Month: December 2007

Bits of Metal Can Open Doors

My building is well insulated against sound traveling between apartments. I once was able to hear some muffled music from up the hall, but it’s been otherwise silent (barring people actually hammering pictures up on the wall when they move in).

Sound from the hallway, though, permeates my front door like water through air. I’ve heard many cell phone conversations conducted there. I’ve heard the neighbors’ loud parties getting broken up (but not the parties themselves). I’ve possibly even heard the comings and goings of criminals back when there were criminals living across from me.

This is why it’s of some concern that my neighbors have not yet deciphered the great mysteries of the modern key.

Since they moved in I keep hearing knocking from across the hall, growing more and more intense over time, with added shouting and cursing occasionally. See, it seems the people who come most frequently to this apartment either do not carry or do not know how to use… keys.

So for anyone else out there who still has not mastered the concept, please understand: there exist bits of metal that are capable of opening locked doors. You can get them from your landlord, usually for no extra cost – they just come free right there with your lease.

Government vs. Almighty Nature

Yesterday’s snowfall produced some traffic headaches, as I’ve already mocked. Bill Galvin, Secretary of the Commonwealth, was quoted on WCVB TV today as saying, “The fact that this was a relatively modest snow storm, well predicted, points to the failure of leadership, the failure of direction, the lack of coordination, the lack of metropolitan planning. We can’t have … this is unacceptable.”

Let’s briefly recap the events of yesterday as they unfolded. First, it snowed a lot in a short period of time. As a consequence the roads were messy, and it was difficult to drive on them. As a consequence, traffic was terrible, and it took people a long time to get home.

In six years in Vermont this happened to me twice – 18 minute commutes turned into two hour marathon crawls. Twice. In six years. My coworkers today confirmed anecdotally that a “once in three years” frequency is about par for Boston.

Beacon Hill could conduct a thorough investigation to get to the bottom of the “unacceptable” answer to the question, “What happens when thousands of people try driving simultaneously on icy, snowy, slushy roads in the midst of a blizzard?” What I’m anxious to find out isn’t how long this investigation lasts, but rather how long before somebody proposes building more tunnels.

T > Gridlock

Vermont no longer has a monopoly on winter. We’re finally reclaiming our rightful place at the top of the ugly weather food chain in Boston.

After my employer sent everybody home in the afternoon, helping to create a glorious miniature rush hour by about 2 pm, I got to watch the rest of the city quietly fall apart.

By 6:00 traffic on my street was almost completely immobile for blocks, with drivers lounging about in the snow, finding themselves unusually useless in their cars. This morning I found my coworkers’ median added commute time yesterday was two hours. Keith Lockhart announced at yesterday’s Holiday Pops, “The record so far is 7.5 hours,” referring (I think) to one of the violinists.

I took particular delight in watching a woman’s failed attempts to extract her car from the plow-induced snow bank from my apartment window. Forcing the car forward and backward an inch at a time did nothing. Enlisting the help of a snow blower may have helped, but not much. What really made it art was when she finally started to get free as the snow plow blew by again, recreating the entire mess.

It’s not that I delight in watching people who drive suffer but… well, yeah, it’s that I delight in watching people who drive suffer. See, me, on the T? I got home yesterday in 30 minutes. The day before that I got home in 30 minutes too. Really every day I’ve ever commuted in Boston it’s taken me 30 minutes to do it. Friday night, Saturday morning, during an ordinary rush hour, and now during a blizzard, it takes 30 minutes.

And when I went back out again to get to Holiday Pops? With all those blocks and blocks of stopped cars on Comm. Ave? It took me 30 minutes.

Take that, drivers.

Sleigh Ride

At tonight’s Holiday Pops concert, the Pops played the immortal Sleigh Ride. Keith Lockhart announced, ‘The most played Christmas song on the radio this year is Sleigh Ride – and it’s our song!’

So I looked it up. Sure enough, Wikipedia tells us, “‘Sleigh Ride’ is a light orchestral piece written by Leroy Anderson during a heat wave in August, 1946; lyrics were written later by Mitchell Parish. It was first recorded in 1949 by Arthur Fiedler & The Boston Pops Orchestra.” (emphasis mine)