escape from big apple

Under the cover of darkness, the carnies packed up and skipped town last night. And I think I know why.

Not long ago I passed by the circus tent in Government Center on my walk home. It was late - around 3 a.m. - and as I came upon the outer perimeter, I heard some sort of commotion. Low and behold, when I rounded the bend, there were two humans making a break for it. The first specimen, a male in his 20s, had just finished scaling the fence and made it to the side of freedom. His cohort, a female, screamed from inside that she wanted out. The male jumped up on the fence so he could see over and coach her in her climbing skills. But she was panicked and cried that she was unable to make it all the way up. The male opted for another tactic, lifting the fence from its anchors, and the female successfully crawled underneath. The pair then stumbled away into the night.

All of this I watched from the shadows. I don't think they saw me, and of course, I didn't report this crime to anyone. Clearly these humans had been abused - perhaps kept in small cages, malnourished or forcefully inebriated. But the carnies were too cowardly to warn anyone about the danger of the escaped specimens and too proud to declare their inability to put on more shows without them. And they needed all of their resources to hunt down the missing pair. So the carnies left, swiftly and quietly in the night.

I just hope those two humans made it to safety. And that I can get some sort of refund for these tickets to next week's show.

under surveillance

The Eye of Mordor relocated to a shiny new plastic home outside my kitchen window. I think (read: hope) it's firey gaze is directed at the alley below, as all the new (read: additional) "no trespassing" and "under video surveillance" signs would lead passers-by to believe. But even if the camera belongs to my landlord and not to unloved-by-his-family guy or loud-masturbator guy (read: my neighbors), there's something creepy about having a camera right above my second-floor window.

If it's not capturing everything I cook on my trailer-home-sized gas stove (mmm, steamed greens - scintillating footage), surely there's some video of me blocking its view of the alley. While my fire escape turned out to be a deathbed for plants rather than a charming container garden - even before the Eye of Mordor made its home here - it does serve as an occasional makeshift porch/smoking lounge. So anyone reviewing the tapes (or, even creepier, a human operator watching in real-time) has surely seen me climb out my window and sit on the steps with a newspaper or the occasional smokey treat.

Perhaps I'll finally get to make my debut on YouTube.

maybe i should go into sales

The dark side is failing.

Every time I ride the T, I stare in confusion and amazement that the people behind the Special K print ads thought they were a good idea. The ads are crisp and clean, with an image of one of the company's new products (the snack bar I understand, but Special K water? Really?) and the word unsatisfying. Now, I understand that the pouring water or part of the snack bar are supposed to be obscurring or making the un in unsatisfying disappear, but really, what you have is a large photo of your product and the word unsatisfying. And the un is just too clear for me to think anything besides, "Yuck. I better not try this new Special K product. It's going to taste terrible, and I'm not even going to feel full after I eat it. In fact, eating a bowl of Special K cereal is reminiscent of eating a bowl of shredded paper that was liberated from the office recycling bin and soaked in the communal coffee creamer during a moment of desperation. Not that I've ever done that. But I'm sure the taste is similar."

But maybe that's what the folks at Special K HQ were going for.

In other marketing missteps (and in a search for tastier recycling bin contents), I discovered a job ad that includes the phrase, "Work environment involves only infrequent exposure to disagreeable elements." This makes me wonder what is so occasionally terrible that the job poster felt the need to advertise it. And just what are these elements? It rains in the office? Drunken Red Sox fans sometimes riot in the employee parking lot? You have to lick and seal your own envelopes? There's an employee who masturbates in the bathroom every day?

If you're going to go so far as to tell me there are disagreeable elements, you might as well lay 'em out on the table. Take a cue from Special K - the world would be a much better place if everyone could be as upfront and honest.

so much for the solar

The city of Boston is going green. Well, greenish.

After putting in extra-large curbside trash cans with solar-powered trash compactors, the city added solar-powered parking meters. No more do you have to dig around under your seat for quarters. These machines take those dreaded dollar coins - you know, the bulky gold coins that roll out of the Charlie Card machine en masse after you buy one ride on the T with a $20. If you've only nickels and dimes to spare, too bad. It's a solar-powered parking meter, not a CoinStar machine or a wishing well. But these meters do take plastic.

And it seems by green, the city is more focused on getting the green than going green. Gone are the days of getting some free time from the previous parker - each of these meters serves half a block's worth of cars. Instead of the meters displaying the time remaining for each corresponding parking spot, these babies spit out a sticky note with the expiration time printed on it. Yep, a "green" machine that uses hundreds of sticky notes a day. Sticky notes that inevitably end up in the trash. Well, maybe if people are nice they go from car window to secret communal stash of extra meter time to different car window to solar-powered trash can. But it's still a bunch of rubbish in the end.

FURTHER THOUGHTS (21 NOV 2006 | 11:30 PM): Nevermind about the plastic. The Boston Globe reported today that you can't use credit for the meters in any increment of 15 minutes (or 25 cents) - you can only use credit to pay for two full hours (that's $2). But there's hope yet. The news hook was that mandatory minimum payments actually violate the terms of several credit card companies.

i feel safer already!

The woman across from me snapped her gum and tapped her foot impatiently. Two college students bitched about their upcoming class schedules. A curly haired hippie-looking guy rocked out to his iPod. Everyone avoided eye contact and looked generally unhappy to be there. Just a regular night riding the T, by all standards.

But then I noticed to my left, a man was highlighting passages in a magazine. Okay, so he highlighted an entire sidebar piece in bright yellow. And, wait - he was starting to highlight the entire article that surrounded it - line by line, every line. He must be a little crazy, I thought. That can't be helpful - how is he ever going to find anything if he highlights everything? Definitely crazy.

I shifted my gaze back, toward his face, then shoulders. Oh, dear. Is that a real TSA uniform? Yep, that looks like a genuine ID hanging from his neck.

I feel safer already with someone so attentive to details being in charge of aiport security.

bits and pieces

• There are next to no Boston Herald newspaper boxes in the city. Every few blocks there is a cluster that includes a Globe box, Weekly Dig and Phoenix boxes, various dispensers of free classifieds, and the obligatory Improper Bostonian and Stuff@Night boxes. The two Herald boxes I found during a stroll from Harvard Square to downtown Boston were empty, of course. What's up with that?

• There is graffiti on the side of a building on Mass. Ave. that reads: "owned by no one but still illegal." It would be a good point, except for the fact that someone inevitably owns those bricks.

• Commonwealth Books on Boylston Street downtown is celebrating its 10th anniversary. The sign in the window is priceless:

Our 10th Year*
*despite Emerson College

• I have perfected the fuck-off-and-die look such that MassPirg canvassers don't approach me. But I was happy to see several anti-MassPirg flyers along Mass. Ave. that direct people to NoMassPirg.com. It's nothing fancy, but you can buy an anti-MassPirg T-shirt if you haven't perfected your look of death.

no exit (or: observations on the mbta's handicaps)

Say you were in a wheelchair. You're riding the subway, get off at your stop and see a stick-figure-in-a-wheelchair sign posted by the sliding exit doors. Is your first thought, "This sign clearly means there's no elevator on the other side of these doors, so I should roll right through them so I have to turn around and pay to get back into the station to get to the actual handicapped-accessible exit"?

If not, the MBTA really needs to work on its communication skills.

As the T has moved from turnstiles to the sliding-door model for its entrances/exits, it seems to be making more of an effort to be accessible for the disabled. But not really.

I noticed today while riding the T that these handicapped-accessible doors are being installed at Central and Kendall Square exits that only have stairs. Oops.

It's no surprise, really. I've come to expect handicapped service from the T, certainly not adequate service for the handicapped. But the least the T could do is remove the misleading signage.

new and unfare service!

Now you citizens of Boston, Don't you think it's a scandal that the people have to pay and pay. ... Fight the fare increase! ... Get poor Charlie off the MTA. - from the song "Charlie on the MTA"

Poor Charlie's never getting off the train. Hell, with the MBTA's proposed fare increase, he'd be lucky if he could get on the the train in the first place.

You see, Charlie paid cash for his T ride. And if the T has its way, paying cash means you will pay a premium - 55 cents extra per subway ride and 40 cents extra per local bus ride, to be exact.

Here's the rub: Under the current proposal, if you buy a Charlie Card, the subway will cost $1.70 per ride and the bus will cost $1.25, with free transfers between the two. But if you come bearing cash or a Charlie Ticket, you'll pay $2.25 for the subway and $1.65 for the bus - and you get no free transfers between the two. That's $3.90 if you need to take the bus and the train somewhere - more than double the $1.70 you'd pay with a Charlie Card!

Of course, you won't be able to get a Charlie Card from the new self-serve machines that are being installed in every train station (though theoretically you will be able to refill the cards there). This means unsuspecting, unprepared locals will inevitably pay the higher fare, as will tourists. Granted, tourists already get ripped off with the Visitor's Pass (a seven-day Visitor's pass is $35, more than double the $16.50 it costs for a Weekly Combo Pass). And I'll be honest: I couldn't care less about the tourists.

But given the privacy concerns, why would you want to buy a Charlie Card? Right, you only want it because you don't want to fork over more money to a public transportation system that's more concerned with implementing a crappy new fare collection system rather than improving services people have been asking about for years.

Forget about the fact that everyone wants the trains to run as late as the nightlife. Forget that Roxbury residents wanted train service again - not a 10-years-later, too-little-too-late bus replacement. Forget that most everyone would simply love for the existing services to work well and run relatively on time. No, the T just had to figure out a way to get rid of the tokens that no one had a problem with - and do it in a way to penalize customers who would prefer to use good, old-fashioned cash or retain some bit of anonymity.

Charlie, it might be time to buy a bike. Or start making an RFID blocking wallet to hold that Charlie Card.

if only

There's something simultaneuously energizing and depressing about the hoards of people that filled my street after Italy won the World Cup semifinals. On the one hand, it's easy to get caught up in the excitement - the singing, the fireworks - and the sardine-can-like confines of Hanover Street. But damn, it's depressing that this many (and this set of) people wouldn't be out in the streets fighting the good fight. Granted, there's something vastly different about celebratory, spontaneous street gatherings and street protests. But still ... I wish people actively cared about their world and their rights as much as they care about a sports team.

ole!

The snap-pop-bang-pop-pop-pop of fireworks fills the apartment. From the fire escape, where I can usually see the double-parked cars on my street, all I can see are people packed into the street. I can't tell where the fireworks are coming from, because the people seem too dense to be able to have them right there, yet there's smoke rising from the center of the street. It's amazing how the pop-pop-pop continues without pause for ten minutes, and people sing-chant ole! ole, ole, ole! ole, o-le! and chatter in italian. i guess it's clear who won this game of the world cup, so here's to many more days of my neighborhood exploding as the games continue.

sticker shock

You know you've lived in Boston too long when ...

You see a flyer for a condo open house. You read it. And when you see it's for a two-bedroom with a roof deck in the North End going for $459,000, your first thought is, "Damn, that's awfully cheap for a two-bedroom in the North End. I wonder what's wrong with it?"

T-ed off

Dear MBTA,

Your proven ability to infuriate customers is commendable. From replacing rail service 10 years too late with a big, slow silver bus to providing our children with the lifelong gift of asthma, it's clear that the customers always come first.

So it should have been no surprise the last two times I tried to board at Government Center and Park Street that you no longer saw fit to actually employ fare collectors to work in the booth and provide change for fresh-from-the-ATM $20s (which, by the way, are conveniently not accepted at the token machines in these stations). No, your fare collectors were dutifully positioned at the turnstiles, telling customers, "exact change only." A noble idea, if only it were feasible to expect customers at two major hubs of transportation to have exact change or be willing to sacrifice a $10 bill in exchange for eight tokens (which aren't even legal tender at area bars or half the other T stations).

I guess it would make too much sense to demand exact change only after you install those new CharlieTicket machines, which take $20s and allow you to actually decide the number of rides you get and amount of cash back (or $1 coins, anyway).

But perhaps this is a brilliant plan, this making customers walk to the next station in frustration and disbelief, hoping to find a real fare collector. Because if you start now, there will be less backlash from how much people hate the new fare collection system and resent the fact that their money is being spent not on service improvements but on crappy, unnecessary turnstile replacements.

Here's to those fare increases you announced - I can't wait. Keep up the amazing work!

Sincerely,
Sabine Strohem

you can't pee here!

File under: odd observations.

I've recently discovered that Boston's pay toilets aren't even open for half the day. That seems odd, given their proximity to bars and given every place shuts down at 2 a.m., leaving drunken revelers to flow out onto the streets and wander home. These are the type of people who might pay a quarter for a place to piss at 3:37 a.m.

But the diplay on the pay toilet at Government Center clearly states that it is closed from "1800PM to 700AM" (yes, indeed, complete with those superflous AM and PM labels). Seriously? What's the point of having pay toilets that shut down at the same time as nearby offices? It's not like you're going to pay a quarter for a toilet when there's one at work that doesn't cost a thing.

I hope somewhere there's a homeless person who's learned to time the toilet closing just right to have a semi-warm, dry place to sleep. Because someone should be able to make use of the thing during its 13 hours of downtime.

silence is sweeter

Note to Boston's street musicians who insist on playing "Sweet Caroline" every time I'm at Government Center or Park Street: If the people in the station aren't singing the "woah-oh-oh" part anymore, maybe it's because we've all been hearing "Sweet Caroline" a little too much lately. It's a popular number, but it's growing tiresome. Seriously, it's the only song I've heard the past five times I've taken the train. Share something original for a change.

spare me

I don't usually put effort toward buying things that are available for free. I can't imagine most people would.

So when I passed a man selling papers outside of the Whole Foods in Central Square, I felt more justified in my typical response, "Not today, thanks." Instead of the usual Spare Change News hawker, there was a man trying to sell copies of The Student Underground, which is widely available for free, on purpose.

But if he manages to get some cash from wealthy yuppies, and those yuppies actually read The Underground, I'm not going to complain.

big brother

As I was looking for tickets on the Paradise Rock Club site, I was prompted to accept a cookie. But not just any cookie. No, this seemed more obviously the big brother of cookies than most of the oddly names little treats that plant themselves on hard drive everywhere. But for such an ominous-sounding server, the cookie doesn't last very long. Peculiar indeed.

99 68 bottles of wine on the wall

If you're wondering what it takes to get on Massachusetts' Most Wanted list, the answer is not much.

I always assumed such lists were for murderers, rapists, people whose actions might fall under the category of violent crimes. But apparently all you have to do is steal fine wines - one bottle at a time.

Yes, that's right. According to an article in the Newton Tab, store owners are just catching on to a thief who went unnoticed for slowly depleting the wine racks of various liquor stores in this posh Boston suburb.

I'm just thrilled to hear that the Bay State's finest don't have better things to do. No, really, I mean it.

she blinded me with science

I'm one of those people who never goes to the doctor.

It's not due to any fear or anxieties people normally associate with the doctor's office. It's that I've come to realize doctors can't really do that much a lot of the time.

And I don't have health insurance.

But Massachusetts might soon require me to purchase health insurance. Just as drivers have to buy car insurance in order to cruise around, people would have to buy health insurance in order to live around here. Or, at least live around here without getting screwed on state income taxes and without having their driver's licenses rendered unrenewable.

This idea begs a lot of questions, but there's one that's been on my mind lately: Will scientologists be required to buy insurance policies if their bosses don't provide health care?

Seriously, think about it. Why in the world would people who generally reject the modern medical system shell out money for health insurance? It's not like scientologists are going to accept pretty much any treatments in a hospital or drugs that any physician might prescribe.

Not that I'm a defender of wacky religious nutbags. But, probably, the state would eventually cave to a religious objection and exempt scientologists from the mandatory health insurance.

And where does that leave me? Still screwed.

Religion can be played as a get-out-of-jail-free card (evidenced in everything from refusing vaccinations to receiving vegan meals in state-run institutions). But atheists and agnostics can't seem to get ahold of that card. Or, rather, we just don't have the money to buy our freedom back, whereas certain religious groups can afford a good old-fashioned lawsuit. Hell, I won't even be able to afford the insurance itself, despite whatever the government claims about my being over the so-called poverty level.

At least I still have an out-of-state driver's license.

invisible insanity

A shriek echoes through downtown. Like a soprano's vibrato, only applied to a trilled R - a letter and sound on which you'd never hear a singer hold a note. It stops. And starts again. On and off, repeating at irregular but frequent intervals.

As I walk around the corner, I see a scattered crowd of business people, their gazes all pointing in the same direction. For a moment, I imagine the sound is an emergency whistle. Someone is in trouble, but all the passers-by stop to watch instead of help - cold "professionals" who can't be bothered to ease someone else's suffering. After all, it's not their job.

But as I cross the street, I see the whistle blower - a 30-something man, pressed slacks and dress shoes showing beneath his black peacoat. He repeats the shrill call again and again and again, his eyes fixed on the street, the whistle between his lips, both hands at his sides.

And all those business people? Their gazes are actually fixed in the opposite direction, as if they don't have to acknowledge the man's existence if they refuse to make eye contact with him. Or, as they say, out of sight, out of mind.

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."