Random Traffic Pics from the Big City

I drove to Cambridge and back today. I hit traffic in Boston getting off route 93 and then had to deal with Memorial Drive being closed. It was fun. Here’s some random uber crappy pics.

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Wasn’t that exciting? WOOHOO!

No Pics

I just drove to Cambridge and back to pick something up at Jen’s favorite electronics store. I tried taking stop light pics in the city but everything came out a blurry disastrous mess.

Sorry to let you all down. I’ll do better in the future.

That was Fun

I drove to Cambridge and back tonight. Three hours. I lost count of how many accidents I got stuck behind. Two of them temporarily closed the road I was on. One of those roads was Storrow Drive. Another was route 93. Hooray.

I took pictures from the car while I was stopped. They are kinda funny.

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There were more, but they were even more awfuller. Oh well. At least I’m home. It’s 9:23 and now I can eat dinner. Hooray.

The Border Cafe: Closed Forever

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It is a sad day. I just learned what I have suspected for a long time. The Harvard Square branch of The Border Cafe is closed permanently. They had been closed due to a fire, but it is the pandemic that truly ended it.

I only saw mention of the Cambridge location. Burlington and Saugus seem to be okay. I don’t know if they’ve been open at all since March, and I sure as hell am not planning on going to find out. I just hope that post-vaccination, they are still there waiting for us.

Pour one out for The Border. We hardly knew ye.

Goodnight, Sweet TT’s

It’s a sad night for Boston area music.  Tonight is the last night we will have TT the Bears in Cambridge.  So many nights watching so many great shows.  Talk about your first rate downer.

(I didn’t start bringing a camera to shows until well after rock clubs stopped being a regular thing for me.  I only have pics from two trips to TT’s, one with Kay Hanley on January 3, 2007, and one with Cordelia’s Dad, two days later on January 5, 2007.  Had I owned a digital camera as far back as 1995 or so, there would probably been hundreds more to share today.)

   
 
Fare the well, oh TT the Bears.  You will be sorely missed.  Thanks for the memories.

Pics from Yesterday

I took a half day off from work yesterday so that I could get into town for the Rush show early. I took a half day off from work today so that I could sleep late… although I didn’t sleep late. Dummy.

Anyway, before going to the garden I went to Harvard Square. I wanted to have lunch at the REAL Border Cafe on Church Street, as opposed to the imposter in Burlington. I also wanted to see if any of my old go-to used record stores were there. They weren’t. That is sad.

Here’s a couple of views from the roof of the parking garage on JFK street.
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I don’t think I ever noticed the Prudential building in the distance from up there before.
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As a Bruins fan, this is obligatory any time I visit the TD Garden.

“Behind the net to Sanderson, ORR!! BOBBY ORR!!”
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While we were waiting in line to get into the Garden, this dude on the other side of Causeway street was snapping pictures of everyone.
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Again, as a Bruins fan this is obligatory. 2011 is starting to feel like the long, long distant past.
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Los Pixies at T.T. the Bear’s Because it is 1987

TT the Bear’s is my favorite music venue in greater Boston and it’s closing. The bar was bought out by the competition, The Middle East which is also the next door neighbor, and despite an attempt to work out a deal to let TT’s stay open under the same management, they are being shut down this summer.

To help give the place a proper send off, The Pixies are going to play a one off, unannounced show tonight.  Here is the band’s statement:

June 18, 2015
BOSTON, MA – IMPORTANT

Hello

To help bid adieu to Cambridge’s T.T. the Bear’s Place, one of the most iconic nightclubs in the country, Pixies will perform at the venue one last time TONIGHT.

Tickets will be priced at $55.00 and go on sale today at 2:00PM ET at the Orpheum Theatre box office.

They will be sold on a first-come-first-served basis with a two-ticket limit.

All interested must be present when purchasing the ticket as all ticket holders will be wristbanded when they buy their ticket.  All attendees must be 18+, will need a valid ID, as well as their ticket and wristband in order to enter the club for the show.

Yes, the ticket price is absurd, and yes you have to jump through a ridiculous number of hoops to get a ticket, but TT’s is not what you’d call a big place.  I don’t know what the capacity is but it can’t be more than a couple of hundred.  Even at $55 and selling at only one location and the whole wristband thing, these are going to sell out in seconds.  Seconds, I tell you.
This is one of those weird gown up issues for me.  Something I never would have dreamed possible 20+ years ago.  When I was a kid I would have slaughtered scores of innocents to get in the door.  I would have done anything.  Now though, I have a conflict.  Given the choice between ditching work to get tickets and then staying in the city all day and then cramming* into a small room to see an awesome (though well past their prime and missing their bass player) band and going to an 8th grader’s middle school graduation ceremony… there is no question.  Graduation it is!
Still, this is a super cool move by the band.  It’s always great when bands who’ve moved on do something to show that they still remember where they came from.  Huge thanks to Los Pixies.  Now if they can just get Kim Deal to come back for the night.  Also, think they can get Throwing Muses to share the bill with them?  Like the old days?
*I went to a show at TT’s once where I thought I was going to die.  Not really, that’s too dramatic, but it was definitely weird.  It was a WMBR Pipeline sponsored show that was headlined by a Zulus reunion.  The Zulus didn’t do a whole hell of a lot for me when they were together, and I wouldn’t have gone to this particular show if Chelsea on Fire hadn’t been on the bill.  At that point in time Larry and I would have gone to the North Pole to see a Chelsea on Fire show.  Anyway, the place was packed to the rafters.  There wasn’t a single inch of free space in front of the stage.  It was alarming.  There were moments when the crush of people actually made it hard to breathe.  I couldn’t tell if it was because we were all crammed together, or if there just wasn’t enough oxygen in the room for all of us, but it was definitely an uncomfortable feeling.  There was also the simple thought that if someone over by the bar did something stupid like set a fire, all of us were dead.  I’m pretty sure this was before the Station burned down, but there was no way a crowd that big in a room that small would have been able to evacuate through the small exits.  It would have been a disaster.  Since the Station fire all of the rules have changed.  I haven’t been to TT’s in a long time, but I’m 100% positive the same claustrophobic fear would not have happened today.  Don’t let my hazy Zulus memories scare you off of tonight’s show.  If you can get there, go and check out the Mighty Pixies.  You won’t regret it.

Wrong Turns

We were trying to go to microcenter in Cambridge tonight but we missed the turn off of Memorial Drive. That wrong turn brought us here:

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Harvard Square.

Then we took another wrong turn and somehow ended up here:

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The Middle East,

It was like the mid-90’s all over again.

Sweet.