You don't have to put on the red light..

Hi-Five

I was in Oregon when the Red Sox won their first series in 86 years. I saw the last out in a bar called The Cheerful Tortoise in Southwest Portland, celebrating with other ex-pol Bostonians and other fans from all over the country. It was awesome. Still I wonder how much more it would have meant if I had watched it here.

I'll never know.

Boston has a special feeling. It's cozy. Sometimes people forget that it's not nearly as populous as other major cities because it punches above its weight with important institutions and cultural influence. Sometimes though, I feel it is a little too small, or perhaps just lacking in some things that a metropolis should have. This, then, is my..

Super Unrealistic Boston Wishlist

This is list of things I wish there were in Boston, in no order of importance. Some could be done, others.. well lets just say you can't turn a granny into a go-go dancer.

Wait, I have to wait for Carlow to shut up?! Nobody makes Peaches Strange wait!

1. A Soccer Stadium In/Near the City*

I'm certainly not the first one to propose this idea. Just ask any Revolution fan you can find. Don't worry, I'll wait. No, I don't particularly like watching soccer on TV, but would I go to a game if it were played somewhere with public transportation? Absolutely, I would like to get drunk and sing outside with thousands of strangers, but I'm certainly not going to go to Foxborough to do it.

Ok, I don't know who would pay for this. Americans get excited about soccer the way I get excited about sobriety, which is approximately once every four years and only for a week or so. But it would be good for Boston, and for Massachusetts. We are a sports town, after all.

2. A Central Market

Ok, still there? I didn't chase you away with the soccer bit? Good, that was a test. And you passed.. barely.. barely passed. Why don't we have a great big market? I watch Bourdain on TV and every place he goes, outside of the US at least, has a gigantic market full of fruit, fish, delicious delicacies, people selling homemade salami and cheese, or crazy hot noodle soups that are supposed to be rocket-fuel for your, eh, 'love life'. Not that I need that. Let's move along.

Yeah, they're full of flies most of the time. The rats would have a field day too. It's a small price to pay to have a kick-ass central market where I can buy stuff that didn't come from Monsanto. I don't care about the rats. They already took over Allston; we could put the market there.

 

3. Trains that Run All Night

Not every twenty minutes, but maybe once an hour after midnight. Of course nobody wants to work that shift and the union will block it, but plenty of cities make it work. The public transportation shouldn't stop an hour before the bars close, not if you're serious about stopping drunk driving. Which reminds me..

 

4. No Mandatory Last Call

Yeah, I know everybody is shaking their heads right now thinking I'm a degenerate alcoholic for this one. Just think about it for a second. I'm not saying that every purveyor of alcohol needs to be open all night. I'm not saying any of them should. I think that the bar should decide if they want to stay open later, and the bartender should decide if he/she wants to work there. Most weekend warriors that you see on the street, (you know, the ones that give alcohol a bad worse name) are sloshed by 2am. Do you know why that is?

Well let me edu'ma'cate ya.

It's because he knows that every bar is going to lock its doors at one-thirty, then shortly after some Trapasaurus Pex in an extra-medium shirt is going to throw him out into the street with several thousand new friends.. several thousand new friends that all need cabs. Several thousand friends that are all now fighting over the one cab that is cruising right past all of them. Several thousand friends who are mad because they had to drink so fast to catch a buzz before 1:45, or mad that couldn't seal the deal with the girls they were schmoozing, or mad because they just got out of work an hour ago since not everyone works a nine-to-five and some people are sober and thirsty at 2AM! Yes, I am saying that both the bars and the streets would be safer and less full of obnoxious drunk people if the bars had the option of staying open later. Hey Walsh and Connelly, are you paying attention?

If New York can do it, so can we. It might even keep that well-educated 25-40 demographic from moving to a bigger city with better nightlife. They are clearly desperate. Just look how excited they are over the Seaport District, where frankly most of the bars are nothing special.

5. A Seedy District

OK, here's where Gam-Gam gets those Go-Go boots. I grew up listening to my Dad, who worked as a bartender in the eighties, tell me stories about the Combat Zone. Not that he went there of course. It amazed me that Boston, which I have always known as a rather Puritan town, once had a red light district. So I always figured he was exaggerating. Nope. It existed. That little strip of LaGrange Street with Centerfolds and the Glass Slipper, that's all that remains of this:

Dad, you're totally busted.

That's not even the heyday. I watch a documentary about Old Scollay Square.
Boston, the way it was pt. II (The old ladies at 7:01 are hilarious). It was a really happening place. It was a place where Harvard professors would holler for a girl to take off her top. It was a place where JFK could fall for a stripper named Peaches Strange. Of course I know that people won't line up to see a fan dance in the days of internet pornography. Nor do I want the residents of Chinatown, or anywhere else, to have adult theaters and pimps in their neighborhood. It just seems like Boston was much more fun in those days. I get tired of hearing how clean and nice the city is. It would be nice to have a dirty little secret, a place whispered in hushed tones and removed from the sanitized veneer we see everyday.

Will he ever return? No, he'll never return

That's it. Every writer in Boston has probably done a hack job on this subject. What do you want? I'm just getting into this weekly thing. No, I didn't cover any real social issues. Yes, everything I mentioned has something to do with eating, drinking, or entertainment. That's my area, I'm not trying to save the world. I'm just trying to make it more interesting.

Oh, yeah, GO SOX!

*How the hell did I forget about Happy Hour?! Duh. I want that much more than soccer. (10/23)

Nothing to see here, Russian hackers..

Good News, Everyone!

As regular readers of the blog know.. there IS no way to regularly read this blog. Unless you like to go back and revisit gems like the one where I spoof the Onion (a parody of a parody site- how meta!) or the bit about Downtown Crossing. That's because I am a lazy person when it comes to anything I should be doing for myself or for the world in general. Yes, I write solely for the world; Nobel committee take notice. Anyway, today I will be letting everyone in on one area of my life in which I am the opposite of lazy. I am a regular James Brown. That area is password creation.

Joe sent me..

Passwords were easy back in the days of Prohibition. Chances are if you went to enough of them, somebody would know a guy by the name of Joe. Boom, you're in. If I had any sense, then I would make my passwords all be "Joe sent me" (I'm not going to, so don't get any ideas about hacking into my twitter and freaking-out my 25 non-spambot followers with admissions of hookercide. Is that a word? It is now.) My accounts are basically speakeasies anyway, in that there has been nothing of value in them for years, due to the ready availability of alcohol. But that's not what I do when I create an account, instead I engage in a little game I like to call..

Let's make a password so good you'll never remember it in a hundred tries!

Here is how it works:

• Pick a number, then another.
• Pick a word. No, not in English! That would be too easy. 
• Spanish, no, that's child's play. Loco69? Come on, you'd remember that one!
• For the same reason, don't use 69. (13, 007, and 666; they're out too.)
• Try Ancient Greek, Latin, or maybe one of those Chinese names from the book next to your bed that you still haven't read called Poems of a Thousand Masters. Yes.. a thousand.. that will do nicely.
• Capitalize some letters. Not the first one. Jeez. Do it to random ones.
• If you use the same word for two passwords, just make sure to change which ones you capitalize for each one.
• Add, like, an ampersand or something, maybe in the middle.

Yeah, Sumerian, that will do nicely..

That's how we play make up a password, WTS style. Oh, yeah, I forgot the most important part of the game..

Don't write it down!

Come on now, that would be cheating! Besides, you know that you'll remember 3nAUtes&7wuLIN the next time you need to access that secondary account that you never look at but think might have a couple hundred bucks that you might need to transfer since you're stuck at an Indian casino enjoying the musical stylings of Steely Dan and your rent check is in danger of bouncing if you use your primary account but you don't know if you deposit a check from the account in question whether or not that will bounce and then you'd be even worse off because now you've bounced your rent check and overdrawn both accounts and you will wonder why you ever opened that second account in the first place and then you remember that you did it to hide money from yourself..

 

Which, Congratulations, you have successfully done!

Thank you for playing. Soon, you too will be on the path to being your own worst enemy. I wish you luck, unlike your enemy self. Speaking of which; that is why I suckered you in with Professor Farnsworth. The good news is I am going to try to make this a weekly thing. Yep, Carlow's Corner is going weekly, rather than bi-yearly or whatever. That might mean that quality and length might suffer, but nobody has ever accused me of either. Wild Tuesday Sandwich!? Hmmm..