(Second attempt to write this, obviously the spirits of Boston are sneaky and can crash Firefox at will!)
“Unexpected travel plans are dancing lessons from God” – Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Cat’s Cradle
Ok so here I am in Boston (Ok Newton, for you purists), down here for the week for training with Veritas, and as fate would have it my friend Adam is both busy, and not feeling well, and Ozz hasn’t gotten back to me yet about getting together, so I guess I’m on my own. After looking around at what’s out in the Theaters now, I find ‘Shaun of the Dead’ a film that appears to be just silly enough to fit my mood, and I find a nearby relatively easy-to-find theater that has it starting at 7:20 so I quickly get directions from Mapquest and rush to my car.
The directions seemed simple enough, get on 95/128S to exit 20A, get on rt 9, turn left on Chestnut Hill and the theater is right there. HAH. Boston, the town where road signs are optional, wins this round. I happen upon another theater though and optimistically park to see whats playing. The only thing starting anytime close to when I arrived there was ‘The First Daughter’, a movie that I think i’d pay NOT to see.
So, defeated, a wander back to my car and decide that I’ll wander off into the streets of Boston. To Rt 20 to Rt 60E to 2A (or something paralell to it) till suddently the fates finally smiled upon me and led me to ..tah dah!…Davis Square, a place I have been to with friends and via the T in the past, and I even found a restaurant I liked, and parking nearby.
I had a yummy quick dinner at Anna’s Taqueria, a restaurant my friend Totally had taken me to years ago. Yum.
I then wandered around Davis Square looking for a payphone since i’m pretty sure Davis Square is relatively close to either Adam or Ozz and, if nothing else, they could tell me how to get out of there without the risk of ending with a ‘bonfire of the vanities’ type but apparently payphones in Boston are few and far between.
I poked my head in the Somervilel Theater but all their movies were not beginning at a convenient time. There was a line of about 20+ ‘Gothy College Kids’ and I couldn’t figure out what they were buying tickets to go see, my only guess is that they were pre-selling tickets to Rocky Horror or something else. As far as I can tell from the website though, this is not the case so that mystery will remain unsolved. What are those crazy kids up to?
I poked my head into Johnny D’s since it was singer songwriter night. However, the room had like 5 people in it and the woman at the door told me it was $7 to hear the performers. The person on stage at the time was playing an electric keyboard and singing a jazzy song, which wasnt my thing anyways, and for $7..er no.. She told me I could sit at the bar and listen, but that interested me about as much as the bad jazz vocals so I left. Had there been a person with a guitar performing, or had the music been a little more up beat I might have forked over the cash. I’m a sucker for a singer songwriter, just ask all the street performers I’ve funded over the years 🙂
So finally I gave up on the payphone quest, hopped in my car and picked a direction to drive in. Eventually I hit 93 and headed north on it until in T’s with 95 and found my way home while listening to part of the debates on the radio.
So while Boston prevented my from finding the theater I wanted, it did arrange for a yummy dinner and a quick return home, so it could have been worse. It’s not so bad being lost in Boston if you don’t have a destination in mind when you set out.
Also – Is it sad that as I was getting lost i was thinking about writing this entry? My title, before I found Anna’s was going to be ‘Boston you fickle bitch’ 🙂
-Matt