South Street Diner

I worked less than one hundred yards from the South Street Diner for over four years before ever setting foot inside. The diner, located at the corner of South Street and Kneeland Street in Boston, has a reputation as an all hours locals spot in the sort-of up and coming Leather District of Boston. It also has a reputation for extremely bad food in my office, and I found out the reputation is well deserved after having brunch there with JR, Ern, and JR's friend Nancy on Sunday.

JR is on a noble quest to find the best brunch spot in Boston, and I'm not one to pass up trying something new, but I think the fact that 50+ employees in my office do not frequent the place is a more than subtle message. The refreshingly brash and gritty atmosphere did not make up for the runny omelet with barely cooked bacon, cold toast, and hash browns that seemed microwaved. Mmmm. See you again in four years.

Winter.

Ugh, it's hard to keep a blog current when work is crazy and you have a cold. My to-do lists are becoming scary. I wish I were here:

Fredo

Let me begin by saying some of my best friends graduated from Boston College, and by no means should I stereotype many thousands of BC students and alumni. But I also have vowed twice (I didn't learn) to never again set foot on BC campus because of the shameful way Notre Dame football fans were treated on gameday by what seemed like everyone around us not wearing blue & gold. BC fans, translate "f-ck Notre Dame" and think about what you're actually saying. I really don't understand the hatred directed our way, although I think there's a connection to the "Yankees suck" nonsense.

Anyway, NDnation has listed ND's opponent on October 13, 2007 as "Fredo", after the character in the Godfather. Hilarious. And by the way, the editor's note in the Fredo post is a bit much in my opinion, but I can understand where the frustration is coming from.

Calla

Calla plays at TT's next Wednesday. Anyone in?

Kobe & tv

I didn't know Kobe scored 81 points Sunday night until I read Eileen's post about it this evening, confirming the success of my efforts to weed tv and the internet out of my life. So successful, in fact, that important news stories and useful information like the weather don't find their way into my head until it's too late. Witness me wearing sneakers and my nice winter coat in a blizzard yesterday. That blizzard came out of nowhere.

Check the always entertaining Boston Sports Guy's column about Kobe.

Harvest, etc.

Lots of eating over the weekend. Hit trusted Fajitas & Ritas on Friday night, and for the first time since I can remember I didn't have a 'rita. Now I have a craving for one. Mom came into the city Saturday, and we had lunch at 75 Chestnut, which is Beacon Hill's best kept secret. Oops.

On Saturday night, after several weeks of colds and other distractions, Heather and I had our Christmas date. We caught a movie at the Brattle Theatre in Harvard Square, where they were holding a "celebration of Werner Herzog". Hurray Werner! We both celebrated Werner by falling asleep during his "The Wild Blue Yonder", which was actually a very cool visually poetic science fiction film, just very slow.

The Brattle Theatre is a fantastic little independent theater with an incredibly diverse film offering. Check this article for some background and history. Unfortunately they face closing unless they raise a lot of money by the end of February to pay their lease and stay open. Support them!

Harvest, located on a little alley off Brattle Street, was excellent. Four stars. I ordered Salmon with cauliflower, tangerine, and wheat something or other mixed together, it was quite unique and pefectly prepared. I'm looking forward to a return visit in the spring when we can check out their patio, but I should make a reservation for that now...

New Urbanist/Walmart Summit

Notes by Laura Hall on a meeting with Walmart to discuss an urban model, based on ideas that came out of the Mississippi Katrina charrette:

1. Prototypical designs: Wal-Mart is actively working on what they
call "non-prototypical" designs, including green and multilevel urban
buildings. Green buildings they are most proud of are those in
McKinney, Texas and Aurora, Colorado. Lots of cool "green" stuff, but
both buildings still have long blank walls and sit behind large parking
lots. They also showed us examples of their urban, multi-level
buildings. From my notes, these examples are in Honolulu, Baldwin
Hills, Korea, Coral Springs and Long Beach. Most of them looked like
they had public streets in front of them. When I expressed my surprise
that I hadn't heard about these, one of them remarked that the only news
that gets written about Wal-Mart is bad news. Currently, though, they
see this model being used mostly in dense urban settings outside of the
U.S.

2. Architecture: They are actively considering the mixed-used,
multi-level Wal-Mart design that Ben Pentreath drew for Pass Christian
during the Forum charrette. They did call us on the carpet about the
architectural style, though. One of them said he had heard that Ben was
from England, and that although he thought his drawing was beautiful, he
respectfully said that it looked like Buckingham Palace! They said they
were more interested in an architecture for the Pass Christian store
that reflected the South. (Yes, you've read this correctly.)

3. Suburban vs. Urban: Before the Mississippi Forum, Wal-Mart
hadn't considered an urban building model to be appropriate along the
Gulf Coast. They said they've only built urban buildings where there
was already an urban setting, and mostly out of the U.S. They normally
don't create the urban setting themselves. We were asked, "When is the
Wal-Mart Village coming to Pass Christian?" in reference to Tom Low's
charrette drawing.

4. SmartCode: We told them that the Pass Christian SmartCode could
enable the development of the Wal-Mart Village. As a group, they were
interested in learning more about the SmartCode. None of them had heard
about it before. One of them said that it sounded like a great idea
because the same rules would then apply to everyone - not one set of
standards for Wal-Mart and one set of standards for everyone else as is
often the case in the communities where they work. At least two of them
are now planning to attend the SmartCode workshop in Biloxi in March.

5. Wal-Mart and New Urbanism: After the meeting, one of them told
me that New Urbanist communities only have high end stores and that the
regular people need to have places to shop, too. Having a Wal-Mart
included in these projects would increase diversity and choice.

6. Pace of rebuilding: We made it very clear that the Pass
Christian Mayor and Board of Aldermen want Wal-Mart rebuilt as soon as
possible since it had represented 15% of their city budget prior to
Katrina. They do not want design considerations to slow down the
rebuilding. One of the Wal-Mart executives told a member of our team,
"But quick doesn't have to mean ugly."

7. Follow up: They have given us their commitment to send 1-2
people from Wal-Mart's Real Estate and Design division to the Pass
Christian SmartCode charrette Feb. 15-19 to work on the design of the
Pass Christian Wal-Mart store and/or village. We told them that this
would be a roll-up-your-sleeves-event where real plans would be made.
They said they understood this and they then gave us the names of their
local architects for follow-up.

We couldn't have asked for a better meeting, and we remain very hopeful
about the implications for Pass Christian, Ocean Springs and other
communities. All feedback is welcome and appreciated as the City of Pass Christian
moves forward with their rebuilding plans.

Protests

I couldn't believe it, but there were riot police on Beacon Hill over the weekend. I couldn't find a story about it on the internet, but a Nazi group planned a protest at the African Meeting House on Joy Street on Saturday. So stupid. I didn't see any Nazis; instead the scene was dominated by a large group of anti-Nazi demonstrators blocking the street, walking in circles chanting. Quite a scene.



Good for them, and it was also good to see the Boston police just blocked the street from cars and left them alone.

Green Manhattan

New York City is the greenest city in the United States, according to this article published a few years ago in The New Yorker. I love this article, because it clearly, and in great detail, articulates the view that good urban planning has a far greater impact on the future of our environment than "site level" green design features such as green roofs and energy efficient heating systems.

In other words, a building designed with every fashionable green feature but built in the wrong place, i.e. following sprawling development patterns, increasing vehicle miles traveled and congestion, and missing urban infill opportunities, is not an environmentally sound impact when looking at the big picture. Here's an excerpt:

When most Americans think about environmentalism, they picture wild,
unspoiled landscapes - the earth before it was transmogrified by human
habitation. New York City is one of the most thoroughly altered landscapes
imaginable, an almost wholly artificial environment, in which the terrain¹s
primeval contours have long since been obliterated and most of the parts
that resemble nature (the trees on side streets, the rocks in Central Park)
are essentially decorations. Ecology-minded discussions of New York City
often have a hopeless tone, and focus on ways in which the city might be
made to seem somewhat less oppressively man-made: by increasing the area
devoted to parks and greenery, by incorporating vegetation into buildings
themselves, by reducing traffic congestion, by easing the intensity of
development, by creating open space around structures. But most such
changes would actually undermine the city¹s extraordinary energy efficiency, which arises from the characteristics that make it surreally synthetic.

Because densely populated urban centers concentrate human activity, we
think of them as pollution crisis zones. Calculated by the square foot, New York City generates more greenhouse gases, uses more energy, and produces more
solid waste than most other American regions of comparable size. On a map
depicting negative environmental impacts in relation to surface area,
therefore, Manhattan would look like an intense hot spot, surrounded, at
varying distances, by belts of deepening green.

If you plotted the same negative impacts by resident or by household,
however, the color scheme would be reversed. My little town has about four
thousand residents, spread over 38.7 thickly wooded square miles, and there
are many places within our town limits from which no sign of settlement is
visible in any direction. But if you moved eight million people like us,
along with our dwellings and possessions and current rates of energy use,
into a space the size of New York City, our profligacy would be impossible
to miss, because you¹d have to stack our houses and cars and garages and
lawn tractors and swimming pools and septic tanks higher than skyscrapers.
(Conversely, if you made all eight million New Yorkers live at the density
of my town, they would require a space equivalent to the land area of the
six New England states plus Delaware and New Jersey.) Spreading people out
increases the damage they do to the environment, while making the problems
harder to see and to address.

MFA: Architects on Film

Check out the Architects on Film series at the Museum of Fine Arts today through February 5.

Lou

I love Lou Holtz, although I didn't know he was a big Republican. I guess as part of Notre Dame leadership, chances are that he would be. Nobody's perfect. Here are some great quotes from the man.

Boston City Hall

Eileen posted a link on her blog to this list of "squares most in need of improvement", topped by our own City Hall Plaza. Not surprising really.


I think it's easy to look back and condemn the mistakes of 60s urban renewal, but looking back at the thinking at the time that enabled the wiping out of the West End and creation of the soulless Goverment Center makes it easier to understand why it happened. Here's a link to an interesting discussion by Boston architects on the subject.

No one denies City Hall Plaza needs change, and there have been plenty of campaigns attempting to fix the space with creative design ideas, but all have either been shot down by loud opposition, failed to gain necessary financing, or faded to obscurity due to conservative Boston politics. With such a high profile space, loud opposition is bound to surface no matter what the proposal, which makes it difficult to actually gain consensus on anything. So City Hall Plaza remains, although it did gain this street art thing within the last couple years.


I personally think the plaza could be dressed up, but the underlying challenge is that the space is too damn big. I think the addition of two four/five story buildings on Cambridge Street makes sense. The buildings should be permeable somehow to allow movement from Cambridge Street to the resulting plaza, City Hall, and Fanueil Hall and the North End beyond, and should include uses that activate the resulting plaza space at all hours of the day.


I believe the new buildings should include a restaurant, a bar or coffee shop open late, and possible civic use such as a historical center or visitors' center, with offices and/or residences on upper floors. Major improvements to the plaza itself must be made to make it a place where people want to spend time. This idea has several benefits:

1. Completes Cambridge Street and activates the existing uses (bagel shop, CVS, Kinsale Irish pub, etc.);
2. Results in a manageable, active urban plaza space with a more comfortable feeling of enclosure;
3. Improves the Cambridge Street - North End view corridor from both ends (picture below); and
4. Reinforces connection from Beacon Hill and Boston Common through Government Center to Fanueil Hall and the North End.

Happy New Year!