Back Bay and Beacon Hill

I am not an early riser. This, combined with going out every night, means that I have been missing a number of presentations I wanted to see, but I’m not concerned with this since I’m finding this whole conference a bit too academic for my tastes. I met up with my geographer friend Stef at the official conference party, complete with open bar and 80s cover band. When I got there everyone was standing around the dance floor, not dancing. At one point the singer said “Do geographers know how to party?” From the response the answer to that question is a definitive no.

I want to give a shout out to CJ Bright and Rebecca Alper. CJ did his presentation on the Silver Line BUS and seemed quite surprised when I dropped the bomb by telling him who I was. Rebecca did her presentation on property values in relation to the E branch street car of the Green Line verses the #39 bus. She found that property values were unaffected whether the transportation was via streetcar or bus. Interesting findings that may make people reevaluate the fight to bring back the Arborway trolley.

I left the conference and was about to go home when I realized it was an absolutely beautiful day out so I just started to wander. I checked out the construction site for the Columbus Center. What a clusterfuck that has been. I’m not going to go into now but lets just say they just dug everything up and it looks like it is going to stay dug up with nothing being built for a while. I wandered around the Back Bay, not really having any real place to go. I made my way into the Public Gardens and onto the Common. This was one of the first warm days this spring in Boston and everybody was out.

I met up with Stef and we got some food and ate it on the monument on the top of the hill in the Common. We were hemmed in on both sides by two separate groups of kids smoking pot so we left. I showed her Beacon Hill and where John Kerry lives. She is short so we took a bunch of pictures inside those crazy tiny doorways they used for coal deliveries back in the day and took pictures inside those Dickensian alleyways that are all over the Hill.

We then went to check out the Hurley Building, a Paul Rudolph building where parts of The Departed were filmed. This is one of the most amazing buildings in the world but lack of respect and investment are showing their signs. The concrete is falling apart and the plazas, which are used as parking, are in terrible shape. We got lost walking down a set of stairs that go nowhere and ran into a guy rolling a joint who gave us directions on how to get out of there. If weed is illegal you wouldn’t know it here.

We ended our trip through the Bulfinch Triangle. I love the old warehouses here. This area could totally be Boston’s TriBeCa (think about it, it is literally the Triangle Below Canal St, more so than TriBeCa in NYC) but its proximity to the Garden will probably forever relegate it to the domain of drunken Celtics and Bruins fans.