Tag Archives: MBTA

April 2011 – Short Story Reviews on my Train Commute

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Since I moved into Boston and decided to rely 100% on public transit to commute to work, I’ve poured through dozens of books traveling to and from work.  I typically rotate between a classic, an adventure novel, and a business-esque book.  I can usually get in about 45 minutes to an hour of reading every day when you count in waiting for and riding on the trains.  Thinking back on it, I never would have read so many books if I were driving to and from work instead of taking the train.  Who has the time to drive an hour to work, spend 8-10 hours working, drive an hour home, eat, read books, AND have a life?  I’m not sure it’s possible so I definitely feel fortunate to be able to take the train to work every day.  Despite the shortcomings and frustrations associated with the MBTA, it still beats the hell out of when I used to drive to work, often stuck in Boston traffic for two hours per day.  That amounts to ten hours per week and 520 hours per year (equivalent of ~21 full days per year, ugh).

I’ve read a lot of diverse books but through talking with an old roommate of mine (double major in Economics and Classics) I realized that I’ve totally avoided the realm of short stories albeit unintentionally.  So I decided that this month’s 30 day life experiment would be to read and review one short story each day on my commute to work.  This should be a good way to put 20 new short stories in my repertoire.

To kick off this month’s experiment, I headed to the Boston Public Library.  I talked to a few different librarians and they were super stoked on my concept.  They printed off a list of popular short stories for me plus adding a few of their personal favorites not on that list.  The list was entitled, “The 50 Best Short Stories of All Time”.  I feel like with a title like that I can’t lose.  The stories were binned into various themes such as: Sad and Shocking, Pop Culture Classics, Modern Writers, Twist Endings, etc.  I plan to not repeat any authors as a way to get a diverse experience, then after this month is over I can go back and selectively pursue authors that I liked.

Over the past two years I’ve kept track of my books through a few different virtual bookshelves online.  I used Virtual Bookshelf for a while which integrated well with Facebook but then they went out of business so I switched to Goodreads.com.  I’ve been using Goodreads for about a year, writing short reviews on most of the books I finish.  There are a few other popular virtual bookshelves that I plan to investigate throughout thsi month such as Shelfari by Amazon, Delicious Library, Library Thing, and a few others.


As with all of my life experiments thus far, I’ll be keeping a Twitter List of users associated with short stories and literature in general.  Join the conversation HERE.

Well Hydrated at the Dive Bar

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Friday night was my first sober-month experience of hanging out at a bar with my friends.  We were getting together for a birthday celebration combined with a going-away celebration for another friend and met up at a dive bar downtown called Biddy Early’s.  It got good reviews on yelp.com for having cheap beer and a good atmosphere so we decided to give it a shot.  Having two reasons to party with the same group of friends was awesome, although I did feel a little bit weird about not drinking anything.  It makes a little bit of sense that I felt out of place because the general expectation for patrons at a bar is that they drink something.  So, to be honest I didn’t quite know what to do with my hands, usually one of them is holding a beer.  I wouldn’t have drank a lot anyway because I was waking up early the next morning to drive to Maine so I wasn’t exactly interested in being hungover the next day.  Feeling the need to be drinking SOMETHING, I bought a glass of ice water just to have something to keep my hands busy.

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Enjoying a tall draught of… ice water.

I thought about ordering a cranberry juice instead like the scene from The Departed but I chickened out:

No one made fun of my sobriety so unfortunately I didn’t have the chance to beat anyone up like Leonardo Dicaprio.  However, before I knew it I had five glasses of water and it was almost  1am.  So we ran to the train (it stops running at 1am in Boston) and caught it just in time to catch a lift home.  However, instead of being drunk in public I was more worried about having to pee on the train after having a few liters of water at the bar.  I made it without having to urinate in public so the trip home from the bar was a success.

It was probably my first time in Boston being in a bar and not drinking so it was definitely a little bit weird to not be drinking beer.  Instead, I cheers-ed to the birthday girl and going-away girl with my glass of water and hung out talking with everyone.  All in all I still had a really good time with my friends and I came to terms with the fact that I don’t need to drink beer to have a crazy good time.  To the contrary I woke up well hydrated and not hungover, what a great feeling.  I would have preferred to have a few Harpoon IPAs to celebrate with my friends but the fact remained that I didn’t NEED to have them, so life is good.

 

Day 30 – $1 for a Patriotic T-Performer

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I have to admit that I’ve had this random act of kindness planned for the entire month but the opportunities slipped through my fingers each time (mostly me forgetting and not noticing).  The act was to give a dollar to a T-performer.  Easily one of the best parts about riding the public transit system in Boston is all of the awesome performers who play on the T platforms.  I was in Davis at about 6:30am going to work and ran into a guy decked out in America gear (read: Amurrrica) playing the national anthem on the flute.

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A flutist on the platform in the Davis Square T, decked out in America gear playing America songs.

I immediately dug into my wallet and threw a dollar into his flute case.  Without missing a beat he said, “Thanks buddy, God bless America”.  He then launched into ‘My Country Tis of Thee’ and played that until I got on the train.  He was actually an incredible musician and the version of the National Anthem was beautifully done.  It’s not often that you expect to hear incredible music at 6:30am on public transit.  There’s another guy who used play blues guitar in this same spot on Monday mornings before work.  I asked him why he plays blues in the T station so early on Monday mornings and he matter-of-factly responded, “It’s Monday morning and everyone’s going to work, everyone’s got the blues”.

I don’t typically give money to T performers.  I’m not sure there’s any reason behind it but I just don’t.  I really should start tipping them especially because my public transit is paid for by my work.  Also, it’s really great to hear music playing in public spaces, I think live music really livens up the atmosphere and helps to create a positive attitude in everyone.

The City of Boston has an application for T-performers such that if you don’t have a permit, you can be fined for playing music in the T.  However, from what I’ve read it looks like a pretty easy process to become a T-performer, all you need is access to the internet to download the form (30 day life experiment?!?!).  Here’s the link to the application, looks pretty straight forward: no doing, selling, or carrying drugs, be neatly dressed, and don’t exceed 80db of noise. http://mbta.com/business_center/subway_performers/ sounds like a lot of fun, maybe I’ll look into it as a month-long challenge…

Day 26 – Directions for a “Tourist”

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Today it was half-raining and half-snowing, or as we call it in the Northeast a “Wintery Mix”.  I was walking home and came across a guy trying to shield his smartphone from the elements while (stressfully) trying to find something on his smartphone.   Classic tourist.  He may have not been a tourist but he certainly didn’t live in Boston.  This became even more obvious when I asked him if he needed directions.  He said he was looking for the green line.  I then asked him where exactly he was going and he said “North Station via the Green Line”.  Another classic “tourist” mistake: taking a really roundabout way to get somewhere instead of taking a much more direct (but perhaps non-obvious) route.

He was probably a 15 minute walk from the green line and even then, only SOME trains go to North Station, most trains go only to Government Center and then you have to get off the train and wait for one to North Station.  This was not something an out-of-towner would have known.  From where he was it could have easily taken 40 minutes after all was said and done.  Instead of this route I suggested he take the orange line (across the street) to North Station instead which would probably be a 15 minute trip.  It took some convincing because he knew that the Green Line would get him there.  Should he trust a stranger?  So I told him that he would certainly get to North Station via his route, but that he could save half an hour at least by taking the Orange Line instead.  By showing him he was correct, just perhaps not the most correct, he then decided to trust me and headed into the Orange Line T-Station.

I used to do that same thing all the time in Boston when I first moved here.  Many of the T-Stations are so close together you might as well walk, but the shortcuts are non-obvious.  Instead of taking the easy route, I’d often go far out of my way to get somewhere because I didn’t know any better.  A good example was going from Somerville to Allston, a trip I made all the time to hang out with friends from home.  I’d take the Red Line to Park Street and then take the B-Line to Allston, about 1 hour and 20 minutes after it’s all said and done, a classic n00b move.  Instead, I should have taken the 57 bus from Harvard to Allston which was about 20 minutes.  Finally someone showed me the light and I felt like an idiot.  However, I was eternally grateful for saving an hour of my life every time I went out to Allston.   I was glad to show this random guy that same light.  Hopefully he found something worthwhile to do with his extra half hour.