30 days of babble, day 1 - boston!
well, technically it's already the 2nd, but whatever. also there's a special on whitey bulger on the travel channel (of all channels!) which is super appropriate because today's topic is BOSTON, for idiosyncratic. (i think they're trying to suggest that after whitey and his girlfriend fled boston, they could live undisturbed in santa monica - even tho people seem to have recognized him - because he was under fbi protection. well, he did inform for them while he was still living here....)
so yeah, boston can lay claim to whitey bulger. woo. (he was a mobster, for them what might be unfamiliar. apparently he was second only to osama bin laden on the national most wanted list. he was kind of terrifying. his brother william was the president of boston university for a while.) he was caught in 2011 and brought back to boston to stand trial. he's gotta be eighty. i have no idea how long he'll last in prison, just because he's already so old.
ok, now they're talking about centralia, pa, which has been burning underground for fifty years and which i always thought should've been a spn episode. i'll go back to boston.
maybe i should define my term - usually when i say "boston" i mean "greater boston" which includes not just the city of but also somerville (where i live) and cambridge, which are across the river, and, like, brookline, where my sister lives, which is next door to boston proper but is an incorporated city in its own right. for a big city, boston-boston is pretty small square mile wise. which i actually really like! it's a big city without being a BIG city. it's nice and manageable. well, as long as you don't drive. i hate driving in boston. the streets are all one way the wrong way and half of them are unmarked at the corners. it's like the city was designed to get you lost. >.< unless you're in the back bay - high-end neighborhood that was built on landfill in the nineteenth century and is thus laid out in gridlike fashion - boston streets look kind of like this.
(that map is of roxbury, which is part of boston, if you want to be technical.)
in 1776 boston looked like this. the powder house is near my house. winter hill and prospect hill are now parts of somerville - back then it was called menotomy - and the "college" marked in cambridge is, you know, harvard. most of charles bay was filled in to make the back bay neighborhood (of swanky stores and gridlike streets :D ) and incidentally the public gardens. back then cows grazed on boston common, and now the city puts down a skating rink in the winter. years and years ago i saw the wizard of oz on a giant outdoor screen - they did a free movie series that summer. the common is a really nice place to walk around. it's green and hilly and there's a bandstand and at the very top is the state house and its blinding gold-plated dome. also in the state house is the sacred cod, a five-foot-long wooden cod that was hung there a couple centuries ago to represent the importance of cod fishing to mass bay industry. it was codnapped in the 30s - i think as a college prank - and the cops got involved and it was a big deal until someone returned it.
i love that we have a sacred fish hanging in the state house. hee.
my other favorite hysterical historical boston story is about the great molasses flood of 1919, which is exactly what it sounds like - a molasses tank sprung a leak and two and a half million gallons of the stuff flooded the north end. it killed people and horses, destroyed buildings, and bent the elevated t tracks. (they had to briefly close that part of the line.) i know you'll be surprised to learn that negligence and shoddy tank construction were to blame. there's an urban legend that on hot days you can still smell the molasses on the streets, but personally i've never smelled it. the north end smells like people and italian food.
you might be able to guess one of the things i like about living here is that there's some neat history. if you ever come visit me i'll probably suggest you walk the freedom trail because a. it's a nice walk! and b. it's all revolutionary war history and it's kind of fascinating. we've also got the first subway system in the country and the oldest commissioned warship in the world. (the uss constitution, aka old ironsides, which was launched at the very end of the eighteenth century. she's a museum now and i highly doubt the president is ever going to call her out of mothballs to sail in service of the country.) and massachusetts was the first state to legalize same-sex marriage and i am never not going to bring that up in a discussion of same.
i hate that the t shuts down at midnight, tho. at least run it until two when the bars close!
i feel like i had a lot more of this post written in my head - i had some time to think about it during curling because there's time to think about a lot of random shit during curling - but now i can't remember what else i was going to say. >.< i like that boston has four actual seasons and that the high heat of summer doesn't last too long, i love that we get snow and that if necessary i can walk to the grocery store and the pharmacy and more than one chinese takeout place and a couple of coffee places that aren't starbucks or dunkin' donuts (ok, so that's more neighborhood specific and less city specific). i'm not a huge sports fan but i really like that boston is such a sports town - it kind of makes me feel like i live with hundreds of thousands of fanboys and fangirls. and all that sports glee is contagious.
you have (greater) boston to thank for amanda palmer, dennis lehane, matt&ben, the brothers wahlberg, spock leonard nimoy, prince spaghetti, and marshmallow fluff. as i am a huge fan of the fluffernutter, the last one gives me some pride.
(i really wanted to include denis leary, but he's actually from worcester which is an hour west. you can thank boston for his higher education, tho, because he went to emerson which is here.)
i know i missed something. did i miss something? anything else you want to know?
(you can still suggest things for me to babble about if you're so inclined. :D )
so yeah, boston can lay claim to whitey bulger. woo. (he was a mobster, for them what might be unfamiliar. apparently he was second only to osama bin laden on the national most wanted list. he was kind of terrifying. his brother william was the president of boston university for a while.) he was caught in 2011 and brought back to boston to stand trial. he's gotta be eighty. i have no idea how long he'll last in prison, just because he's already so old.
ok, now they're talking about centralia, pa, which has been burning underground for fifty years and which i always thought should've been a spn episode. i'll go back to boston.
maybe i should define my term - usually when i say "boston" i mean "greater boston" which includes not just the city of but also somerville (where i live) and cambridge, which are across the river, and, like, brookline, where my sister lives, which is next door to boston proper but is an incorporated city in its own right. for a big city, boston-boston is pretty small square mile wise. which i actually really like! it's a big city without being a BIG city. it's nice and manageable. well, as long as you don't drive. i hate driving in boston. the streets are all one way the wrong way and half of them are unmarked at the corners. it's like the city was designed to get you lost. >.< unless you're in the back bay - high-end neighborhood that was built on landfill in the nineteenth century and is thus laid out in gridlike fashion - boston streets look kind of like this.
(that map is of roxbury, which is part of boston, if you want to be technical.)
in 1776 boston looked like this. the powder house is near my house. winter hill and prospect hill are now parts of somerville - back then it was called menotomy - and the "college" marked in cambridge is, you know, harvard. most of charles bay was filled in to make the back bay neighborhood (of swanky stores and gridlike streets :D ) and incidentally the public gardens. back then cows grazed on boston common, and now the city puts down a skating rink in the winter. years and years ago i saw the wizard of oz on a giant outdoor screen - they did a free movie series that summer. the common is a really nice place to walk around. it's green and hilly and there's a bandstand and at the very top is the state house and its blinding gold-plated dome. also in the state house is the sacred cod, a five-foot-long wooden cod that was hung there a couple centuries ago to represent the importance of cod fishing to mass bay industry. it was codnapped in the 30s - i think as a college prank - and the cops got involved and it was a big deal until someone returned it.
i love that we have a sacred fish hanging in the state house. hee.
my other favorite hysterical historical boston story is about the great molasses flood of 1919, which is exactly what it sounds like - a molasses tank sprung a leak and two and a half million gallons of the stuff flooded the north end. it killed people and horses, destroyed buildings, and bent the elevated t tracks. (they had to briefly close that part of the line.) i know you'll be surprised to learn that negligence and shoddy tank construction were to blame. there's an urban legend that on hot days you can still smell the molasses on the streets, but personally i've never smelled it. the north end smells like people and italian food.
you might be able to guess one of the things i like about living here is that there's some neat history. if you ever come visit me i'll probably suggest you walk the freedom trail because a. it's a nice walk! and b. it's all revolutionary war history and it's kind of fascinating. we've also got the first subway system in the country and the oldest commissioned warship in the world. (the uss constitution, aka old ironsides, which was launched at the very end of the eighteenth century. she's a museum now and i highly doubt the president is ever going to call her out of mothballs to sail in service of the country.) and massachusetts was the first state to legalize same-sex marriage and i am never not going to bring that up in a discussion of same.
i hate that the t shuts down at midnight, tho. at least run it until two when the bars close!
i feel like i had a lot more of this post written in my head - i had some time to think about it during curling because there's time to think about a lot of random shit during curling - but now i can't remember what else i was going to say. >.< i like that boston has four actual seasons and that the high heat of summer doesn't last too long, i love that we get snow and that if necessary i can walk to the grocery store and the pharmacy and more than one chinese takeout place and a couple of coffee places that aren't starbucks or dunkin' donuts (ok, so that's more neighborhood specific and less city specific). i'm not a huge sports fan but i really like that boston is such a sports town - it kind of makes me feel like i live with hundreds of thousands of fanboys and fangirls. and all that sports glee is contagious.
you have (greater) boston to thank for amanda palmer, dennis lehane, matt&ben, the brothers wahlberg, spock leonard nimoy, prince spaghetti, and marshmallow fluff. as i am a huge fan of the fluffernutter, the last one gives me some pride.
(i really wanted to include denis leary, but he's actually from worcester which is an hour west. you can thank boston for his higher education, tho, because he went to emerson which is here.)
i know i missed something. did i miss something? anything else you want to know?
(you can still suggest things for me to babble about if you're so inclined. :D )