I took a long walk yesterday with my friend Markus from Tübingen, Germany, who is in town to get his MA in English. He had been staying in the YWCA (he claims not to have known what the “W” stood for) while looking for an apartment. He found one, but when we met at Back Bay Station yesterday he said he had to go back to the YWCA to leave his phone number for someone there. So we headed in that direction.

When we got there I waited outside on the corner of Berkeley and Appleton for him. I’ve been over there countless times through the years, but it’s really not until you find yourself just standing there looking around that you see things. And I’d just never really had occasion to stand around on that particular corner before. So when I looked across the street and saw this:

I was sort of surprised. Was it once a synagogue? When I got home I did a little research. The only mention I could find online was a brief one from The Boston Walks “Jewish Friendship Trail” site, that listed Berkeley and Appleton as stop #4, and said of the intersection simply:

“…near the corner of Berkeley and Appleton Streets, we can glimpse a vivid reason why Jews felt comfortable occupying several communal buildings at this intersection. Here, in the first floor of the Theodore Parker meeting house, Adath Israel ran its Sunday school beginning in 1875.”

If this is the Theodore Parker House–and it may or may not be–I don’t know why it would have a Star of David figuring prominently in the design, since Parker was not a Jew. He was an abolitionist, transcendentalist, deposed Unitarian minister (you know he was radical if he got chucked out of the Unitarian Church), and finally head of the Twenty-eighth Congregational Society of Boston, whose Appleton Street Chapel was built at the corner of Berkeley and Appleton Streets around the time the building in the picture was.

So, my curiosity is piqued. If anyone knows anything about any of this, give me a shout.

Marcus joined me after a few minutes’ musing on the street corner there, and we headed to Back Bay, eventually making our way through the public garden, for a stroll on Beacon Hill, where I noticed this in passing:

A found phallus. Just thought I’d share.

We walked from there to the Charles and found a park bench, and Markus ate a plum. And we watched the sky:

Then we decided to go to Cambridge. So we walked to the Charles/MGH T station. It has yet to be automated, and here, again, the T’s utter incompetence in this process was on glorious display. We could not use our Charlie Tickets, of course, and found ourselves scrambling to come up with change. Markus got his token, and then I handed the man in the token booth two dollar bills–I am absolutely sure of it–and asked for “one, please.” I got two tokens, and fifty cents back. For some reason. I didn’t complain. Seventy-five cents a trip seems totally reasonable to me. I think that’s about what the T’s worth these days. I felt somewhat, slightly–but only slightly–compensated for all the inconveniences. It could be a secret policy of theirs, to quell the fury of the masses with little random giveaways like this, making you sort of complicit in the conspiracy. I mean, you sort of think, OK, the incompetence is bearable if I get a free ride out of it occasionally.

In Cambridge we walked around Harvard Yard. I showed Markus a swarm of tourists who had come all the way from Southeast Asia to polish John Harvard’s shoe, even though it’s not really John Harvard. I asked him if he wanted to do it, too, and he said he would pass.

We had a quick bite to eat at the Friendly EATING PLACE on Mass Ave at Dana Street (roughly midway between Harvard and Central Squares). It’s been there forever, and as far as I have ever been able to tell, it’s no friendlier than any other EATING PLACE in the neighborhood, though no less friendly on the whole, either. The sign facing Dana Street is the most strictly accurate, reading simply “EATING PLACE.” Although people also talk and laugh and drink and watch the TV in the corner, and day-dream, and worry, and look at passersby through the window. But if you want to be all functional about it, I suppose it is an “eating place” first, and an all-those-other-things place second. The eats are, however, so-so at best.

So, we hopped back on the T at Central Square, where, of course, we could not use our tokens, and Markus’s Charlie Ticket was out of funds, and the train was coming, and I ran my ticket through, and next thing I know, Markus jumps through with me. No buzzers buzzed, no red lights flashed, and no one was in the station to do anything about it if they had. This was my first fare evasion experience (albeit a passive one) with the new automated system, and to be perfectly honest, it was painless.

Not that I myself would actively evade paying my fare, but I’m not one of those people who a bag of money drops out of the sky and lands on their heads and they go turn it into the authorities, either. You know, if the universe offers you a free ride, take it. It’ll all even out in the end. I’ve lost plenty of money feeding the T’s old token vending machines, and if the gods of the underground are seeing fit to pay me back a bit at the moment who am I to question their wisdom? Am I gonna spit in the eye of Providence?

HERE.

Boylston Street has some of the most pathetic bicycle rackage in Boston. “Well, at least there are some bicycle racks,” doesn’t cut it. A surprising number of people share a pathetically small number of racks that were obviously put in more as a symbolic than a practical measure. But almost worse than the city’s half-assed gestures toward alternative modes of transportation in its core, are cyclists’ insensitivity to the needs of other cyclists. It’s sad, but not too surprising, truth told, that there’s really no solidarity among cyclists in the city. I mean, City of Brotherly Love Boston most assuredly is not.

At the risk of seeming like more of a prickly prick than I generally do, I would like to demonstrate two methods of racking your bike on the Boylston Street racks: the first would be the WRONG way, the selfish, inconsiderate way, since it allows for only two bikes to be racked at once. Whereas the second is the way that allows for four bikes. And, trust me, maximizing space is important during the work-week.

These are not ideal racks, as I’ve said, but you work with what you’re given. Really, the main point here is to think about others occasionally. You know, when you do, I swear to God things run much more smoothly for everyone. It’s not just being nice to no purpose. Being nice actually makes things work better. For real.

So peace out, and freakin rack your bikes up right, Boston!

An op-ed in today’s Boston Globe.

Have you seen him yet?

My friend Tony spotted him over the weekend, on Mass Ave., if I’m not mistaken. And then, this evening as I was riding home, we crossed paths on Tremont Street.

He’s a skinny, scrappy old thing. Looks like he’s seen some tough times. But that’s life in the city, as my ma used to say, especially for a bear. But despite the patch of mange on his tattered old hide, and his worn old visage with its faded fur and sad, goofy smile, he’s ever so friendly, waving at everyone as he rides by. And waving in a nice way. He doesn’t freakin’ QUACK-QUACK at you, all aggressively, like you’re the butt of his joke. Just a neighborly little wave as he passes. Which is why people wave back.

He doesn’t stand for anything in particular. He’s not advertising anything that I can see. He’s just a bear on a bike. Which is enough, when you think about it.

We need to fix him up with a foxy, cycling she-bear, so they can get busy making baby bears. Because Boston most definitely needs more bears on bikes.

Last week there was a firestorm over cycling in the city on the pages of The Globe. It was ignited by a letter to the editor from a certain Marika Plater, which is worth quoting in its entirety:

THIS IS to the man in the blue Volkswagen who screamed at me, with an obscenity, to get on the sidewalk when I was riding my bicycle on Memorial Drive last week. Actually, this is to all of the Boston drivers who have honked at me while I’m biking and following the traffic laws; who have given me the finger, cut me off, splashed puddle water all over me, and squeezed me to the curb.

I want to tell Boston drivers that they do not own the road. Bicycles belong on Boston streets as much as cars do. Especially because the number of bikers will rise as skyrocketing gas prices and heightened environmental concern cause people to seek new forms of transportation, drivers need to learn how to be respectful of bicyclists and to share the road.

So here’s an abbreviated list of Massachusetts bicyclist rules of the road:

Bicycles are allowed on all roads, unless there’s a sign that says they are prohibited.

Riding bicycles on sidewalks is discouraged in general and is illegal in Somerville and parts of Cambridge.

Bicyclists must obey traffic laws.

Bicyclists should use hand signals when turning.

Bicyclists should stay at the edge of the right hand lane when there is not a bike lane, unless making a left turn, in which case they can use the left lane.

Boston drivers: Bicycles have the legal right to share the road with cars . Please watch out for bicyclists and remember that we are not protected by pounds of steel as you are . Please be considerate rather than cruel when you encounter us on the road, and please look out your window before opening your car door. Biking in Boston does not have to be as stressful as it is .

Her rant elicited the obligatory counter-rant from a certain David McCaffrey of Waltham:

MARIKA PLATER must have a death wish (”Bicyclists belong on the roads, too,” letter, Aug. 17). No one in their right mind would ride a bicycle on Memorial Drive. Hundreds of bicyclists use the sidewalk along the Charles River daily. Is Plater so obtuse that she would risk her life because there is no road sign prohibiting bicycles?

She gives a list of bicycle rules. It’s more of a wish list. Not only do bicyclists disobey the rules, their aggressive actions are a real threat to pedestrians. While driving on Mass. Ave. in Cambridge recently, I observed a bicyclist swerving in and out of traffic at high speed. When he came to the red light, he blew right through, narrowly missing an elderly woman. I observed four more bicyclists blow through the same red light.

Why do so many bicyclists disregard the rules of the road? Probably because they are unaccountable. They need no license plate, registration, inspection, or insurance. They don’t even pay an excise tax , which helps pay for the roads they use.

The next time Marika Plater wants to vent, she should look to her fellow bicyclists.

Ouch.

People. First of all, calm down. There are no innocents in the war of all against all going on on Boston’s mean streets, so let’s not pretend we’re not all at fault here.

Secondly, one of the reasons cyclists behave the way they do is that as stressful as driving is in Boston, cycling is a hundred times more stressful. It takes a lot less to get yourself seriously injured or killed on a bike than it does in a car. because many Boston streets are not made with cyclists in mind, you have to develop some aggressive strategies to get from point A to point B. Until cycling is considered a serious transportation alternative, you will have guerrilla cyclists on the streets.

Which doesn’t entirely excuse bad behavior on the part of cyclists. And I have seen cyclists behaving very badly indeed–usually, but not always, those loathsome bike couriers, biking’s version of cabbies and truck drivers. They think because they do it for a living it gives them the right to dress and behave badly. It doesn’t.

I myself have rarely encountered any real trouble with motorists, to tell the truth. You do have to keep a look-out for motorists and pedestrians, but that’s just cycling in the city. I have not been honked at, given the finger, cut off, splashed or squeezed to the curb. Really. And I ride along Mass Ave for a good portion of my commute.

I do avoid traffic, and choose my routes carefully, though. I’m not biking to prove a point, I’m biking to get from point A to point B. And I give myself enough time to deal with unanticipated delays. So the main reason I have not encountered too much trouble on the road is that I anticipate it, and take measures to minimize the probability of it.

So it’s no tribute to Boston’s drivers, God knows. They have a real problem signaling turns. They routinely blow through red lights. And many have anger management issues. Instead of putting all the blame on cyclists, motorists like McCaffrey here should get out of their cars, hop on a bike, and ride through the streets every once in a while–not Memorial Drive, of course (he’s right that Plater’s a dork to do this).

What he would find is that all those things that annoy him about other drivers when he’s in a car, are multiplied and amplified to the nth degree on a bike. And they’re no longer merely annoyances that he can blare his horn at. They can be downright life-threatening when you’re riding a bike.

Not asking for sympathy, here, just telling it like it is.

And personally, I don’t object to a certification course for cyclists. In fact, there are courses on urban cycling offered by MassBike. The idea of an excise tax for cyclists, whose lightweight vehicles have hardly any impact on roads, and who in many parts of the city don’t have lanes of their own, is a little outlandish, however.

Cycling should be encouraged, and every measure taken to ensure it’s safe in the city. That means cyclists should learn the rules and the necessary skills, and that the city should work to build a cycling infrastructure that would minimize dangers of mixing with motor traffic. And motorists should get out of their cars on occasion and ride in the city, as well. They might learn a thing or two, and maybe, just maybe, they’d find a better way to get from point A to point B in the process.

You may have picked up this week’s Weekly Dig, and seen the crotch-shot that came in apparent answer to a cover of a couple weeks back featuring a bikini-clad female buttocks. There was a letter to the editor after that one bemoaning the dearth of covers featuring “dude ass, or some close-up dick bulge.” And it was a legitimate complaint, and The Dig recognized it, issuing “an open call for man-bulge art.” What you see on this week’s cover is apparently what made the cut:

No offense to photographer Jeff Galusha, who has spent a lot of time, apparently, perfecting his art, but, as my good friend Joey Smithers (of The Joey Smithers Effect–and don’t pretend like you don’t know who he is, either) said, over beers last night, “that’s not a bulge, it’s a camel toe.” (By the way, he would like to thank The Dig for having the courage to say what has become glaringly obvious: the penis is the new pussy.)

There followed a lively discussion amongst all those present about whether the cover adequately addressed the original grievance, if at all, and what exactly should be considered a “bulge” in the first place. Personally, I think a distinction must be made between bulge, droop, and sag. I don’t think I have to illustrate the difference for you to see pretty plainly that The Dig cover is more a droop at best, possibly a sag, but really not a proper bulge. Nice try, guys, but no cigar.

Truth is, in the end, this Dig cover satisfies no one. It is overly ironic, and one thing I can say about irony with absolute confidence is that it doesn’t mix well with sex. Irony ends where sex begins. There is no such thing as an ironic sex organ. That’s why we cover them up. Irony can mask or reveal real intentions. So can underwear. But they are not the same.

We are in an interesting cultural moment. I mean, think back 35 years ago (ouch!) when the Stones came out with Sticky Fingers:

Pretty scandalous at the time. But by fifteen years later we had Marky Mark prancing around in his tidy-whities, grabbing his bulge (and it was a proper bulge) in prime-time TV ads for Calvin Klein.

So, what’s happened here? How did we get to where a droop or a sag could pass as a bulge on the cover of an alternative free weekly like The Dig? Here’s the problem in a nutshell: if they put a proper bulge on their cover, they’d be too mainstream, and it would be too confusingly earnest. The problem here is how to make the man-bulge, which has become downright iconic, teasingly ironic?

The funny thing about the original request for “dick-bulges” on the Dig’s letter page is that it was a reaction to what might seem to some an unironic cover featuring, as I mentioned, a female buttocks. But what makes that sort of cover fit The Dig is that it actually slyly parodies trash, but only for those who “get it.” If you’re not in on the joke, they’re just female buttocks, I guess.

Body parts are hard to parody, is the thing. Unless portrayed grotesquely or recognizably grotesque in themselves, a bum is a bum is a bum. Breasts are breasts. Semiotically speaking. You may have a preference as to shape, size, whatever, but it’s hard to make any kind of ironic statement with them.

Man-tools are easier than breasts or buttocks, though, because each has varying states, and because the tumescent state has been so relentlessly idealized and iconized (though in slightly sublimated form) in our culture. Nowadays instruments of domination and monuments to power are assumed to take the form of the phallus.

The bulge, in short, is the status quo. The phallic nature of our monuments was outed long ago. This is in fact why obelisks have fallen from fashion, and part of what was so profound about Mia Lin’s gash-in-the-earth design for the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial (although due to that talent for sublimating many who have tried to replicate “The Wall” in small-town monuments to the war have lost the significance of the monument being below street level, and have focused instead, as the popular nickname for the monument suggests, on the wall itself).

Fittingly, you will note that unlike the early seventies Sticky Fingers bulge, the post Mia Lin, mid-nineties, Marky-Mark version is antiseptic and amorphous:

Like the old Jane Russell bras, those CK boxer-briefs don’t reveal so much as acknowledge what cannot be denied. They offer a way to standardize an idealized bulge, promising to give your bulge that same neutral, pleasing form. In the guise of hyper-sexuality (a pumped-up, thugged-up Marky-Mark), Calvin Klein was actually offering our liberal-permissive culture a new-school version of Victorian sexual restraint. Perfect for the decade of Ken Starr.

So anyway, not only would a real bulge not do for a Dig cover, but a noticibly limp droop or a sag wouldn’t go far enough, either. It would clearly take small, sad, droopy bits in loose-crotched, pink man-panties to get the right message across.

It’s not like I’m jonesin’ for eye-candy. My point here is not that The Dig should be anything it’s not. I think it’s interesting how truly girded in on all sides artistic culture gets at times, is all. Not that artistic culture is always as interesting as what constrains the artists themselves.

As for eye-candy, I went to the MFA the other day with an out-of-town friend, and we ventured into some galleries I hadn’t explored. And there, right before my startled but delighted eyes, was a gang of priapic dwarves!

And who can resist priapic dwarves? Seriously. You gotta love the ancient Greeks and Romans. I’ll take a gang of angry, horse-hung dwarves over Marky-Mark any day!

In fact, why not put one of those little guys on your cover, Dig? I mean, Christ, you could still put them in pink man-panties if you wanted.

I discovered a couple days ago that while there are comments that get posted to my site immediately without moderation, there are some that go into a queue that I have to approve before they appear on the site. I don’t know why some go into the queue and others don’t, frankly, but most of the “comments” that end up in the queue are spams. To be honest, I figured they were all spams and instead of going through them, I periodically deleted the whole bunch without having a closer look.

Well, the other day I had a closer look. The ratio of legitimate comments to spams was something like 1:100, but there were legitimate, thoughtful, even insightful comments in there that would have been deleted had I not taken that closer look. (I still delete the ones that call me names, by the way.)

I wanted to mention this oversight on my part, and to apologize to anyone who may have attempted to post a comment in the past, whose comment never appeared. If you didn’t call me names, it was because I threw it out with the junk mail. I will be more careful from now on. I wouldn’t want to miss any stray compliments, would I?

Ok. That’s it. Carry on.

These two shots were taken from Kingston St., between Bedford and Summer (scroll down for detailed directions–the red “x” marks the spot). The first is looking due west, the second looking southeast. I was right across the street from The Good Life, which is The Place for martinis, apparently, in case you didn’t know. I’m not gonna get into the whole “what is a martini?” debate right now, though. It’s too early in the morning, and I’ve only had three martinis so far. (I need at least five-and-a-half to get philosophical.)

The building in which The Good Life finds itself is utterly charming, by the way:

The closest T station is Downtown Crossing (Red Line), which is .17 miles away. To get here from there, walk approximately 1 block SE on Summer St., turn right on Kingston St., walk a short distance SW on Kingston St., and look up.

Just so you’re clear on this, I consider a “found vista” in the city that open space framed by the structures. One thing I like about Boston–that you can really see in the second shot above, is how unexpectedly, and from just one certain angle on the ground, lines converge.

In that picture–looking SE–what is pleasing, mysterious, titillating even, is the vanishing point between the buildings. Their parallel lines seem to converge in that sliver of open space. There is freedom there, beyond—but it opens up only for a moment. Take two steps in any direction, and it’s gone. Like the shadow of a thought, or the hint of a possibility.

If you’ve discovered a secret vista, send it to me HERE.

HERE.