sidewalk rage

BOSTON, Mass. - A suburban woman caused a five-pedestrian pile up on Hanover Street yesterday when she stopped dead in her tracks to seach her handbag for breath mints before meeting her fiance for a romantic dinner at Lucca. No one was seriously injured, but several pedestrians, all of whom live in the North End, fled the scene angrily, and witnesses say one pedestrian verbally assaulted the woman who caused the accident.

This isn't the first reported case of sidewalk rage. Over the last few months, this New England city has seen an alarming rise in reported cases of the pedestrian equivalent to road rage. While experts say no conclusive research has been completed, there seems to be two common factors that cause road rage and sidewalk rage: cellular phone usage and stupidity.

"I don't know what's wrong with these people," said Norton Endre, 36, of Boston's North End. "It's [Hanover Street] a busy street - the main drag - and the sidewalks are narrow. Just move to the [expletive] curb if you're not gonna move down the street."

Sal M. Prince, 25, agreed.

"It's bad enough people drive like idiots on Hanover Street," she said. "I mean, between the double parking and the six-point turns in the intersections and the subsequent screaming matches from car windows, we've got enough idiots in the neighborhood. The last thing we need is is this idiocy moving out of the cars and onto the sidewalks. I mean, when I get off work, I just want to walk into my building without having to battle my way through a congregation of people ooh-ing and ah-ing at that stupid life-sized chef statue my landlord puts out in front of his restaurant."

Meanwhile, members of the local business association are concerned about the way neighborhood residents treat visitors here. They say the visitors - largely tourists - are key to the economic health of the area.

"We need to keep the tourists coming back," said Dan Corpratore, the association's vice president. "Sure, it might be a nuisance to always come home to heel-to-toe traffic and Joe Schmoe holding up the line to answer his cell phone, but it's the price we pay for living in a neighborhood as beautiful and historically rich as this. The tourists support our economy, and we need to treat them with respect."

That's why Corpratore said his organization is going to start a public awareness campaign urging people to be nicer to others around them.

But in this city known for its residents' icy relations with everyone around them, it remains to be seen whether the business association's campaign will garner any support.

"It's a nice idea," Prince said. "But we're not known for being nice. That guy stopping foot traffic because he can't walk and talk on his cell phone at the same time - if he's in the way when I get over there, he's getting shoulder checked and getting a mouthful. I got places to be - I don't have time for that kind of BS."

extras in the movie of life

Upon exiting the Government Center T station through the turnstiles, I hear it:

"Animal rights. Sign the petition."

The shout is monotonous. The speaker's face, expressionless. If she were a stand-up comedian, I would call it deadpan. But I think she's serious. I think she really wants people to sign the petition. With a complete lack of passion or enthusiasm, though. It's like she's been put up to it.

Rather, it's like my life is a movie with bad extras. Where do they find these people?

nature: only in mexico

The wind rushes through downtown Boston, and the air is cool enough to necessitate use of a scarf. It might not be snowing, but it feels like it might. Right near City Hall Plaza, in front of the Holocaust Memorial, a woman is walking, barefoot and bikini-clad. Some green palms provide her shade. A man in board shorts is nearby; he's got a volleyball net set up and is looking for someone to step up to the challenge.

As Dave Barry would say, I am not making this up.

And I just might join these beach bums if I weren't on my way to work. Oh, and if they weren't enclosed in fiberglass "promobus." Yes, these are real people. But while my ears reddened in the wind, they were on display in a heated U-Haul truck with transparent walls, sand lining the bottom and tropical plants scattered throughout. The lower rear of the truck had a slogan painted on it: "Nature: Only in Mexico."

OK, so that isn't entirely true. I don't remember what the slogan was exactly, but it was along those lines, and it was that absurd. Clearly the U.S. is going to destroy Mexico's ecosystems while it's working on obliterating its own. So even in the future, if there's only one place left to find nature in the world (aside from that fact meaning we're entirely screwed), it certainly wouldn't be Mexico. But it's a nice idea.

Though I can't say such nice words about the means of advertising. There's something just creepy about a life-sized snow globe with real humans inside (or sun cube, as the case may be). But apparently these are award-winning sun cubes, and they're traveling to a city near you. (You can also find the press release here.)

On the plus side, they're too big to shake. But they're just the right size for gawkers and frat boys with cameras.

new news

Misanthropicity isn't getting updated anymore because its creator now has better things to do, namely his brand new daily newspaper in Cambridge, Mass. For city dwellers here, we've now got a free Monday-Friday paper that beats the hell out of the Metro when it comes to, well, any original content. This isn't the place to get your national or international news; the articles are written by locals for locals, part hard news and part features, and there's an hour-by-hour events calendar with easy to find categorical tags such as "rock," "lecture," "comedy" and "art," among others. The design is clean, the editing is tight, and I just hope it takes off, because it's filling a gap and filling it well. Oh, yes, the important parts: it's called Cambridge Day, and you can pick it up only in Cambridge, mostly in retailers and restaurants (think local businesses such as convenience and grocery stores, 1369, Rosie's, etc). You can go to Cambridge Day online if you want to check out submission and advertising policies, but the content is restricted to print at this time. Oddly, none of the local media has yet caught on or done a write-up or mention in a media column. Get on the ball, people!

make the bosses pay

After attempting to read some of the actual proposed healthcare legislation (Health Care for All has all the necessary and updated reading) as well as news coverage, something strikes me as interesting: how employers play into all this healthcare discussion.

You see, businesses that provide employees with healthcare will get some perks, and businesses who don't provide healthcare will have to pay a tiny bit of money to the state. All this after a lot of lobbying and politicking, of course. But it appears we're only talking only about employers who provide healthcare to full-time employees. This is significant because people who work in retail often would glady take the company health insurance - but the bosses prohibit them from working over 39 hours and thus keep them in part-time status, denying them benefits they deserve. Of course, this means big corporations that provide heathcare to their few full-time employees and otherwise carefully plan ways to keep everyone else classified as part-time would be exempt from paying money to the state to cover all those uninsured workers ... those uninsured workers they created.

healthy appetite

Finally, a story that addresses what Massachusetts residents might actually get from any one of the mandatory healthcare plans being discussed at the statehouse ("Is a $200 policy for healthcare realistic?" Boston Globe, 11/2/05).

Anyone living in Boston knows that the federal poverty level is laughably out of touch with the actual city poverty level. And I'm skeptical the state's subsidies will be enough. People whose income falls between the 200 percent to 300 percent FPL range are barely scraping by in Boston. I know because that's where I fall. After payroll taxes, student loans, rent and utilities, I barely have a total of $200 left for the month - let alone $320 to cover the premium that would be provided under the House plan. Those subsidies would have to be amazing, because when it comes down to weighing the decision between eating (and maybe having enough left over to see one show or movie that month, if I'm lucky) or paying for a healthcare plan (and one I can't even use because the co-pay would put me over-budget and in debt), the choice is simple: I choose food. It certainly has nothing to do with feeling invincible, it's just practical.