Day 40: 80 Photos in Boston -- Part 2.

Phase 8: More museums.

#56: 2 Dunkin’ Donuts in one photo (no editing). A hallmark of the Boston area is the sheer magnitude of Dunkin’ Donuts gracing its presence – it’s almost higher than the number of Starbucks per capita.  So clearly, the intentional meaning of this clue was to get a photo where you could clearly see two facilities in the same shot.  We accomplished this fairly early on, but given that our high-definition camera shots were limited (what with 4 smartphone cameras and my almost-dead Canon with the busted screen), we weren’t super happy with the results.  However, we were quite happy with our own interpretation of “2 Dunkin’ Donuts in one photo”.

#55: Best mural. Taken at the Fire Museum, this shot was M’s idea – Boston burning.

#58: Fire museum.  Not quite sure if you’re supposed to be able to make some noise from that thing, but a girl can try.

#63: The biggest milk bottle. This was a no-brainer for some of us – those of us who actually knew Boston, that is. J works at the Children’s Museum several days a week collecting data on the kiddies, and he was well aware of this, as were L and M.

#30: A chalk drawing on the sidewalk. And clearly the best place for these was also the Children’s Museum.  We saw many, but decided to include hop scotch!

#27: Donuts that are not for Dunkin’. We tried several things – life preservers, tires – but decided in the end that some doughtnuts really are just not for dunkin’.

Phase 9: More water fun.

#70: A barking crab. Well. This was too easy.

#59: On a boat. Normally I would feel a bit iffy about climbing into a stranger’s boat, but somehow one feels as though they have carte blanche while on a photo scavenger hunt. Oh, and we saw another team doing it immediately before we did.

#38: The Plywood Palace.  No idea what this clue really referred to, in the end. But we decided this was pretty close.

#49: Quacking at a Duck Tour boat.  Really, who doesn’t quack when they see a Duck Tour boat?  Gotta get on one of those one of these days.

Phase 10: And even more water fun!

#40: The Big Dig. I think we did manage to capture something that came of this, in the end, en route to the aquarium.

#4: The fearsome fish: Codzilla. So – we really thought we had this one at the Chinese supermarket. But when we randomly saw the real Codzilla, we figured we might as well use the beautiful non-codfish from C Market as another epic photo.

#42: Photo of another team. There were many opportunities to take this photo – but how cute that J ran into someone whom he knew from school in Mexico?

#48: Seals of approval.  I think pretty much every Banditos team today had this idea – but up to today I had no idea there were seals available for free public viewing outside the aquarium! I hope they have lovely lives :-/.

Phase 11: Hong Kong.

I feel this one event should get its own phase – though many more pictures happened around the same time because L & S broke off again to help with #66, the T.  Up to today I also had no idea that Hong Kong existed in both Cambridge and Boston, in addition to China!

#50: Go to Hong Kong without leaving Boston. How epic would it have been if we had also included the one in Cambridge?

#19: Bronze shoes fit for a Bird.  Larry Bird, that is. L & S snagged this near Faneuil Hall.

#67: A hug. What’s the best kind of hug? A macaroni hug.

#76: A giant golden grasshopper. Apparently there is one atop Quincy Market.

#62: A lion and a unicorn dancing on a roof.  Boston sure loves its animal-topped buildings. This one’s the old State Building.

#66e: Photos of your team on all 5 MBTA lines – the Blue Line. Since we were in the area, S & L nabbed this shot.

#66b: Photos of your team on all 5 MBTA lines – the Orange Line. Perhaps nearly as elusive as the Silver.

Phase 12: The North End.

By far one of the coolest areas of Boston.  And one I wish I went to more often. My favorite sandwich shop (which doubles as an Italian grocery store) resides here as well – called Going Bananas, it also boasts excellent smoothies!

#31: Public art. This I just came across while going through photos – we had so many photos of public art, we didn’t event attempt to take the “best” one on purpose. L took it, and I really liked the perspective.

#3: Two Foo lions. Unfortunately we didn’t notice this clue until we were well out of Chinatown. Fortunately, we saw some awesome lions in the North End!

#35: With a statue of a dead white guy.  A contender for the easiest photo to take in Boston.  This one of J and St. Francis of Assisi was too adorable to pass up for the winner.

#75: A high-five for the ages. Happenstance these photos happened to both be taken with St. Francis – I just thought he’d be a great guy to high-five, independently.

#71: Re-enacting a historical event at its site. Another “forgotten” opportunity that worked out. The original plan was to take a photo of us re-enacting the Boston Massacre at its original location – but not drinking tea at Paul Revere’s house also seemed fitting.

#72: This house went on a diet.  Such a cute clue.  And such a neat way to find out this “skinny house” existed!

#32: A tourist carrying a Mike’s Pastries box.  Easy. Done and done. They’re a dime a dozen.

#33: A tourist carrying a Modern Pastry box. I didn’t even realize Mike’s had a serious contender, but this was only moderately more difficult. (See a much later section for notes on how difficult #34 was, though.)

#37: Recreate the Abbey Road cover (watch out for traffic!).  Possibly the North End was not the optimal location for this, but it worked out pretty well (note how carefully I positioned my legs – the others had a good effort too ;)).

Phase 13: Re-entering the heart of Boston.

#10: Team pyramid.  Our team was almost too exhausted for anything resembling a pyramid at this point, but we attempted to rally and came up with this. Another team saw us doing it, and we took a picture of three pretty adorable kids doing a pyramid next to us.

#73: A giant tea kettle. M totally had our back on this one and knew exactly where this was located, near Government Center and on our way to what we thought was going to be the last stop of the day. Little did we know…

#68: With a historical re-enactor. L and I interpreted this one: I thought that it should be a PP attaching to the NP immediately preceding in clue #67 (a hug); she thought it should be a stand-alone. Either way, this one totally rocked. We passed a pub (I think it was the Green Dragon Tavern; at any rate it was around the corner from the historic Bell in Hand) that had two extraordinarily-dressed period costumers sitting in the window, sipping on a couple of Sam Adams, and L balls-ily walked inside and asked to have her picture taken. And succeeded.

Phase 14: Our “Last” Stop.

The last clue was clearly indicating we should have a beer. Making us think we should go there for the epic end of the day. It was nearing 6pm, and M was meeting a friend at 6-ish to have a drink before going to a concert of a choir she has been in for a long time (though she took a break this year) called Coro Allegro. Originally I had been planning on meeting up with her a bit before the start of the concert (and even thinking I might go home and change beforehand) – but again, little did I know. At any rate we headed to the location of clue 80.

#80: A place where you can see a cold Sam Adams across the street from a place where you can get a cold Sam Adams. At first we had just been thinking “statue” – statues are cold and are pervasive in Boston. Somewhere around clue #80 it hit me that actually dead people are “colder” than statues, and we realized the clue had to indicate the cemetray (apparently called Granary Burial Ground) near the commons where Sam Adams lies. Thus to Beantown Pub we went!  Though it took about 20 minutes (and three servers) to get the other kind of cold Sam Adams, it was worth it.  Though there was crazy, bar-shaking bass, there was also juice for my phone, which let me text about two people before it died again.  A day without phones is like a day without… feeling tied down by technology.

Day 40: 80 Photos in Boston -- Part 1.

Phase 1: Get there.

Banditos misterifotos. Quick explanation: Banditos Misteriosos are a group in Boston that host free, Boston-tastic events that often involve roaming around the city exploring or hosting a fun activity in a public space.  Today was my first banditos experience, and the theme was a Boston photo-based scavenger hunt.  I had very little idea what to expect.  There were five of us, with our first initials being M (that’s me), J, M, L, and S. JLS are first-years at MIT, and M is a friend I know from choir. This is how we eventually formed our team name, “Ma-jamel-toes”. I know. So sue us.

After a quite epic-in-nature night out at Howl at the Moon, somehow I wound up with an uncharged phone and a ability to sleep easily until 10:30am – the time when we were all supposed to meet outside my apartment (except from M., who was meeting us there). L&S had rallied and woken up J, and then they woke up my roommate, who woke me up. After a 3-minute shower and some hobbling around to find a scavenger-hunt-worthy outfit, I was out the door and we were on our way. M was there early (read: on time) and already had our list of clues: 80 items!

Phase 2: Initial photo-taking frenzy near the Public Garden / Boston common.

We met Meg at the entrance to the Public Garden, and immediately began snapping the camera at anything we could find that vaguely resembled some of the clues on the list.  From my estimation, we snapped about 9 images immediately in or very near the Common:

#61: Public Toilet. Amusing how this was our first hit!  By the end of the day, this row of portable toilets near the park had disappeared...

#8: A person that looks like their pet.  Not our finest effort, but we did see many adorable pups in the park at 11am and one of them had delightfully curly hair – only slightly more delightfully curly than his owner.

#14: This red line carries thousands, but never actually moves.  Now, I know I’ve heard this line before – and of course, it was referring to the red line that connects much of historic Boston on the Freedom Trail, which begins (I think?) quite near the common / near the State House.  I like our particular rendition of it, which is why it also serves as the head picture to this post J.

#15: Period costume tour guide using modern technology.  Perhaps it is cheating to stage events, but we found a Sam Adams-esque man nearly immediately (I think he may even have been an actual tour guide) and handed him a cell phone.  As I said, this part of the journey was a blitz.

#44: A squirrel and a pigeon.  Unfortunately, my camera (which has a non-functional screen, though it does have a viewfinder!) was on a quite low resolution setting.  Great for saving space on my SD card; bad for capturing tiny animals in a wide shot of Boston Common. But I promise you, they are both there.

#39: Playing on a playground. J was, of course, the first to high-tail it to the playground near the Duck Pond in the Common (any time there is a playground around that kid is down to party).  Weird thing was there were no kids on it, at all – at this point it was nearing 11:30a.  When we were back in the Common around 6p, a gaggle of little goslings (I mean children) were out and about.

#45: Wearing a plant.  This one happened without my even realizing at first – I thought S was just wearing a plant for the hell of it.

#46: In or on water. So many opportunities for this today – but L valiantly strolled past the sign proclaiming there was to be no going in.

#69: Impersonating famous movies outside of a movie theater.  Unfortunately we only impersonated one – J and I did Rose and Jack at the helm of the Titanic. Of course.

Phase 3: The not-so-little building.

We realized that an epic day of traipsing about would probably require some cash, so we headed to the Little Building at Emerson College.

#23: An oxymoron. As it turns out, the Little Building is not so little.  Kind of an oxymoron.  More ironic.  Unlike nearly everything Alanis mentions.

#25: Arm wrestling with a stranger. The security guards at the Little Building seemed to me to be slightly suspicious of our exuberance at retrieving money from an ATM.  So to put them at ease, we decided we probably better ask them to help us with our tasks, that way they’d know we were 2legit2quit. By arm wrestling one of them.

Phase 4: The Tam.

The Tam is really a destination in and of itself, anyhow, so it was quite excellent that we found a way to seamlessly worked it into our adventure. I was still not quite ready to daydrink, so I indulged in some orange juice.

#9: An arcade game! Bleep! Bloop! Bloop!. We captured both Big Buck Hunter and Pac Man, but the latter beat out the former.

#57: Most Bostonian image. It has the Patriots. And some old Bostonian dudes. It has a sign that says “Cash only”. It’s at the Tam. It’s pretty damn Bostonian.

Phase 5: Random walk.

This bit of the journey was definitely not at all consolidated by grid cells in my hippocampus. But it was the happiest-go-luckiest random walk in awhile, and the first of many that day.

#20: A sea monster!.  This little was, at first, our best shot at Codzilla (and honestly I think he might be better than the original).  M claims it was clearly a mistranslation. I claim it’s really just Codzilla.

#51: A photo of your camera, no mirrors allowed!. We had the best time at this Chinese supermarket. Trying on scarves was part of it – the picture-of-my-camera part was nearly inadvertent. L & I ended up buying a scarf, too J.

#74: อยากเต้นรำไหม . Most people would give up at this clue. M went: “Oh, that’s Thai. Let’s just go ask someone who reads Thai what it means.” Effing brilliant. Apparently it meant, “Would you like to dance?”

#1: Give a fellow team member a makeover. At first we had walked to the Boston Opera House to find a picture of a long kickline (presumably from A Chorus Line or something), to no avail.  However, we passed a little shop called So Good on the way, so we were all set for giving S a makeover!

#64: It is most often the casement, that names are determined by placement, when push comes to shove, there’s nothing above, then you can no longer call it a basement.  Answer: Filene’s!.

#66d: Photos of your team on all 5 MBTA lines – the Silver Line.  Happily for us we were able to nearly walk on to the Silver Line without breaking stride – oh-so-elusive, it is!

#66a: Photos of your team on all 5 MBTA lines – the Red Line. Of course, it is the line most of us take the most often, and also the line we took in to the scavenger hunt this morning. However, we were not aware at the time that we should simply photograph everything that happened to us! So L and S ventured out to grab a picture of a couple of lines leaving from Park St. while we all walked on foot to South Station.

Phase 6: The waterfront.

It was a bit of a trek to the waterfront, so some of our team members split up to start the “T” journey (one of the clues involved a team member being photographed on each of the 5 lines of the T). It was honestly the only reason we ever split up, which was great.

#24: Using a photobooth.  One shock of the day was that there actually do exist payphones in the city of Boston.  We saw perhaps no actual booths, but this seemed pretty darn close.

#41: The Little Dig. Apparently there is actually (in the French sense, too) a project going on called “The Little Dig” – named as the little sister of “The Big Dig”.  It’s unclear whether this photo actually captures that dig, but either way, it’s definitely a smaller one than The Big Dig (the preceding clue).

#77: The “lobster tours” boat.  After looking at the pictures that other teams posted, it was clear that it was hard to capture a shot of the real lobster tours boat.  We did in fact make it to the correct dock, but in going through the picture later, I couldn’t find it, so subbed this pic, which M took of boats which clearly looked as though they should be hunting for lobsters.

#18: Getting chased by a zombie.  The misteriosos planners clearly knew what they were doing, because there were zombies all over Boston today. And L definitely got chased by some near South Station.

#60: Best beard. Perhaps the planners also knew there would be some serious contenders out for best beard today, because we almost instantly ran into the one we felt was obviously the best.  He was also quite fond of getting photographed with the lovely L J.

#12: Pinkies out at the Tea Party museum.  Though we didn’t go inside most of the museums we ventured to, we did get some excellent shots of them – and an idea of the astonishing number of quirky museums in Boston!

Phase 7: Some serendipity on the trek back from the waterfront.

#2: Peter Pan burned this down. One of the most serendipitous moments of the day was randomly walking along the water and realizing that tout d’un coup, we were at James Hook and Co. Lobsters. I remarked, seemingly off-the-cuff, that oh, perhaps Peter Pan had burned this down – and remarkably, L knew that the lobster place actually had burned down – and all of our cogs turned at just the right time to include this on our list. (S & L also took the opportunity to scavenge some seafood!)