Day 88: Hatch Shell

 Going to see the Boston Landmark Orchestra play Aaron Copland at the hatch shell near the Charles (Boston side) was just great.  Apart from one cranky audience member who freaking stole my hot pretzel.  (Seriously: "Oh, ma'am, I've been waiting about 10 minutes.  I think that's--" "Oh, what a pity. [walks away]")

Gorgeous evening! Hatch shell! Who cares I had to wait a few more minutes for the next pretzel! Plus Appalachian Spring and other Copland for free.  Unfortunately, I had to leave early - a friend from choir was part of the All-Boston chorus singing some of the folk songs, but it was in the second half so I missed it. According to M., who invited me, the folk songs were a bit strange because they sounded so "formal" -- not at all like sing-song-y folk stuff.  There are free concerts every Wednesday for the rest of the summer at the hatch shell -- everyone should go!

OK.  That was the most salient point I had to make for today. Other great things about today:

1. Got to have dinner with K&L like old times at Oleana!  (YUMMY food, AMAZING baked Alaska, and tasty muscat and other wine...)
2. Got to walk across Longfellow from the Hatch Shell to Oleana. Love doing this at a moderate pace when it's nice out. Beautiful.
3. Z IS BACK! From London.
4. After chatting with Z I ended up grabbing a quick drink with a friend I hadn't seen in a while at Brick and Mortar. Good good evening.

Day 35: Now you see it, now you don't

A feature of Cambridge which seems to creep up on me is how it's constantly morphing.  The street I live on alone has gone through a serious makeover during my four-year tenure to the extent that it feels like I've grown up with it a bit.  Sometimes they come back (as in the case of the hardware store with the cheeky t-shirts with taglines like "Got caulk?"), and sometimes they're gone forever (as in the case of the somewhat sadly misplaced-looking Gap that used to grace the corner of Mass Ave and Essex).  Others (ahem, Phoenix Landing) just change kitchen staff continuously with the result that the tasteless food might be replaced by amazing $4 happy hour burgers, only to sadly be redacted for a new staff who favors $10 burgers with peanut sauce (ok fine I might love peanut sauce so that wasn't really a good example).

Tonight I had a chance to really appreciate this feature as I ended up getting some dinner with friends at Thelonius Monkfish, a new-ish joint just down the road which was the first sushi place to grace the presence of my neck of Mass Ave.  What's more, "Prohibition has ended!" there, as the signs outside proudly proclaim - i.e. they finally got a liquor license.  We clearly had to celebrate with modified sake bombs (the non-college-kid version in which we didn't quite make everyone else in the restaurant hate us because we were yelling and banging our fists).

Finally, we hopped across the street to the newly opened Brick & Mortar, which used to be the Enormous Room -- or, as pretty much everyone I knew accidentally called it, the "Elephant Room", due to the tiny elephant on the door which was the only cue you were entering the correct place [note its absence now in above picture].  I must say that it was kind of sad to see the place go (first bar our grad school cohort gave a nod to, etc.) -- except that the new version is so much better it's like going into Tu y Yo having expected Taco Bell :).