Postcard from Dorchester
Hey Bridgeland!
Just writing to you from Boston, Massachusetts, where my family and I are on a summer trip visiting friends. I’m enjoying this vacation because it’s as if we’re residents, not tourists, and we’re really getting a sense of what it’s like to live here. Anyone who tells you that every place in America is the same nowadays has been spending too much time in megaplex theme parks and their adjoining hotels. I suppose the accommodations in Back Bay are nice, but a hotel is just a hotel. The real Boston is in the neighborhoods, just like the real Twin Cities are in places like Bridgeland, not a certain Bloomington shopping mall.
We’ve been staying in Dorchester, an area of Boston that, depending on who you talk to here, is a bad part of town or a good one. Sound familiar? You really have to be there to decide for yourself. I was never quite able to think of a neighborhood in Minneapolis or St. Paul to compare it to because, A) it’s big and made up of lots of neighborhoods, and B) the interplay of economics, race, and class are so much more complex than anything we see in Minnesota. It’s a little bit Phillips, a little bit Northeast, with some Seward and University thrown in, which is to say it’s unlike anywhere I’ve been.
Dorchester was settled in 1630, about the time Boston was being settled to the north, and it was eventually annexed as part of Boston in 1870. Since it’s been around so long, lots of notable people are from Dorchester, but since most of us are poor historians, the most recognizable former resident is Mark Wahlberg. Marky Mark was evidently quite the hoodlum when he lived there, so maybe he isn’t the best representative, but unless you can identify Cotton Mather, Lucy Stone, or William Stoughton, he’ll have to do. Leonard Nimoy comes in a distant second.
Today, Dorchester is the largest residential area of Boston. Dorchester Avenue (or Dot Ave) runs through the middle of it all, a north-south string of bars, Laundromats, barbershops, churches, parks, corner stores, restaurants and cafes that range from swanky to sordid. Where we were, most of the businesses have these ugly metal shutters that can be pulled down over the storefronts. The question I had was: do they do a better job of driving away criminals at night, or customers by day? I never found out whether they are necessary, or if it was just some company that took advantage of Dorchester years ago by selling shutters and fear door-to-door. The sidewalks tend to be dirty and beat up, but the curbs look like they are literally carved of rough marble. That’s part of the mystery that is Boston, I guess.
The housing stock varies like that too. Many of the houses are “triple deckers,” tall, deep, three-apartment structures that have a decks on the front of each unit. They have to create their own shade, because with narrow lots and a big footprint, there isn’t much room for trees. At the other end of the spectrum, Dorchester is filled with ornate 3-story Victorians. We were staying in one of these, a 120-year-old, six-bedroom monster on a dead end street. The houses on this block would not have been out of place if they were plopped down near Lake Calhoun.
We met all kinds of people. Our friends had a party so we could meet everyone, and it was a blast. There were people of all backgrounds, all friendly, all gracious. Much of the credit for that goes to our hosts, but if it was representative of the neighborhood, Dorchester certainly contains a lot of good people. I can think of much more economically blessed places I’ve been that were much less welcoming, but at a barbecue in Dorchester, everyone fits in. I think of how I get sick of explaining to people that my neighborhood in the city is a great neighborhood, and not some scary slum. I’m sure our Dorchester friends feel the same.
I didn’t spend the whole time thinking about race and class, history and geography. We did some touristy stuff too. A Red Sox game at Fenway. The Freedom Trail. A day trip to Plymouth and the rock that the Pilgrims may or may not have landed on in 1620. I walked around Harvard one afternoon and tried to estimate the number of 18-year-old kids within a mile radius who are smarter and wealthier than I am. That was depressing, but I cheered up when I realized that being a future ruler of the universe doesn’t equal clever: on an emergency phone booth shelter on the edge of Harvard Yard, someone had scratched out the “I” in “ASSISTANCE.” Ah, that highbrow Harvard humor.
Looking forward to getting back and hanging out with you all. After being here, I think we have it pretty good in Bridgeland. After all, we get to live in the neighborhoods that make up the real Twin Cities, and we don’t have to fly in and stay at a hotel to visit that big tourist trap in Bloomington.
The Head Fake is featured regularly in the print and online editions of The Bridge. You can email Jay Kelly at jk@theheadfake.com, or visit his web site at www.theheadfake.com.
last revised: July 19, 2007