I get back to the old 'hood about once a week these days. And last Thursday when I was there, I noticed they had finally erected a new mammoth flagpole in Everett Square to replace the one that had been struck by lightening a couple of years ago.

According to the Dorchester Reporter, "The giant explosion scattered javelin-sized shards of wood across nearby streets and, for a time, caused evacuations for some neighbors who live beneath the towering mast."

I can personally attest to the awesomeness of the original. At 98 feet it was reportedly the tallest wooden flagpole in the state.

The new one is a hundred feet tall, but it's made of fiberglass. Not strong enough to fly a thirty foot by fifty foot flag like the old one was. But wooden flagpoles of that size can run thirty to forty grand. As it is, the fiberglass model cost ten thousand bucks.

I remember when I was working with the DCR on Meaney Park. I asked my man Karl Pastore (salt of the earth, by the way) about some new playground equipment. The figure he floated was in the tens of thousands of dollars. And then he mentioned the flagpole in Everett Square (a block away), and the DCR didn't have any money to begin with.

And we didn't have a PPP up and running, and no way to raise any matching funds, so we had to settle for some mums, about half of which were stolen by abutters, and the other half pissed on by our vagrant-in-residence or trampled on by our local drug-dealers and their clients, for whom the park is a sort of outdoor office.

Ah, fond memories of Dot.

The city is doing a lot of work in and around Dorchester these days, that's for sure. There are brand-spanking new signs, like the one at the intersection of Mass. Ave. and Melnea Cass, announcing something called the "Newmarket Industrial District":


I don't know if this has always been the name of the area, but because there wasn't a sign, how could anyone ever have known? Whether it was or wasn't, putting it out there is a good idea. When a place has a name, that's a powerful thing. When people know what it is, even better.  Because then people can say, "yo, meet me at such and such a place," and the like. 

Previously that stretch was known to me as "Nameless Void of Urban Negation." I didn't call it that, because it didn't seem to merit being called anything, but "Nameless Void of Urban Negation" was kind of how I thought of it in an unutterable sort of way.

But just as knowing an animal's name and calling it by name tames it, the name Newmarket Industrial District somehow tames what seemed to me previously (however erroneously) to be a wilderness of concrete, asphalt, potholes, litter, and broken glass.

"Newmarket" is a perfect name for an area targeted for redevelopment, too, which is what makes me suspicious it might be a new old-sounding name. And if I'm not mistaken, the area falls into the Boston Empowerment Zone.

But the funny thing about the word "empowerment" is that it is immediately dis-empowering, because in acknowledging the need for empowerment you're pointing right at the source of weakness. Which is probably a necessary step, like an alcoholic admitting he's got a problem.

Still, personally I think it's a good thing it's not "Newmarket Empowerment Zone." In fact, it's a good thing it's a district and not a zone. "District" sounds like someplace someone somewhere has designated as such. Zone sounds like someplace that just happened. War breaks out and suddenly there's a war zone. There's a thirty-kilometer radius around Chernobyl called "the Zone of Alienation." Even a "comfort zone" is something Dr. Phil keeps telling you to get out of. Of course, the end zone is someplace you want to be. But you don't stay there for long.

So "Newmarket Industrial District" gets a big thumbs-up from me. It sounds like a place with a purpose.

There's a new not a park, but a parklette, on the corner of Mass Ave. and Shirley Street, across from Victoria Diner and bordering the William Eustis Playground that gives that corner a sense of purpose, too. It's been spruced up and a new flower bed with a granite border added.

The corner is dedicated to Frank "Buster" Carline, from the Hanna club football team, and the granite has this quote etched into it: "If you're a champion once in your life, you're a champion forever. So gentlemen, let's have some fun!"


See, this is what I'm talking about. About these "empowerment zones". The quote is sort of empowering, I guess, if you were ever a champion, maybe. I wonder if the poor sod sleeping on the park bench there was a champion once. And what if he wasn't? if it's true that if you're a champion once, you're always a champion, is the opposite true, too? Well, as Tom Petty once sang, "even the losers get lucky sometimes."  Maybe they should have that etched in granite somewhere.

It's a nice parklette, anyway. And it gives folks another spot to wait for the buses that hardly ever come.

But probably the biggest public art project in the area that has finally come to fruition is The Giant Grinch Head at the Columbia Rd./Boston St./Mass Ave./E. Cottage St. Clusterfuck...


The amazing thing about the Grinch Head is that no matter where you view it from it's always the back of his head.  Like those paintings with eyes that follow you everywhere.  My friend Dmitri actually pointed this out to me.  I thought it was supposed to be a Clapp pear, or something.

The Clapp pear was, after all, developed by Thadeus Clapp, a Dorchester resident back in the day (the mid-nineteenth century day, that is).  I am not aware of any Grinch-connection to Dorchester, on the other hand.  It's not exactly Whoville.  I mean, did you see Gone Baby Gone

This is a great example of a piece of meaningful public art lovingly offered (it took Somerville artist Laura Baring-Gould five years to craft the eleven-and-a-half foot wonder) that means nothing to the lion's share of current locals—the ones who patronize the check-cashing joint or the Dunkins on the other side of the clusterfuck, or the Store24 or the KFC on this side.

This is an area of Dot uniquely rich in history, even for Dot, which is pretty rich in History in general.  The Blake House is right around the corner, and my own once-beloved Atheneum Park and Meaney Playground (speaking of Gone Baby Gone)— site of the first town meeting in American History—is just a block away.  But it's hard to say what this place is, or what it means today. If only the Grinch Head could speak.  If only it wouldn't keep turning away.

One last thing I found interesting in my weekly wanderings in Dot. You may or may not have noticed by now, but I am always looking at—and for—signs.  This is probably a function of having flown by the seat of my pants for so long, I always like to know where the exit is.  Anyway, riding along Columbia St. I came upon this very important-seeming message from the Mayor...


...posted in this very prominent place:


I'm not sure why it's addressed to tourists ("Welcome to Boston") in this particular part of town, although there is a lovely firehouse across Annabel St., where I found it, which I suppose could be some kind of tourist attraction for people who travel the country visiting old firehouses...


.....and why it wasn't in Creole and Spanish, since the area's population seems to have shifted in that direction.  But Nino knows best.

And I found it all very empowering, nonetheless.