Day 87: The Cambrige Street Code

When you live in a city for a long time, certain aspects of the city become like second nature.  Little things that you barely notice on a day-to-day basis, but rules which, when "violated" (when you're traveling, in strange situations, etc.) strike you as very strange. For instance, the other day I was out late-ish at night, and was crossing a street with someone from out of town who tried to stop me as I began to cross at a red light. "Wait!" he exclaimed. "There's a cop right over there!"  I had to explain to him that in _this_ town, pedestrians are treated like gods, bicyclists are given quite the run of the street (though not as much as pedestrians), and cops can barely even get to motorized vehicles through the morass of pedestrians, cyclists, and god-knows-what-else -- maybe even roombas. At the very least, pedestrians jay-walking is not frowned upon in the slightest, and in fact, once a pedestrian is in the street, it is the motor vehicle-ist's responsibility to stay-out-the-way-b****, stay-out-the-way.

What I'd like the reader to come away with here is two-fold: (1) Cambridge and Boston have their own street codes (apparently not obvious to visitors) and (2) it is such that if you have to travel very far not on foot, you should stay-out-the-way.  I.e., Take The Damn MBTA (the "T").

Now, the T is not perfect either. For one thing it stops running about 90 minutes before bars close (terrible planning on the part of the city for the hoi polloi, but great planning if you want to increase the existence of drunk or cab drivers).  For another, there is only one route into Cambridge (well, two if you count the brief foray across the river by the green line to Lechmere, but for Pete's sake).  However, Cambridge-to-Boston's red line is pretty speedy, and it's pretty clean, stations don't smell bad, etc.  Pros outweigh cons.

I have taken to T-ing to choir practice in Back Bay on Tuesdays -- I drive from work to park at home (work is difficult, though not impossible, to get to by public transit) and then grab the red line by my house.  Soon I hope to turn this into biking, but bike is still out of commission due to broken lock (and probably air-less tires).  At any rate, once in a while you meet someone interesting on the T.  A friend once got a long-term girlfriend this way.  I've not quite had that success rate, but I did have a nice chat with a woman with a 3-ish-year-old in a stroller (she was rather precocious -- maybe she was a tiny 4-year-old).

Apart from extolling the T, I'll take this opportunity to extol Dvorak, who wrote the one piece (Stabat Mater Dolorosa) we rehearsed today.  Granted, it's an over-20-min-long piece, so it was warranted.  I realized the other day that our conductor must have a bit of a music-crush on big D because she has included something from his vast repertoire in each of our three concerts.  I don't mind :).  Following up singing about the virgin Mary watching her son dying from torture on a cross (luckily it's in Latin so typically we can ignore this), we celebrated with some beers at the 'Snake down the road.

Day 64: Close Encounters of the Veggie Kind

Truth be told, I have put great efforts into discovery of the best grilled cheese and the best cheeseburger in Cambridge, but not until recently did I come to believe that a similar quest for veggie burgers might be in order.  Mostly because I feel like veggie burgers are usually crumbly bundles of poorly cohered beans and tofu - not so appealing, right?  Well, I stand corrected.

In addition to providing an edgy yet very Cantabrigian environment (complete with the fixture of a periodic table of burgers and other foods chalked onto its back wall and serving as the menu), the Miracle of Science also serves up a damn good veggie burger.  Saved by the grace of not being a vegan burger, some magical creamy sauce saves the day, and it's delicious.  I stopped by with a friend after our choir practice in the Back Bay, and at first we thought we could get away with splitting one... which turned quickly into two (and I'm pretty convinced he could have gone further if we'd have let him).

After a long day of work, softball (we came thisclose to not losing...), and singing some masterful pieces from a piecemeal mass (more on that later), Miracle was the perfect end to the day.

Day 57: The 'Snake

Tuesdays are serious days this summer.  In addition to Calliope (choir), which has always been on Tuesdays, the Straw Dogs softball games are also on Tuesdays this summer, meaning that I dash from the Fresh Pond area down to MIT around 4:30 and don't get home until 10p at the earliest, after Calliope.  Today was the first of such days, so I suppose I shouldn't be speaking in generics quite yet. However, I have a fairly certain feeling that getting home at 10pm on Tuesdays is not going to be the norm, due to the presence of a nice little place we like to affectionately call the 'Snake (the Rattlesnake, located on Boylston St. in Back Bay; pic above taken around the corner on Newbury St.).

It's just around the block from where the choir practices (at Emmanuel Episcopalian, a really pretty church which is beautiful on the inside... the kind of place I used to fantasize about as a kid who wished she went to boarding school; yes, weird).  And it's got some tasty stuff.  D., who just joined the choir after I pestered for a while, was fairly disgusted by my zest for the macaroni and cheese, which, in addition to being basically the antithesis of all things vegan, includes (along! with bacon) Taza chocolate.  Sound gross?  Maybe, but I find it almost as delicious as the peanut butter burgers at both Bukowski's.

Yay softball!  Yay choir!  And yay for adding more chocolate and peanut butter to the world. :-/?

Day 12: Calliope

This morning started out with a brisk bike ride on a beautiful day in to the Back Bay area, where I was meeting with the director of my choral/orchestral ensemble, Calliope to help out a bit with auditions. The morning ended up being extremely pleasant (although only 2/5 women who were auditioning actually showed!) as I chatted with the director and two of the other women in the chorus.

I was quite lucky to stumble upon Calliope just by searching for a choral group to join last summer. The most interesting part about Calliope is that the chorus both performs *and* practices with an orchestra, and it's a really great group of guys and dolls. I always wished I had taken up an orchestra instrument -- the closest I came was oboe in the fifth grade, and I didn't get all too far with that :). So it's a great experience to be able to practice with an orchestra each week, and getting back into singing with a group has been so uplifting.

Anywho, enough of my goings-on about that. After auditions, I biked up to the Armory in Somerville from Boston to meet a friend at the winter farmers' market there - who turned out already to be gone by the time I got there (turns out, I am a bit slower at biking 5 miles, much of it uphill, than I would like!). But that was fine (and the market was really well-organized, I definitely want to go back!), and I headed to my next destination, Starbucks in Davis Square, which usually has outdoor seating. Turns out they haven't put out their tables yet, but the restaurant next door had, so I had a salad while waiting for a friend to join. He checked out my flashy green bike for a bit and I studied some for my biology exam (this post is being written during an *ahem* extended break). Soon I'll bike back home because it's my roommate's birthday tonight and we are hosting the first "real" party chez nous! (At least the first one I will be in attendance at.)

Happy spring to all!

Day 5: Cambridge Winter Farmer's Market

At the request of a friend of mine who does urban foraging, and who had a booth at the market this morning, I attended the Cambridge Winter Farmers' Market for the first time early this afternoon. I came away with a slightly heightened knowledge of the foraging prospects around the Charles river, a copy of an urban foraging book (gift for Dad for Father's Day), and some tasty aged cheese.

I started writing this post this afternoon, before I knew about the second wonderful treat Cambridge would bring me today. A friend of mine posted a message online that she had an extra ticket to a show at Berklee Performance Center just across the river to see Devotchka opening for the Magnetic Fields. I know Devotchka mostly from the soundtrack to Little Miss Sunshine and had only heard a few songs from Magnetic Fields (which I must admit at first I thought was "Magnetic Zeros", as in Edward Sharp and the Magnetic Zeros, a band I've been listening to a lot recently). And boy was I pleasantly surprised at hearing both live! We had really good seats (although Berklee is a great venue and most any seat is good) which always makes it nicer. The night ended with a lovely walk over the bridge back to Cambridge, though a bit frigid. That sneak preview of spring we had a few weeks back would be welcome as a more stable fixture!