of common reality in this part of Boston.

The average household income in Dorchester is $28,000 a year.

Whether that sounds like a lot or a little depends on where you begin to measure.  For our regular readers who live in Hinton, West Virginia, it's a little for the Boston area.  Very little.

Living where I do, by the JFK/UMASS MBTA station (that's the subway to you Hintonites), I don't see any abject poverty.  Believe me: $28,000 will not support a nuclear family in Boston.  The rent on a two bedroom apartment will consume half that and more, not including utilities.  This may explain the lack of nuclear families in Dorchester, but again...I don't see a lot of single parent households where I live, not that I'm taking a detailed census or spying on my neighbors.

Some parts of Dorchester are like the part I live in.  Adams Village, Neponset, Pope's Hill, Ashmont Hill, Jones Hills, Mount Bowdoin, the Polish Triangle, Point Norfolk, Lower Mills; they are all fairly stable, middle class, whatever middle class means.  Let's say the people I pass on the street don't seem to be going without.  They are also primarily located near train stations and they are also predominantly white.

I do not like to dwell on racial differences on the Matrix.  I usually make it a point to avoid discussing them, but they exist.  Different parts of Dorchester have different ethnicities, to be sure,  The same differences in skin color and income that demark other places also occur in the Dot.  It isn't pretty, but it is true.  Sometimes it's good, sometimes not.  Again, it depends on where you start to measure.

If I looked at the tax records for my neighborhood, I suspect the average income isn't dragging the neighborhood average downwards.  This part of Dot is full of college students working part time jobs, but they are paying market rate rents and living, as some scholars do, at the local bars soaking up cheap food and suds.  Just eyeballing the lay of the land, I suspect what lowers Dorchester's median income figures are the neighborhoods roughly west or northeasterly of Washington Street: Four Corners, Codman Square, Talbot Avenue, Norfolk Avenue, Columbia Road, Blue Hill Avenue, East Cottage Street, Bowdoin/Geneva, and other terrain that doesn't have names for its neighborhoods, just a collection of pins on a police station map.

There are two Dorchesters.  Both of them are equally welcoming and equally convivial. I've never witnessed a crime being committed in Dorchester and I have been down most streets and I am out most hours of the day and night.  I have never been uncomfortable.

There is a different culture to the west than there is to the east of Dot Ave, which is an approximate, handy boundary line.  The east is whiter and more asian (whether Vietnamese or Chinese it's hard to say).  The west is darker and more hispanic (or Haitian or Cape Verdean).  You can't really say one side is old Dot stock and the other side is new.  African Americans have been a majority in some parts of Dorchester for more than half a century.  They aren't immigrants.  They are Dorchesterites.

East plus West equals the middle ground, which is somewhere near Field's Corner.

I've been thinking about this over the past few months and, unlike my usual folderol, I thought I would work through more serious musings in public.  I'm trying to develop a Dot-view that is more panoramic than the one I have now.  As I say, I have been almost everywhere, but as a transplant, I have been almost everywhere as someone passing through, or as someone from Savin Hill,  rather than as a native.  A fellow citizen, perhaps.  Some people live in a Dot microcosm.  I am  one of them.  I want to take in more of the macro view.

I don't usually solicit comments but I invite you to add your observations and thoughts.  Let's discuss.

Cavolo/Tavolo

In 1918, Guiseppe Malatesta opened a trattoria in Peabody Square.  He called it Cavolo, the Italian word for cabbage.  It seemed like a good idea at the time with all the Irish immigrants moving into the neighborhood.  There was also a sizable German population, but Mr. Malatesta could never say the German word for cabbage convincingly: kohl.

Selling meals of slaw and sauerkraut out of his storefront paid the rent but just barely.  Creditors from the Shawmut Bank that had advanced capital to Mr. Malatesta weren't happy with the cash flow and they feared they would have to foreclose on his chopping blocks and crockery.  What would they do with them?

Mr. Malatesta sprung a plan to spice up the menu a bit.  Dorchester's main trolley stable was located a little up Dot Ave, where the Field's Corner Shopping Center is now.  He contracted with the City of Boston, which had recently annexed Dorchester, to take care of streetcar steeds that had gone lame.  Thus, the menu of his restaurant added a bit of protein to its mix.  Cavolo was married to cavallo,  Cabbage plus horse is very chic if you say it French and, at the time, it was unintelligible in Italian in Dorchester.  The same can be said of the listed ingredients in Vietnamese sandwiches in 2009.   It sounds good, it tastes good, I'll come back tomorrow for another.  Both the flavor and the price are right.

Sometimes it takes a little extra to make a go of a restaurant.  Simple isn't always best.  People don't mind paying a little more if they feel they are getting their money's worth.  As old, Mr. Malatesta would have said, "Una tavola con una tovaglia fare il piatto bellisimo."  A table with a cloth does make the most beautiful dish.  Sometimes you just have to give it a little window dressing and not a-speeka-da-eengleesh.  It's true, if unpretty: Never give a sucker an even break.  We all have to eat, and no matter how it's gussied up, Dorchester delivers the vittles most people demand.

A tip of the fedora to the Dorchester Reporter for pointing out an example of history repeating itself.  A tip of the fork to the eatery at 1918 Dorchester Avenue in old Peabody Square that is working to serve its clientele well.  Rather than giving the people who pass through Ashmont Station what they supposedly need, Tavolo is giving them what they want.  Something nice to eat homeward bound at fair value for the dollars they earn at the other end of the Red Line.

Paradise by Milton

Day breaks but after that everything is ship shape in Dorchester, MA. All the leaks are caulked. There are no drafts to dodge. Snug as bugs in a down quilt, Dorchesterites hunker down and sleep the slumber of the unencumbered.

Where's Dorchester? Look Mac, if you don't know I can't even call you pal... Look Stranger, if you don't know where Dorchester is you'd better take a Duck Tour to find out. This is the time of year to do it. Bundle up as you trundle out. Keep your eyes peeled on that goose chase and stay downwind.

Any bum can rush to Dorchester, but it takes a certain kind of dreamer to linger long enough to catch a Talbot Avenue bus. A Dorchester adventure is an invitation from Fate to a footloose freebooter to bind his or her ties to a geography that includes more three-story buildings than the whole State of Kansas contains and as many active citizens as Vermont's voting population. Dorchester is wild and wooly while being conveniently served by mass transit and civilized amenities. Dorchesterites sip their Dunkin Donuts coffee with pinkies raised.  They are generous tippers too.

When the Red Line splits at JFK/UMASS, conductors announce, "Change trains here for Braintree. This train's final stop is Paradise." Paradise for many, perhaps, but others abandon hope when they enter Dorchester. Dorchester isn't for the hopeless.  Hope springs eternal from under a rock in Dorchester Park directly behind Caritas Christi Hospital's maternity ward.  Hope is the gasoline that lights Dorchester's fire.  The hapless souls who lack hope are welcome to stay to nurture their tinder but most head back post-haste, pre-trauma, on a one way ticket back to Porter. There are no downers in Dorchester, only up-and-comers.  Smile!  The Dot's got your back.

Even if Ashmont isn't the paradise you are looking for in Dorchester, take a transfer to the Mattapan High Speed. You'll find your paradise at the Milton stop.  At the southernmost tip of Boston, there's nowhere to go but uptown and inbound.  Even if it takes a few connections to reach your eventual destination, those connections are easy to make in Dorchester.

Loving the Dot Life.

Birds do it. Bees do it. People in Eastie and in West Roxbury do it. People in Dorchester do it too: they fall in love.

A city is a school of hard knocks and Boston is no exception. There is a reason that MIT and Harvard are located across the Charles River in Cambridge. Painful lessons get taught and learned in a metropolis where the spoons are not cast in sterling silver but in zinc and lead, pig iron and trace molybdenum, a curry of slag and mercury tailings mixed into a slurry of ferrous sulfate, ferrous oxate and feral habits. Some intellectual meals are consumed with dainty silverware, while others are served up on the blades of snow shovels and forced down an unwilling student's throat with a boot heel and a blackjack that is more bitter than any supermarket or convenience store brand of licorice.

It takes a neighborhood to raise a child, and anyone who can recognize that fact can be the Secretary of State or, maybe, even President of all 50 United States. There is no rule that someone born and raised in Dorchester, Mass., the biggest and best part of Boston, cannot reach past the limits of her or his potential. Comets never stop. Dorchester hasn't stopped moving or evolving since Time began. There is no evidence to suggest that Dorchester itself doesn't set the standard toward which other places should aim. Some places lead. Eventually, other places will follow the sweet, sweet smell of success. For the moment, at least, Dorchester stands alone.

Dorchester is unique. Spend a few hours on Bowdoin Street or on Columbia Road or on the mid-southerly stretches of Columbia Road. You learn quickly enough that you're not in Roxbury anymore. You learn quickly enough that while you are in Boston, you are in a different kind of Boston. You are in Dorchester. You're in the Dot, and the Dot is not a pot of jam, a pot of mustard, or a cannabis market. It is a place in which generations follow one anther trying to do well for everyone involved, personally, familiarly and communally. Each party pulling ever upward at the sails with all hands on deck.

Children are raised in Dorchester to become responsible adults, productive citizens, vertebrae in Boston's semi-rigid, semi-flexible, ramrod backbone. Adults spend their whole lives in Dorchester, mixing their good will and collected energy, minute-by-passing minute, into the concrete that will cement a better tomorrow. Love makes a community and love blossoms in Dorchester. Sometines that love is passionate. Most often that love is resigned and contented that good work is being done.

Birds do it and bees do it. Dorchesterites do it too. There is plenty of room and time in Dorchester for love. Office workers downtown watch the clock ready to punch out and get on with thier real lives, their Dot lives. They leave Boston proper and head home on the bus or the Fairmont Line or the Red Line. You can love your job in Boston but if you live in Dorchester, that's where you really love your life.

Some different ways to think about the facts of Dorchester.....

...secrets, situations, comedies, decadence....Dorchester...100% on the Dot.

BOGO: Buy one and get one...free

There is a sale going on in Dorchester, Mass. It's a real estate bonanza. It's not a fire sale and it's not a going out of business sale. It's not a holiday sale except in the sense that every day is Dorchester Day in Dorchester! It's good value honestly negotiated over the barrelhead, sold and bought with only the best intentions for sharing a sound investment. Everyone comes out a winner in Dorchester

You can buy a condo or a house or a loft in Dorchester and you get to own that condo or house or loft if you don't think about the bank that financed the purchase and still holds the deed. You also get something added on for free, an extra value, a bonus...you get a little something that makes the mortage less onerous... You get to live in Dorchester!

Not the Dorchester in England. The Dorchester in Massachusetts is the better Dorchester. That's why the Pilgrims sailed away here. It's the best part of Boston. You don't have to sail across the Atlantic. Just take the Red Line and have your downpayment. Happiness and prosperity will follow.

Living in Dorchester is a two-for-one deal: you get to live in the Dot and you get to be a Bostonian. This is the best of all possible worlds. Most Dorchester real estate brokers have a doctorate in optimism. Most Dorchesterites come upon their panglossian view of the world not through book philosophy but by the street lessons their surroundings impart. You can't live in Dorchester long without going through every following day with a punch drunk, Mona Lisa smile on your mug. Dorchester breeds contentment. Realtors don't lie. They don't even fib in the Dot.

Wise investors know they will get the best return on their dollar when they buy property in Dorchester. This isn't speculation. It's a proven, historical fact. Dorchester may be a neighborhood of booms and busts if you keep your ears and eyes open, but it is also home to a steady climb. Everything goes up in Dorchester. As a rising tide lifts all ships, Dorchester promotes the portfolio and personal growth of everyone it touches. Dorchester excelsior!

Buddy, you can spare a dime. When you buy a gumball in Dorchester, two fall out of the machine's slot. It's BOGO all the time in the Dot.

Alive and in technicolor

Though full of slapstick, melodrama and overacting, Dorchester, Mass. is no silent movie. Quite the reverse. Firstly, it's real life. Secondly, it's quite noisy.

The heavy rumble of the Red Line rattles Dorchester's spine and, where the Red Line ends at Ashmont, the Mattapan High-Speed Trolley carries on the work. The High-Speed is a tad less loud, but it passes through Cedar Grove Cemetery and the T wouldn't want to wake the dead, would it? At least the T stops running some time after midnight. Dorchester is home to an elevated highway (I-93) that runs at second story height and is clotted and congested with cars and tractor trailers all hours of the clock.

Babies squawl in Dorchester. Kindergartners swear like soldiers. Their pipsqueak voices lend an alarming novelty to trains of connected curses and anatomical combinations they cannot really understand...or can they? After becoming accustomed to the local argot, playground profanity becomes a part of Dorchester's atmosphere, like the sound of flower petals gently patting the pavement when a zephyr blows inland off Dorchester Bay.

Pots and pans clatter over the course of a day. They make as much noise as the shopping carts pushed by the can men and bottle collectors who start their rounds an hour or so before sun-up and continue the rest of the morning until a little after dawn has faded into noon. Garbage day is a busy day in Dorchester as rag men and scrap dealers patrol the curbs. There is treasure to be found in Dorchester.

Coffee shops, diners, lunch counters, fine restaurants, pizzerias, Chinese take-out joints, bakeries, and barrooms buzz with the talk of the neighborhood. Dorchester is anything but silent. It is busy and burbling, percolating with vitality and street smarts, with pep and persistence, with zip and with zing. Silent Dorchester? Far from it. Dorchester is alive and loud . It's also in technicolor.

Dorchester's mass transit

Prior to the days when the car became king of intra-city transportation options, most of Boston's neighborhoods were served by street cars. That tradition is perpetuated by the various Green lines and the Mattapan High-Speed, but every other route has been demolished and replaced by concrete meridians, most of them sterile concrete curbways in mid street where pedestrians must pause between lanes of traffic. Blue Hill Avenue is the most eye-displeasing example, especially on the Mattapan approach (or exit depending on whether you are heading inbound or out). Blue Hill Ave along much of its length is split by a wide expanse of raised cement that is dotted with light poles and ornamental planters at regular intervals. Despite the greenery that straggles over the brims of the pots, this is a dead zone that could be put to much better use.

The Dorchester Reporter, this part of Boston's paper of record, feautres a thoughtful assessment of the proposal for a mass transit upgrade along Blue Hill Avenue, that goes by either the unattractive or futuristic name, depending on your viewpoint, of 28X. This is basically an extensition of Silver Line type service from Ruggles to Mattapan Square by way of Dudley. I'm for it, but I think it needs a better name. I'm not in marketing but 'Silver Line South' or, more evocatively, 'Silver Line Zephyr' would be better names pointing to the relatively more efficient nature of the proposed service. Buses in dedicated lanes with enclosed stations would run more like trains than like the current Bus 28 route.

The Silver Line has a bad reputation in some circles, but I've always enjoyed using it. I've never taken it to Southie but I have taken it to the airport. Though this branch of the Silver Line is a mass transit option that seems to have been designed by a committee of camels, it gets to the airport in convenient, hassel-free time, even when most passengers are stowing oversized suitcases. I prefer taking the Washington Street branch to taking the Orange Line when I need to reach parts of Boston east of the South End proper. It's not an elevated train and it doesn't run through Eggleston Square all the way to Forest Hills (and I fault it for that) but it ably serves the areas it is designed to serve. It is also much quieter than a train, which is something the neighbors probably appreciate.

Much like the E Line was "Mayor Tobin's Baby," able to be constructed because of funding by an infusion of New Deal dollars, the construction of the 28X (can I call it the Silver Line Zephyr?) hinges on the support of federal funds available under another Democratic federal administration. Without the infusion of federal funding, Blue Hill Avenue may be serviced by more inexpensive, regular bus service for infinite years. Why is this proposal being green-lighted now? Because funds are available. This is not "Mayor Menino's Baby" however. Influence over mass transit has been stripped from local control and it a thing only indirectly addressed by mayoral canditates. There is no use discussing something over which you have little influence. Governor Patrick is the party responsible for putting this baby in the bath. I appreciate him doing it, but it highlights how much control Boston's 'strong mayor' has over developments in what should be his or her jurisdiction.

My advice: strike while the iron is hot. Upgrade when you can. Upgrade to a dedicated bus right-of-way and get the infrastructure in place. If demand exceeds supply, muti-car light rail will be easier to deploy in the future. A train line is an expensive thing to build. The tracks won't get laid on virgin land. Is there any virgin land left in Boston? I think dedicating a section of public thoroughfare to efficient public transportation will make future upgrades more palatable if and when they are needed. Contentious people will demand platinum service when they could settle for gold. It may not be 24-karat gold, but it will be something more than gold plate over cheap zinc. Niether Rome nor Mattapan Square were built in a day. Both are still works in progress, and both should take advantage of whatever opportunities are available to be viable for the next few decade. Given the chance to build on what you have on hand, roll the dice and wax.

28X will be an improvement over current bus service and it will also construct stations right now that will be a needed component of a more heavy-stock network should it be built in 2020. That will result in a cost savings and reduce the price tag should the decision be made to expand rail service to Blue Hill Avenue. Needless to say, a more efficient transit line along Blue Hill Ave. will provide some construction jobs and will provide easier access to the neighborhoods it serves, boosting businesses and raising potential property values. To those who are against improved service, I ask, "What are you afraid of?"

I once read a maxim that many people seem to subscribe to: "If you are over thirty years old and rely on the bus, you are a life failure." I haven't owned a car for more than twenty years but I know that car ownership is a part of the American dream. This is all very nice if you live on a farm or in the suburbs, but I, like most Dorchesterites live in a city. A car can be as much an inconvenience as it is a neccessity. City living isn't about driving. It is about interacting with your fellow citizens. City dwellers do it on the street when they walk, they should do it when they travel by every other means beside their feet, except by car. The bus allows it. 28X will do it with added convenience and efficiency.

In other related news, the Ashmont bus stops have been taken off Dot Ave. I noticed this two weeks ago when I went to Ashmont to take the Mattapan High-Speed Trolley to Lower Mills. I was amazed to see the amount of space dedicated to boarding and disembarking the many bus routes that serve Dorchester. Ashmont Station has been closed for construction since I moved to Boston two years ago. It seems to be an efficient arrangement off the main road. People bad mouth the MBTA. I have a few quibbles, but they are too few to mention. Having lived in a city with hourly bus service that wended its way to take an hour to travel three miles on some routes and an hour to travel ten miles on others, how can I complain about the MBTA's schedule?

Dorchester is blessed by the past investments in the Dorchester Tunnel and the Red Line, the Mattapan High-Speed. It is hard to walk away from the costs that were sunk to build this infrastructure and the benefits that still accrue from them keep this part of Boston vital and active. Dorchester isn't written off as a backwater because it is still an interconnected part of the city's fabric by industrially engineered mass transit lines. The more the better. The more capital outlays, the less anyone wants to abandon the past expense. It's already built, we may as well use it. Dorchester is one of the most vital parts of Boston because it is one of the most well connected. It cannot be ignored. Anyone who looks at an MBTA subway map can see that.

Snipe hunting

Is anything so predictable as rain on a weekend in Boston? Even in Dorchester, "The Neighborhood with the Sunny Disposition," it rains more often than not come Saturday. This year especially. This year especially.

The good news is that this weather is the best weather for snipe-hunting and early morning banter at McKenna's Cafe over coffee and omelets confirmed this. Some of the early risers who take walks in Dorchester Park down in Lower Mills reported more than one snipe sighting.

Chubby was eating his usual beans and eggs when he spotted Big Gut walking in the door. "Hey, Big Gut," he shouted over the dining room chatter, "The snipes are running in Dot Park." Big Gut ambled over to the stool next to Chubby's. "I know," he said. "They're as thick as mosquitoes down there in the brambles round by the ball fields. I think I'll get my net later if the weather doesn't take a turn toward sunshine.

Chubby and Big Gut are two of Dorcheseter's most renowned snipe hunters, so when Big Gut said this the dining room chatter dimmed a bit to hear whatever snipe hunting tips could be eavesdropped. The two men dropped the subject altogether after glancing over their shoulders. Chubby asked, "Did the Orioles play last night? What's their standing?" Big Gut replied, "Meh," and ordered a Grampian Champion.

Never seen a snipe? According to these two, experience Dot hunters you can spot one at Dorchester Park just past Carney Hospital on Dorchester Avenue. It's easy to reach via the Mattapan High-Speed, which will whisk you within a stone's throw of the ball fields at Butler Station.

How to view Senator Kennedy's body

Senator Edward M. Kennedy is lying in state at the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum this evening and tomorrow. If you are taking the Red Line to JFK/UMASS to pay your respects, you have to go through the station to get to there. Don't go up the stairs at the end of the platform to exit on Sydney Street. Sydney Street is, as they say, on the wrong side of the tracks.

The stairs, and elevator, to the station are in the middle of the platform. You go into the station suspended above the tracks, you can't miss it, and exit out the right hand doors. Then you go downstairs or downramp to catch a bus to the Library. The bus trip is free of charge. This isn't just for admirers of the Senator. The bus is always free.

If you lose your way and end up on Sydney Street, as many tourists do, you will find yourself in a picturesque, residential neighborhood that lacks any landmarks to help you get your bearings. Most people choose one direction or the other. If you take a right, Sydney Street dead ends but there is a narrow walkway that will take you to Columbia Road. Once there, you can take another right and get into the T station again and ask the attendant where to catch the bus. Like most MBTA employees, those who staff JFK/UMASS are courteous, patient and helpful.

If you take a left on Sydney Street, you will probably end up passing my house. Seeing me on the porch, enjoying a 68 degree, August evening in jacket and hat, you can ask me how to get the library. Like an MBTA employee, I will courteous and patient and helpful. You will be about the thirtieth person tonight to interrupt my musings, but this happens all the time, if a bit less frequently when Massachusetts has a full complement of senators, so I'm used to it.

I will tell you that you have to turn around and go through the station. You will tell me that you tried but the turnstyles are one-way. This is true. The turn styles at the end of the platform are for egress only. The opposite of a Roach Motel, you can get out but you can't get back in from there. I will tell you that you have to go a bit farther down the road and there will be another break in the fence at the second police call box. Pass through and you can get into the station to its other side without paying a fee, and catch the bus on the opposite side. Don't take the UMASS bus, take the JFK Library bus.

If you do take the UMASS bus, and you might since you don't seem inclined to read signs, don't worry. At the last stop, walk to the water and turn left. If you take the Dorchester Harborwalk, you'll enjoy some lovely views of Quincy and Shawmut across Dorchester Bay and the JFK Library is ten minutes away if you stroll in a leisurely manner.

You'll tell me that the T should post signs on the platform with clear directions so that people like yourself don't get lost. I'll agree and say that there are signs but they aren't very prominent. I'll reassure you that you are in good company and this happens all the time. It's not just run-of-the mill Midwestern tourists who stop by my porch for orientation. I've doled out directions to my share of celebrities, none of whom I'll name even though the National Enquirer once offered me a tidy sum for my autograph book and recollections.

Wanna iguana?

Chez King is home to a pretty meatless kitchen. We aren't strict vegetarians but we enjoy our vegetables more than we enjoy muscle-based foods or organ meats (sweet breads, chitlins and such). One member of this household (not your humble narrator) is German (eine Deutcshe) who thinks of meat in her native language as das fleisch (flesh). You couldn't think up a more honest label if you were a cannibal.

We live about two blocks from Gene and Paul's Fresh Meats, the oldest, contiuously operating meat market in Dorchester, Mass., located at the intersection of Dot Ave and East Cottage Street and Crescent Avenue. As a sometime customer, I've always enjoyed the cuts offered by this establishment when I've needed a bit of animal protein to flavor a dish and I've also enjoyed the service.

While Gene and Paul offer the usual fare of chicken (das haehechen), pork (das schweinefleisch), and beef (das rindfleisch), and during the X-mas season they offer up a X-mas goose a-la-Dickens (die ganse). That's about it for the options. Curious about what else is available from Boston's meat cutters outside of Dorchester, we ventured on the Red Line to Charles/MGH station.

Entering the jaded, decadent zone at the back of Beacon Hill, we stepped through the door of Savenor's Market at 160 Charles Street. Savenor's motto is "Best on the Block," and by that they mean best on the chopping block. The shop is known for selling exotic game fit to eat.

The options, besides the domesticated breeds available at Gene and Paul's, included packages of ground antelope, ground bear, and a skinned coil of rattlesnake. The most tempting option of all was a selection of frozen iguanas. The chopping block and cleaver had been put to good use in preparing the iguana carcasses, but they were kept far from the skinning hook, the fillet knife, and the meat grinder. These iguanas were shrink wrapped sans head and feet onto their styrofoam trays with skin and frills in full glory. They were bright green on the outside, as if they had been killed nestled in some tropical, Galapagos foliage, keeping their color as obviously ineffective camouflage.

The iguanas' poses perched on their styrofoam trays, absent heads and feet of course, matched how they must have perched at the time of capture. They looked like they were ready to leap, adding to the exoticism of the promised meal. I don't know how popular iguana (dei eidechse) is on Beacon Hill but looking at the exposed flesh in the neck, wrists and ankles, it seems to be low fat and, thus, heart healthy. It is a bit pricey though. The cheapest iguana on sale was $97 and change. Sorry, Savenor's.... no sale. I picked up three chicken-and-apple sausages instead. They made two delightful meals this weekend. The sausages were about six bucks. I don't think iguana Bolagnese would have been any tastier.

Dot Confucius

"In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of." - Confucius.

The same can be said of a city.

As a magnet of opportunity, a great metropolis draws immigrants from all walks of life. It used to be that the wealthy as well as the poor lived cheek by jowl in our cities. This is still somewhat the case in Boston. While many of the wealthy have emigrated to the suburbs, Beacon Hill is still a fashionable address for the upper crust. Their are new, luxury condominiums high above the rest of the older city skyline around the waterfront and the Common. The same can't be said about the other neighborhoods though.

Roxbury Heights for instance, was once quite prosperous. You can tell by the architecture that remains. I drove through the neighborhood this afternoon and nowadays it is more ghost town than prosperous. Ashmont Hill isn't in such an abandoned state, but it has seen more glamorous days. Some of the streets are the most picturesque in Boston and, in fact, my favorite house in the city is located on Melville Avenue. Tell someone in Tory Row that you live in Ashmont and they'll say, "How can you? The Red Line smells like urine after Savin Hill!" Not true, the breeze off Dorchester Bay sprinkles the atmosphere with the aroma of April freshness. Even in August.

While no one should be begrudged having a little extra pocket change or a nest egg socked away for retirement, these things seem to be the exception rather than the norm in many parts of Dorchester. What does that say about Dorchester in particular and Boston as a whole? While extreme poverty may be negligible, so is extreme wealth in the Dot. To say the neighborhood is middle class is accurate and there is no shame in that. To say it is upper middle class is a stretch of the imagination even this daydream believer cannot swallow.

When a city is governed well, poverty, while not something to ashamed of per se, is symptomatic of a broken system. When a city is mismanaged, the means of achieving comfortable wealth are distasteful. The same is true of influence, reputation, and perquisites. What is the source of access? Character and ability, or connections and the ability to make 'donations'? Would you tell your mother how you earned them?

I'm no insider. The only time I've been inside City Hall was to get my Dorchester parking sticker, a plain slug of a design for motorcycles on which the clerk writes Dorchester and the expiration date with indelible magic marker (and not with the best penmanship, I might add). Is the city mismanaged? We have an experienced urban mechanic keeping the gears well-greased. I have little interaction with the local government aside from dodging or paying parking tickets and dealing with what seems to be an regular stream of excise tax bills.

I am not insinuating any corruption in the current administration. Plenty of innuendo surrounds it, but it just that: nothing proven and certainly nothing egregious. It could be an interesting election. Or it might not. As Tuesday's editorial below was entitled, The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same.

Dorchester robbery

There wasn't any need to contact the Dorchester Crime Unit at District C-11 HQ, but while we were away last week a thief broke into a certain Savin Hill apartment. Losses were negligible, maybe sixty cents, but the circumstances are confounding enough for commentary.


Though a large Vietnamese contingent has settled in this section of Dorchester, the neighborhood has deep Irish-American roots. The local restaurants and the smells wafting out of neighborhood kitchens confirms this. The cuisine tends to shy away from sharp flavors. Spice racks are typically stocked with iodized salt and factory-ground black pepper. Maureen Shea once told me that freshly ground pepper is too spicy and she never understood how people could eat it. "It's something fancy they do in the Back Bay and that's why I never eat out there," she said. Aside from these two staples, there is usually also a jar of caraway seeds to knock the winds out of boiled cabbage. Garlic? That's something the Eye-talians in the North End and Eastie eat, but not real Dorchesterites.


Before we went on vacation last week, we dutifully ate all the leftovers, leaving the cupboard bare until our return. One thing that was left, however, were two heads of garlic that rested in a dish on the counter. These heads of garlic were the target of the thievery that took place in our absence.


Despite the long-established, cartoon paradigm, mice don't really crave cheese. In fact, if you are setting traps, most people recommend using peanut butter as bait, though I've often heard gum drops are equally effective. To my knowledge, no one has ever recommended putting a garlic clove in a mousetrap, but it seems that one mouse has developed a taste for this cornerstone of Mediterranean cooking. Over the course of eight days a mouse devoured two heads of garlic leaving only the empty, papery skins.


How do we know it was a mouse and not some other intruder? I don't need to be a part-time private eye to crack this case and finger the perp. There were garlicky mouse droppings all around the scene of the crime. The problem is, this has to be an out-of-town job. What self-respecting Dot mouse would develop a taste for garlic? The answer is that it's not possible. Two theories:

1. Knowing we would be out of town, a certain mus musculus hopped the Blue Line out of Orient Heights and after several transfers on the MBTA, made his way to JFK/UMASS station for a garlic binge. He or she was sloppy about leaving evidence but hotfooted it back to home base before we returned to catch him red-handed with full cheeks.

2. A North End rodent tired of Haymarket scraps hopped the Orange Line and transferred to the Red at Downtown Crossing.

The only other alternative, Dot-on-Dot crime, is unthinkable. Needing some garlic for the first home-cooked meal in a week, I resigned myself, as a victim, to stop by the Shaw's at Harbor Point to restock my garlic supply. A regretful end to a perfect vacation, but, really, I needed to do some grocery shopping anyway.

Dot Aquarius

When the Moon is above the William Clapp House and the two ends of Dot Ave are aligned, then peace will guide elections and Love will steer the Red Line.

Let's tally the signs, shall we? One: The moon does regularly raise above the headquarters of the Dorchester Historical Society on Boston Street in the Polish Triangle. Two: While Dot Ave doesn't really run as straight as a rifle shot from Gilette's World Shaving Headquarters to the Walter Baker Chocolate Factory, it is easy to get from Point A to Point B with minimal leaning on the handlebars. Three: If the slowly unfolding yawnfest that is the upcoming mayoral election is any indication, politics in Boston are as worry-free as Tom Sawyer's float down the Mississippi. Four: Love does steer the Red Line, a love of professionalism and a fervent devotion to superior customer service.

We have all the signs of the dawning of the Age of Dorchester.

Harmony and understanding? Check. Sympathy and trust abounding? Check. No more falsehoods or derision? Check. Golden living dreams of visions? Check, depending on what this is supposed to mean. Mystic crystal revelation? What??? I suppose so. And the mind's true liberation? Oh, definitely check. Definitely. Dorchester is a helluva town.

Ready to topple the Back Bay and Beacon Hill as Boston's premier address, The Age of Dorchester is dawning. Rumor at Brothers Diner has it that Senator Kerry is shopping for a pied-a-terre in Mattapan.

More-chester

Why should expectations be low about Dorchester? It is Boston's biggest neighborhood. Opportunites abound. Life is lived large and in the round in the Dot. It is an empire of goodwill, glad tidings, low rents, cheap food and high living that will fit in most people's budget.

Thin wallets have their place in Dorchester, Mass. Fat wallets are acknowledged, but they don't garner any special treatment. "Pay me what you owe me," is Dorchester's mantra. Dorchester doesn't only rhyme with Poor Chester. It rhymes with More, Chester. I've never met a soul named Chester in the Dot, unless we're talking about Chesty Rivers, but her nickname doesn't have anything to do with the one on her birth certificate.

People don't move to Dorchester to slide down Boston's economic ladder. They move here for the chance to climb up its rungs. Ability, technical skill, and silky palaver go a long way in Dorchester, Mass. If making good is about making good connections, Dorchester is a spider web of interlocking threads easy to navigate for those with multifaceted eyes and nimble legs.

Some people get sick in Dorchester, whether with ague, vapors, Montezuma's Revenge, the Hottentot trots, catarrh or the croup. You don't need to cough in Dorchester to whoop. The contagion of accomplishment is infectious. People disembark from the Red Line and say, "I'm in Dorchester! Hooray!"

Illness is endemic everywhere and the Dot is no exception. Despite that, Dorchester isn't the Sick Man of Boston. It is the most robust organ in the metropolitan body, a veritable spleen that will take all the abuse it is given and never deviate from its evolved purpose. Dorchester filters the lifeblood of Boston, fortifies it, boosts it up, cleans it out, chastens what's not working right and discards what's dirty into the trash. What works in Dorchester has run the gantlet of scorn and come out purer and stronger for it.

Long live the Dottoman Empire!

Motorcycle vs. MBTA

We rode out to Lexington today on the little Ninja 250. Nice weather made this a nice project to undertake. Always irksome traffic lights made it unpleasant on the more citified parts of Massachusetts Avenue.

Mass Ave runs from Edward Everett Square in Dorchester to the entrance of the Minute Man National Park in Lexington. We left the house, close by Everett Square, around 11:00. The only pleasant part of driving the first leg of Mass Ave is the bridge over the Charles River connecting Boston and Cambridge. The view is nice, the air is bracing, and there's nothing stopping a motorcycle from just going from one end to the other. It took about twenty minutes to travel the, I don't know...three miles...to the bridge.

Cambridge was no better. One light turns green so that cars can reach the next light just as it turns red. Who thought of this traffic pattern? I know that "Traffic Engineer" is a profession. Can't Cambridge (or Boston for that matter) hire one? We started and stopped our way over the face of Cambridge until we reached Porter Square and after that the trip was a bit speedier, but it wasn't until we got out of downtown Arlington that we could really make good, needlessly unimpeded time.

In Arlington Heights, my passenger said, "This is a really long ride." I checked the odometer. We had travelled exactly eleven miles in an hour. Long in time and frustration but a pittance in distance. After that there were few lights and we got to Lexington Green, four miles away, in under ten minutes. The picturesque, suburban/colonial landscape zipped by like frames in a nostalgic movie dream.

We walked around the Green and then headed to Concord for lunch. Nice town and we enjoyed the tour after we left Arlington, but we live in Dorchester so we had to head home. I had an idea in my head. I said, "Why don't I drop you off at Porter Square and race you, motorcycle vs. T? I'm sure you'll win but we should prove it." My companion agreed though she was dubious that she would win.

I pulled up next to Porter and my companion disembarked. I didn't seem to be able to make a left turn back onto Mass Ave from where I was, so I headed down the street and crossed the train tracks intending to get back on Mass Ave. The temptation was too much though. There didn't seem to be any lights or traffic on the road I was on. Taking advantage of this, I headed down Beacon Street (Cambridge) through Inman Square, and then down Hampshire Street, which did have lights, but far fewer and less cars than Mass Ave.

I felt guilty. Whereas before I was sure to lose, I now felt sure to win and I had subjected my companion to a long, needless T ride. I hooked back onto Mass Ave just before MIT and headed back to Boston over the Charles River. The traffic gods were kind. I didn't get stuck as often as I expected and actually made good time, Boston-wise. I even just made it from the light in front of South Bay Center across Columbia Road to Dot Ave without needing to idle. Of course I was forced to stop where Dot Ave intersects with East Cottage Street and Crescent Avenue. It is a fact of life I've come to accept.

I pulled up to my unoccupied house victorious. I went inside to grab my wristwatch which read 14:30. I wanted to accurately measure the margin of victory. I then headed down to JFK/UMASS the wrong way down a one-way street but there weren't any cars and, as a motorcycle I can easily get out of anyone's way when I'm in the wrong. Before I could kill the engine, who was walking up to me? My fellow racer. The time on my watch: 14:32.

She said she had waited seven minutes for the train at Porter and her whole trip took 35 minutes as clocked by her cell phone. If I had taken Mass Ave I would have lost hands-down. As it is, taking less travelled streets, I feel the MBTA beat me fairly and squarely. Well done, Red Line, well done. I have met my match. Next time we'll take it on the open road.

Green belt along the Red Line

If Boston has a Garden District, it is along Sydney Street, with tendrils branching out in the smidge of blocks between the Red Line tracks and Dot Ave. You can walk a straight line between JFK/UMASS and Savin Hill stations or you can meander for two hours or more. This morning I stumbled into a tourist group admiring the landscaping along Sydney and I listened in on what the tour guide was telling her fellow travellers and presumed paying customers.

"Look at the lawn here," she said loud enough for all her gaggle of two dozen of followers to hear, "This is typical Dorchester style meant to economize the work put in for maintenance while maximizing visual beauty and diversity. The dandelions are buttercups are allowed to ripen to add color and the proliferation of chickweed and onion grass adds repetition of form in confluence with the play of shade of the maple branches overhead."

A little farther down the road she rhapsodized about the placement of two resin frog statues placed next to a clam shell on a bed of cedar chips. "See how these homeowners have paved their back yard with polished marble slabs?" she asked, "This is indicative of the South Vietnamese influence that is making itself felt in the neighborhood. Among Vietnamese, marble signifies prosperity and brings more of it with its presence." Her listeners took snap shots with their cell phones and nodded in understanding.

Before I peeled myself away from the crowd they had stopped in front of a flagpole cemented in a front lawn that has miniature wooden figures of Uncle Sam and a U.S. Marine posed as if they are hoisting a flag. "You'll note," the tourist guide said, "That patriotism has its place in Dorchester and a place of pride, it is. This vignette is an expression of what all Dorchesterites feel and, while this particular example is more overt than most, I think you will agree that we'll see other examples not just of national patriotism but Dot Pride too as we continue on our tour." Everyone nodded.

I headed back down the street toward home. I pulled a few weeds by my doorstep. I've been aware I live in a garden district, but I didn't know outsiders were touring the street. I'd hate to disappoint them with slovenly grounds keeping. Best to put the best outward face on Dorchester when people are looking. Smile and the world smiles with you.