Spitball Army

Yesterday, bought a pair of New Balance shoes – though didn’t go to the factory in Allston, which may or may not be there still.  I went to an independent shoe store right on Dunster Street next to Herrell’s.  I don’t think they are going to be there a whole lot longer.  The pattern here seems to be to muscle out the small, independently-owned businesses – the ones that have traditionally provided the color and personality that so greatly defined the Square in the past – and replace them with long-term tenants, generally big national chains with lots of money, brand-name recognition, and the desire and ability to renovate the retail property.  Gentrification, baby.  And I swear I’ve heard people cursing gentrification in the current context two or three times daily since I’ve been here.  It really does seem to have done some real damage here in Harvard Square, though my trip last night to Porter Square and Davis Square showed that, though there is some of that happening there, they still have their “own thing” – their character – going on.

12:08:24 p.m. on Friday, 21 September 2007.
This is a 90-second live-action snapshot of the activity in Harvard Square, a la Augie Wren.

Did some more walking around today.  Up Brattle Street toward Longfellow House.  Went by the Westheimers’ house.  It’s very sad that they are both dead now.  Don’t know who owns the house, but it is in terrible need of a paint job and the shutters on the front are falling apart.

They always made sure the house looked neat and attractive, both inside and out.  The house next door was for sale.

I took an afternoon nap.  It was for one hour, then made a couple of phone calls, and slept another hour like a slug.

Took the T to Porter Square later in the afternoon.  The subway system no longer takes tokens.  They have taken the “branding” approach, as well, as the tickets that you buy from a machine (automation again, as at the airport) are called “Charlie,” as in “Charlie on the MTA!!”  It took me awhile to figure out how to buy one.  The lines to buy with cash were very, very long, and no one was purchasing at the credit card line, so I did that.  It wasn’t easy, at first, all touch screen technology and menus, but I would be a pro a second time.  Bought a $10 ticket which scans each time you take the train.  Individually, they’re now $2.00, versus 50 to 75 cents last time I visited.

The Porter T station was filthy!  I remember when it was brand new – now the blue and white bird murals that lined the ceilings above the longest-escalator-in-the-world have turned brown and gray, and all they appear to be now is dirty.

Above ground, the whole Star Market lot has been completely re-developed.  The new buildings go all the way up to the house next door to my old tri-decker at the corner of Acadia Park.  The people that own that house could make a mint worth of dough if they ever sold that corner building.

Walked from Porter to Davis Square through a neighborhood that I had never even seen before.  There were some beautifully restored old houses that were most likely at one time multi-tenant slums.  The obvious transformation was pretty amazing.  The yards were all neatly landscaped and many had graveled drives and garden units behind them.  It was a shock to come out of this idyllic neighborhood into the noise and grime (and construction) of Davis Square.  Davis is still retaining a lot of its “townie” character – not so much of the polyglot character of Harvard Square, nor the sophistication.  I was hearing LOTS of that lazy Boston curl from the speech of the people I passed on the streets.  I ran across a bookstore called McIntyre & Moore that was all used books, and it was massive.  They had very little fiction, but tons of more academic-leaning stuff.  I imagined that this is one of the places where personal academic libraries come to rest after their owners either die or move away.  I found a volume of Omar Bradley’s A Soldier’s Story for $7.50, in hardcover.

By default – as the two pizza places I walked to had lines out the door – I went to a joint called Diesel Cafe and had a mozzarella/pesto/tomato sandwich, toasted, that was really tasty.  I’m thinking, by the looks of the people working at the last two places I’ve been (bookstore and Cafe), that Davis is still home to a lot of Bohemian types – several piercings, idealistic t-shirt slogans (for example, “Free the Jena 6”), and snotty 23-year-old post-college attitudes.  I’m imagining that they are battling the townies for dominance in this neighborhood, and while they expend all of their energies and resources attempting to eliminate one another, some other group of people will move in and replace the pubs and sub shops with garden shops, crepe cafes and Starbucks outlets.  It just might happen.