20 posts tagged “boston”

...has always felt like the choice here in Boston. But I miss my bike! I am not a particularly graceful bike rider, or a competitive one, or even a very successful one, but I love it. I learned how to put one together, and when it broke on a rainy night in Portland, how to fix it myself. I have been known to slam my fist on the back of a few cars who cut me off (thanks to Chris for teaching me that one in SF) and ride to the beach, music in my ears and feet balancing on the pedals, flying around a corner in SF. I want Dodai's bike.

Boston has always intimidated me on a bike, though - the streets here are so intensely ass-backwards that I have a hard time even driving around here. Not to mention how many times I've nearly been clipped just walking across the street. The Boston ethos of traffic seems to be "don't look, just go". I haven't had a bike the whole time I've lived here, and I miss it. I really, really want to ride. But where? and why? and how?

Does anyone in Boston who is not a crazy fixie bike messenger type (although I love you all) ride here? What is the strategy? How is it done? Should I just shut up and stop being a pussy, or what?

It's not a Disney ride for drunks, and it's closing to make room for a CVS.

"This is a double-edged sword," said Dumas Lafontant, director of the Lower Roxbury Coalition. "It's never good when liquor stores outnumber supermarkets, and we welcome giving residents more access to medicine and other goods. On the other hand, we don't welcome a major corporation replacing a locally owned business."

Horace Renge, 56, an unemployed man with a big, toothless smile, comes by the store nearly every day to earn a few dollars fetching coffee for the Petrillos or sweeping the place. His picture is on one of the store's cash registers...

"David Mays has even more to lose. The president of Tow Happy earns about $2,800 a week towing cars from Liquor Land's lot, where people visiting the hospital often park illegally. "There's no way I'll replace this income," he said, after nearly towing the car of a reporter who had been at the store.

Petrillo and her daughter Christina, who are on a first-name basis with many customers, say their business is about more than money.

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Liquor Land is across from the hospital which houses the gym I go to, and bookends a bunch of public housing. It makes me sad to lose a local business that's been around for longer than my dad's been alive.

nerdily, I like the Vegas-y typepace.

One of these days, I'll start to "get it" that it just snows here, seasonally and ceaselessly, like rain in Portland or fog in San Francisco. Until then, I still find it both baffling and charming, like living in a Laura Ingalls book.

It's been more than a year now since I left California.

A LOT has happened since then, both in my Vox universe and the world in general. I didn't really think about it until today, until I was walking to pick up some breakfast, and realized I just take all the Boston oddities for granted. One of the things I loved best about San Francisco was just walking around people watching, taking it all in.

5 things I miss about California:

sushi
the beach
Golden Gate Park with Stella-lou
boys in rollerblades, angel wings and hot pants rollerblading down Market
all yall

5 things I love about Boston:

the wicked accent: "Makaah's Maahk whiskey"
thunderstorms
people yelling out all sorts of random things on the street
whole families piled in giant hooptywagons, eating popsicles
bodegas with cats in them:

It was warm enough out this morning to go running - 2.3 miles, just around the neighborhood. I know it's supposed to be cold and possibly snow again this weekend, but today, it's spring. I haven't felt that waiting-for-seasons-to-change happy satisfaction in a while.

I flung all my windows open when I got home just to try to make the house smell like melting ice and a vague hint of green things growing.

It's warm out! I only had to wear one pair of pants to walk to the studio. 

I wasn't sure when I came back to San Francisco how I would feel: would I want to move back, would I ship myself back a bucket of avocados, would I find I'd left some important internal organ here? Would it be like going to my old high school? Here's how it was:

Sometimes, you can feel yourself having growing pains, and nothing can stop that change once it's started. It's like a house on fire. This has been one of those weeks. I realized how much I'd changed and how much changing I could still do. I walked around some of my favorite places.  I saw my favorite babies and dogs. I've had to stand up for myself, twice, in a way that I'm not accustomed to. I'd much rather sit down for myself. (vague phrasing intentional. Magic 8 ball says: ask again later.)

I couldn't see everyone I wanted to, because this city is full of amazing and vibrant people that I love. I explained the story of why I moved to a town like Boston, a city scared of Mooninities, a hundred times. What it did was make me miss the hell out of my darlin boy so much, and at such weird times: there was no one yelling at the news, or to walk with me to the taco truck.

I read things that convinced me now more than ever that I am incredibly lucky to work with such amazing people.

Thank you, San Francisco, for always welcoming me, and I'll always miss you: you, the city so full of yourself that you actually ARE a person. As a friend used to describe you: that tranny in sparkly heels who sometimes loves you and sometimes hates you but always wants to do something fun and fabulous.

I actually found that I'd left my heart in Boston so it's time to go home. I'll be back soon.

Listen to the whole thing:

I got nudged out of my spot as a dj opening for my friends' band by a banjo playing beat poet. Seems the bar owner double-booked.

I'm not even kidding.

It's too bad that I can't play this just for the laughs:

What is your favorite scent?
Submitted by Erinen. 

I just smelled it - wet leaves and woodsmoke. Now I want marshmallows and life would be perfect.