Harry Fig cartoon from boston.com

[redcolumbine.livejournal.com]

Comments

[diego001.livejournal.com]

Lolhipsters.

[ron_newman]

Four years old, but still classic.

[mperrotti76.livejournal.com]

Oh what this town has become during my brief residency here...

[secretlyironic.livejournal.com]

Oddly, people have been complaining about the same things since the colonial period. Seriously, there's newspaper editorials by Ben Franklin lamenting that there aren't any cool bars left in Boston, not like during the Revolutionary period where you could hardly walk into the Green Dragon without stumbling upon enlightenment hipster conspiracies to overthrow the government.

[mperrotti76.livejournal.com]

Funny you should mention this. I just began watching the John Adams series on HBO yesterday. Quite good so far. Paul Giamatti is amazing and under appreciated as an actor.

[clevernonsense.livejournal.com]

yess, but Franklin is the original sourpuss "Boston sucks wah wah wah" person ...man, he would have fit in here well.

[ayelle.livejournal.com]

LOL -- good point sir.

[clevernonsense.livejournal.com]

this is the first time being forced to read Franklin's autobiography has paid off.

[mistresshellena.livejournal.com]

rad.

(I think we get it from the English. This sort of talk is all the rage over here. Why I feel so at home, I guess....)

[m00n.livejournal.com]

It *does* kind of beg the question of why Davis Square needed a second major pharmacy chain in such a tiny area. Or yet another very high end clothing store that falls completely out of the price range of a significant portion of the local population...

[m00n.livejournal.com]

And of course this while our used book store is moving elsewhere...

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

Yes, a whole three blocks south and one block east.

[m00n.livejournal.com]

I agree that it isn't very far, but it's definitely a lot further than the CVS is from the Brooks. And it's no longer "in" Davis Square. Leaving us with zero bookstores and two chain pharmacies.

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

Don't worry; the Brooks/Rite Aid/whateverthehell may be converted into a hotel. Won't that be an improvement!

[redcolumbine.livejournal.com]

A hotel? Well, it would certainly do well; at least that's not redundant.

Is this just inevitable evolution via market pressure? Is Davis Square as a place to live, except for a select elite, history? Does it even make sense to try to preserve affordable housing and green space, or is it like trying to hold back the tide?

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

My understanding of the hotel project is that the city government is trying to find a developer to put one up in Davis Square; the city thinks 100 rooms is what it needs, but they're waiting to hear what prospective developers say, so it could be smaller (though I think not bigger, given the zoning restrictions on height and such). I don't know the reasoning behind it, though.

[redcolumbine.livejournal.com]

Well, it's doggone difficult to find a hotel that's not either way the heck out, prohibitively expensive, or already full, so it seems like a workable idea. I'm just hoping they incorporate parking into their design...

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

Yes, they are requiring that the developer include parking (underground, because the sites they are considering are currently parking lots: the Day St. lot, the lot where the Rite Aid is, and a lot on Buena Vista). And I think it's not just hotel parking, but enough to make up for losing the surface parking, too, though I wonder if there might then be something funky re:security in that case.

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

*looks at a map* How are you defining "block" here?

[m00n.livejournal.com]

Aye. According to my highly sophisticated Google map calculations, it's more like 8.5 blocks.

[ron_newman]

What store is that?

[m00n.livejournal.com]

It doesn't have a sign yet and I don't know its name, but it is moving in to the location formerly occupied by Dahn Yoga at 67 Holland Street. Admittedly I am jumping to conclusions about the price but it definitely doesn't *look* like somewhere I could afford to shop even if I made twice my current salary. It's not that I'm principally opposed to such things, but there are already two other clothing stores on that relatively small stretch of road catering to that income bracket (and notably none catering to mine).