Well, the sun was out most of the day today, but I happened to get caught in the rain. I had got on my trusty bike and cycled down to the Shaw’s on the other side of the JFK/UMass T station. I make it a point to go to that supermarket rather than the new Stuper Slop-n-Schnapps because every time I go to Shaw’s I hear Nicolette Larson’s “Lotta Love”. They have it on a continuous loop there, and Jesus God I love that song with all my heart. I do. Neil Young wrote it, and I have his version at home, but Neil Young is no Nicolette Larson. Once you’ve heard her version, you go back and Neil sounds like Kermit The Frog singing it. I heard Nicolette’s version first, of course. That’s the one they played on the radio back in ‘78, when I was nine. Nine. That was a very good year.

So every trip to Shaw’s is like a trip back in time. To nine.

Now, it was sunny–you know, partly cloudy, but the sun was shining, when I got to Shaw’s. When I stepped out of the supermarket there was this wall of black, impenetrable evil barrelling across the heavens. It was inscrutibly ominous and headed straight for me, like, like, like my future, or something. But it was moving so fast and headed for Southie, I thought maybe, just maybe it’ll pass right on over me and rain on somebody else’s parade.

No such luck. Just as I got on my bike and jetted off across the parking lot, all hell broke loose. There was this ferocious wind whipping all around, and lightning and thunder. It was very Wagnerian. And then came, not rain, but HAIL! Riding your bike in a hail storm. Not a good idea.

So I took a detour into the T station. Haven’t been in JFK for probably a month, maybe a little more. Figured I could wait out the brunt of the storm there. Or at least the hail. I was surprised to see that they’ve got a wall of ticket machines where the newpapers used to be. They’ve also got a couple of the new turnstiles in there, though I can’t say if they’re up and running yet.

I still didn’t really want to hang out there, so after a couple minutes, I took off. I was soaked to the skin by the time I got home, and now the sun’s out again. It’s true what they say about New England weather: you don’t like it? Wait a minute, it’ll change.

Well, when I heard the rain wasn’t gonna let up until NEXT Thursday, I finally broke down and got myself some proper raingear and have been cycling to Back Bay and back every day. Monday I got up and thought, I’m gonna get just as wet walking to the T station from home, and from the T station to “work” and back again, as I am just riding my bike to “work,” so why not just ride? You know, get it over with quicker.

Plus, in the first scenario I’d have to stand, packed into a humid, mobile bird-flu incubator for forty minutes, with scenes of near-Dickensian misery all around me, the train lurching and rocking to the collective gnashing of teeth. You know the drill. No thanks.

And it’s been drizzle for the most part, albeit a steady drizzle. Still, as for rain, it’s no biggie.

On my way home in the afternoon, I even dilly-dallied a bit in the South End. Stop-and-smell-the-roses type stuff. Where on the T can you do that? I don’t dare to take my noseplugs out the whole time I’m underground.

Yesterday I took a different route so that I could stop and admire my hands-down favorite piece of public sculpture in this, or any city, really:

Clearly alluding to the underbelly of the Fontana di Trevi in Rome, this postmodern anti-fountain on the corner of Pembroke and Warren was an early attempt, before extensive gentrification, to increase property values in the then-blighted area, by adding top-notch public sculpture that reflects pride of place. It now stands as an heroic monument to asphalt and scrap granite in the heart–or, actually closer to the liver–of our fair city.

After admiring that for a spell–really recharging my aesthetic batteries–I proceeded along the intestinal tract of Mass Ave. on my way home. I saw this poster advertising the ubiquitous Da Vinci Code on a T lean-to outside of the NStar facility across from South Bay Shopping Center:

I haven’t read the book, and have no intention of doing so, and if I see the movie it will be out of the same dull desperation on a rainy day that drove me to Mission: Masturbation III. But I liked this poster. It’s a little different from some others I have seen. I particularly like the looks on the actors’ faces. Like they’re being confronted by something both awesome and distasteful at once. Like a full-scale Lucien Freud nude. In fact, I imagine the photographer probably flashed a couple Freuds at them to get that shot. There’s more than a hint of “ee-yooo” there, don’t you think?

Tom Hanks, who has finally turned to marshmallow, looks concerned for humankind on the verge of a revelation that obviously horrifies the scrumptious, fiery-eyed, nostril-flaring Audrey Tautou, who nestles in his marshmallowy breast for comfort.

Hmm. Honestly, I don’t understand what’s the big deal about The Da Vinci Code. Many other deities have married mortals, after all, and no one batted an eye. If gods become flesh and then don’t mingle with the fleshly, how can they really be said to have understood what having flesh is all about in the first place? Why not just stick with being a burning bush? I mean, to go to all the trouble to get fitted with a body, and all tricked out with the tackle, and then…? It’s like taking a Carnival Cruise and never leaving your cabin. It’s like going to Vegas and staying holed up in your hotel room. Can you really say you’ve been to Vegas? Sure. But have you really been to Vegas? If you haven’t done anything that needs to stay in Vegas, as the ad says, then you might just as well have stayed home, really, and watched the series on TV.

But having said all that, it should also be said that whatever a god does when he manifests in fleshly form should really be his own business, don’t you think? QOTD.

When I was cycling this morning I encountered two cars at an intersection. One barely stopping where the other should have had the right-of-way. So the woman who was cut off blares her horn and shouts out of her window at the guy: “Hey! Have courtesy, asshole!” Well, that’s one way to spread the courtesy meme, I guess.

The truth is I’m a cheap bastard in the first place. I quit buying cigarettes and started bumming them when a pack of Viceroys got to about what a trip on the T costs now. I’ll quit the T, too, and start bumming rides, if the fare gets too out of hand. If you’re not good with money, you’ve got to be good at making friends with money. Those are the only two ways to get by in the world today.

Remember, it was not so long ago that we were getting the same service for 85¢. When I first came to Boston, it was 85¢ and it stayed that way for nearly a decade. And it was an impressive system at 85¢ a pop.

But nothing would make it worth a buck-seventy. Nothing would make it worth $750 a year for a monthly subway pass. Nothing. Not flowers and chocolates. Not champagne and sushi. Not daily foot-rubs, tongue baths and blowjobs from a personal harem of plus-size T conductors in thongs and the GM himself. Nothing. N-O-T-H-I-N-G.

I’ve heard a lot of people’s ideas about what would make it worth it to them: improved infrastructure, updated equipment, more trains, faster service. But that’s way too pie in the sky for me, especially since the proposed increase is not earmarked for improvements, but for merely maintaining “basic services”.

The problem with the T is that the higher the fares, the worse the service will get, because riders will be ever more outraged by the ever-lousier yet more expensive service, and T employees will continue to be rude and unreceptive while providing that lousy service for which they are so well-known and in which they apparently take great pride. Because the T currently exists to serve the T, and not those who ride it.

We know, as the Bureau of Transportation Statistics says, that “a major reason for [the T’s annual operating defecit] is the fact that Boston’s transit work force is among the highest paid in the country.” Consider that almost 55% of the operating budget of the T goes to payroll, and a third of that to fringe benefits. We have all heard about the generous pension offered by the T, for which employees are eligible after only 23 years. An antiquated and counterproductive system of seniority still governs the T. In ’05 The MBTA Advisory Board observed that rampant absenteeism is costing the T $4 million a year in overtime. Thus far, the T has done nothing about it. The T continues to reward bad behavior and lackluster job performance.

Add to this the BTS’s findings that in addition to payroll, bloated costs are due to the “MBTA’s outdated equipment and the fact that it generates much of its own power in inefficient, oil-burning power plants,” and it’s clear that the problem is systemic. The cost of fares will continue to rise while improvements will be minimal or redundant (like the informative flashy new electronic signs in Downtown Crossing that say simply, “No Smoking” and “for more information go to mbta.com”–Gee, thanks).

This is why it’s hard for me to justify paying more for fare, because it’s not going to fix what’s broken: the unions, bad contracts for grossly overpriced generally faulty equipment as the rule, and the legislature’s “forward-funding” plan, which just ain’t cutting it, either.

And one last little note. I just think it’s ironic, all that money that went into the fiscal black hole that is the Big Dig. These fare hikes are about priorities–of commuters, of the T, of this city.

I got some shit today from my dentist’s receptionist via a friend of mine who’d just had his teeth cleaned about my latest Metro column HERE. Apparently the complaint had to do with the fact that I live in Dorchester, so I have no earthly right to be slagging off the South End. I mean, about their rubbish problem.

But I’ll tell you something. In Dot we use trash cans. You hardly ever see the kinds of scenes you see in the South End–with the rubbish strewn all over the sidewalk and spilling inot the street–in Dot.

Part of the reason is that people have space to store trash cans here, whereas in the South End, there’s nowhere to put ‘em. I understand the problem, but the solution they’ve come up with there–basically, do nothing and pretend there’s nothing wrong–just isn’t working.

By the way, I’m still thinking about what would make the T fare hike worth it for me…

Just wanted to keep you all posted on my cycling adventures on the streets of Boston.

I missed a week of The Dig, but read in this week’s issue that there’d been a “soapbox” on cycling in Boston, by a cyclist who was apparently slagging off other less-skilled and less fashionably attired cyclists than himself.

The letter to the editor responding to his article rebuts some of his noxious assumptions about other cyclists, but the one thing I don’t agree with the letter-writer on is that cars and trucks are always more dangerous than other cyclists. All of the near-collisions I’ve had over the past couple of weeks have been caused by run-ins with other cyclists, most of them riding on the wrong side of the street, on one-way streets, where I was riding with traffic.

I also ride the wrong-way down one-way streets sometimes. This is one of the perks of cycling in the city, rather than driving. And I make use of sidewalks, too, when they are relatively clear of foot traffic. But I also try to be aware of all the traffic around me.

Just the other day I had three run-ins with cyclists that pissed me off. It so happened they were all riding the wrong way down one-way streets where there was quite a bit of traffic, and I was riding to the right of the traffic, going the right way.

Two of them were young guys, one all tricked out in cycling gear, the other was a princess from the South End who obviously didn’t want to get his highlighted tresses mussed-up on his morning commute, because of course he didn’t have a helmet on. Neither of them so much as looked at me—even when the princess cut me off, and we came inches away from a collision (and bike collisions are so awkward and embarrassing, and are almost guaranteed to mess up your hair). Neither made any attempt to get out of my path, either. One of them acted like it was his right not only to travel the wrong way down a one-way street on the wrong side of the road, but also tried to go to my right so that I would be on the traffic-side, and have to swerve into traffic to get out of his way. It’s a little much.

Almost worse than these head-on encounters is getting stuck behind other cyclists. Especially in rush hour, there’s nowhere to pass. I don’t blame other cyclists for this. If there were proper bikepaths or bike lanes, there’d be a better way to pass.

The closest close call I’ve had yet was when I got stuck for several blocks in evening rush hour traffic behind another cyclist, who decided, without signaling in any way, to stop dead to let another cyclist cross from a side street in front of her. I had to brake hard, and my chain came off. She had no idea I was behind her, never looked back, and went along her merry way oblivious that I’d almost just smacked into her.

A big problem with urban cycling is it seems like everybody’s got his own set of rules—or more like expedients. And because the environment is so hostile to cycling, cyclists become hostile to the environment. But there is also a bit of the Bostonian attitude that says that everyone is an obstacle to whatever little end you’re aiming at.

I do agree with the letter-writer that Boston’s cyclists should lose the holier-than-thou attitude, but I have a feeling that those with attitude have it whether they’re on or off the bike. Personally I ride because it’s cheaper than taking the T. I mean, I’m so cheap, these are the lengths I’ll go to to avoid paying a buck-twenty-five for the T. Seriously. I know I’m not cool. I know I look like a dork in my fourteen dollar Styrofoam helmet. I have no illusions about any of that.

My solution is to try to find an idiosyncratic, out-of-the-way route where I’m as unlikely as possible to encounter cars, pedestrians, or other cyclists.

Still have yet to emerge from my wireless crisis, so I was back at Bates Hall yesterday when in came a most annoying woman in head scarf and sunglasses. She was either one of these Western women who choose the veil or an overstuffed unglamorous version of the late Audrey Hepburn. I am guessing the former was the case. And the fact that she was clearly a convert was annoying, because when people are born into a religion, it’s somewhat understandable that they would continue to practice it, but converts are always out to prove something. And, as my dear old dowager friend, whom I met and mooched off of years ago in Budapest, Madame von K– used to say: “stridency in anything is unattractive.” I have not found all of her maxims to be true, nor even many of them, but this one definitely is.

Anyway. So she was annoying right off the bat. And I want to make it clear that it has nothing to do with the scarf. I have nothing against scarves. I have a colleague who is an authentic Muslim from the Middle East, and she wears the loveliest scarves. And she is really the loveliest person. See, so some of my best friends wear headscarves.

But people have an aura as surely as they have an odor. And this woman’s was rancid. She was conspicuous in the first place, but made herself even more conspicuous by the way she behaved. Bates is clearly a reading room, which means most people are reading in it. It’s a quiet place. Well, she sits down—at the table across the center aisle from mine—and starts ripping single pages out of her daily planner. One by one. R-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-rip. R-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-rip. R-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-rip.

OK, whatever. Clueless, right? Unfortunately, it just happened that this was the day I left my headphones at home. Meanwhile she busied herself very self-importantly ripping out the pages of her planner, and then ripping them up.

By the way, there’s a custodian going through now. He just paused, looked around, and then threw a bottle into one of the little metal waste paper baskets here. It made a huge sound, reverberating through the hall, which seemed to satisfy him. He sauntered to the other end of the hall, repeated the gesture, and then sauntered out. And they say the working class male is inarticulate. Well, people get their point across, don’t they? One way or another.

So back with Jameela the Ripper. I got used to it. I’m very adaptable like that. Then, after about forty-five minutes, this nutty-looking wiry little woman with a mop of frizzy grey hair came scrambling in, and went right up to Jameela—I thought sure we were gonna have a Bates Hall bum fight—and asked her if she minded her sitting down right across from her! Right across from her! It’s unheard of! Especially when there were free seats that were not right across from her! But The Friz had a laptop, and the tables only have outlets on the inside aisle-side, not the outside wall-side. It’s just one of those things. I mean, it made some kind of sense, at least.

And the Friz was nice enough about it. I mean, she could’ve just sat there. There’s no rule that says you have to ask someone’s permission to sit RIGHT FREAKIN ACROSS FROM THEM in a library reading room, after all.

But, check this out: Jameela the Ripper didn’t even acknowledge her, but immediately—without a moment’s hesitation she started very violently, noisily gathering her things up. I was like, damn, girl. Chill. Ol’ Friz is not that bad. You’re lucky Mohamed’s not here. (But, come to think of it—I have never seen Jameela and Mohamed in the same place at the same time—could it be a sort of wacky “Krippendorf’s Tribe” type thing, where Jameela actually IS Mohamed? The mind boggles.)

So here Jameela is gathering up her stuff in a noisy huff, and Ol’ Friz starts waving her hands in Mohamed–er, Jameela’s face (she still has her big, mysterious Audrey Hepburn sunglasses on, by the way) and Ol’ Friz is shouting, “Hey! Hey! You in there? Miss? Miss?!?” But Jameela refuses to answer, or even to look at her. “Yo! Lady! Can I sit here? Do you mind?!? Hello! He-lo-o-o-o-o!” Ol’ Friz is still waving her hands in Jameela’s face, until finally Jameela’s got all her little scraps of ripped-up paper gathered up and stomps off to another table, like, three tables away.

So was it a real victory for Ol’ Friz, or just by default? QOTD. I’ll tally all votes and get back to you.

Anyway, I got a little chuckle out of the whole spectacle, at least. But Ol’ Friz got the last laugh. That’s the thing about crazy people. So she ended up watching some kind of video, without headphones, on her laptop. It was just louder than whisper volume, which was the perfect volume to bug the holy hell out of anyone in her immediate vicinity.

Another day in Da Hall. Gotta love it.

So I was riding through the South End on my way back to Dot yesterday, and, lucky for me, it was the day before garbage collection and I happened to have my camera on me. I have wanted to record for the world, and for posterity, what the view from a million dollar condo in the South End is like two days out of the week:

Gorgeous, innit?

And this is a random sampling. I didn’t have to go looking for torn bags and rubbish strewn about. It’s all over the South End. Now, I don’t live in the South End, myself, but I still find this scene utterly atrocious and shameful for a city that insists it has some kind of class.

Last year I did a little investigating, and found that new “rubbish rules” had been issued in 2002. Unfortunately, this is one of those meaningless actions government takes so that they can say they’ve addressed an issue, when in fact they have done nothing to solve it.

The “new rubbish rules,” first implemented in 2002, and renewed in ’05, state that “There must be sufficient metal or durable plastic barrels for storing of refuse generated in building.” But on the next line, the compact says: “Disposable 2-ply [or heavier] plastic bags may be used instead of trash barrels for curbside trash collection.” This translates roughly to: “throw your trash out the window onto the sidewalk and street. Make sure it is strewn about all over the area in front of the building.”

There is absolutely no point in saying in the first breath that you should have adequate metal and durable plastic containers, and then in the next that you can substitute plastic bags for them, if you wish. Obviously—I mean, just look at the pictures—plastic bags don’t work.

Now, when I’ve brought this up with residents, they kvetch that if they spring for a trash can somebody will steal it. Or, where are they gonna store it? Or what’s to stop the rag pickers from digging through trash cans and tossing out the contents, too?

OK, so live in filth two days a week in your beautiful million dollar brownstone, and pretend that your neighborhood doesn’t look like Fresh Kills. Trash? What trash? Why, I don’t see any trash!

But this is not only a civic issue, a quality of life issue, and an issue of people pussying out on the challenges of urban living, of efficient and effective waste disposal, it’s fundamentally a public health and safety issue. And other cities have dealt with it, and dispose of their waste with some dignity. We’d do well to emulate them.

The first thing you have to do, though, is admit you have a problem.

It really is part and parcel of a public culture that takes little or no real interest or responsibility for its public spaces. I mean, seriously, how can you spend seven-hundred-fifty grand for a tiny condo in the South End, and live waste-deep in garbage two days of the week, every week, all year round? And still have that South End attitude, to boot?

We should start with more stringent recycling regulations. No more of this la-tee-da! Do I feel like recycling today? Look at it like this: the fewer recyclables you have in your garbage, the less likely those looking for recyclables in your garbage are going to be to find them, and the less often they find them, the less often they’ll come back looking for them, and after not finding them at all, they’ll stop looking altogether. Trust me. If we can train pigeons with “negative rewards” we can train the neighborhood rag-pickers.

That’s a start, but barely.

Cutting down on food waste is another thing. When you throw out large amounts of food, once your garbage has been riffled through for recyclables, the next wave will be animals and people rooting around in them for food. Use your garbage disposal, or make a concerted effort to cut down on food waste.

But for a comprehensive solution, the city has to get involved. What’s needed are uniform waste disposal containers, provided by/purchased from the city. The containers should be fitted specifically to refuse-collection trucks. Containers and trucks that go together like this are infinitely more sanitary than the anything we have on our streets today. They are also infinitely more efficient.

At the very least, rubbish disposal should be systematized, which means as little variation on a theme, as few individual options as possible. Another thing it would be infinitely easier to do with a better system is fine offenders. It’s a city government’s dream.

But here’s the thing. The city doesn’t give a shit, because as far as it knows, it’s citizens don’t give a shit. Maybe there’s a rumbling every now and again. But this situation has been the norm for so long now, that we seem to think it’s normal. It’s not. But the rule is: you’re willing—even eager—to live on a garbage heap, they’re certainly willing to let you.

When I sent my letter to Commissioner Casazza last year pointing out the need for a change in the “rubbish rules” themselves, I got a rapid reply from an underling that read: “Please contact Code Enforcement with this issue at 617 635-4896. They will send an inspector out and possibly fine the responsible parties.” The problem was, of course, precisely that no one was in violation of any code, and that, still, there was rubbish all over the sidewalk.

But it’s good to know they have some bureaucrats sitting around waiting to fill out the appropriate paperwork, generating more rubbish, should any violators of the virtually nonexistent rubbish rules ever actually be found.

Sitting outside the library this morning a few minutes before it opened, and looking out over Copley Square, I counted twenty-five cars, trucks, and SUVs, backed up, waiting for the light on Boylston to change. Every single one of them had but one single occupant in it. I think it’s a shame that it takes $3-per-gallon gas prices for the government to come up with real incentives to use public transit.

Now, apparently, there’s been a move on the part of the legislature to give individuals who spend over a certain amount on public transit per year a significant tax rebate. And it’s about time. Even the President, trying to score some points for his party in an election year, is touting alternative energy (hydrogen is his new energy source of choice) and incentives for hybrids. Is this the same president who, a couple years ago, was offering huge write-offs for SUVs? Yes, I think it is.

Whatever. People need a good kick in the balls, that’s for sure. The legislature should raise the driving age, too, while they’re at it. No one has come up with a good reason not to. In fact, the only reason I’ve heard, from our privileged classes, of course, is that American idol wannabes wouldn’t be able to get to their auditions if the driving age was raised to seventeen-and-a-half. Well, boo hoo. I mean, the obvious reason for keeping the current driving age is that youngsters work, but the youngsters whining about it don’t, for the most part. They’re the ones driving flashy Beemers and Lexus SUVs to their all-important after-school Idol auditions. Outlaw American Idol, too. Problem solved.

I have some sympathy for working people, from dual-income families, where mom or dad can’t shuttle the kids around, but that’s not really my problem. My problem is that the rest of us have to pay, in countless ways, for their inability to budget their time. And why do we have to pay? Precisely because their inability to budget is based on higher consumption, and we give absolute preference in our society to those who can—and don’t hesitate—to consume more. We are a consumer culture to the core.

I’m not saying anything everybody doesn’t already know, of course. The question is, does it have to be this way? And if so, why? I took a little hike around Walden Pond a couple weeks ago, and they were selling t-shirts in the gift shop with Thoreau’s injunction to “simplify, simplify, simplify” on them. When you have to buy a t-shirt with this message on it in order to get it—well, it’s a little ironic, innit?

I remember a few years ago there was a big “simplify, simplify, simplify” movement on. But mainly it meant the switch from Laura Ashley window treatments to Ralph Lauren. You don’t simplify by cutting down on consumption, you simplify by changing brands, just like you lose weight not by eating less, but by eating more low-fat foods.

Bitch bitch bitch. I know, even I get sick of hearing myself bang on about it, but come on. When carpundit asked, in apparent earnest, why I didn’t just get my own wireless connection, I thought it was obvious. If you live in a triple-decker and somebody has a strong enough signal for everyone, why not split the cost three ways? Why isn’t that our first impulse, rather than throwing money at price-gouging telecom giants who had no compunctions for years about stealing our roll-over minutes? What’s wrong with this picture? In lots of little ways, it’s the war of all against all, isn’t it?

One things for sure, it’s harder than ever to simplify. My dad was one of these comical old coots who was always coming up with overcomplicated ways to simplify things. He really seemed to believe that at the end of all this was some sort of suburbatopia of perfectly climate-controlled, totally automated homes run by clapper technology, sitting on self-mowing, self-raking lawns, with self-shoveling drives, and so on. The best part of it was his cooking. He had perfected exactly three dinner entrees from his big Betty Crocker Cookbook since his retirement that he would make over and over and over again for my mother, night after night after night, year after year, in a never-changing three-day rotation. They were minor marvels, exact replicas in three dimensions of the picture in the cookbook he had taken them from. And that was obviously the point for him, although my mother confided that she liked the breakfast she prepared for herself while dad was still in bed better.

My point? I forget. Hmm.

I guess even when we simplify, particularly through systemization, we usually find that it’s not the magic bullet, after all. My dad seemed to desire a completely controlled environment, the same one that seemed, understandably, to stifle my mom. The goal was never simplification, but control of his environment. We see the same thing with technologies that are touted as means to simplify our lives, when more often than not they come to represent a false sense of security, or control, in a world gone crazy on account of the self-same technologies creating the proliferating problems they advertise solutions for.

Oof. I’m getting a little dizzy. Stop the world, I’m gonna throw up!

Anyway. I’m not about to move out to the wilderness. Too many mosquitoes. Simple is good. Mosquitoes, not so good. And don’t get me started on the black flies. I lived in Baxter State Park in Maine and worked on the Appalachian Trail for ten weeks one summer in my early twenties, and the mosquitoes and those demonic black flies made a meal of me every day and night—I probably lost two quarts of blood daily up there. Never again.

Hey, it’s Earth Day! Hooray for Earth! (Disclosure: I’m rooting for Earth to win.)

I’ve been wanting to ask those of you who cycle in Boston if you have ever noticed that no matter what direction you’re traveling, there’s always a headwind? QOTD.

A little shout-out to Charlie D., regarding livablestreets. I went to a forum at the Museum of Science recently that they co-sponsored. A lot of great ideas being implemented elsewhere, definitely worth looking into for Boston.

I should say that when I lived in JP I enjoyed having the greenway right outside my door. JP is fairly bicycle-friendly, but still, I think, focused more on “leisure-cycling,” not actually getting from A to B in a timely fashion. It’s a start, but Boston is the perfect size for a comprehensive network of bike trails that could get you anywhere you wanted to go. We should aim higher.

Anyway, thanks Charlie D., and I encourage everyone to check out livablestreets.com!

And a shout-out to dsaklad, too, who wrote to ask: “How would you compare Bates Hall with other reading room areas around the Boston Public Library buildings’ floors?…” I’m assuming this is a rhetorical question, dsaklad, and if so, it’s a very, very good point.

I don’t really have any major complaints with Da Hall. Even the crazies are well-behaved there, mostly on account of the proactive security personnel, who don’t take no guff. But the truth is you don’t have to be crazy to act the fool in public. In fact, I’m sitting right now in that little cafe-type place in the McKim Building–Sebastian’s–and there’s a perfectly normal-looking fellow in the corner reading something very lengthy on his laptop aloud to himself. Now, in and of itself, there’s nothing wrong with that. I always read what I’ve written out loud before I send it off for publication, for example, because, for some reason, I think it should sound nice. But I wouldn’t do it in the reading room, or in the middle of a cafe, unless I had been asked to a reading, or something, y’know? It’s a matter of sharing public space. It’s about mutual consent as to its uses.

When the students are in their exam period, the library and this little cafe are just crawling with people who seem to be on a mission to outfreak each other. I’ve seen some stunningly pretentious performances, let me tell you. Young people trying to shock with their put-on personae. Sad, really.

It’s like Berklee School of Mucus over on Mass Ave. I pass through the area on my way to the Fens, and all I’ve got to say is they’re all so different they’re the same. Looking freaky is easy enough these days. Doesn’t impress me. It’s an extension of adolescent acting-out. Nothing more, nothing less.

(Meeeeowww! You can tell I’m getting old and crotchety–in fact, yesterday I went shopping and was in the fitting room trying on shirts. I came out to ask the twenty-something clerk if she thought the fitted shirt I had on fit, and she said, “well…” It was snug, but that’s how it’s cut. She was like, “that’s the style, but…” I was like, “but what?” She didn’t want to say it, bless her, but the “but” was something like “but for people half your age.” I bought it anyway.)

What you’ve got in the youth of today is a kind of moral oreo: deeply conservative on the inside, but freaky on the outside. They’re joiners—but so were the hippies and the beats and so on. It’s always been about belonging. To a tribe, sure, but having your face stapled is no different really than wearing a suit everyday. A different team, sure, but essentially the same game.

I remember when Vans were really cutting-edge cool. That’s when the skateboarding subculture was going mainstream in the most obnoxious way. About six months later, everybody was wearing ‘em. I mean, old bag-ladies and bums were tricked out with their double-tongues. Vans are very comfortable. I admit I bought a pair and wore ‘em out, though I have never in my life been on a skateboard.

Point is: you’ve got to put a lot into staying ahead of the curve these days. That’s why tattoos and piercings have gained popularity. Because you have to really want to be part of the tribe to get ‘em.

But it’s all good. When you think about it, how much true originality can one society take?

Anyway, everyone knows the real freaks are the ones everybody says “seemed perfectly normal” before they bit off the heads of ninety-seven live chicks and left them lined up on little toothpick stakes on the State House lawn, or whatever. And no, that wasn’t me.

But back to Bates Hall. The great thing about this brave new world we live in is that, actual schizophrenics are really the least annoying of the lot. It’s a great time to be stark-raving mad, if ever there was one. Because nowadays, it’s those who are mad who often seem most sane.

And “sane” people are always taking advantage of the license we grant the insane in public. It’s like, “well, if crazy people can talk to themselves in public, why can’t I?” Or, you know, “if nutso there on the internet can kidnap his neighbor and cannibalize her, why shouldn’t I be able to, too?”

Manners are memes. It’s all monkey-see-monkey-do. What’s conventional is arrived at by a sort of silent consensus. It’s not what someone says should be done, like the Catholic Church or the Bush Administration would like it to be, it’s what people are actually doing, and when enough people get to talking to themsleves in public or eating their neighbors’ children, then you’ve got what they call a critical mass. Manners don’t always make the best sense. But I do think morals are intuitively obvious to anyone with a little good sense. (Under no circumstances do I condone cannibalism, by the way, in case you were wondering.)

And the monkey-see-monkey-do factor is why it’s even more important to proactively—preemptively—spread positive memes. On Earth Day, and every day!