Welp, it's official. I will take the room in the co-op, about a block from Davis Square. Quite a change of scenery for me. I've been in Dorchester for a little over a year now—not long in the overall scheme of things. But after even such a relatively short stay, you forget sometimes that the rest of the world's not like this. I mean, aside from Beirut and Baghdad.

But to move from Dudley to Davis Square without some intermediary square for a few months in order to acclimate—I dunno, maybe Franklin?—is probably pretty foolhardy, if not downright dangerous. The culture shock of the move alone could lead to severe PTSD.

Needless to say, I have never lived in any one of Utne Reader's top fifteen "hippest places to live" in the United States, circa 1997, as I soon will. In fact, this will actually be my first foray, period—livingwise, at least—on the other side of the Charles (unless you count my first night ever in Massachusetts, back in July of 1993, which I spent in Cambridge Common).

After doing my time as a soldier in the war-zone, is it shameful for me to admit that I'm actually looking forward to being able to browse in a bookstore a block from my new digs? To have a coffee and toodle around on my laptop in one of the many coffee shops a block away, if I want? Or say the mood for a movie strikes me mere minutes before the show starts? No problem. There's a cinema a block from the new place, too. My God. It's like... life, or something.

Call me bourgeois, I don't care.

Yeah, there are those who'll whine, "but is it real life?" Or just a Cambridge-side fairyland simulacrum of life, only slightly less postmodern for being just the other side of Cambridge itself, with just slightly less brainy but equally soulless nasally-voiced hipsters and save-the-planet PC pod-people populating faux-funky coffeehouses, acting bohemian while preparing for an eventual life of privilege and flatulence of which their Davis Square years will one day be referred to as "the salad days"? (Check out this discussion of the closing of Someday Cafe for some examples. Exhibit A: the charming Melissa A. and her "dutch-ovening" boyfriend.)

Anyway, it's a question.

And here's another one: what's up with those scary concrete statues with the bronze masks standing around everywhere?


Actually, don't answer that. After a little cursory research, I discovered that the statues, erected in the early eighties—and they are so early eighties—were meant to be temporary, and originally did not have bronze faces. But after their concrete faces were, erm, defaced by vandals, it was decided (by the people who decide these things) that the virtually indestructible bronze "masks" would be added to thwart any further face-hating statue-manglers.

But you wouldn't know all that just by looking at them, would you now? Though modified out of practical necessity, the masks add a level to the works they did not originally possess, and were likely never meant to have. They were meant as light-hearted additions to the square, approachable and "interactive" in a way—the urge to have your picture taken with them if you've got a camera handy is almost irresistible at first.

But eventually, their vulnerability—particularly the scary-cute elderly couple pictured here—was their undoing. Those these poor little innocent statues were forced to "interact" with put cigarettes out on their foreheads, sprayed paint in their faces, and scratched their eyes out with pen-knives.

The bronze "masks" became the armor they were forced to wear in the public square after repeated attacks. Poignant when you think about it, innit?

But I still think they're creepy. What I thought of when I first noticed them was The Android Invasion, from the old Doctor Who series:


I figured maybe they kept the controls for the signals and street lights in Davis Square under their masks, or something.

Like I said, public art like this—these life-size statues of "ordinary people" doing ordinary things—window shopping, or drinking from a fountain, or sitting on a park bench masturbating—were popular in the early eighties. Particularly wherever a city was endeavoring to reinvent a run-down neighborhood. It was as if they wanted to provide examples to residents of what to do.

"Hey, honey, look! The creepy life-size concrete statues are hanging out in the square! It must be the place to hang out now! Let's go!"

"OK! Let me just grab my pen-knife and a bottle of spray-paint! Got your cigarettes?"

Anyway, there will be time and more to explore all of these questions. I will begin officially blogging from Davis Square starting the first of January.