I met an out-of-town friend on Newbury Street for coffee the other day, walking from the BPG to Starbuck’s behind the woman above. She was moving at a pretty good clip for someone loaded down like a pack mule. But you know how high-powered boutique shopping pumps up those adrenaline levels. And the more outrageously useless and overpriced the goodies are, the headier the rush. This chick was possessed. Maybe she had a shot of testosterone, or something. She must have strutted the whole length of Newbury Street showing off her booty (the pun was unfortunately unavoidable, given the circumstances).

Of course, it’s entirely possible there was nothing at all in those bags, and she was either a paid advertisement (however ill-advised) for the shops along Newbury Street, or (a little more likely) a bag lady collecting recyclable plastic water bottles on the sly. You just never know.

She seemed proud, but there was something shabby about her, sad to say. Too many bags, no one to carry them for her. Does she really think that’s something to be proud of?

People have clearly lost their minds. What tiny little minds they had to begin with.

Here’s something. I happened to pick up Metro last week–I think this was Tuesday or Wednesday, and I thought I had an op-ed in it (about Ralph Reed–but the editor was apparently skittish about some of the content–asked me for sources and everything, then never ran it–you can read it HERE, but it’s nothing special)–so on the op-ed page they have this thing called “Today’s Debate!” where they ask your schmoes, shmegeges, shlemiels, and shmendriks on the street what they think about something they’ve obviously never thought about.

Tuesday’s looked like this:

Now, as someone who lives in Dorchester, which is not a world away, by the way, I take umbrage at this willful Allstonian ignorance. Could they possibly have found three whiter, WASPier wankers to ask about urban violence? I’ll tell you what happened here. The reporter was too afraid to go to those “certain neighborhoods” Jennifer (who apparently has no last name–she’s like the Cher of Chelsea) seems to have maybe possibly heard that some of the alleged violence in Boston was “centralized” in.

The WASPiest answer was “You just need to be smart about where you go and what time you go there.” I think they left out the end of the quote, probably something like …to buy your crystal meth and cruise for rough trade.

It’s sad that Boston is so Balkanized people in one neighborhood doubt there really is a problem in the next one over. It’s true, as Jennifer says, that it’s concentrated in certain neighborhoods. But that doesn’t mean it’s not the whole city that suffers when violence erupts. Or that it’s not in our interest to examine what’s really happening (and, yes, it’s as bad as people make it out to be), why, and how we can stop it.

It’s not that far from Dot Ave to the Newbry, you know.