Goings on between Dot and the 'bury

Are they shooting a movie in Dudley Square?  I drove by where the new police station is going up and the cops in hi-viz lime jackets were directing traffic or, rather, watching traffic go by.  There were a couple of trucks on the northern corner unloading sound equipment and spot lights big enough to qualify as Klieg lights, though I doubt any premiers are debuting.  The trucks blocked my view, but it looked like a film crew and maybe some caterers, hair stylists and, dare I suggest, actors were blocking out scenes between the back of the Silver Slipper Restaurant and Drain's House of Style.

The Silver Slipper and Drain's are certainly two Boston landmarks that deserve to be commemorated on film.  Too bad they couldn't have been worked into the verisimilitude of "The Friends of Eddie Coyle."

Further up Warren Avenue, I noticed that Gyro King has closed down in Grove Hall!  One of the reasons I had meandered in that direction was for a gyro.  The other reason was because today was wonderful motorcycle weather after yesterday's relentless rain.  I had taken a shortcut to Blue Hill Avenue and instead of the most beautiful Shwarm-tastic sign in all the Boston metro area, I saw a colorful sign for "Chifipi"

Stuck in traffic about a half block away, I wondered what this Chifipi could be.  I had to navigate traffic on two wheels as I passed but I can tell you this based on the logo painted on the front window: Chi stands for chicken, Fi stands for fish, and though I can't be sure I'll bet dollars to donuts that Pi stands for pizza.  This doesn't bode well, gentle reader.  It takes specialization to become King of anything, be it with gyro meat or purple prose.  I don't know any cook yet who has mastered the trifecta of chicken, fish and pizza pie.

It's worth a future investigation though.




I saw The Friends of Eddie Coyle recently at the Brattle.  Good movie.  Pretty much how the world saw Boston in 1973 and the cinematic image hasn't changed too much if you consider Mystic River, et al.  The Athens of America.

Both ends of Dudley

I travel from the beginning to the end of Dudley Street twice every day in warm weather.  During the winter I take the T at double the time unless, on a day like last Monday, the weather is unseasonable.  Dudley Street stretches between Upham's Corner and Dudley Square, part of Dorchester and part of Roxbury, both parts of Boston proper.

You cannot think about modern Boston without thinking of Dot and Roxbury.  Do they call Roxbury Rox?  Does it have a congenial nickname?  All I know is that both neighborhoods share a common, fluid boundary and parts of one may be part of the other and vice versa and forever shall the inhabitants disagree but they will do it amicably.

The Both Ends of Dudley blog, a likeminded enterprise without our excessive doses of folderol and pugnaciousness, based in Roxbury rather than Dorchester reports on a Beehive expansion that got the kabosh.  Too bad for Centre Street.  We do have a Centre Street in Dorchester if the Tesla Group wants to regroup in Dorchester.  I don't the Centre Bar will want to relocate, but there's no need for that.  The large space formerly occupied by the Emerald Isle seems to be available.  It is just a short stroll from the Field's Corner T station.  Food for thought.

Boston's Gyro King

Grove Hall: that nebulous intersection that is one part Roxbury, one part Dorchester, one part suburban shopping center and one part inner city. Boston's Gyro King has planted his throne on the corner of Blue Hill Avenue and Grove Hall's Mecca. You can't miss the palace. It's gate is crowned with a blaring yellow sign with green letters flanked by two three-dimensional, plastic cones of gyro meat. At dusk, the sign glows; a beacon for the hungry.

The shop's grand opening was this past September 9th and the Gyro King is attracting some repeat business. I was there last night to test the menu, ordering the signature dish, naturally. If you're are going to call yourself the Gyro King, you'd better to be able to put your shawarma where my mouth is.

While I was waiting, a woman and her child came in and she was on her phone taking an order to deliver for takeout. The man behind the counter waved and the woman cut her conversation short. "I forgot," she said to the counterman, "You don't take debit cards do you?" He nodded NO. She said she would be right back and in fact she did return after five minutes as I was leaving.

In the meantime, however, a rather husky gent came into the shop and he read the overhead menu that wraps around two walls. "What's the chicken cheese steak?" he asked, pointing at the picture of a long sandwich. The man behind the counter said, "It's a sandwich with chicken, cheese and steak." The husky man looked at the picture a moment more. "Yeah," he said, "I'll have one of them, the chicken cheese steak. Make it the one for $5.99." The almost-six dollar model comes with french fries and a soft drink.

My order was done before I got to see the chicken cheese steak get prepared, which is probably just as well. My take home: two gyros for ten bucks, tax included. Were they good? Yes. They were as solid as bricks with pressed lamb and spices, some lettuce, tomato and onion and yogurt sauce wrapped in a light, grilled pita. Thus far, two people have made four snacky meals out of them. There is about a quarter of one left that I'll probably have as a midnight repast or for breakfast.

Size matters

Look Stubby, I know you've got talent but sometimes size matters. Look at Dorchester, Mass., that neighborhood that dwarfs the rest of Boston like a pot belly supported by spindly legs. Square miles more vast than other Boston neighborhoods, with a bigger, more diverse population that would win a a tug-o-war if Dorchester's horde held one end of the rope opposite any other part of Boston, Dorchester can dot any other part of ye olde Beane Towne's eye.

Size matters. It takes many cells to make a body. The Dot's got 'em with some to spare. That's the white count (WBCs, are what we call this in the medical trade). Dorchester is immune to infection or contamination. Boston is a city with a egg head, a pencil neck and protected pockets. The city is ham-handed with two left feet, a glass jaw, a bum wing, a gimp, crossed-eyed, and mumble-tongued. Not in Dorchester though. In Dorchester, loopy thinking gets left at the Andrew gate's turn style. There's a collection box and when that box is full, all the fool notions get carried back inbound, special delivery, COD, return to sender. Thanks but no thanks, bub, we've got enough hubbub without your back-biting folderol.

Boston also has a soul, a vast, various, glorious sense of hope that isn't defined by circumstance, race, situation, prospect, or education. This is the Cradle of Liberty, after all. You can earn every degree from one of Boston's colleges and not know anything about how the city works at its most intimate level. Traffic flows through the streets like sustaining blood through arteries. The outer neighborhoods are as well supplied as the core, most often more so. The salt of the earth isn't paved over or hemmed in. It lies exposed on plains, whether in Jamaica or Newmarket, or on the expansive spread of the beautiful Dot. Puddingstone forms the bedrock of Boston, honest Roxbury puddingstone, the kind that rears out the ground in Franklin Park and Dorchester Park and in West Roxbury and Hyde Park.

Boston has heart and that heart beats forcefully in Dorchester. Sometimes bigger is better. Sometimes bigger is best. That's the case in Boston. The biggest neighborhood is best. That's Dorchester...Dorchester, Mass. If you never forget it, you'll never regret it.

And Stubby, I know you got your nickname because you lost a few fingers while working the docks. No hard feelings, pal. Thanks for taking one for Boston Harbor's commerce. Thanks for living in Dorchester. It wouldn't be the same without you. In Dorchester, everyone counts.

The Roxbury-Dorchester border

I was reading an article about OpenAir Boston describing how they brought wireless service to "the Grove Hall neighborhood of Dorchester." I remember when the service started and it was likewise described as being in Dorchester in the Globe.

The funny thing is, I was in Grove Hall this morning headed down Blue Hill Avenue to the Stop & Shop located in Grove Hall's Mecca. As an aside, 'Grove Hall's Mecca' is the most inappropriate name of any shopping center located next to a mosque. Anyhow, headed from Franklin Park, the typical blue oval sign that announces Boston neighborhoods reads, "Welcome to Grove Hall/ ROXBURY/ City of Boston/ Mayor Thomas M. Menino."

To my mind Dorchester has always ended at Columbia Road. I know it's not a perfect or official boundary but it works well enough in my mind. I travel the length of Dudley Street everyday, and when I cross Columbia Road in Upham's Corner, from Stoughton Street onto Dudley, my head knows I am still in the Dot, but my heart tells me I am entering Roxbury territory. In the opposite direction on Dudley Street, after the East and West Cottage Streets intersection I feel I am entering Dorchester, but I don't feel I'm home free yet until I cross Columbia Road at Upham's Corner.

I had a conversation recently with an acquaintance and he assured me Grove Hall is part of Dorchester. I'd known of the overlap but I've always thought it a part of Roxbury. It's a little off my radar to be Dorchester proper to me, just far enough to be somewhere else. That somewhere else is the next nearby neighborhood: Roxbury.

I'm sure real estate agents represent it as either, depending on their client, but the two neighborhoods are of similar essence. It is like comparing platinum to gold, one is somewhat more desirable, but both elements have high intrinsic value worth the investment.

Who decided that the official sign should designate Grove Hall as part of Roxbury? Surely, the incumbent mayor who is ever-sensitive to popular perception wouldn't have allowed his name to be attached to an erroneous attribution.?

In the end does it matter? It is Grove Hall, Boston, after all, another example of parochial hair-splitting. It is like my personal decision to end Dorchester at Andrew Square. That seems to be where the Dot's magnificence ends and Southie's begins. I've talked to people from South Boston who have debated me that Andrew is definitely, solidly part of Southie, stomping grounds of Whitey Bulger and Michael Flaherty. Who am I to argue? These things are hazy. The important thing is that all of these places are Boston.
A book about Dudley Street. I recommend it.

Cleopatra wasn't black

Despite the slogan, Cleopatra, though Egyptian, wasn't black. Egyptians are Africans, so it's correct to refer to the last ruler of an independent Egypt (until relatively recently) as African. She was however, the last of the Ptolemaic Dynasty, a dynasty founded by one of Alexander the Great's generals, Ptolemy, and hence she was of Greek descent. There was a lot of Appalachian-style intermarriage in this dynasty, so the chance of some black blood getting into the line, while possible, is remote.

Even if Cleopatra VII had come from native Egyptian stock, she wouldn't have been black any more than modern Egyptians are. The Ptolemaic Dynasty lasted between 305 BC and 30 BC, when Egypt was conquered by the Romans. Prior to the Ptolemies, however, there was a dynasty of black pharaohs, between 750 and 656 BC. This would be the period of the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty, also known as the Nubian Dynasty.

What does this have to do with the price of tea in Boston Harbor? It turns out that the National Center of African American Artists in Roxbury has a permanent exhibit that commemorates the Nubian Dynasty. The imposing and somewhat dilapidated mansion that serves as the Center's headquarters at 300 Walnut Avenue is also home to the recreated tomb of the Nubian Pharaoh Aspelta (600-580 BC). It's a remarkable exhibit showing how this pharaoh was laid to rest for life everlasting. If you want to see some photos provided by the Center click here, but for the $4.00 admission price, I recommend going in person since the experience can't be replicated on a computer screen.

I believe this is the only permanent exhibit the Center maintains, and it's an important one. The Nubians were centered in the Kingdom of Kush, in modern Sudan, and they preserved Egyptian civilization during a critical, if ancient time. This is something to be proud of if people are going to be proud of their race and it is much more accurate than erroneously claiming a Greek as a relative. Take it from someone who often mixes fact with fancy. If you're going to do it, you'd better have your facts straight.

Unfortunately, the Center isn't served by train. You have to take the 22 bus from Dudley Station to Walnut Avenue on Seaver Street. It's a short, three-block walk up Walnut to the Center and it's located in a picturesque and well preserved neighborhood. Don't believe all the horror stories you've heard about Roxbury. This little pocket is a peaceful jewel.

What a neighborhood.

What do you call a guy with no arms and no legs? Matt. What do you call a part of a city that gets little respect but deserves a lot more? Dorchester.

Travelling from Longwood to Savin Hill this evening, I went from one world to another within the same municipal jurisdiction. Both are Boston. Both have their part to play in this urban opera.

Huntington Avenue, between Brigham Circle and Symphony, is crowded with bright-eyed youth full of half-digested book smarts untarnished by experience and without a scar to show they've earned their place in the sun yet. Tremont Street is another story. The farther one gets from Brigham Circle, the darker and more sparse the city seems. Mission Church has a chapel filled with crutches from those who cast them off after being healed by miracles. After the church are a few pizzerias and then the wide, concrete and asphalt, sterile intersection of Roxbury Crossing.

I was on my motorcycle by the time I hit Roxbury Crossing. The light turned green and I rocketed down Malcolm X Boulevard, a street with few features, canyoned on one side by dynamited puddingstone and on the other by factory-facaded school buildings and an enormous, institutional post office. My speed was just right and I passed through Dudley Square and all down the length of Dudley Street without hitting another red light. Dudley is a place where no one gives up hope. They mill between destinations like the city's grist that gets leavened into airy bread. Self-contained, little wrong is committed in Dudley. It is a half-charmed place in which Fate never forgets to bestow a few blessings.

I passed the over sized, bronze pear in Everett Square, a symbol of Dorchester's fecundity if there ever was one. I parked my motorcycle on Dot Ave, walking the street to pick up some sundries before I settled home for the evening. The sidewalks were just as crowded as those in Longwood, but a different breed of humanity was out and about. I passed the bleary-eyed, the watery-eyed, the cross-eyed, the legally blind, the blue-eyed, the brown-eyed, the almond-eyed, the mystically third-eyed. I passed among the bloated and the spindle-ribbed, between the straight-backed and the wearily bent, the chalk-faced and the rosy-cheeked. Young and old, adolescent and senescent, addled and sage, the only homogeneity was provided by context and common experience. Dorchesterites. Dorchesterites all. Human beings foremost, Bostonians of course, citizens of Dorchester in the end. What a city.

School without a science teacher

I have volunteered to conduct science experiments with fourth grade students at a local elementary school. The school doesn't have a science teacher. This is in Boston, a city known for its progress in biotechnology, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a science corridor of high-tech companies along the Route 128 beltway. I will be volunteering at a private school but a public school, a block away, is in the same straights and relying on volunteers from the same program to expand their science curriculum because the public school also doesn't have a science teacher on staff.

I am more a romantic, intuitive dreamer than a hard-nosed analyst. If I am teaching science to youngsters, something must be wrong with the system. I would prefer to lead field trips wandering around the neighborhood appreciating abandoned buildings and well-crafted brickface facades, but that is an indulgence that comes secondary to productive, deductive thinking. I understand how electricity works and how density allows for flotation and the biological food chain and whatever else our experiments are supposed to prove. With that background, I have the leisure to appreciate the more ephemeral aspects of my surroundings.

That children who attend schools adjacent to the Longwood Medical/Academic Area don't have a science teacher doesn't pass the smell test for a well-rounded education. Mission Hill and Roxbury are lucky to have responsible corporate neighbors with deep pockets who can pay their employees to lend a helping hand and provide staff, however marginally qaulified, to guide students through a few, pre-packaged experiments. Do Dorchester schools have the same resources available to them?

I assume the corporate entities in Longwood employ more college-educated persons than the businesses in Fields Corner. I don't think Tedeschi Food Mart or Mad Rag are offering their employees to help out at that neighborhood's schools.

Something is broken and that something needs to be fixed. I don't have the answer but I will do my part to shed a little light of enlightenment and the miracles of critical thinking about natural facts for one hour a week in Mission Hill. I can only hope someone else is doing the same in the thick of Dorchester's school system. Boston, and the world, needs more children who will grow into adults, who grasp the basics of the universe's mechanics.

Why fear?

It is natural to feel fear in certain situations but not when you are just walking down a street. Dorchester unjustly has a reputation that makes drivers' knuckles go white around the steering wheel as they exit I-93 onto Freeport Street. I don't know why. I have lived in Dorchester almost two years and I have never felt my life or property threatened. I've been all over Dorchester, in the classy neighborhoods and in the sketchier ones. Everyone has always been polite and helpful. I have never been approached to be a party to an illegal act, though my manners and dress would lead one to assume that I was in some places for no other reason.

I have been the most pale-skinned person for blocks but I have never felt uncomfortable for that. I have been the oldest person in a knot of young men on a sidewalk who were less well-dressed, less educated, less socially connected, and less law-abiding than myself, but it was never an issue for any of us. I am not boasting, only making deductions based on the available evidence. I ask for directions and they give very accurate ones. One of the toughs wishes me a nice day. I thank the group and respond likewise with good cheer. Have a nice day, sir.

Some places get known as Wild West war zones where might makes right and the black market is the only market. Good news and no news doesn't sell newspapers. If it bleeds, it leads. Plenty of nothing goes on in Dorchester, but most people never get a chance to learn about that. This applies to other parts of Boston. I am thinking of Roxbury in particular and the Dudley Street corridor that connects the two neighborhoods. Dudley Street is a vibrant and interesting avenue though disposable income doesn't slosh around it the way it does in other parts of Boston. People do, and people are what make a city interesting and livable.

It is easy to look down your nose at how the other half lives. It is just as easy to get out and about, saying hello and complimenting the people you pass on the street, gathering greetings and goodwill in return. To be cheerful doesn't make you a mark for hustlers. Common courtesy goes a long way. It is better to live a century as a rube than one day as a snob. I've been a snob. It is comfortable to be smug but it is much better to be open to what the cityscape offers.

Population destiny

Dorchester is Boston's largest municipal subdivision, logging in just shy of six square miles. The population in 2001 was 92,115 people in a larger city made up of almost 600,000 at the time. If you do the math this come out to about 15,000 people in each square, Dorchester mile. That's more crowded than a Red Line train during rush hour. There may some friction and frayed nerves at times, but, like harried commuters, the people of Dorchester get along as they head to their specific destinations.

Interestingly enough, Dorchester is Boston's second-most densely settled neighborhood after the equally maligned Roxbury. People think downtown is dense but that is mostly an impression of architecture and tourist traffic. Neither Roxbury nor Dorchester is home to high rise office towers or vast civic plazas, or anything modern, really. They exist by rules and plans laid out at least a century ago and oftentimes older. The infrastructure works and supports a multitude. It is time-tested and doesn't go in for fads.

Dorchester is one three-decker building after another after another along every street in every direction, each story packed with families and each family packed with stories. The sidewalks don't lie. There are always people out and about on some fool errand or another. You don't find many people in the Financial District after working hours or on Sundays.

So many people jostling and talking to each other results in a cross-pollination of ideas and ambitions. Great schemes are incubated in Dorchester (and Roxbury) and great men and women get their start here. People from outside the Dot say it is too crowded, too run down, there's too much crime, the beautiful people don't live there. The beautiful people may move away after a time, but they are born here and more are born after them. Its per capita concentrations of souls is one of Dorchester's assets. Good and evil, rich and poor, industrious and lazy, abide side by side in close proximity. It is a stimulating place in which to live, a place that breeds understanding and universal viewpoints, compassion and competition, philosophy and piety, and a willingness to allow everyone to work together.

You don't want bankers and construction contractors running your city. A living city needs a neighborhood like Dorchester (and Roxbury) to keep its focus honest and close to the bone of humanity.

Lost on Washington Street

I was in Eggleston Square in Roxbury this afternoon doing a little shopping at Skippy White's Record Store when I noticed a pedestrian wandering about from corner to corner between Washington Street and Columbus Avenue, obviously without a compass. "You look lost," I said. "You've got that right, friend," he replied. "Which direction do I take to Codman Square?"

"You're a long way from Codman," I answered.

The stranger looked up at the street sign and said, "But I'm on Washington Street, right?"

"You're on Washington Street, alright," I said, "But you're on Washington Street in Roxbury. That's a different avenue from the Washington Street in Dorchester."

"Am I still in Boston?"

I reassured him, "Indeed you are. The problem is, if you follow this Washington Street, you'll end up in Hyde Park in one direction or downtown in the other. If I were you, I would head that away toward downtown. At least you'll be able to catch the T and save yourself some shoe leather. If you take the Red Line to Shawmut you'll just be a few blocks from Codman. I wouldn't recommend walking to Dorchester's Washington Street from here."

The stranger looked puzzled. He asked, pleadingly, "Where am I?"

"Oh, you're in Boston," I said, "You're not that lost yet, but don't let the street names confuse you. There are at least four Washington Streets that I know of but there are probably more that I don't. Don't trust the signs. In Boston you have to poke about and find your way through trial and error. I was like you when I first moved here but I've learned my way around. Just get on the T and it will take you close to where you want to go, assuming its close to a T station."

"Where's the nearest T station?"

I pointed westward. "It's somewhere over there," I said. You'll hit a main-looking road that runs north south and you should follow that one way or the other as you feel inclined. You wander back and forth along a few one way streets with no clue where you're headed until you hit some stairs headed underground, Follow the rumble of a train on submerged tracks. Let that sound be your guide and you'll eventually find your way."

"Can I follow you?" he asked. I told him I was taking the bus through Jamaica Plain to Calumet Square in Mission Hill and once he was dropped off there he would be just as lost as he was here. "Let your conscience be your guide," I said, feeling like Jimminy Revere, ""You'll get where you're headed in the end even if it takes you all day. We've all done it at least once."

Jungle love

With a blanket of snow over Dorchester, we were surprised to hear the soothing sounds of exotic tiki music wafting out of an open, third story window on Sagamore Street. The ukulele strains were so hypnotic, a gaggle of Dorchesterites had stopped in the middle of the middle of the street with ears cocked upward. Nobody was doing a lot of driving today but the streets were thick with pedestrians heading though the snow flakes for milk, malt liquor, bagged snack food and pizza made to order.

A young man sporting a frizzled beard was one of the people stopped on Sagamore Street listening to the music that issued out of this apartment. He said, "I feel like I'm in Hawaii." He said it spontaneously to no one in particular and he was quickly hit with a snowball by a companion who said, "I couldn't do this in Hawaii, buster." The whole group guffawed and scooped snowballs from around their feet and started pelting the guy who exaggerated the situation too much.

It didn't feel like Hawaii in Dorchester or any other part of Boston today. It felt like New England in winter, the worst time to live here. Despite that, it did feel care-free. There is something about a snow storm that makes everyone congenial. We are all in this together. The inconvenience of not being able to travel as far as you choose forges a bond with other people in the street, in the stores, in the pizza parlors...we just want to get out a bit and see that the world is getting on. It's nice to be alive in a winter wonderland. Boston, Dorchester, Roxbury, Eastie, Charlestown, Chelsea, Southie, the Back Bay, the South End, West Roxbury, they are all pretty places but they become even prettier under a blanket of snow.

One of the women who stopped on Sagamore Street, she was 60 years old if she was a day, said, "This music puts me in mind for the beach." She looked at her squire and said, "Why don't we take the Blue Line to Revere and walk the beach?" He said he would load his ipod with tiki music as soon as they got home and then they would be off like a shot for Kelly's Roast Beef and a stroll along the picturesque shores of exotic Massachusetts Bay.

Dorchester breeds daydreams along its shortest streets.

A conundrum of neighborhood names

We all know why the Back Bay is called a bay. It was once a shallow, fetid, stinking backwater of a bay filled with sewage and carcasses before it was filled in with soil to form an arc parrallell to Cambridge to become the eastern picturesque shore of the majestic Charles River. Pricey land, perhaps, but solid land just the same. All the expense that went into filling the bay demanded a solid investment. It remains so to this day, thus far. What of other Boston neighborhood names?

Why is East Boston the northernmost part of the city? Why is South Boston the part that stetches most to the east into Boston Harbor while all of Dorchester spreads below it on a map? Why is West Roxbury at the city's southern edge? Why can't anyone tell Allston from Brighton so much so that the two are always referred to together as Allston/Brighton?

Why is Lower Roxbury right next to North Dorchester though both neighorhoods share a common border and latitude? Why do we travel uphill from the Orange Line to get to Jamaica Plain? Why does the Mission Hill branch of the Boston Public Library have 'Parker Hill Library' carved over its doors? The Mission Church was built before the library and only a puddingstone's throw away.

How does a city known for its parochialism get away with naming neighborhoods, in Dorchester at least, complete with signs from the mayor welcoming travellers, Morton Street Village or Adams Street Village? Morton and Adams Streets are long. Am I to believe that no one ever had a better name for these nodes of commerce and community? Pull off I-93 in Dorchester and you will be greeted by a sign on Columbia Road. It says: "Welcome to Columbia/Savin Hill." Can anyone think of a clunkier monniker? Yes. The Red Line T station on Columbia Road is called JFK/UMASS. There may not be graft involved in this but there is certainly some grafting.

The Pepper Pot

Looking for some good Jamaican jerk food? We recommend Irie Restaurant in Kane Square near the crest of Meeting House Hill in Dorchester. If you can't make it there because it isn't connected to the T and bus connections don't run terribly frequently, may we offer an alternative that is just as hygienic and savory?

The Pepper Pot is a short walk down Dudley Street to the east of Dudley Station. You needn't bring your compass. The freindly folk that frequent Dudley Station will be more than happy to direct you. For authentic Jamaican flavor, the Pepper Pot can't be beat. Knowlegable, attentive wait staff will guide you through the menu. Once you make your selection from a variety of stewed meats in savory sauces paired with Carribean greens, the kitchen staff will lavish loving kindness to your dish. Sip an Irish Moss drink and enjoy the easy-going ambiance and mouth- watering aromas the Pepper Pot has to offer while your meal is being prepared to your satisfaction.

Demanding diners know they don't have to sail away to a Sandals resort for real Jamaican food. This fare is easy to find in Boston if you know where to go. Here is a tip: Take the Silver Line to the end of the line. Walk two blocks to the Pepper Pot. Your palate and your stomach will thank you.

Better Than Good

When something is better than good, it deserves a different word. Some people say "fantastic," and that may work if you come from Fanchester. Where I live though, if something is better than good, we call it dottastic. We usually append two exclamation points for emphasis like so: Dottastic!!

The word is a fad that is catching on with all the youngsters around Dorchester. I wouldn't say the word has reached the critical mass to be all the rage, but it's making its rounds and gathering force. I was in the McDonald's at Codman Square where a young couple were enjoying a late lunch. The boy said, "My sister took me to Eggleston Square yesterday and that Filet o' Fish was good, but this one is dottastic!!" His date took a bite of hers and flashed an enthusiatic thumbs-up in agreement while still chewing.

At the Tedeschi Market on Neponset Avenue the other morning, I was picking up a Dorchester Reporter and the Herald. The cashier was all of seventeen. After I had given her my $1.25, she gave me a winning smile. "Thank you, sir. You have yourself a dottastic day!!" I assured her I would.

While waiting on the inbound platform at Shawmut Station, I watched a gaggle of pre-teen girls squeal with delight at one of their member's shoes. "Those are so dottastic!!" They kept saying it over and over. The shoes' owner was very pleased by the attention and compliments. She said she had gotten the shoes at AJ Wright.

Proof that the word is entering the mainstream, at least in this part of Boston: There is a handwritten sandwichboard on the sidewalk outside Peabody Tire. It says: "We have the BEST Tires at the Most Dottastic Prices!!"

Will the word catch on outside Boston's biggest neighborhood? It may be a tough sell. Roxtastic sounds pretty nice, too.

Little Chicken

Poultry husbandry is illegal in Boston, as is any other kind of livestock-raising beyond dogs, cats, guinea pigs, lab mice, goldfish, homing pigeons or budgies. Urban animals are encouraged but rural animals are dissuaded from entering Boston's city limits unless they are dead, cut to order, and ready for the frying pan or the oven.

Tonawanda Street in Lower Roxbury, just north of Newmarket and west of Upham's Corner, has been awakened recently by the sounds of a rooster before sunrise. Many cocks crow in the dark in this part of the city, but few bestir the neighbors before alarm clocks are set to go off. Though animal enforcement have been called in, no one has been able to pinpoint the source of the every-AM disturbance. Cock-a-doodle-doo rings out over the rooftops as the sky to the east tinges pink. An insomniac can't even buy a newspaper or a chocolate bar at that hour of the morning. The neighborhood isn't pleased by having its beauty rest disturbed.

Talk around the Ideal Sub Shop, on Dudley Street, most mornings indicates that a brood of "pocket chickens" has been smuggled into upper Dorchester and lower Roxbury from Cuba. It has long been a scheme of the Castro regime to breed miniature farm animals since at least the 1990s and the sound of the mysterious rooster cries on Tonawanda Avenue have been attributed to a communist plot. The goal behind this wrinkle in the Cuban Scientific-Agrarian Plan was to bring the bounty of rural self-sufficience into the apartments of urban barrios. Slogans included: "A Dairy in Every Closet!" and "A Pocketful of Grape-Sized Eggs!" Boston may be a better city in which to explore the ramifications than Havana.

The Massachusetts ASPCA has been briefed to be on the lookout for miniature poultry, most probably chicken but perhaps turkey, duck or goose. Birds are expected to be able to nest in the span of a human hand, but there haven't been any conclusive sitings or measurements. Who knows what mutations have been spawned in sub-topical, jungle, genetic, abandoned sugar plantation laboratories? Who knows what principals of science and nature have been bungled? There may be a new breed of chicken in Boston, a bird fit for a pocket. If true, it will still be illeageal to bread or keep as a pet, if not illegal to eat. Every good citizen around Tonawanda Street is encouraged to turn in information on the source of the mysterious avian crowing. Boston's mayor has offered a $3.oo reward for valuable tips that lead to the discovery and incarceration of alien pocket-chickens.

Good Enough

"The downside of everything getting better is that people forget the virtues of just good enough."
James Lileks wrote that today on his "Bleat" at lileks.com. I couldn't agree with this sentiment more. He is specifically talking about coffee today, and I sympathize. I go to J.P. Licks every morning outside my office and I have to order a large Peru. I would like to just order a cup of coffee the way I do at Mike's Donuts up the street. Lileks doesn't need a shout-out from me; the reverse would be nice but unnecessary

I take the Orange Line to Roxbury Crossing and I either get a coffee at Butterfly, located in the station, or at Mike's Donuts a little further up Tremont Street. I don't need to specify what kind of coffee I want at either of these places. I don't particularly care what kind of coffee I get as long as it is hot and black and unflavored. J.P. Licks operates on a different, more newfangled model. I am expected to be a connoisseur at Licks. They have about thirty-wonderful flavors of ice cream and because of that, I suppose they feel they should be offering as many varieties of coffee. I just can't be bothered. Diner coffee is good enough for me.

The staff people at all these places are very nice. The ones at Butterfly and Mike's have worked there a long time (at least in the morning at Butterfly; after the crack-of-dawn shift, art students take over the carafes). The staff at J.P. Licks comes and goes. They are mostly art students also from what I can tell. They are used to persnickety orders. At Mike's you get coffee and you can get a donut if you want one. I just get coffee and the newspaper. Then I cross the street to Mission Hill park to read the paper before I go to work. It's a nice routine, one that is good enough.

My routine wouldn't be made any better with a better cup of coffee and not just because I don't care. I like to sit in the park with Boston's skyline in the distance. I read the Globe or Herald and look up. I gaze north and see the tableau where all I have been reading about takes place. The other day I read a story about a child being shot in Roxbury by the Mission Main apartment complex. I pieced the details together and realized I could see where the tragedy occurred. It was fifty yards away but whatever happened the day before, it was peaceful that morning. There was just a man reading a newspaper enjoying a cup of plain coffee. A city is like that. There are so many fleeting details. Just good enough is good enough most of the time.