Blogatron

Welcome to Brookline!

(Note: this is an e-mail I sent to friends and family, letting them know that I was alive and such after my move from New York City to Boston. I'm posting it as my first entry because I'm impatient to make sure everything works and too lazy to write a whole other big blah at the moment. So, yeah, I cheated a little. Meh. Also, let me know if anything is messed up, since I'm leaping headlong into a medium I don't understand whatsoever. Hey, I'm a learn-by-doing kinda girl.)

Well, we moved okay. In that we got all our stuff here and not much of it broke along the way, at least (although one plate broke the night after we arrived, as if to mock us for all the trouble we took getting it here). Along the way, I really think we managed to achieve a new level of moving hell. Suffice to say that it's generally a good idea to try to pack all of your stuff BEFORE you move, and not, say, as the truck is being loaded by your patient-but-increasingly-annoyed family members/semi-in-laws. I've blocked out most of the pain and humiliation of the big day, but on August 2nd I woke up to discover a truly astonishing number of bruises, aches and pains.

We are getting unpacked pretty well. We're desperately seeking a loveseat for the living room; however, we're having a bit of trouble finding a happy medium between overpriced designer furniture and ugly, cheap stuff. (Any ideas, you Bostonians out there?) There seems to be a lack of discount meccas in the immediate Boston area, I suppose because it's such a car-oriented city and it's no big deal for most people to travel out to Danvers to visit Target. But for those of us limited to use of the public "transportation" (and oh, do I have a word or two about that for later!) it's not so easy.

So here we are in lovely Brookline Village, just past Fenway Park on the T (aka the subway to us recently transplanted New Yorkers, although it's really not). We're just a few minutes' walk from the T, Josh's school, and my yet-to-be-started job, so we couldn't be better off in terms of location. It's a bit suburban, but in a homey way rather than a beige-minivan despair way. There are many charming and/or wacky shops, tasty restaurants of various ethnicities, and a really really fantastic (especially after the cramped, understocked horror of Key Food in Astoria) supermarket. And of course, this being New England, a Dunkin Donuts every 20 feet, as per zoning regulations. There's also an art deco-styled indie movie theater just up the road, currently doing a Mario Bava retrospective midnight program (heaven!), and a video store with a fantastic cult/horror section. It's been fun exploring the neighborhood as we search for household items which we somehow need despite having more crap than can be comprehended by the human mind.

Now, since this is getting ridiculously long and since my brain is still looking at things this way, here's a list of Things That Are Better in Boston vs. Things That Are Better in New York, so far.

Things That Are Better In Boston:

Trees
There are some. Lots, in fact. And they don't have that kinda sickly, fighting against all odds to survive thing that New York trees have. In addition, there's grass, flowers and plants galore. It's nice to have some nature around.

Manners
There is general agreement about what constitutes them. What is this saying excuse me on the street? What is this waiting politely for every single person to depart the train before you get on? What is this saying hello to people when you pass them on the sidewalk or in the laundry room? Now this might just be a Brookline thing, because we are in the 'burbs after all, but then, Astoria was pretty damn suburban for New York and people were still all rude and pushy and self-righteous. I feel a bit like, well, a rude New Yorker as I barrel down the sidewalk dodging through the oh-so-mellow pedestrians without so much as a by-your-leave, but I just can't get into the whole interacting with strangers thing yet. Give me time.

Our Apartment
We gave up some space when we moved from our two-bedroom-with-small-"living-room" (aka: enlarged hallway), but let me tell you what we gained: A big bedroom which can contain bookcases and a chair in addition to a bed and a bureau. A bathroom three times the size of our old one, with a tub that doesn't look like it's about to crash through the floor at any moment and tiling that was done by someone with a vague idea of what tiling is all about. FOUR closets, two of them huge, and a freaking linen closet. A patio. Yes, a patio. With real ground for the cultivating. Laundry in the building. Level floors. The concept of 90-degree angles. More than one electrical outlet per room. A landlord who thinks having the apartment cleaned and painted before the new tenant moves in might be a neat idea.

Weather
Yeah, yeah, I grew up in New Hampshire, so don't try to scare me with your New-England-winter talk. Bring it on. What I like: it's August, and though it might get hot during the day, it actually gets cooler at night.

Things That Are Better in New York:

Public Transportation
I told you this was coming. With all apologies to those Bostonphiles I might be offending, the Boston transportation system is kind of ridiculous. For one thing, the trains: tiny. On the Green line which runs by our house, they are these little trolleys that are two. cars. long. They are like toys! Hello, rush hour? Yeah, I'm so glad I work within walking distance. And the bus? Painfully slow. For starters, they never come. For followers, since traffic is terrible in Boston, it takes forEVER to get anywhere. You might think you've seen bad bus travel in other cities, but Boston HAS to be the worst - narrow winding streets, crazy drivers, and way too many cars in general (well obviously, since you don't take public transport unless you absolutely have to). Lastly, the T shuts down at night. Yeah, it stops!! At MIDNIGHT!!!! Huh? I can't even grasp this concept yet. It's just too foreign.

The Hours
And on that subject, there is no 24-hour deli or diner within walking distance of our home. Most things close by 10. This is probably a Brookline thing, but...ten. pee. em. Enough said.

The Pace
Walk faster. Walk. Faster. WALKFASTERWALKFASTERWALKFASTER!!!! I'm all for the politeness and the eye contact between customer and counter person in stores and the hey-how-are-you-stranger and all that, as soon as I get used to it, but for God's sake walk faster!!! This is not something I'm going to adapt to, either. I'm a natural fast walker (I get it from my mom - hi, Mom!). I have to concentrate in order to walk slow, and it hurts me.

The Wildlife
When we first moved into our Astoria apartment, there were some roaches. We put down Boric acid and they went away, and that was that. I love wimpy roaches! Other than the occasional mouse sighting or fly getting in, we were pretty critter-free. Now we live in a ground-floor apartment in an area that is very much more a part of the natural world. There are ants, there are beetles, there are unidentified flying things. Okay, I can deal with that. However.

There are also centipedes. House centipedes, the only bug proven to make me leap into a chair and scream like the lady in the damn Tom & Jerry cartoons. I HATE fulfilling gender stereotypes. But I hate centipedes even more. Unnatural 30-legged little spawns of darkness!! Tomorrow, I'm arming myself for battle. My plan is to seal up every crack I can find in our house, and sprinkle poison liberally in the dark crevices that centipedes like and that our cat can't reach. If that fails, I'm buying one of those bubble outfits, because, bleccchhh, centipedes!! Eeek!

Posted by hilatron at August 15, 2002 04:51 PM