Going to work

It occurs to me that Boston is actually a very tiny city. It's very dense, and there's a lot of distinct neighborhoods and districts, but really, my circle of work, shopping, dining, entertainment, and living occurs within a mile radius of Chinatown. I could probably live contentedly for years within a five mile radius of the Boston commons. It is the smallest big city I've ever seen, made more apparent by the fact that the closeness of the distance means that everything is pedestrian scaled and walkable.

I wake up in the coolness of the morning in a very small room, pull on my clothes, and eat a quick bite of something, say a Greek yogurt or bowl of cereal in the communal kitchen of the apartment. I walk down two flights of creaking stairs covered in thick blue carpeting, which is wearing through to show the wooden risers and treads beneath. Pushing through the two wooden doors, I emerge onto the street with an unhindered view of the freeway in front of me and below. I follow the brownstones in the same age and style of my apartment building to the major street, and crossing, enter another much more upscale, old brownstone residential neighborhood, this one lit by gas lamps, and covered with a canopy of trees.

Emerging, I cross the street, dodging the modulated flow of morning traffic, to walk up a quiet street past the massive Tufts Medical center complex and the associated buildings, hotels, and offices. Crossing Stuart, I'm in Chinatown, where the streets are lively and full of people, trash is everywhere, and there is a smorgasbord of pungent odors- rotting trash, diapers, old fried food, new fried food, spicy curries, baking bread, dried spices, incense. Its easier to walk on the streets here anyway.  Past the bakeries, the general stores selling everything, all made in China and so cheap as to disintigrate immediately. There was one such store which blew me away with it's breadth of wares:

The first layer is the convenience store- one enters to find refrigerators of coke products, stacks of beauty and health supplies, candy bars. Then comes the video store in the next two aisles- first, Asian film from Thailand, Hong Kong, Japan. Then an aisle of pornography- for all tastes. Beyond, inexplicably is a huge area selling women's clothing from lingerie to standard street clothes to traditional Chinese garments to cheap Boston souvenir tee shirts. This, so far, is about half the store. The other half has luggage and cheap Chinese souvenirs- fans, resin Buddhas, soapstone beads, hanging lanterns, paper cuts, the like.  Further back, toys, hardware, tools, cleaning supplies, an aisle of cooking utensils and pans, small tables and stools, footwear including knockoff Crocs. Office supplies. It is the American dollar store, the corner kiosk, the flea market, and the gift shop rolled into one.

Beyond the Chinese gate, more major arterials, then the hub of the financial district- South Station. The storefronts drop away to spartan marble and concrete walls. Here is asphalt and concrete and brick and sky framed by industrial office towers and crags of ventilation towers for the buried freeway below the surface. Here, the car is lord, and suited pedestrians dart furtively as mice in the periods of logjam. South station is a nexus- a terminus of inner and inter-city busses, subway lines, commuter rail, and interstate rail. It serves the power of the city- the Big Four financial firms, the medicals, the architects and lawyers and media corporate empires which occupy the financial district and the seaport. If it wears a suit, if it carries a briefcase, if its salaried with benefits, and if it eats salad sold by the pound and $7 sandwiches five days a week, it comes here. They mass and flow, mostly out in the morning.

Fittingly, the terminus is lorded over by a juggernaut- the Fed. Financially as well as the architecturally, the massive tower shoots up over the city with its cold steel and glass walls and tight perimeter security. One cannot avoid its gaze skirting its hardened base, moats, guards, and fences as one heads towards the Seaport.

The anteater Arthur sits on top of the Children's museum across the bridge, once one passes the barrage of Irritating fife-and-drum music eminating from the not-yet-open Tea Party Museum and Simulated Rebellion Experience™. It's all brick warehouses here, converted into a "design center" within the past five years. Architects, office furniture, robots, design professionals. Dunkin' Donuts counts off the pace, repeating itself every fifty yards. In Chinatown, they spelled the name in plastic orange-and-pink Mandarin characters. In the Seaport district, its gold on black. More construction. A sea breeze. Water and canals and bridges.