Day 77: Cambridge Common

For a place called the Cambridge Common, it's certainly rather uncommon enough for me to go there.  It's located just in the wrong spot -- were it on the other side of Harvard Square, I'm sure I'd make a visit much more frequently.  I typically rely on my Harvard-loving friends to suggest it before I go there, and today was one of those days.

The whole Harvard psychology crew that I love dearly had a friend visiting recently -- someone who left Cambridge for California just as I started hanging out with them, so I was really happy to meet her this past week.  Tonight was her going away party, and we made plans to reunite in Southern California (she's living in L.A. currently).

Things that I love about Cambridge Common: the greasy food (they have something called fried macaroni and cheese), the size (never a problem getting a table), the fact that they serve really delicious brunch on the weekends, their outdoor seating, the fact that they have UMBRELLAS covering tables in their outdoor seating (came in handy during the n-teenth crazy summer storm to happen this week, while we were there), and tonight, for the first time, tasting their beer flights (they have picks, but you can choose anything you like from their fairly extensive list).

Things that I do not love about Cambridge Common: the fact that I eat greasy food when I am there, the fact that it does not have as much character as nearly any bar in Central (though I do have a feeling it would be more fun at the bar), its only pseudo-coziness, and the fact really, even though I love certain things about it, I can just never bring myself to love it.

For some reason writing this made me remember how much I miss Razzy's, a bar with diner-style food in Somerville that closed within the last couple years.  Great vibe there, and one of the most "normal" dive bars I've seen host karaoke.  Plus -- it's name was Razzy's, for crying out loud.  What's not to love about that?

Day 24: The Wrong Campus Pub

Today, a friend of mine dissertated (!) and now has a Ph.D. in psychology from Harvard.  Pretty sweet.

I couldn't make it to the actual defense because I had to work, but of course there were festivities afterward.  So after work, I headed over to Harvard's Campus to the Queen's Head, Harvard's answer to some combination of the Muddy Charlies and the Thirsty Ear (the "other" on-campus pub at MIT).  It turns out my memory had just re-written itself, overwriting "Cambridge Common" with Queen's Head. For so many reasons, Queen's Head was the Wrong Campus Pub.

I figured my mistake out pretty quickly thanks to my helpful friends who were already at the right location, and much fete-ing was done for the dissertee.  In fact, JR and I managed to persuade a big group of folks out for live-band karaoke later in the evening.  But while I was still at the Wrong Campus Pub, so many Wrong things happened. It's located in the basement of Memorial Hall (pictured above), and as you can see even with my crap-camera-phone shot, it's a lovely old building (albeit a shortened version of a lovely old building, according to the story whereby the Cambridge fire station located across the street sees a part of Harvard burning and lets it burn, an answer to a many-years-old standing feud between Cambridge at-large and Harvard at-small).  In the basement, there are some pretty narrow halls that contain several extra tables where one can drink beer purchased in the pub, but there is not much room between the walls of the pub and the exterior walls of the building.  For some reason, some Harvard folks decided it would be a great idea not only to throw some sort of rather-obnoxious-and-flamboyant-Oscar-Wilde-style-dramatic-music-ky thing inside the pub, but also to have its cast members darting back and forth wildly amongst beer drinkers in the hall.

So thing number 24 that is right with Cambridge is how deliciously *wrong* Harvard can be.  (But then again, it is, more often, right. :))