Tonight I had plans to hang out with a friend (K.) who worked at MIT while I was a student there. One thing I love about hanging out with K. is that her version of Boston is so different from mine (which is super Cambridge-centric... fairly obviously). She lives in Brookline but often hangs out near Newbury Street/Copley, near the seaport, at Drink, etc. Adult places. Tonight she asked if I might be up for meeting in Faneuil Hall, and I ended up joining her and a friend of hers at a place called Anthem. I had to think about the word for a second when I heard it -- for some reason I find it to be a really striking word that is not used often. Of course it calls to mind Ayn Rand [aside: I've somehow managed to get through the tomes that are Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead -- one of my favorite books of all time, but don't worry, it's for literary reasons -- but have never managed to read the much more reasonably-sized Anthem], but for me, it also brings to mind some sort of image. Maybe it's from the cover, but I imagine a person, usually a very young person with a true heart, standing, looking up, shining with justice, and standing FOR SOMETHING. Ok, sorry for the weird diversion.
Back to Anthem the bar. This all goes to say that while I like the word, it also seems kind of a weird name for a bar, and it kind of bugged me, because although the bar was fine (and it's fun to be in that area once in a while), I didn't feel it lived up to its fairly patriotic name. Unlike People's Republik, which most certainly does.
After Anthem, I parted ways to join my choir folk at a last-minute charity karaoke event. The money raised was to go toward fighting cancer. Really cool idea... did not win the raffle, but did enjoy a beer or two and belt out that awesome song by Megara from the movie Hercules.
