July 26, 2004
Boston Sunday
We spent four hours in Boston yesterday--from 10:15 in the morning to just after 2:30. The drive in was uneventful and we parked right across from the Fleet Center in a parking garage. Had we driven a little further, we would have paid four dollars more. The rates seem to be calibrated by how much time the vehicles spends on local street.
Anyway, we walked from the Fleet where there were a few people with tags around their necks lining up to go through gates to get inside the fencing to the Government Center and then the Quincy market area. It would not have been a good route to try to negotiate with a wheel chair.Crosswalks are haphazard; walk signals are unreliable and there are barricaded work areas everywhere because the demolition of the elevated highway is not yet complete.
At the Quincy Market we encoutered our first overtly political groups, supporters of Lyndon Larouche who were trying to pass out position papers. Oddly enough, most of the young men spoke German accented English. We did not take their multipaged documents. The next group we encoutered, after making our way across the surface artery to the park on the waterfront, was holding a reading on a platform and with a loudspeaker commemorating people who have died in the Isreali conflicts. There didn't seem to be anyone handing our any information. Men in black and police in flack jackets did have a presence and one large shepherd was allowed to relieve himself on the grass outside the children's play area.
It's been at least four years since I've been in Boston and I was sorry to see that the park is filling up with more and more structural elements, as they say. In addition to the arbor and the children's playground, there's now some sort of maintenance building with a couple of public toilets.
Speaking of toilets, Joe's American Cafe, where we had some iced tea and onion rings overlooking the water, has the cleanest, shiniest "restrooms" I've ever seen. The floors are polished to a high sheen and there's not a finger-print to be seen on the woodwork either. At sign at the entrance to the restaurant even invites the public to use the facilities. That's a first in my experience.
Having been refreshed at Joe's, we meandered along Causeway Street, skirting the North End and taking a look at the condos that have now been constructed on most of the old warves. I was sorry to see that some of the warf buildings have had wings attached on the land side, somewhat ruining the original architecture. Maybe I'm just a little soured by jealousy, 'cause that sure is a place where I'd happily live, if we could afford it.
The North End neighborhood is little changed. Though the paper has reported that the residents are have a hard time getting used to not having the noise from the highway behind them, that wasn't a problem yesterday because of the noise from all the helicopters over-head. Three or four of them had obviously been dispatched to fly back and forth.
It was the feast of St. Joseph yesterday, beging celebrated with a marching band and a serenade by singers in "traditional" garb. Banners over the main shopping street announced yet other festivals for the next two weekends.
We settled on a small family-run restaurant for lunch. The menu was appealing and the prices seemed very reasonable. Turned out that was probably because the restaurant accepts cash only. But somebody must have had a late night out. This cash-only enterprise had no change on hand so the cook had to be dispatched next door to get some. Message to prospective diners: bring cash and small bills to the North End.
Having enjoyed our lunch and a couple of Italian Birres (didn't know Italians drink beer), we continued our meander along Causeway Street, past the swimming pool and the bollo courts and the hockey rink converted to a FEMA headquarters. Parking along the street was outlawed by "Special Police Event" signs but wasn't being enforced against one derelict vehicle which, though it had enighborhood parking stickers, obviously hadn't been moved through many street sweepings. A couple of tour buses from out of state didn't seem inclined to honor the no-parking signs either, even though we discovered a large parking lot next to the Center had been set aside for their use. The drivers were probably lost and couldn't find their designated area.
We discovered that the old causeway bridge which leads to the dock for the "Constitution" as well as a number of new Residence Inns and an approach to the Tobin Bridge is still operational.
Lots of sightseers were walking, jogging and being driven across in Duckboats. Still glad we weren't trying to negotiate the area with a wheel-chair.
Since we had parked on the north side of the Fleet Center and were now on the south, we made a couple of false starts trying to get around. Some streets were blocked to traffic with barriers, others with large dump trucks but pedestrians seemed un-impeded until they came within a half block of the center where only people with plastic around their necks were permitted to go through make-shift gates.
Actually, the gates are only make-shift in the sense that the fencing in which they are contained is easily moved about (as easy as it is to move eight foot by four foot screens with a four foot metal base which has been set up by the hundreds to form the fence). Although movable, this fencing is in every sense permanent and obviously intended for repeated use in different venues. It's probably being rented like tents for weddings and receptions.
While we were circumventing the Fleet Center we watched the police arrive. They were delivered in yellow school buses which had the word "Bus" taped over. For the most part, the officers being delivered to the site seemed to be somewhat over-the-hill and, for the most part, over-weight. Most probably couldn't pass physical entrance tests. Oddly enough, the female officers fit right in. Though they could more properly be described as "stocky" rather than over-weight.
The few officer we querried as to how to get to the parking garage seemed not to be familiar with the names of the streets in the area nor where anything was to be found. I got the impression that they were not familiar with the city as a whole. Perhaps because the police tend to be permanently assigned to specific neighborhoods. Which, it seems to me, would be a disadvantage during a real emergency.
Anyway, by mid-afternoon there were no more buses in the special compound than in the morning and the number of people with plastic tags going through the gates seemed about the same. The restaurants and bars right next to the Fleet seemed to have fewer patrons than those in the North End. People were getting into locked buildings by waiting for someone to come out. And, oh yes, the parking garage turned out not to have a human attendant at all.
In order to get out, one was expected to stop at a glass-enclosed booth, about three times the size of an ATM facility, submit the card one got from the machine when coming in, pay with cash or credit card, receive a receipt and another card which was to be deposited into another machine at the exit to lift the "barrier." All of which was supposedly being observed by a camera which somebody was presumably watching like a hawk to make sure no-one drove through the barrier without paying. Given all the man-power on the street waiting for protesters who didn't arrive, you'd think a few warm bodies could have been dispatched to the parking garage right next to the Fleet.
Of course, the Democratic Convention doesn't start until today and much of the activity yesterday could have been a sort of dry-run (generating lots of over-time for the patrolmen). But that still leaves me with the impression that much activity is designed to impress the citizenry rather than to actually improve security. While the Globe had been reporting that the city removed trash receptacles in the downtown area to minimize the opportunity for terrorists planting explosives, the neighborhoods through which we walked were full of large garbage containers parked in doorways and overflowing with trash. The ability of terrorists to plan ahead and anticipate contingencies seems not to have registered with our security planners.
Guess the best we can do is keep our fingers crossed.
Anyway, our exit from the city was also uneventful. We simply followed the route we had walked by car and snaked onto the exit to the Tobin Bridge from Causeway. There are no bridge tolls on the way out, so we were past Chelsea in no time. There's never much traffic heading north on a Sunday afternoon.