I always thought it strange that the Fenway Art Center is locates in the heart of the Back Bay. It’s been there a long time too. To the right is Cafe Jaffa which is intermittently open and may have a customer or two when you walk by.
Rent can’t be cheap, L’Espalier (one of the most $$$$ restaurants in boston–and worth it) was on this street until their recent move to the Mondrian hotel.
What gives?
Seen on South St., Jamaica Plain MA
We got a few inches of snow again today. Boston’s hasn’t melted away all of the snow since around 12/26/2008 which, in a way reminds me more of what the weather was like growing up in New York. What’s a bit different is that this is Boston, and I’m pretty sure those are not cat footprints… more likely, it’s a sizable rat.
After the snow, rain and overnight freezing temperatures, this is what greets you in the morning.
I have a car, but I choose to take public transportation because I don’t want to me yet another solo-commuter in a car burning carbon left and right so I can listen to NPR and complain about traffic.
Days like these, Boston makes it tough.
It’s a 1/3 mile walk to the Forrest Hills T stop (subway, bus & commuter rail station). The whole way, sidewalks were completely frozen over (except that one huge slush-lake that required a blazing an overland portage route).
For the cars though, nice dry pavement. Now, don’t get me wrong I don’t want frozen roads crippling capitalism or anything, but when the roads are dry and sidewalks frozen, what do you get? –school children and old ladies walking down a busy street, in the traffic lanes, because they ate affraid of the sidewalks.
(posted, with typos, from iPhone)
Just signed up for next weekend’s PodCamp 3 Boston, as a first time attendee I’m wondering what it will be like. I’ve been to twenty or so conferences over the years (most recently the Search Engine Strategies conference in Chicago) but never one that didn’t also come with a day off of work.
Let me know: Have you been? Are you going? What’s it like?
I’ll be looking over the PodCamp event schedule, doing some research on the presenters and blogging my initial plans this week, what should I do / see? Where’s the real action and value in a conference like this? Are the the after hours events good?
Tequila Rain is a place more often associated with the phrase “Show us your ****!” than a gathering of new media folks so that should be an interesting place to plop 300+ twittering, geo-tagging, iPhone toting bloggers.
A message for the many thousands of people who are visting Boston this summer, take a breath, get off the Freedom Trail, and take a look at some buildings that were built after the 19th century! The Boston area has some excellent examples of “modern” buildings designed by world-famous architects.
Architecturally speaking, I am a fan of the current Boston City Hall, the Extension of the Boston Public Library, but rather than ruin your summer reading up on the virtues of the brutalist movement, here are some lesser-known crowd pleasers to get you started.
MIT Ray and Maria Stata Center (Gehry Partners LLP)
Boston Federal Reserve Bank (Hugh Stubbins, Jr.)
Carpenter Center (Le Corbusier)
Institute for Contemporary Art (Diller + Scofidio)
Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge (Christian Menn, et. al.)
Davis Museum at Wellesley College
(Rafeal Moneo)
There you have it, two Pritzker prize winning architects, the only Corbusier in America and, if you really want to, you can see at least four good I.M. Pei works to boot.
What are your favorite Boston buildings of the 20th and 21st century?
A June 25th article in BusinessWeek magazine highlights a study by architectural firm RMJM Hillier, the article list the top ten American cities ranked by design. The study included an assessment of cities with a population greater than 500,000 and interestingly included weighting by “number of ‘green’ buildings and level of sustainability”.
Boston was ranked 3rd behind New York (2nd) and Chicago (1st).
Why Chicago edged out New York for the top spot
The article quotes Peter Schubert, RMJM Hillier design director: “The green aspects of a city—its sustainability, environment-friendly initiatives—were the most important features of design we considered”.
