Category: Places

Word is that the boom days are back, that Boston is entering a new tech resurgence, etc. etc. Allrecipes.com just went for $66M, the word on the street is that Facebook thinks it’s worth $2B.

I’ll believe it when I get a steady job.

Went to a wedding in NYC this weekend. Reception at the University Club, a place so far uptown it seems, as they say, like Boston. They don’t allow sneakers in the lobby– if you’re casually dressed you have to use the service entrance/exit. There are some concessions to modernity, though: they have admitted women since 1987, and of course there is an up-to-date globe in the library, next to the one which still lists Prussia and Siam.

This afternoon, the American Museum of Natural History. The first floor still has the dusty dioramas, but the fourth floor is incredible: plenty of emphasis on evolutionary theory and the development of paleontological science.

Bookdwarf and I, along with her sister and brother-in-law, will be insulting the Oscars for the remainder of the evening. I’ll be talking, she’ll be talking and blogging.

The Somerville Community Path covers old rail lines between Alewife Station and Davis Square, and then on towards Cedar St. There, it stops, and the old rails lie rusting. I saw them and I thought, anyone can tell you there’s no more road to ride.

But then I took some other pictures, and they seemed to tell a completely different story. It begins with hey, we can go down behind the old factory near Murdock St. We can be alone back there, make out on that old sofa my aunt threw out, drink some beers I stole from my dad’s fridge. We’ll ride there on my new moped.

The Romance of Business Travel, and Other Myths at the NYT, includes this gem:

MOST UNWELCOME SURPRISE After being picked up at the airport in Damascus, John Denson, an international lawyer in Houston, felt something hard near his feet. It was an Uzi. He asked the driver if it was his, “and he replied that he had his own, and that one was mine, ‘just in case we need it,’ ” Mr. Denson said. “It is amazing how little room a Mercedes has in the back seat when you’re trying to avoid touching a loaded Uzi.”

If you get into a cab in Silicon Valley and ask to be taken to any hotel in Mountain View, the driver seems pretty likely to ask if you’re involved with Google in some way.

I don’t think I like Palo Alto all that much. I mean, it’s all pretty, but it doesn’t seem real to me. I like San Francisco a lot more. I found a very cute bookshop, where I got a copy of “Thief’s Journal” by Jean Genet, but when I got to the cash register I was surprised to be charged nearly twenty dollars for a used book.

My experience may be tinged by spending nearly an hour today trying to find taxis, and by one taxi getting pretty badly lost, to the point that I had to call the hotel and get directions and write them on a piece of paper; the driver was then unable to read my directions without reading glasses, which he kept slipping on and off as we lurched down Castro Ave. Did I mention that the transmission was slipping?

Today I had lunch with an old family friend who has returned from think-tanking in India to live in Palo Alto and get a Ph.D. in energy policy at Stanford. He seems happy. He is the sort to pick a neighborhood based on its school district, because he plans to have children and raise them where he is right now. He is happy.

The various neighborhoods of Silicon Valley have all begun to blur together for me, although I did have a wonderful bowl of noodles at a place on Castro St., and a couple of good beers over at the Tied House Brewery, both in downtown Mountain View. Still, downtown Mountain View doesn’t have the walkability and neighborhood feel that Davis Square does. All the local weeklies have page after page of ads for plastic surgery.

I’m wondering how far I’ll have to commute to find a place like the one I’m in now. SF is great– but it’s an hour at least from anywhere that seems to be hiring. And if I like Somerville so much, why am I looking for work so far away? Perhaps I should spend a little more time developing my Boston-area search next week.

Anyone in a bad mood? Check out how long it takes to get a doctor’s appointment in this town. The example in the article was five weeks for an appointment, but last time I tried to see a dermatologist I was quoted waits of six to eight months– and I called four or five hospitals.

Also in the doom-and-gloom column, foreclosures are up 35% and home prices are dropping… to merely absurd levels.

I knew, moving to a slightly larger apartment last spring, that I’d be using more gas to heat my house. And I knew, what with all this crisis going on, that the gas would be expensive. But crikey, I had sticker shock when I got the bill anyway. Something is horribly, horribly wrong.

Therefore, I am shrink-wrapping my windows today, and yesterday, when someone on the phone asked me how I felt about relocating, I said, “With weather like this, enthusiastic.”

Charlottesville, VA is a small city with a small town feel. That small town friendliness shows up most on the Downtown Mall, the ten or twelve blocks of Main St. that are blocked off for pedestrians only, and where you can go into almost any restaurant and see locals running into people they know. It also shows up in the nightlife, particularly at Club 216, which is both the town’s only after-hours club and the only gay/lesbian bar within seventy miles. Whether you’re gay or straight, whether your musical taste runs to disco, hip-hop, or disco remixes of hip-hop songs, you’ll fit right in as long as you’re thin, up late, and willing to pay the $13 cover charge. (Club216.com, 218 Water St, Charlottesville. Fri/Sat 10PM-5AM.)

Today’s vaguely possible career idea: I’ll go to Mexico for a few weeks, and write a best-selling travelogue or short New York Times travel article about the trip.

If that fails, I can buy a suitcase full of counterfit Viagra and sell it online.