I went to the ICA yesterday afternoon to see the Buster Keaton silent classic The General with live accompaniment from Cambridge's own Alloy Orchestra. It was a real treat not only to see this great movie on the silver screen but to see it with a great original score by this talented trio.

The ICA itself continues to vex and impress in equal measures. The main auditorium where the film was shown is impressive.  At the end of the performance, the walls were lifted to let the light in, revealing a view of the business district to appreciative oohs and ahs.

The interior of the building has spaces ideal for performances, lectures, exhibitions, and workshops, but the exterior is impressive from precisely one angle, and it is not an angle you can see it from except in photos taken by trained professionals who must have been on the roof of the World Trade Center next door. Because here's what you can actually see:


I know I've said it before, but I just love the view of Anthony's there.

(Note to ICA: the ice on the deck overlooking Anthony's is a lawsuit just waiting to happen.)

I only bring this up—I mean, the reality of the view—because I think it's important the way a building really fits into the real landscape, and how it is really experienced by real people interacting with it. It's no longer an architect's model. It is a real, live building now. If you are looking for the building you've seen in those impressive photographs, good luck finding it.

Don't get me wrong, it's a good space. But there are still serious access issues that make the actual experience of the ICA much less friendly than it might be. I discussed this with my companion to the performance yesterday, the legendary Mr. Big.

I had taken the T to Courthouse and trekked across the seemingly endless parking lot which has no sidewalks or indications as to where pedestrians can safely walk. Nor is there any clear indication as to where the entrance to the building is.

Big had driven and parked in a fenced-off lot between the World Trade Center and the ICA, where there is no, er, formal access, I guess you'd call it, to the latter. You can get to the building, all right, but you have to step over some jagged stones to get up on the sidewalk. There are no steps.

The parking lot experience, which you have to endure whether you drive and park or take the T, is not a pleasant one, and it bespeaks a lack of planning on the ICA's or the city's or somebody's part. Big says he doesn't think the lot is owned by the ICA. I don't care. You've got a huge convention center, this much ballyhooed museum, and God knows what-all going in down there, somebody—whoever it is—needs to get the parking figured out, and get some pedestrian-friendly landscaping in there.


After the performance, which was delightful, we drove to the South End at Big's suggestion, to have a late lunch at the Garden of Eden. I hadn't been there in ages. On the walk there from where we'd parked we passed a couple of typical South End couples—well-maintained middle-aged men who make it a point to sneer at you if they can perchance catch your eye.

You get the feeling they are—whether they want to or not—making furious calculations as you approach based on your attire and attitude—from age to income to penis-size—all as measured against their own.

And then it always seems their inner queen ends up popping her neck, snapping her fingers and saying, "hmph, she thinks she's all that." And then you get the sneer. (Could just be me getting the sneer, of course. I've always thought I'd be greeted in the South End as a liberator and showered with roses, so anything less is disappointing, to say the least.) 

So we pass this couple, and I says to Big: "you see that?"

He's like, "see what?"

"They sneered at us."

He's like, "oh, yeah? Didn't notice."

I proceeded to explain to him my whole scenario of the inner queen.

He's like, "and how would you know all that was going on in their heads?"

I had to admit because it was going on in mine, I guess.

Hmph.

It's like the other day I'm on the T. Some older guy with a cane gets on at Mass General Hospital. The train's fairly packed, though it's not rush hour. I see the guy get on—I'm sitting near the entrance he's standing in, and kind of register him standing there, but don't think anything of it. He stands for one stop, and then grabs a seat in the next section of the car when somebody vacates it at Park.

All the sudden I'm thinking to myself. "gee, that guy had a cane and had to stand because nobody got up and offered him a seat." I was getting pretty steamed about it, thinking, "people are so thoughtless and selfish and rude—hey, wait a minute. I was sitting here the whole time and he was about ten feet from me, and I didn't offer my seat to him, either."

I have seen the enemy, and he is me.

Anyway, as I was about to say, I always try to smile at South Enders, because nothing flummoxes them more than someone smiling instead of returning the sneer. Again, the inner queen pops her neck, rolls her eyes, and says, "what's she got to smile about?" That's what mine would be saying anyway. Or something like: "only a complete idiot goes around smiling at people for no reason! Either that or he's slung like an ox. Hmmpphh!"

I don't think all South Enders are horrid, of course. This is just another of those gross generalizations I think we all know has a tiny grain of truth to it, though. But even if some South Enders are horrid on occasion (as we all can be) I don't think the horrid ones are harmful. It's always seemed like a cut-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face kind of thing, although some have explained it as more of a don't-shit-where-you-eat philosophy. But I think the truth is somewhere in between. If you're going to shit where you eat, cutting off your nose might make it more palatable, somehow. I don't know.

What I do know is Boston has always had its catty side. It's like James says in The Bostonians: "The little knot of reformers watched her as she arrived; their faces expressed suspicion of her social importance, mingled with conscientious scruples as to whether it were right to recognise it."

You don't claw your way to the top just to get declawed once you get there, do you?

My introduction to South End social mores came several years ago, strangely enough in an airport in Zurich, where I met a South Ender who had been eyeing me from across the airport lounge. We both had a couple of hours to kill, and decided to have a drink. He was a charming fellow, Latin, studying at one of Boston's premiere institutions of higher learning, and seemingly thoroughly ensconced in the South End scene. After a pleasant conversation, we exchanged numbers, and hopes that we would meet again in Boston.

A couple weeks later a friend of mine introduced me to the Garden of Eden. They call it that not because of Adam and Steve, but because of all the snakes, I've gathered. During the summer, when the sidewalk cafe is open, it's a hotbed of intrigue.

So we get a table, I look over, and there's my friend from Zurich, sitting with several other men. I catch his eye, and give him a smile and a wave. He blinks, and looks away as if he doesn't know me from Adam or Steve.

Ah, I said to myself. So that's how it is. Nothing to do but grin and bear it, then.


I was in a good mood yesterday in the South End, despite the occasional sneer, because I enjoy Big's company, and we had both enjoyed The General. Like I said, I hadn't been to the Garden of Eden for ages, so it seemed like a special occasion.

We got a table, and looking around Big commented on how it was getting too mixed with all the straight people moving in, but I think it's a good thing. I think gay people behave better around straight people. And straight people dress better when there are gay people around.

So we have this waiter who's like the male version of Sofia Coppola. Tall and lanky, with those big puffy lips—the lower one just sort of hanging there—and that vacuous look. He was probably twenty-one, but could have passed for seventeen. No complaints from my camp. Cute kid. Eye candy. But he was a little slow on the draw. I can deal with it, but Big wasn't in the mood to humor him.

The kid comes up and stands next to the table but doesn't say anything.  Big finally looks up from his menu and says, "Yes?" The kid's got a shtick.  He's obviously used to people thinking he's cute and kinda dumb, and he's been coasting on that all his life. I'm like, he's got a shtick, let's let him do his shtick.

But Big's spent most of his adult life in the world's power centers and he wants service, not shtick. I can appreciate the shtick, myself. I wasn't in a hurry, and I was willing to humor the kid. You know, he's cute and kinda dumb. Let's see where he goes with it.

But I could see it was going to be good cop/bad cop thing with Big and me. I was going to get to be the good cop, so it was win-win for me. But I had no idea how bad Big's bad cop could be. He grew up on the mean streets of Dot. I tend to conveniently forget that most of the time.

The kid takes our order and I go off to the john to wash my hands. A side-note here: the toilet at the Garden of Eden was filthy. There was paper waste flowing out of the trash can and onto the floor. If you can't get someone in there over the course of a busy Sunday to clean periodically, at the very least you should invest in paperless hand-dryers. You can have all the fancy-schmancy grass-fed local beef on your menu you want, but if your one and only washroom looks like that people aren't going to want to come back.

I get back to the table and Big is huffing and puffing. I'm like, what's up? Apparently right after I left the kid came back and said, "um, I totally, like, forgot your order. I've got, like, five tables today. What did you want again?" Big repeated the order, and suggested the kid might want to write it down this time.

While we waited for our food, we talked about my recent move from Dot. Big said from reading my blog he could see my whole outlook had changed since coming to Somerville. I said, yeah, I'm thinking of becoming a lesbian, if they'll have me.

I asked him if he'd heard about that attack in the Target store at South Bay Mall in Dot. He was like, yeah. It was like the Lord of the Flies, or something. These ten year olds viciously attack this adult who allegedly bumped into them. They took her down, the ten year old who was arrested "kicked her repeatedly in the head and stomach as the victim’s clothes were being ripped off and she was punched in the face by the other girls."

Big was appalled, of course. I mean, it's appalling.

"You know that little girl is never going to be right in the head."

Big was for swift and firm punishment as an example to others. Guillotines and pillories were mentioned. (I actually suggested the pillory as an alternative to the guillotine, but it really wasn't hard at all to picture the spectacle of either in the middle of the South Bay parking lot.) As we were letting our imaginations run wild, I realized the fellows at the next table had fallen silent and were looking a little ashen. That's about the time the waiter brought our food, and I changed the subject.

I got the chicken pot pie, which wasn't really a pie at all, with chunks of vegetables too big to eat whole, and Big got a burger that looked like it was trying too hard not to be a burger like any other burger. You know the type. Nothing at the Garden of Eden can just be what it is. It's like Serpico says to his lady friend: "Answer me this: how come all your friends are on their way to being somebody else?" How come all your burgers are on the way to being something else, Garden of Eden? Answer me that.

It's OK to be a burger. I mean, if you're a burger.

The waiter stayed away through our meal, and when he finally came to clear our table and ventured "how was everything?" Big sort of issued a short, sharp shock. I don't even remember what was said, but in an instant we were all blushing uncontrollably. I have no idea why I should have been, but I was. The kid mumbled "sorry," and scurried off, bringing the check a moment later, without asking if we wanted coffee or dessert, and setting it timidly on Big's side of the table, looking for all the world like he was afraid he was about to get his hand bitten off in the process.

Since we were not going to get coffee at the Garden of Eden Big suggested going across the street to Francesca's. And, yowza, there's a little blond, blue-eyed bombshell waiting tables there—I felt like I'd been socked in the stomach when I saw him.

Not only was he an absolute dish, but he was efficient, friendly, and full of pluck. He was bouncing all over that room in his impossibly tight little t-shirt, spreading sunshine like he had heat enough to spare. We both wanted to take him home. He was about 5'2" and I was sure he'd fit in my pocket, but I didn't think we could get away with it without being noticed. The place would have gone all dark and dank without him.

That's the kind of thing you like to see, but then you're, like, all depressed later.  Because you want one of those to go.

Hmm.

While we were there aside from watching the waiter, our chief form of amusement was watching these two lovely Burmese Mountain Dogs out on the sidewalk, waiting for their owner. Everyone loves these dogs. There was not one person the whole time we were there who could resist smiling when they saw them, or stopping to pet them.

I do not see Burmese Mountain Dogs often. And these were so delightful, we commented on them at length. Today, in Central Square, I saw another one. Which was strange, but you'll have to wait until tomorrow to find out why...