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Not a Boring Hellhole Ruined By Blue Laws and High Rent After All: Boston Odds and Ends
- by joeb
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- August 27, 2008
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Alright, fine, the title was facetious. Still, though, it seems pretty self-evident that Boston's undergone a pretty serious facelift within the past couple of decades. Crime has dropped and Boston is regularly mentioned among the safest, nicest cities in America. Somewhere along the line, though, it seems like it's lost a lot of the street-level mystique that, to me, makes a city really great. Here are a handful of facts and other minutia that just might fool you into thinking Boston has an iota of weird culture left.
Julia Child
One of the most famous chefs of all time, Julia Child attended Smith and spent much of her time as a celebrity at her home in Cambridge, part of which her and her husband converted into a television studio. Her husband had to build her custom countertops because, at 6’2" tall, regular countertops would have probably made her look weird on television.
Upon her death in 2004 (last meal: French onion soup) she donated her house to Smith College, who then sold it for some reason. It’s just a regular house now, but there aren’t any laws against walking by. Check it out if you’re so inclined.
Julia Child's Old House
103 Irving Street Cambridge, Ma 02138
Mr. Butch
Former mayor of Kenmore square, former mayor of Allston, forever a Boston street icon, Mr. Butch is probably more representative of Boston’s two-decade change than anyone or anything else. Homeless in Kenmore square, he was driven out when Boston University bought up the entire area. He lived out his remaining years in Allston, eventually serving as sort of a mascot of the place.
Before his tragic death in a scooter accident last year, Mr. Butch once showered and shaved at my old house. His clothes smelled so bad they made my friend Dan throw up, and he told us about the time he played with Devo at the Rat. It was undoubtedly one of my favorite days I’ve ever spent living here. He was generally a cordial and hilarious guy.
The Great Boston Molasses Disaster
In 1919, the North End flooded with molasses and almost 200 people were killed or injured. Drowning in a 35 mile-per-hour wave of molasses strikes me as one of the most astonishingly awful ways to die imaginable.
Residents of the North End (apparently) claim that on hot days the neighborhood still smells of molasses. If you feel like checking it out for yourself (and especially if the smells actually exists and makes you hungry, I guess), do yourself a favor and check out nearby Ernesto’s pizza. It’s the best pizza in the city and probably some of the best I’ve ever had.
"Dirty Water" by The Standells
This garage rock classic , now played whenever the Red Sox or Bruins win at home, has become Boston’s unofficial anthem. However, the song wasn’t written by the Standells. It was written by their manager, Ed Cobb , who was also responsible for such songs as “Tainted Love.” (Soft Cell covered it).
Cobb himself had no specific attachment to the Boston area, having been reared in the music industry as a member of The Four Preps , a singing group based out of Hollywood High School. Songs based on specific regions and cities were all the rage in the mid-60’s, though, and this one happened to stick. It’s a fine song, but not as good as the other Cobb-penned Standells classic, “Sometimes Good Guys Don’t Wear White.”
Dirty Water
The Standells perform “Dirty Water” on television. The water is still dirty, albeit less so.
Galaxie 500
Galaxie 500 are my favorite Boston band of all time and certainly one of the defining bands of the late-80’s-early-90’s Boston indie rock explosion.
My snobbish, boring tastes notwithstanding, I included them in this guide because of a piece of information buried in their wikipedia entry: “In their early years, [drummer Damon] Krukowski didn’t own a drum kit, so he borrowed one from his Harvard classmate Conan O’Brien, who’d bought a kit but had recently given up playing it. This drum kit can be heard on many of Galaxie 500’s early recordings.”
There you have it, folks: Proof positive that there is nothing beautiful in the world untouched by the hand of Conan O’Brien.
Galaxie 500 - Tugboat
The music video for “Tugboat” by Galaxie 500. If you would ever like to stun me temporarily for purposes of, say, stealing my wallet, just play this song within my earshot.
OK Soda
I have only recently realized that OK Soda isn’t the widely recognized cultural oddity that I’ve always assumed it was. Pepsi created this weird soda that supposedly tasted like a bunch of different sodas mixed together and launched this enormous, weird, gen-x-targeted marketing campaign featuring drawings by the likes of Charles Burns and Daniel Clowes and an extremely strange call-in feature.
Boston was one of just a few test markets for OK Soda, presumably because of its high youth population.
OK Soda is explained and analyzed extremely well in this suck.com review.
The Rat
The Rathskeller ,probably better known as The Rat, served as the birthplace of Boston’s widely recognized contributions to punk and hardcore.
Playing host to just about every punk and underground rock act imaginable throughout the 70’s, 80’s and early 90’s, the Rat serves to this day as a dividing line between Boston residents who were there and Boston residents who weren’t. I wasn’t, but that doesn’t stop me from recognizing that, when this place closed and Boston University gutted it to make room for a hotel, a pretty big piece of Boston’s recent cultural history went the way of the dodo.
The Jesus Lizard at The Rat
The Jesus Lizard bring their one-of-a-kind insanity to the Rat. An era gone by.
Two Guys, a Girl, and a Pizza Place
This television show , which I remember as being really stupid, was not only set in Boston, but its titular pizza place was supposedly based on Little Stevie’s, one of the best-worst restaurants in the entire city. Often cited (and observed) for using the same mop to clean its floors as it does to clean its ovens, Steve’s wins the endorsement of countless drunken fools every night of the week, even in the absence of insipid television shows that indirectly endorse it.
Princess Cheyenne
Princess Cheyenne ,also known as Louise Wightman, also known as Lucy Wightman, was a renowned exotic dancer in Boston’s infamous “Combat Zone” red-light-district area throughout the 70’s and 80’s. After an appearance in Playboy, a stint as a talk show host and some time spent studying Psychology, Wightman sent some money to a degree farm in Dominica and began practicing without a proper permit. She was eventually arrested.
She was also briefly engaged to Cat Stevens and shares my alma mater . They don’t make them like her anymore, at least not around here.
Pizza and Julia Child's House
A map to the locations in this guide, which happen to have ended up being two pizza restaurants (one good, one bad) and Julia Child’s famous home.
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I’ve ended many a night at Little Stevies (is this good or bad, I’m not sure!?) and Ernesto’s was a lunch staple where I used to work. And I went to Emerson too…finished grad school there in Dec :)
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How excellent is this?!
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