Day 113: Biking along the Charles

For Day 3 of biking to work, I took the path not through Central and Harvard but rather through Cambridgeport and along the water.  The Charles River has always been my favorite part about the city I live in (I speak loosely hear of course -- I suppose I just mean in gross geographical terms, or something), and I will darn well attempt to see it a lot over the next month.  One time my first summer here I managed to make it out by the MIT sailing dock in time for sunrise -- just gorgeous.

After work, I met E. in our "old place", Thelonius Monkfish in Central, for some sushi -- this time, veggie sushi for me.  (I have never, ever ordered vegetarian sushi before.  What is becoming of me?)

Capitalizing on the nice summer air some more, there was a later venture out to Harvard to the beer garden at Charlie's, and later to a friend's house in Somerville who has something that almost qualifies as a roof deck.  It's definitely a... well a roof.

Boston must be a city with some of the best and most diverse views, honestly.  For having so few really interesting geographic features, to boot -- the river winding through really makes it.

Day 67: U-Me, Stoneham, MA

With all of the cool places to try out in the immediate vicinity (see the majority of posts 1-66), it is no wonder that venturing out just a bit farther into the 'burbs than Arlington is something done rarely. However, a recent acquaintance who is quite connected to the local music scene (particularly jazz) invited us (a friend and me) out to Stoneham, MA in order to a) eat sushi and b) listen to a great a vocalist he's friends with.  Both of these aspects of a night out appealing to us greatly, we set out to join them at U-Me, a restaurant in Stoneham, MA.

Although it was fairly dead for a Friday night, the ambiance was great.  The restaurant is split in two, and one side was the location of the live music -- just voice and guitar, and it was beautiful. A nice little bar graced the corner, and we got a table right next to the small musical set-up.  The restaurant boasted all sorts of Asian food -- Korean, Japanese, Chinese, tons of sushi -- and each of us ordered from a different sub-genre, but each meal was delicious (I find this to be quite impressive). At the end of the night, we even attempted to order two cocktails, but when the waitress only brought one we decided it was plenty.  One of those very scrumptious all-alcoholic concoctions where every ingredient is sweet (in our case, elements of white chocolate, mint, and creme de cacao).

At only a 20-minute drive out of town (on a Friday night, no less), this is definitely a spot I'd love to make my way back to.

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 :).

Day 28: THE T

Aaaaand we're back to your regularly scheduled programming.  Well sort of.  Actually we are back to that programming on crack -- it's the three-day-doozy I have been dreading for sometime.  Today wasn't so bad, honestly -- at the (almost) end of the day was my first exam this week, the lab practical.  It was pretty wonky -- 24 stations with diagrams/dead animals/EKG traces/etc., with a minute and a half at each, the TA timing us and calling out "Switch!" every 90 seconds.  Sort of surreal.

Prior to that was an unfortunate delay on my flight from Chicago by 3.5 hours, nullifying the point of me getting up at 4:30 in the morning to race to the airport by L (El?).  It all ended fine, though -- which brings me the point of this post: THE T (in particular the red line) in Boston (and it's speed of transportation to/from the airport) can be phenomenal, despite what this website would have you believe and despite the fact that it closes an hour before bars.  Hop on, hop off right by my car.  Speed to work.  Work.  Cram.  Exam.  Then to MIT to work on talk.  Serious day.

Best part: sushi while finishing writing the talk.

Day 17: Genki Ya

 
Poem: Ode to Genki Ya in Eight Lines.

One word: Sushi.
Two words: Best sushi.
Three words: Best cheap sushi.
Four words: Best boat of sushi.
Five words: Best cheap boat of sushi.
Six words: Best boat of sushi in Cambridge.
Seven words: Best ten dollar takeout sushi in Cambridge.
Eight words: Best sushi across the street from my workplace.

Or, perhaps you like a Ryan-Gosling-style haiku better:

Hey, sushi, sushi
Yellowtail and salmon fish
Avocado, too

I mean honestly you can't describe the deliciosity of sushi in words, so why even bother?

*** Late-night edit (please excuse poor quality of photo, but it seemed so necessary).

The night turned more epic than expected.

As per usual, on a Thursday night when only normal events occur, I head over to Asgard for the LBK scene. Tonight, only one of the typical LBK-goers could make it (apart from me, obviously). As he noted, the band (namely the lead singer) seemed a little lackluster, though ever-enthusiastic when the two of us went on (my first song was great crack: "This Love", by Maroon 5, a karaoke first for me; my second was a standard and strangely enough, also a first for me, though it worked -- "Stand By Me").

Karaoke ended a touch early tonight, and since I had worked until after 10pm, I was ready to be out for a bit to offset the mind-numbingness of working 12 hours straight. With very little convincing, my fellow LBK compatriot and I set off down the road for the Cantab to see the Thursday-night glory which is the Chicken Slacks (to which a full post will be devoted I HOPE soon), and the epicness of the night had begun. It turned out that it was the last night with the 'Slacks for the last *original* remaining member of the band (a nothing-if-not-legendary fixture of the Cantab's) . The keyboardist, in fact. So it was quite bittersweet.... even though the Chicken Slacks as it currently stands is not what it used to be.

The best part of Central Square is that a random-walk home can be so serendipitous. Ours involved buying chocolate Cheerios (force-fed chocolate Cheerios, in my case), half participating in an offering of said cereal to stranger and having the entire box nipped, running into two men who were excited to celebrate the date and offered to share their enthusiasm with us (it had already become 4-20 at that point; no, the offer was not accepted), an encounter with a mayonnaise-eating musician at Hi-Fi, and a brief conversation about a potentially epic road trip to Nova Scotia / P.E.I. (a dream of mine since always). This night is just another reminder that I will be obnoxiously depressed to leave Cambridge.