Some very predictable reflections and expressions of gratitude on turning sixty years of age.

First observation: I don’t feel that old. Quelle surprise, right?

I seem to be blessed with better health and fitness at this age than many of my peers, and I credit most of that to my active lifestyle, especially my cycling.

In my experience, happiness comes from surprisingly basic, mundane pleasures: wind and sunshine, being outside in nature, physical activities like cycling and kyūdō that keep me in my body, delicious food, the companionship of other people and pets, and the comfort and security of a stable home.

Despite having had my share of wealth, accomplishments, and experiences, I don’t think those are a reliable foundation for a satisfying life. They are pleasant ways to assuage the ego, but one’s ego is a completely untrustworthy guide. I’ve been most satisfied when I’ve been of service to others, whether I found that through nurturing aspiring writers, writing software to improve medical outcomes, raising money for cancer research, or helping others find the transformative insights that come with a productive meditation practice.

I’ve been very fortunate to enjoy a life that was mostly free of struggle, trauma, illness, and pain. So many things came easily to me. My life has been blessed, relatively easeful, successful, and enjoyable. I’ll retire with a heart absolutely overflowing with gratitude and treasured memories.

There’s very little I would change. I have surprisingly few regrets and little shame. I should have done a better job with dental hygiene and my dietary choices. But my only source of deep regret is my relationships. Relationships are hard, and I’ve caused more hurt through selfishness or unskillfulness than I would have liked. If you were on the receiving end of any of that, please accept my sincerest apologies.

For whatever role you have played in my life, thank you. I’m especially grateful to anyone who chose to keep me company for an extended duration of time. And my deepest thanks and recognition to Inna, my life companion for 25 years and counting.

Be well, all!

Want to feel old? Just take a look behind you…

I’ve been blogging long enough now to post the third installment in my series of posts remembering people, places, and things that Boston has lost since I moved in.

Nostalgia. Memorabilia. Whatever synonym you use, it’s likely to evoke the same bittersweet morose feeling of loss. So many good times, so many memories, all gone to seed.

At the same time, a city—or at least a living one—needs to change, grow, and evolve to stay interesting and vital. Still, it’s hard to feel as sanguine about new, unfamiliar places as the comfortable, memory-filled things they replace.

This week provided a particularly sad example, in the sudden shuttering of the venerable Boston Phoenix, a free alternative tabloid newspaper that guided two and a half generations of young adults through the vibrant if chaotic maelstrom of Boston youth culture.

The Phoenix was the heart of my Boston experience through my 20s, 30s, and 40s. Clubs, bands, restaurants, classical concerts, lectures, readings, exhibits… If it was worth doing—even if it was way too outré for the mainstream media to touch—you’d find it listed in the Phoenix.

Although I’ve aged and my life has become more mainstream, losing the Phoenix is no less painful. If nothing else, it represented a connection, and sense of continuity with the person I used to be. It was one of the threads that still connected me with that other Ornoth, the younger, more social, and more visceral one whom I grew out of.

But it’s just the most recent example of the Buddhist law of impermanence. Here are a few others, just to remind you that nothing lasts forever, and the great danger of binding your happiness to something impermanent.

Restaurants
Bouchée French restaurant on Newbury
Brown Sugar Cafe in Fenway
Bombay Club in Harvard Square
The Greenhouse in Harvard Square
Pomme Frites in Harvard Square
Brigham’s Ice Cream
Tealuxe on Newbury
Geoffrey's Cafe
Cottonwood Cafe on Berkeley
Herrell’s ice cream in Allston and Harvard Square
J.P. Licks ice cream on Newbury Street
Carberry’s Bakery in Central
Allston’s Sports Depot
Anthony’s Pier 4
The Otherside Cafe
Bhindi Bazaar
Island Hopper
Morton’s Steakhouse
Locke-Ober restaurant
Upper Crust pizzeria
Hard Rock Cafe in Back Bay
Ronnarong Thai restaurant in Union Square
Club Casablanca in Harvard Square
Joe’s American Bar & Grille on Dartmouth (relocated to Exeter)
Papa Razzi Italian restaurant (relocated to Newbury from Dartmouth)
Nightlife
The Kells
TC’s Lounge
Harpers Ferry
Businesses
Pearl Arts & Crafts in Central
Bowl & Board
HMV
Judi Rotenburg Gallery
Nora’s convenience store on Newbury Street
Compleat Strategist on Mass Ave.
Globe Corner Bookstore
Borders bookstores in DTC and Back Bay
Mcintyre & Moore used books in Porter
Copley Flair
Daddy’s Junky Music
Filene’s Basement
Anthropologie
Best Buy at Newbury & Mass Ave.
Fung Wah Chinatown bus to New York
Louis Boston (relocated to Southie)
Bob Slate Stationers (temporarily?)
Media
WBCN
WFNX
Stuff Magazine
The Boston Phoenix
People
Ted Kennedy
Charles Sarkis and the Back Bay Restaurant Group
Government
Massachusetts Turnpike Authority
Metropolitcan District Commission
FastLane

If you’re interested in other stuff that Boston has lost, check out the previous posts in this series: one from 2009 and another from 2005.

Updates: All Asia Cafe, Cambridgeport Saloon, Thailand Cafe, Charley's restaurant on Newbury Street, Crossroads Irish Pub, Bostone Pizza, An Tua Nua pub, Anthony's Pier 4, the Purple Shamrock, Hilltop Steak House in Saugus, Hi-Fi Pizza in Central, Calumet Photo, Steve's Greek restaurant on Newbury Street, Daisy Buchanan's on Newbury Street, India Samraat, Cactus Club, J. Pace & Son North End grocery, Amtrak's ticket office in Back Bay station, Louis Boston, Louie the Tricycle Guy, International Bike in Brighton & Newton, Forum restaurant on Boylston, Bayside Expo Center, MakerBot on Newbury Street, TT the Bears nightclub, Tedeschi convenience stores, the entire food court at the Prudential mall, Berk's shoes in Harvard Square, Church nightclub (formerly Linwood Grill), Scissors & Pie pretentious pizza hovel. Impending closures: Johnny D's, Medieval Manor.

Car Talk

Feb. 19th, 2010 02:28 pm
Bob Libby

Yes, I’m a cyclist and I haven’t owned a car for 15 years, but that doesn’t mean I hate cars. In fact, I was quite an automotive enthusiast for most of my childhood.

My father dragged me down to the local race tracks even when I was very young. I grew up with photos of my favorite racecar drivers adorning my bedroom. To this day I remember battles between local heroes—now enshrined in the Maine Motorsports Hall of Fame—like Homer Drew and Bob Libby at places like Beech Ridge, Oxford Plains, Wiscasset, and Unity raceways.

Richard Petty

In addition to watching NASCAR legends like Richard Petty, David Pearson, and Cale Yarborough on television, I had a whole fleet of plastic model cars that I’d built up, and a slot car track to play with. I would spend endless hours pedaling my Marx Big Wheel in counterclockwise circles around the driveway in imaginary races… wearing out at least three Big Wheels in the process!

Naturally I had the full set of racing flags: red, green, yellow, checkered, white, black, and the blue and yellow “move over” flag. I sometimes confused people driving through our neighborhood by playing race car flagman at the intersection in front of our house.

At even that young age, I didn’t think I had the cojones to be a world-class stock car driver, so I chose the next best thing. When I grew up, I wanted to be a race car mechanic. Never mind that I had no mechanical aptitude whatsoever, nor any access to cars, parts, and tools to tinker with!

Hot Rod magazine

At eight years of age, I was already an avid reader of magazines like Hot Rod, Road & Track, and Car & Driver, as well as the wonderful and memorable CarTOONs comic book.

NADA guide

My buddy John Gousse and I would dumpster dive behind the local car dealerships, picking up discarded NADA blue books so that we could study the body styles and engine options of all the current models. I could not only identify any car’s make and model on sight, but also its specific year, options package, engine size, and zero-to-sixty time.

With that kind of upbringing, it shouldn’t be a surprise that I suffer from the typical American affinity for the automobile. Growing up, one of the biggest questions in the world was what kind of car I’d own once I got my drivers license.

Well, let’s talk about that a bit, because the main point of this post is to take a look back at the family cars that I remember most vividly. The photos that follow are close approximations of the vehicle we had, although the colors were often different. A couple of the later photos are of our actual vehicles.

1961 Chevy Impala

There’s only one place to start this list. The first car I remember us having was also the one with the most character and style: my father’s 1961 Chevy Impala. Its gloss black body was in bold contrast to its fire engine red interior. But what captured my imagination were its lines: all fins, sweeping curves, V-shapes, and daggerlike arrows, with six bullet-shaped tail lights. Even the emblem carried crossed red and checkered flags! It screamed speed and class and elegance.

It also was the protagonist in one of my family’s most memorable misadventures. In the days before my brother was to get married to a girl from Texas, he and my father went to Boston’s Logan Airport to pick up the bride’s family, our future in-laws. The car’s engine had been replaced improperly, and as they drove through the Sumner Tunnel beneath Boston Harbor, thick black smoke started pouring from the tailpipe, and the car died just as they reached the end of the tunnel. Welcome to the family!

1970 Plymouth Fury

My father’s next car was a green 1970 Plymouth Fury III. The contrast with the Impala couldn’t have been starker. Big, boring, bland, and boxy, the Fury (or “Furry”, as I’d call it) was a typically sturdy but boatlike American Chrysler sedan.

What scares me is that this car actually stands out in my mind. After the Fury, my father went through three consecutive Oldsmobile Delta 88s, none of which had any personality whatsoever. They were big, comfortable, and reliable, crossing the continent numerous times, but it still makes me sad. My father must have been quite an automobile enthusiast himself, but the last four cars he owned were utterly mediocre.

1970 Datsun 510

Over his lifetime, I believe my father owned eleven cars, none of which were imports. On the other hand, five out of six of the cars my mother owned before my father’s death were imported. I vaguely remember a green Volkswagen Beetle—my mother’s second one—in the driveway of my childhood home.

But the earliest car I truly remember was a yellow 1970 Datsun 510 sedan. A very basic Japanese econo-box, at the time of the 1973 Mideast Oil Crisis, it must have been a blessing for my folks. It was nothing but a curse, however, after they sold it to my brother, who claimed it misfired, overheated, and ate oil. The Datsun mark eventually was incorporated into the Nissan brand.

1975 Chevy Vega

The Datsun was followed by my mother’s only American car and first brand new car: a 1975 Chevy Vega. It was bright red, with a black vinyl top, kind of reminiscent of that old Chevy Impala. This was the car I learned to drive on, and the car I took my license test in. My mother liked the color, and I generally liked its sporty styling; it was, after all, our first car with any character since that old Impala. Its aluminum block engine burned oil, though.

The car my mother—and therefore, I—had during high school was a white 1981 Subaru GL wagon. I nicknamed it “Ur-a-bus” for its utilitarian design and because that’s what you get when you spell Subaru backwards!

1981 Subaru GL

A grossly un-cool car for a high school student to have, it made up for it in one key way: it had a neeto space-age glowing amber dashboard with digital readouts and an overhead schematic of the car that indicated open doors. This earned it the nickname “the Starship” from my friends, who then referred to me as “the Admiral”.

The Starship accompanied me through gaming conventions, SCA events, move-ins and -outs from college, and many dates and late-night returns from girlfriends’ houses. Unfortunately, it was also the victim of my “learning experience” of causing two accidents within two weeks. In one, I rear-ended someone while driving a girlfriend to a concert; in the other, I attempted a U-turn on a busy street from a parallel parking space, and got hit from both directions. I still have a piece of paint that flaked off from one of those impacts in my scrapbook for 1983!

Despite the number of times I bounced it off other vehicles, my mother kept that Subaru until my father died, at which point she adopted my father’s habit of buying American: a mid-sized Olds, and then a Buick. Only in 2005 could I convince her to buy a Toyota Camry. It’s served her well, despite Toyota’s current recalls and troubles.

1982 Mazda GLC

Meanwhile, once I started living off-campus at school, my girlfriend Linda and I needed a car of our own. With college bills and student jobs, our choices were limited. We wound up with the used blue 1982 Mazda GLC you see at right: basically, another underpowered Japanese econo-box. My buddy Mike Dow co-signed for our car loan.

The one cool thing about the GLC—the “Glick”—was that it had a moonroof. That was tremendous! It was the car we took off in after our wedding, and our transportation for several trips to Pennsic. Along the way, we made our own air conditioning by turning canisters of compressed air upside-down and blowing the freon onto ourselves.

We used that GLC hard. We dented the driver’s side door by throwing it open without catching it. And one Christmas Eve, an entire rear wheel assembly flew off on the highway and we spent the rest of the day frantically looking for someone who would perform the repair so we could get to my parents’ for the holiday. It was a good car, but when I got my first job in the real world, it was time to splurge.

1984 Dodge Daytona

But before I get to that, I have to mention one other used car. With Linda and I both working, it became clear that we needed our own cars, and Linda found a friend who was getting rid of a maroon 1984 Dodge Daytona. It wasn’t in great shape, but it was functional, and certainly sportier than the GLC. So she drove that car for a couple years, eventually taking it in the divorce. I only mention it here because yeah, it was in a sense one of the cars I’ve owned.

But the car I bought when I joined the working world was another Mazda: the blue 1990 MX-6 GT sport sedan shown below. It was my first new car, and it too came with a moonroof—one you didn’t have to hand-crank! It was nicknamed the Toxicmobile after it’s licence tag: 869-TOX.

1990 Mazda MX-6 GT

The best part about the MX-6 was its turbocharger. After the Glick’s feeble 98 horsepower, the MX-6’s 145-hp was delightful. The only issue was its horrible turbo lag; you could literally floor it, then count four seconds before the engine suddenly kicked in. But it was a wonderful car, and I thoroughly enjoyed my daily ride to work, which concluded with a fast, downhill slalom through Westborough Office Park. Finally, a car that handled, accelerated, and just overall kicked ass!

Sadly, the Toxicmobile’s story doesn’t end well. It suffered a couple rear-enders on infamous Route 9, and had to have the whole transmission replaced. Then, when I moved into Boston proper, it sat unused for months, except for the times I had to drive it to the shop after some Red Sox fan smashed a window. It became clear that I didn’t need a car in the city, and I’d save money by renting a car whenever I needed one.

I miss the Toxicmobile a lot. As my first new car, it was a mark of success. As a sport sedan, it was just a ton of fun to drive. And it was an integral part of my life from 1989 to 1995, a period that saw my first real job, my divorce, a two-week road trip to Austin and back, a new career at Sapient, a new relationship with my first girlfriend from high school, turning 30, moving into Boston, and lots of involvement in the local music and alternative scenes.

Jeep Wrangler

But I also just miss driving. For now, I have to limit myself to enjoying the cars I rent for business and pleasure, although I rarely get to drive them very hard. I managed to scrape up a little Honda Fit econo-box on a recent work trip. And figuring out how to pilot the right-hand drive car we rented in the Caymans was a learning experience, that’s for sure! And I totally fell in love with the Jeep Wrangler we rented in St. Thomas; those things are just stupid fun!

It still amazes me that after being such a car freak as a kid, I’ve lived without a car since 1995. Fast and unique cars always seemed to be one of the great pleasures of adulthood, but now that I’m here, I find them an extremely expensive luxury. But if money weren’t an object, I know two things that would be at the top of my shopping list: a Jeep Wrangler for bouncy, sun-drenched fun, and a 263-hp Mazda Speed3 for screaming fast fun.

Mmmmm… Cars!

Four years ago I made a post entitled “What a Pillar of Salt Sees”, which enumerated dozens of Boston landmarks that had disappeared. As time went on and more things changed, I added a paragraph of addendum.

At this point, that list has grown long enough to justify another whole new list to note the people, places, and things that are no longer part of the city’s fabric.

That said, here’s some of what’s changed since 2005:

Bands
Bim Skala Bim
Clubs
Man Ray
the Plough & Stars (since returned)
the Linwood Grill
the Littlest Bar
Avalon
Axis
Restaurants
Thornton's Fenway Grill
El Pelón Taquería
Rod-Dee Thai Cuisine Fenway
Sorrento's Italian Gourmet
the Cambridgeside Galleria Panda Express
Friday's on Newbury Street
Newbury Pizza
the Linwood Grill
James Hook Lobster Co.
Rangoli Indian Restaurant
the Friendly Eating Place
Cafechina
Commonwealth Brewery
Businesses
Baybank
Bank of Boston
BankBoston
Fleet Bank
FleetBoston
Sugar Heaven
Trani Ice Cream n-jectibles
Allston Beat
Krispy Kreme
Gargoyles Grotesques and Chimeras on Newbury Street
Grand Opening
Quantum Books
Marty's Liquors in Coolidge Corner
Martignetti's liquors
Coolidge Corner Barnes & Noble
Virgin Megastores Newbury
Tower Records on Newbury Street
Tweeter Etc.
Media
Boston Globe's Calendar and City Weekly sections
People
Red Auerbach
Miscellaneous
the “Partisans” statue from the Boston Common
the DuBarry mural
T tokens

More recent updates can be seen at this post from 2013.

4:52am

Mar. 11th, 2006 06:30 am
4:52am.

It's like having just come from an incredible movie that touched you to the heart, over and over.

And no one else has ever seen it.

No one else has ever even heard of it.

And they'll never get the chance to see it.

You'll never be able to share it with anyone.

"Made mindless" and the Southern Cross.

Berg and the Nakeds.

From Ka-Ve to my wedding to the Paint Lady.

Car magazines and reading primers

Frankenstein and Philadelphia Freedom.

Corrugated fun.

Dodgeball and Seally Pond.

The Saco River and the quarry.

Garnet and Garnett.

Watching the most important person in my life dying in an ICU.

The Bentmen and Concussion Ensemble.

From group love in a Jersey suburb to a different kind of group love in a cottage on a Scottish loch.

Free Enterprise.

Disco duck and "sprots".

Frodo Lives! at the McClurg Court Theater.

Sink the buses and save the nukes.

He's an eviscerator.

Sweet, Abba, and Devo piped thru a jury-rigged speaker system.

Mosquito Mountain and the Devil's Triangle.

Miles and miles of roads and trails that no one else has ever seen.

The Klong Yaw.

Hundred thousand dollar tax bills, and one-cent bank statements.

The Great Lie, and Then Again, Maybe I Won't.

Blond. Egad.

The turn toward Race Point, and resting at the beach afterward.

The campanile of the New Old South Church.

Astoria, and the RR.

Nights at Bill's or the Pluff.

The Toxicmobile. The Glick. The Starship. The Devinci and the Plastic Bullet.

Quack and meow. I'm flabbergasted. Ay-ant! Juggo naiyo.

Fletcher Pratt. "Eh? Did you say munny?" Yes, shut up, Hal.

Playing ball against the wall of the DMV for years at a time.

Compersion, and the ten thousand and one unspoken crushes.

Suits, casual, and back to suits. Purple rugs everywhere. I think the Morale Committee should have considered that.

Pemaquid, Camden, Battie. My tree in Old Town.

The ComDisk, MJJWSMBB, and HSnet.

Mazar Balinu, Carmarade, and DAL-SYS.

Kenny Kinnikinnick, inventor of Gnip Gnop.

Silent summer drives back from girlfriends' homes.

And the Southern Cross.

This is what it's like to grow old.

I've lived my life thinking: while I'm young, I'll live it up. That way I'll have a huge collection of wonderful memories to relive when I get old, and can't do all those fun things anymore.

I guess I'm over the crest of that proverbial hill, because when I look back, I'm filled with hundreds upon hundreds of memories of my life.

I see now why old people feel isolated. It's not because they're alone; it's because they've lived an amazing, deeply touching novel that no one else will ever read.

So many people and places and events have touched my life, but no person will ever share the things I remember, the things that even today bring up deep feelings that toss me around like a toy boat toy boat toy boat.

If you've been part of my life, I owe you something I can never repay. You've honored me greatly, and no matter how small a part you played or how distant the events in question, rest assured that you have touched me, and I remember.

Though no one else can or will, I shall remember, until the end of my days. Namaste, my friend.

Think about how many times I have fallen.
Spirits are using me, larger voices callin'.
What Heaven brought you and me cannot be forgotten.

It’s been a couple weeks since the Puggle left home, and I’m pretty well adjusted. I think the main source of my anxiety was the thought of him suffering, and not knowing what I could do for him. But now he’s beyond all that. The high drama of his impending death is over, and it’s just a question of adjusting to his absence as a known, unchangeable fact.

However, before my memory of the Puggle fades, I want to take a moment and record some of the wonderful memories he gave me. Some of these are one-time events, and some are just the gifts he gave me every day. I know these probably won’t mean much to you, but I wanted to save them here for future reference, to serve as a remembrance of his character and the companionship he provided.

So here’s the list.

  • Puggie Nose Leather (“Puggie knows leather”)
  • His habit of curling up under the covers and going to sleep behind my knee, with his head on my calf
  • His habit of pawing at the blanket to let me know he wanted to get under the covers
  • His amusing habit of flossing every day using the cord on the blinds
  • How he’d often jump onto my lap while I was sitting at the computer, then putting his front paws on my shoulder, asking to be picked up and given a Huggle
  • How he’d curl up in the crook of my arm while I was sitting up in bed reading
  • The evening ritual of him standing on my chest to get his kitty massage after I climbed into bed
  • How he’d invariably sabotage any attempt to make the bed
  • Our occasional walks in the lobby: his ”constitutionals“
  • How those walks would usually end with him running back to our door after someone in the building spooked him
  • The Puggle Skywalk between the countertop and the kitchen table in the Fenway apartment
  • The total destruction of the door frames in the Fenway apartment
  • The Kitty Crazies, which in the Fenway apartment resulted in him clutching the door frame, suspended four feet off the ground
  • His fuzzy Puggle toes
  • ”Here comes Puggle Claws, here comes Puggle Claws, right down Puggle Claws Lane. He’s a Puggle ’cos he’s got Puggle claws and a little Pug brain…“
  • Sleeping inside a kick drum… amazing
  • His completely predictable hissing at any women who visited
 
  • The time he cleaned my bicycle chain for me and got grease all over his face
  • Climbing through all the kitchen cabinets
  • When I built a little pagoda that allowed him to jump all the way up into the top shelf in the bedroom closet
  • His annoying habit of leaving the bathroom door open after he came in and left while I was showering
  • ”Reach out… touch face.“
  • ”It’s not sex unless the Puggle is watching.“
  • Always leaving one of the kitchen barstool chairs pulled partway out so that he could jump up onto the kitchen counter
  • Coming home after a weekend away and having to have extended love-fests on the bed before anything else
  • His catching a mouse at the Fenway apartment and absolutely having no idea what to do with it
  • His Puggie pantaloons
  • Wanton shredding of cardboard boxes, and tenderizing them beforehand for him with my Benchmade pocket knife
  • Strength-sapping sunbeams
  • His habit of sleeping on the bed above (and sometimes atop) one’s head
  • Waking up in the morning with the Puggle in the same position as me—on his side, with his body under the covers and his head on the pillow, face-to-face with me
  • His climbing up into kitchen cabinet and lying down after I closed the glass doors behind him
  • His taking it upon himself to wash my hair for me back when I had long hair
  • The rising trill (known as ”mipping“) that he’d make when asking a question or jumping up on the bed

Thank you, Puggle. For these, and for everything.

Edited additions:

  • How he’s tell you he'd had enough play by giving you a “nibble”: gently clomping down on you with his teeth, as if to say “I could take a piece out of you if I really wanted, so simmer down, rude boy…”
  • And if you didn’t simmer down, he’d give you “the bunny hop”: grabbing you with his front paws and kicking with his legs and his rear claws out.
 
  • “What kinda cat is he? He's an Eviscerator!”
  • “Cute, cute little Puggie. I wanna make him stay up all night…”
  • His uncanny ability to elude veterinary staff; twice he got away from them and out of the back room, once screaming all the way down the hallway, into the waiting area, and into a corner underneath a table, requiring us to move all their furniture to get him out!

Yesterday, [livejournal.com profile] modpixie posted to the [livejournal.com profile] b0st0n community a list of Boston sights and sounds that no longer exist. It sparked enough nostalgia that I thought it might be interesting to set down a list of the things I’ve seen here that are, sadly, either endangered, going, or gone.

There are two lists. The first column enumerates those elements of Boston that are already historical data. The second column is a list of things which are currently in the process of failing. Most of those are still here—at least nominally—but I think they are endangered species that could disappear tomorrow.

Long GoneGoing?
Bands
The Cars
Cliffs of Dooneen
Concussion Ensemble
EBN: Emergency Broadcast Network
Steady Earnest
The Allstonians
The Bentmen
Bim Skala Bim
The Mighty Mighty Bosstones
Powerman 5000
Clubs
Local 186
Mama Kin
The Rat
Venus de Milo
The Linwood Grill
Jacques
The Plough & Stars
Restaurants
33 Dunster
The Blue Diner
Bombay Bistro
Cafe Avventura
The Deli Haus
The old India Quality
Kebab-n-Kurry
Mehfil
The Rattlesnake Bar & Urban Canyon
Steve’s Ice Cream
Bartley’s Burger Barn
Herrell’s
Little Stevie’s
The Pour House
Rodizio @ Midwest Grill
Organizations
Bank of New England (BONE)
Filene’s Basement & bridal rush
Jordan Marsh
Lechmere
The MDC
NECCO
NYNEX
Stah Mahket
Tower Records Newbury
Waterstone’s Booksellers
Wordsworth Books
The Boston Bruins
Building 19
Coolidge Corner Theater
MFS
Newbury Comics
Places
The Boston Garden
The elevated Central Artery
The Fleet Center
The John Hancock Observatory
The DuBarry mural
The Haymarket
The old Northern Ave Bridge
Yawkey Way as a public way
Media
WSBK, WLVI
Mighty Mouse
Creature Double Feature
 
People
Bird, Parish, McHale
Bobby Orr, Terry O’reilly
Red Auerbach
The Woop-Woop Guy
Miscellaneous
Bowling under Fenway Park
Meeting people at the gate at Logan
MBTA tokens
The Mattapan High-Speed Line

More recent updates can be seen at this post from 2009 and this one from 2013.

Frequent topics