Boston Subway

The other day I went into Boston to participate in an informal meeting of a new architecture group revolving around a two-day event slated for September. I got the e-mail for the meeting at 4:15PM from my desk at home in Haverhill MA. My brother gave me a ride to the station to try and make the 4:30 T at the Haverhill Station, we missed it by seconds.

The bridge connecting that area to the Bradford neighborhood stop has been out for the better part of 4 years. So making it across the Merrimac River wasn't going to happen in the two minutes it would take for the train to pull out of its next stop. So we drove to Reading, and he dropped me off there; next train: about 5:30PM.

Then it pulled into the station at 6:20 or so, and I thought great, I have plenty of time to get to a little ice-cream shop located on Newbury Street, (I Googled it before I ran out the door) I went to the subway stop, walked to the green line pickup, then went to the Prudential Center stop.

This, I realize, is where things went to shit.

Leaving the Prudential Center, I walked a couple of streets down, (absentmindedly thinking about other things) and not recognizing my surroundings looked for a landmark of some kind. It turns out I walked out of the opposite side of the building and walked in entirely the wrong direction, after back-tracking a few blocks I came across the part of Newbury Street I wanted, (near Tower Records or whatever its called now, the one with all the Virgin Records Corporate garbage) and located the ice-cream parlor.

Now, I was trying to keep my spending to a conservative amount, so I didn't splurge for the bottle-cap sized ice cream, instead I bought a coffee. (Reasonably priced, considering.) Now I sat and waited. I didn't see anybody from a previous meeting, but hell, they could've stepped out. Then around 7:05PM, I asked the time, and I realized they're not coming. I screwed up, I think to myself. So I walk down the street, and check my e-mail with the BAC security guard, (thanks security-guy) and when I check my map, I realize Harvard Street is located in Charlestown, near Bunker Hill CC, not near Harvard U. near the Back Bay.

By the way, it's raining. I have no umbrella.

I walk back to the Prudential, and I can't find the entrance back into the subway, so I follow the map inside, which leads me over a sky-bridge. Then I'm back outside, and wandering around. These damn yellow buses (which are part of the service) are either out of service, or going entirely in the wrong direction, so I keep walking. Finally I'm back on the subway. Things get worse.

At Park Street the rail car operator gets a call over the radio or something, and he tells everybody that his rail car is no longer in service, and we need to transfer to another track. More waiting.

Then again at Government Center the rail car stops, and we are told we need to disembark and go up top and get a transfer and blah blah blah. A bunch of people wait around, (surely they wouldn't discontinue service from Gov't Center to the Fleet Center. We were wrong.)

I head up top, and sure enough there is another of those horrid yellow buses that never seem to go anywhere. (You know this sort of malarkey never happened when the elevated tracks were still up.) And when I step on the bus, the driver asks me for a T-pass. I don't have one. So, fuck this, and I'm walking again. Finally I get to the Fleet Center I am soaked, and miserable, and irritated at everything, and when I get into the subway station, I ask someone for the time...after all that it's nearly 8:45PM. By the time a train shows I've got fifteen minutes to get down to the place in Charlestown before they close. Having been swiftly and utterly defeated by the inclement weather and the transit disservice, I give up, and go to Hooters.

Even that place was miserable. I didn't have enough money to buy beers, but I did have enough for a hamburger and a coke; so I ate instead. My waitress disappeared for what seemed like twenty minutes. The ride home on the T sucked, because I was wet, the lights are always too bright, and I don't have a CD player right now. (Broken, different story.) All in all, that is why I don't do things spontaneously, I always suffer for it.