TOO Many Damn People!

And they all seemed to be in Harvard Square yesterday. Of course they were – it’s August. Tourist Time.

I'd motored into Cambridge. The plan was to meet Felicity, hit Harvard Bookstore, a gallery (Cambridge Artist Cooperative maybe?) and then hoof it down to the MIT nabe for ice cream at Toscanini’s. Sounds like a great day, no?

Una problemo – where to park Bix. On-street would earn me a ticket after a couple hours but where's a reasonably priced, conveniently located garage? Yes, I should’ve taken the T into town BUT the lot at the station was full and I didn’t have time to find an alternative plus auto-pilot – I was on it.

I parked in my old East Cambridge area, in the Galeria’s huge underground lot. Cool, cool right? I emerged from the mall only to find that EVERYthing looked radically different. Ya see, it’s 15 years since Jen, Oni, The Amazing Bob and I called Spring Street our home. In that time the territory’s been terraformed not so terribly unlike Berlin, where the wall once stood. East Cambridge – between MIT and Spring – has gone from crusty old, blue collar, downmarketness (but still unaffordable for us as prospective home buyers) with trash and rubble strewn vacant lots to nada but gleaming tall, tall buildings. Posh “loft style” condos, chi·chi bars and restaurants and, of course, a zillion bio-tech companies and other start ups abound.

It’s a ten minute walk from the mall to the MIT/Kendall T stop – a daily walk when we was residents – BUT I GOT LOST!!! I couldn’t see any of my old landmarks over all the new high rises – the prison, that cute little brick cottage, the Greek restaurant that Jen and I used to stop in on our way home from work or the small, ancient factory building (that looked like a fab place for a studio). And, of course, Cambridge has never believed in street signs…EXCEPT on the new lanes that’ve been carved out, around the fresh, zippy superstructures.

45 minutes after leaving Bix and asking for directions (TWICE!), I found the T-stop. Sheesh!

The site of my first print shop gig, now a
cobbler’s shop

Harvard Square was jam-fucking-packed. It was a beautiful day. Why weren’t these people all at the goddamned beach!?

I made a beeline for book heaven.

An aside: a bookstore selling bestsellers AND, (this here’s important now), small independent publisher’s offerings, who ALSO have a Used Book Basement, is always automatically my fave. Brookline Booksmith in Coolidge Corner and Harvard Bookstore are two such places.

What’d I snag on this escapist fiction mission? A couple Tony Hillerman mysteries, a Charles de Lint I hadn’t seen before and the first in Vivian Shaw’s Greta Helsing series. I did good.

Sadly, Felicity was hung up at a doc appointment and couldn’t meet. Just as well, between the mobs of tourists, the heat (mid 80s is MUCH cooler at home, where I’m surrounded by trees and ocean) and the disorienting what-the-fuckness of being hopelessly lost in my old revitalized ‘hood, I was ready to pack it in. So, I did.

I managed to get from T stop to mall garage in one, not circular, shot. Shocking. I know. I think I’ll wait on visiting Cambridge again. Tourists gotta go and students need to get settled in and busy with school (NOT underfoot on the streets!). MAYBE in October.

Too Many People – Paul McCartney