Ornoth

I’ve written before about my condo in Boston’s Back Bay.

In addition to being strategically located, my building has a lot of history. Former luxury hotel where the visiting team for the first ever World Series stayed. First commercial building in Boston to have electric lights (installed by Edison himself just three years after he invented the light bulb).

And on the Commonwealth Avenue mall there’s a memorial to the nine firefighters who died in the 1972 fire and partial building collapse that remains the worst firefighting tragedy in Boston history.

I’ve seen a few photos from the fire. There’s one of people combing through the wreckage looking for survivors after the southeast corner of the building came down. There’s another showing the ladder truck that was buried under a two-story high pile of rubble in the alley out back.

I’ve always been curious about the actual damage done to the building and how much of it collapsed. After all, my unit is on that very southeast corner, on that very second floor, overlooking that very alley. But I’ve never found a photo that showed that very clearly… until now.

The photo accompanying this article was taken ten days after the fire, and for the first time, the fire damage and collapsed area are clearly shown.

Seeing this photo for the first time, I’m awestruck. Click on it and open it up in full resolution while I tell you what you’re looking at.

The building faces to the right, onto Commonwealth Ave. On the left, the back of the building features rows of bay windows overlooking the alley, then a parking lot, and (off camera to the left) Newbury Street.

Zoom into the pile of debris where the southeast corner of the building used to be. On the second floor, you will see a white internal wall with three dark vertical lines. See it? Right behind that wall is my main bedroom.

If you follow the second floor, you’ll see two narrow windows flush to the exterior brickwork, which are my two bedrooms, and then the bulge of my living room’s bay window, complete with the streetlight that remains there to this day. The area to the right of that white bedroom wall is probably my closet and the hallway that runs the length of my unit, and then the common area hallway.

On one hand, it’s nice that my unit wasn’t part of the collapse. On the other hand, you couldn’t possibly get any closer, and it’s a bit eerie knowing that a quarter inch of drywall is all that separates your bed from the place where nine men were crushed to death on the eve of Fathers’ Day.

Although this photo is over forty years old, it’s also disturbing how little the building has changed. Sure, they repaired the stubby central spire and replaced the collapsed section with a horrible slab of modernist concrete. But other than that, this could almost pass for a photo taken recently; it’s scary how familiar it looks.

Sure gives one pause to think.

So the Celtics won the NBA championship, and they won it in championship fashion, with perseverence, character, teamwork, and—as a result— complete dominance of their opponent.

I watched nearly all of the 2008 playoffs from Joe’s American Bar & Grill on Newbury Street. I groaned as the pathetic 37-45 Hawks took the Celtics to seven games in the opening round, followed by another seven-game nailbiter with LeBron James and the fourth-seed Cavs, and a fine six-game contest with the second best team in the league, Rip Hamilton’s Detroit Pistons.

Despite the Celtics having the best record in the league, everyone picked Los Angeles to win the title, including 9 of 10 ESPN analysts. I quietly voted my mind: the Celtics in six. Right on the munny.

I was watching Game 2, with the Celtics up 24, when Joe’s caught fire, forcing everyone out. At least I didn’t have to pay for my dinner! Meanwhile, the Lakers staged a comeback that fell just shy of completion. While Joe’s was closed, I had to watch Game 3 at the Rattlesnake, sitting next to Louie Evans, Boston’s infamous tricycle-driving Woop-Woop Guy.

And then Game 6, back at a crowded Joe’s. None of the bartenders I had become familiar with, and no sign of Dani, the barfly I secretly looked forward to seeing. After ending the first quarter with a mild four-point lead, the Celts took control in the 2nd, distancing league MVP Kobe Bryant and the Lakers by 24.

My routine has been to order supper at the tail end of the 2nd, so I can eat through the break. That was okay when the games started at 6pm, but with games starting at 9pm, that pushed suppertime out to 10:30pm. I’d eaten a plate of chips & salsa after work, so I wasn’t that hungry, and I was kinda tired of meat, so I ordered two ears of corn on the cob and ate them sitting at the bar, to many confused looks from the sizeable crowd.

The final two quarters must have been torture for the petulant Kobe Bryant, because the Lakers had no hope, trailing by more than 40 points, but they still had to spend another 24 minutes on the floor of a raucous Boston Garden, watching Boston’s second string hit an unending sequence of humiliating threes and dunks and alley-oops. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a dominant performance on the court. The Celtics won in true championship style, and there’ll be no apologists accusing them of backing into their title.

And then it was over. Paul Pierce was declared Finals MVP, but not before drenching coach Glenn Rivers with Gatorade. Kevin Garnett knelt at center court and kissed the leprechaun, then hugged Celtic legend Bill Russell. And team owner Wyc Grousbeck dedicated the title to recently-deceased Celtic patriarch Red Auerbach. That’s Celtics Pride.

I remember the first Celtics game I attended, back when I was too young to know what it was about or care. I also remember playing Bas-Ket as a child with players I named Tiny Archibald, Dave Cowens, John Havlicek, M.L. Carr, Cedric Maxwell, Bob McAdoo, and JoJo White, after players of the ’70s. I remember watching the fat Eighties years, rapt by players like Bird, Parrish, McHale, Ainge, Dennis Johnson, and Dee Brown.

And I remember the horrors that befell the team after 1986. Repeated draft failures. Rick Carlisle, Chris Ford, Len Bias, Acie Earl, Reggie Lewis, Rick Pitino, Antoine Walker, and Dominique Wilkins. And Paul Pierce… a real talent who had Celtics Pride, but suffered for a decade with no supporting cast.

Enter Danny Ainge. The same Ainge who was traded from Boston to Sacramento for a guy named Joe Kleine. Now Celtics GM, and architect of deals that brought Boston that supporting cast. Paul Pierce is the only player on the 2008 championship roster who survives from the team that Danny Ainge inherited. Ainge deserves all the accolades that can be heaped upon him for keeping only seven players from last year’s worst team in the league, supplementing the keepers with major league acquisitions, and turning the Celts into this year’s best regular season team and, of course, world champions.

And then there’s Doc Rivers. He has his share of detractors in Boston, especially after last year’s pathetic season. And he has certainly made his share of ludicrous coaching decisions, including many during these playoffs. But he deserves credit for doing one thing right, and it’s one very big thing.

Before this year’s season began, Doc took the team to Rome for a special training camp. He took this diverse group of individual contributors with immense egos, and got them to believe in the importance of defense and team play. He got them singlemindedly focused on one thing—earning an NBA championship—and settling for nothing less. And, most importantly, he got them to appreciate the story of the greatest franchise in professional sports history, and see their own role in it, if they stepped up to the challenge. The same Doc Rivers who played against us for the detestable Atlanta Hawks: he taught these guys Celtics Pride.

And they’ve shown it. They played unmatched team defense. They played through lineup rotations, adversity, and injuries. Through it all, they remained a team, a family working as one toward the only possible goal: lifting their own championship banner to fly with the legendary other sixteen up in the Garden rafters.

Teams and families are not homogenous; they’re made up of people who fill various roles, so even though the Celtics live and die as a team, I want to talk a bit about the players, because each of them showed both individual skills as well as depth of character that make them admirable role models.

I have to start with Paul Pierce, because Celtics fans can identify with him. He joined the Celtics full of pride and hope, and he brought that hope to thousands of fans. Then we struggled together through ten long years mediocrity before this year’s opportunity. That shows the depth of his loyalty to the team. But during that time he also grew as a person and player, becoming the acknowledged leader of the team. In the Finals, he played amazing ball, including suffocating defense against Kobe Bryant, despite suffering a painful knee injury in Game 1. Watching his reaction to finally realizing his—and our—dream is a memory I’ll always treasure.

Kevin Garnett is one bat-ass crazy mutha. The intensity of the desire and emotion he brings is downright scary, like the crazy berserker Picts who used to paint themselves blue and go naked into hand-to-hand battle. He’d been eerily ineffective during the three games in Los Angeles, but came back strong in Game 6 to provide the emotional spark the Celts needed, including an unbelievable line-drive conversion after a foul that will surely appear on posters for years to come as the defining moment of the 2008 Finals.

My impression of Ray Allen is that of quiet, introverted humility tempered by self-confidence. The shooting guard couldn’t find the hoop with Google Maps during the conference finals against Detroit, but he persevered and finally started pouring in threes when L.A. came to town. He, too, overcame adversity, this time in the form of his infant child’s hospitalization, not to mention the eye injury he suffered in the middle of Game 6.

And then there was this Rondo kid at point guard. Could a 22 year old second year player play the leadership role on the floor necessary to get through the playoffs? The questions were doubled after he bruised his ankle in Game 3. The Lakers cheated off him on defense, exploiting his reluctance to shoot from the perimeter, and fans groaned every time he drove the lane, got right to the cup, and passed up the open layup in favor of passing to teammates on the outside. But when he did take shots, he often made them, and his playoff performance was truly admirable, especially considering his limited experience.

Sam Cassell played backup point guard and brought both Finals experience and an offensive spark off the bench.

Eddie House also shared time at point guard, and provided needed offense when Rondo struggled. Between the three of them, they managed to divide the time at this key position without devolving into selfishness.

Kendrick Perkins, the big man in the middle, was an awesome presence defensively and on the boards. The man quietly does his job, and does it superlatively well. Huge unsung hero.

And when it wasn't Perk, it was Leon Powe, whose character, forged in family adversity, is so deep that they made it a halftime story.

And James Posey, Boston’s other Finals veteran, brought perspective, a stifling defense, and a killer three-point shot. Every time the Lakers cheated off him on defense, he made them pay.

So that’s the summary of the 2008 Celtics: a collection of great individuals, forged into a single, unbeatable team.

But what of the future? I think Posey and Ray Allen are the most likely to move on, which would leave Boston with a gaping hole at the shooting guard spot. Will that hurt them next year? Only time will tell, but that’s where I’d focus my effort if I was Danny Ainge.

But for now, it’s time to savor the first Celtics victory in two decades, capped by a dominant, stupendous final game against the old nemesis the Lakers.

Go Green! Awesome job, all around. Thank you for a storybook year.

I started a new project on Thursday the 30th. On Monday through Thursday our project team work at the client site in Cambridge, but on Fridays we work from our corporate office in Boston.

This is going to sound boring, but bear with me for another paragraph. It’ll get really interesting in a second.

So on the 30th I was at the client site, and December 1th I was at Optaros. Last Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday I was at the client site all day. On Thursday I had a one-day business trip to Manhattan, but the team was mostly in Cambridge. Then, on Friday the 8th, we were all working at our office in Boston.

It was 11am Friday when the client’s office building blew up.

Yeah, blew up. Two electricians were working on a transformer in the sub-basement when it blew, killing one of them. Approximately 600-800 people were in One Broadway at the time, and about a hundred were taken to area hospitals for smoke inhalation and later released after the subsequent major fire. The stairwells filled with toxic smoke and some people had to break windows and climb onto the roof of the adjacent parking garage. All this on the most brutally cold morning so far this season. You can read the full story and see image galleries via these links:

Boston Globe Saturday article
Boston Globe photo gallery
Boston Herald Friday article
Boston Herald Saturday article
Boston Herald photo gallery

It made for quite a surreal afternoon, as all the major news sources blared news about the fire and the subsequent shutdown of the Longfellow Bridge and the MBTA Red Line. And then it was on the front page of the local papers yesterday.

So we were very fortunate, in that our team of 30+, who usually work on the third floor, were not in the building that day, and all the client’s personnel made it out safely.

Since then I’ve received nearly a dozen email updates from the building management. It looks like the place will not reopen for about a week, during which time we’ll be hosting the client at our office space by North Station. That’s going to be a big jam, since we’re short on space and desks to begin with.

I still have a bunch of dress clothes over at One Broadway, but nothing irreplaceable. They can wait.

Very surreal. Perhaps I should add an Imminent Danger Pay clause in my employment agreement?