The Redstar Perspective

UPDATE (10:55 p.m.): Apparently I’m not the only one quitting. HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson is expected to resign tomorrow. Wahoo!!! Ok, now I’m done. Read on.

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It’s with some sadness and some relief that I write this post: I will not be blogging anymore at The Redstar Perspective. This has been a difficult decision, and I’m still unsure what it means. I may retire this site entirely, or I may resurrect it at an unknown point in the future. I’m still sorting out the details.

Here’s what led to this decision, somewhat in order of importance:

a) It’s time to write my dissertation. After meeting with two of my advisors recently, it’s clear I can finish this thing in the next 12 to 15 months and GRADUATE!!! Especially since the New Year, but generally speaking, blogging has become my primary activity, and an enormous time suck for me. Yes, my stats are SLOWLY growing, and, according to readers, my writing is improving. But, in addition to feeling like I’m losing my way re: the content of this blog (more on that in a minute), I also feel like I’m investing so much time and energy in this blog and not generating the returns I want to get. It’s not ok with me that my readership grows when I discuss the general election, because that’s not my preferred content focus. The hours I’ve been spending on posts about Obama v. Clinton, etc., is distracting me from really focusing on the writing I need to be doing NOW - that is, on issues of social justice, urban recovery and contentious politics in post-Katrina New Orleans. In other words, my dissertation.

b) I no longer feel comfortable blogging without anonymity in the ’sphere. Given where I’m at in my still-emerging career, I’m not ok with folks’ ability to track down my thoughts and opinions on-line.  I regret not blogging anonymously, and any blogging I do in the future will strive for greater anonymity. For someone with deeply personal intellectual interests, the current context of the Democratic primary and the empassioned and often heated on-line discussions of race, racism, gender, sexism and misogyny, privilege and prejudice have left me feeling that the web is an even less safe space to really grapple with these issues. In our splicing and dicing interpretative world, I know my thoughts and perspectives on the primary, on poverty, on my family, etc. are up for grabs for appropriation and re-interpretation. Nonetheless, I plan to remove some of the content from this site, but will leave the rest up for the history books.
c) The RP has run its course. This blog began in part because of my work in New Orleans, because my buddy Jake urged me to blog rather than send long e-mails to everyone I knew about what I was experiencing in the city beginning in January 2006. With this dissertation, my work in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast is coming to a close. This blog has grown from that original reporting, to cover topics of development, poverty, housing, inequality, activism, cities, and politics more broadly, but all of this has been mixed up with odes to my boyfriend, Grey’s Anatomy, and random (hopefully amusing) stories about my childhood and roots. Frankly, I’m not interested in writing a general interest blog that’s a mix of analysis and journaling. I need the latter for my mental health, but I’ll find another outlet. My priority is to examine urban inequality, especially as it impacts low-income women, households, and neighborhoods. This is what I want to be blogging about (and working on in my lifetime), and I know there’s a niche audience who wants more of this. I’ve got all kinds of ideas for blogging, but I need a new and fresh venue. That will come in time.

So there you have it. Just in time for what would have been the second annual RP History Month. I’m still figuring out how to keep my original New Orleans posts and select others on-line and available. I’ll probably make an announcement about that in the future.

If you’d like to stay in touch, please leave a note in comments. That will give me an e-mail address for you (remember, others can’t see it) if/when I launch another blog.

Thanks to all my readers and champions over the last two years, especially NYC Weboy, and other blogging allies such as Professor Zero, DonnaDarko, Pizza Diavola and Pocochina. It’s been fun, instructive, exhausting and mostly my pleasure. I have become a blogger. Look at me.

Until we meet again, I leave you with some highly recommended reading:

Please read this disturbing, enraging and graphic coverage of the brutal rape and assault of a woman and her kids in Dunbar Village in W. Palm Beach, FL, and how you can let the NAACP know where their legal, PR and activist resources really belong.

A pregnant man challenges people’s ideas about gender, sexuality, and reproductive rights. And shakes up the healthcare profession. (H/t Echidne.) Meanwhile, pregnancy discrimination complaints from women reach record levels.

A refreshing comments thread that asks bloggers to cool it re: their election coverage. Instead of all the collective hyperventilating, let’s all check out Insurgent American’s 35-Point Practical Guide for Action. (H/t Corrente.)

Read Brownfemipower’s WAM conference speech about centering feminist activism around questions of citizenship and the problems this creates for advocating for immigrant women. (How I missed this conference - held at MIT, the irony! - is beyond me.)

Be well, have fun, and stay safe.

Because election fever has overtaken my brain, I’ve been neglecting the issues I usually talk about here: poverty, urban development, housing, inequality, and post-Katrina New Orleans. (That my blog readership is way up reinforces the notion that no one likes to talk about poor people.  Sigh.)  So I pass the mike to Prof. Peter Dreier from Occidental College, who I recently saw speak at a conference where he urged those college kids who could afford it to drop out of school this fall and organize voters for the election.

Dreier sums up a great deal of what I’ve been studying these last four years - in the context of class, power and voting patterns. His point of departure is Obama’s re-hashing of the meme about working-class white (WCW) resentment - one I picked up happily as it gave me an opening to embrace the good and bad about my roots. Dreier points out that although WCW racism and prejudices held by all middle- and lower-income social groups exist, it is the institutional power of wealthy whites that perpetuates structural racism and inequality - a system upheld in the voting booth year after year. He writes:

…let’s be clear about the class nature of racial prejudice, stereotypes, discrimination, and disparities. Wealthy whites are more likely than working-class whites to use the race card in the voting booth. Voting statistics reveal that most upper-income whites consistently vote in Republican, not Democratic, primaries, which means they don’t have to vote for black or Latino candidates. And in partisan run-off elections, wealthy whites overwhelmingly vote for Republican over Democratic contenders. [He goes on to sample supply voting data by income categories.]

…

…in an Obama-McCain face-off fewer wealthy whites will vote for Obama than working-class whites whom affluent pundits are so quick to label as racist. Indeed, we’ve already seen a significant number of blue-collar white voters show their support for Obama in Iowa, South Carolina, Wisconsin, and other states. Yes, white working-class Democrats in economically troubled Ohio favored Clinton over Obama. But in November, most of the blue-collar Democrats, working-class independents, and union members who voted for Clinton — in Ohio and elsewhere — are likely to switch to Obama, not McCain.

It is understandable that most wealthy whites would consistently vote for Republicans, who like low taxes and hate strong unions. But in recent decades, a significant number of working-class whites — the so-called “Reagan Democrats” — have voted for GOP candidates who have done so little to address their bread-and-butter concerns. As Thomas Frank argued in his book, What’s the Matter with Kansas?, the Republicans have successfully used “wedge” issues — abortion, religion, gun control, gay rights, affirmative action, and, of course, the war on terrorism — to persuade some working-class whites to vote against their economic interests.

But the tide seems to be changing.

…

By focusing on voting behavior and attitudes, however, political pundits deflect focus away from other fundamental concerns. America’s corporate and political rulers have long used racism, ethnic stereotypes, and immigrant bashing to divide working people and weaken their collective power. Manufacturers recruited Southern blacks to act as strikebreakers in Northern cities, and employers warned “No Irish need apply” and resorted to anti-Semitism to pit workers against each other. In hard economic times, scapegoating against blacks and Hispanic immigrants diverts white workers’ attention away from the failure of business and political elites to create enough decent jobs.

Although working-class white Americans may harbor racist sentiments, they do not control the major institutions that are responsible for America’s racial divide, including the economic forces that sometimes pit white, black, and Hispanic working families against each other for jobs, housing, and decent schools.

…

in every sphere of American life — income, hiring, promotion, housing, the quality of public schools, college attendance, treatment by the criminal justice system, media portrayals, and others — race remains a divisive issue. While upper-middle class pundits may get some smug pleasure out of pointing to racial prejudice among America’s white working-class voters, they would be more accurate if they looked up, rather than down, the economic ladder to identify who really has the power to prop up, or fix, the institutions that turn bigotry into discrimination.

It’s worth reading the whole thing. This is where my worries flare up that current Clinton supporters - should she not get the nomination - will fall for the “Maverick McCain” meme rather than supporting Obama/the Democratic nominee. We cannot let that happen.

Still I believe.

Driving to school this morning in the NAS-TAY rain and slush, pass Brookline Liquors and read on the awning, “Go Celts”.  It’s been A LONG LONG time since I’ve seen that.  Pretty sure I was still shooting hoops in junior high during the last Celtics fervor.

Driving home from school this afternoon, still DISGUSTING outside, 93.7 Mike FM-”We play everything” delivers on that promise by playing Styx “The Best of Times.”  Picture me sitting at the Comm Av/Chestnut Hill Av intersection in Brighton in my turquoise love machine, “PONTIAC” lit up in red on the trunk since the lights are on, with Styx cranked and me singing right along.  I bet it’s moments like that that I’m at my most attractive.  (Guess the classic-rock-obsessed hs boyfriend was good for something.)

And then there’s this in the NY Times: a guy living outside Brighton Center receives a postcard dated 1929, addressed to the former owner of his house.  To quote the history-loving M.A.S.:  COOOL.

Weboy here.

It was during the third shampoo - the one before the scalp massage and the Shiatsu in my chair - that I realized I like the pampering of my hair salon. I have given up a great many extravagances - I no longer shop til I drop, or go to the Spa for massages - but my hair is one thing where I just cant skimp.

And too, there’s the moments, like the shampoo, that are just utter indulgences. I usually close my eyes to experience the sensations of having someone else touch my head; it’s not something that happens all that regularly, and because, like many, I carry a lot of stress, it does take a lttle work to let oneself be touched. I completely understand people who say they simply leave their body - I drift into semi-consciousness.

Red is quite simply the only woman I know who came with amazing hair and needs to do little to it - when I first met her we discussed hair coloring, and she decided she couldn’t do it because her natural red might never be the same. And dash-it-all, she’s right: I don’t think I will ever see such golden tresses, especially when they’re kissed by the summer sun. Not only that, but with little effort - and I mean one basic blow-and-go haircut she’s had pretty much in all the time I’ve known her - her hair falls in waves of cascading shoulder length curls that most people get perms to achieve.

Me, not one thing about my hair is natural - I’ve cut it and dyed it and straightened it and braided it and done God knows what else. My current regime is the famous “Asian straight perm,” which I love, and which is utterly time consuming. My hair stylist is a genius, a wizard at cutting straight hair, and a great chemist - the results are long and lustrous, with minimal damage.

And, with a toss of my long mane, that may be that: thanks for having me over. Red should be back online shortly. With a tan, no doubt, and a refreshed spirit. It is, after all, a glamorous life.

Weboy here.  It appears our Red-headed mistress has decided to bask in the sun, without more posting.  Good.

I think it’s only fitting that my last post in Boston should be on Red’s site - it’s her town, and now I leave it to her. Red isn’t happy about the fact that I’ve moved back to New York (I am, after all, an NYC Weboy), but I think time has shown that one town can only contain the both of us for so long - at some point, no town is big enough.

Last night on my blog, I talked about the feeling that it’s over.  Today, walking around town, I was reminded that it’s not.  It was a beautiful day (take that, LA), and people all over reveled in the ability to skip the winter coat and play outdoors.  Boston, at heart, is an “outdoorsy” town - ruddy faced people who enjoy a brisk run or a game of pickup touch football on the quad (there’s a reason the northeastern college experience is so quintessential).  RedStar, our very own, confessed to me one rainy day that for years she got mistaken as the “field hockey” type… when really she’s probably a kindred spirit to nice Upper East Side girls who’s main competitive sport is shopping…. or nightclubbing.

I’d say I’m with her, but really, I’m not.  There’s a secret, solitary jock inside of me who likes a good run.  I may have felt a little lost, a bit out of place here in my two year residency… but we were getting there, Boston and I, on a mutual agreement of terms. In New York, it puts me in something akin to the “gym bunny” class of gay men, but without the Zone diet and the crazy abs. Healthy, and a little thinner… that would be fine.

Walking home today across the Public Garden, I was sad to see that the Swan Boats are on their winter hiatus.  As a kid, nothing thrilled me more than visits to the Garden, and a chance to ride around the (man made) lake.  Looking for Mack, Jack, Lack and Quack and all the other ducklings. My first gift to my nephew (the Most Adorable Nephew in the Universe), in fact was just that book. Now, with adult eyes, I see that the amazing lake is really just a man made pond, no deeper than a duckling’s legs.  But in Spring and Summer, with the Swan Boats circling, it still seems magical.  It’s not the worst memory to go home with.

Everyone loves a Boston Girl.  I still love mine - the inner one, and the Redheaded stepchild. Take care of our town, Red.

I hear more about the “new” New Orleans these days (sadly, you can believe some of the hype, and not for the right reasons) than any “new” NY, but one need only satisfy one’s Law & Order addiction - as I’m doing as a side project to my PhD - to see how much NYC has changed over the years.  In keeping with the spirit of writing about not too much this week, this post is not a wonkish treatise about urban development and politics.  (I know, I know, you miss my lecturing ways.  Prof. Redstar will be back mid-January, after I shop my screenplay in L.A.  But I digress…)

I’m extemporizing here about my upcoming visit to NYC, which involves four nights of visiting friends in the outer boroughs.  And I’m not talking about the hipsterati in Brooklyn.  Nope, instead, with thirtysomething boyfriend in tow, I will be staying with friends and their families (collectively, three children under the age of five) in the Bronx and Queens.  Saturday night involves a trip downtown for a joint ABD status/birthday dinner with my best girlfriend from college and her husband.  And New Year’s Eve is still shaping up, but the likelihood of me blindly finding my way into a cab between 2 and 4 a.m. is about as high as one of the “lesser-known [presidential] candidates” debating on C-Span right now actually winning the election (someone take the remote away from the M.A.S.). 

Sure, I still have friends who live in Manhattan, and I’m still uncool enough that most of them live uptown (the married ones anyway…and I’ve never been cool enough to have less than a handful of friends living in Brooklyn), but really my NYC reality now is visiting my 22 year old cousin as she fashions her own version of my quarterlife adventures in the city.  Most of these friends are also out of town right now, on vacation with their young families, on mini-breaks with new flames, and just generally living their lives in the ways we know now, which mean that our paths cross less and less frequently, and generally only for special occasions such as reunions, weddings, etc.  My world is shrinking, and shifting. 

This post is not rueful, even if it is nostalgic.  This man of mine has a growing Flickr collection of us posed in front of extended family Christmas trees and dinner tables, at far-flung weddings, and in various leisurely settings.  Apparently, this is now my life.  And I’m wiser, and happier and fatter for it.  But what a kick, commuting from Boston’s own periphery of Brighton to the ‘hoods of Riverdale and Jackson Heights.  Places - mainly the latter - I’d consider living if I ever came back to NY.  A hope I still keep alive, even as I relax behind the wheel of my stepmom’s hand-me-down Pontiac, commuting between Newton and Quincy and Hanover and Connecticut in my own (re)new(ed) life in Red Sox Nation.  Who knew.

I’m off til mid-next week.  If I was more motivated, I’d organize a 2007 “Best of” collection of posts for your enjoyment; I’ve seen that around the web and wish I had done it.  Someone go through my archives for me, will ya?  But feel free to poke around here in my absence.  I can’t promise you’ll want any of the food in the cabinets, but there’s always some booze lying around.  Until I’m back on-line, I wish you all A Very Happy New Year - Be Safe and Have Fun!!

More or less cross-posted at NYC Weboy.

For the M.A.S. and me, Xmas began tonight, and continues, ceaselessly, through Tuesday.  I’m off-line for most of that, perhaps sneaking in a blog post, and def. some blog reading, on Monday. 

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!  And a stiff drink, or zen meditation, or Bring It On on TBS, pick your poison, if you’re planning to be as exhausted by the end as I am!!!!

Be safe and have fun.

Just so we’re clear. 

PolicyLink has released a brief analysis of HUD’s plans to replace subsidized housing for extremely low-income households, those making 30% of Area Median Income ($15,9k).  This includes many households in New Orleans with minimum wage employees working full-time (40h) per week in the service and hospitality industries earning just over $12,000 per year.  Overall, HUD plans to replace about one-third of the 12k pre-storm units.  Separate from the overly villified and spotlighted public housing developments, which face a 59% net loss, less than one-third of the deeply subsidized housing specifically set aside for seniors, the disabled, and low-wage workers will be rebuilt.  Check out the graph on page 3 to see the comparative reductions in public housing, scattered site housing, and supportive/senior housing.

I’m deliberately preying on the cultural distinctions we make between the worthy and unworthy poor here, a false dichotomy, not least in the reality of neighborhood composition.  I’m doing this because I know the assumptions we all make about who lives in public housing, including the assumptions held by public housing residents themselves about their neighbors.  But I want to make clear that the housing specifically built to enable our grandmothers or disabled relatives - those we can’t or won’t care for, or those who, like us, seek independent living that meets their needs - to live on their own is also being destroyed by the federal government in New Orleans, whether by deliberate and corrupt demolition choices, or because of a willful and callous lack of reinvestment to bring these properties back on line.

I originally wrote this post last night, only to have my blog crash.  It was much more personal and rhetorical, if no less strident.  I linked to this very personal and clear post from kactus, about her experience as a mother, disabled woman, and community member in public housing, and I wrote about my own experiences growing up visiting family in South Boston public housing.  I wrote about eating corned beef and cabbage on tv trays at my grandmother’s, and how I thought tv trays were the coolest thing ever.  I wrote about how excited I was on these visits to cross the pedestrian bridge over the 2 lane road in front of the projects, and I distinctly remember the snazzy leather Members Only type jacket my 80s mustached dad was sporting on these visits.  I remember the specific language my grandmother used to describe her home, words like “rubbish” instead of trash, which went into the “incinerator” chute outside in the hall, and how our visits were in the “parlor” versus the living room.  I remember playing with my cousin Clare’s new Easy Bake oven during one of many Christmas’s visiting her and her sibs and parents and grandmother in the notorious D St projects, which went through phased redevelopment around that time, starting from the back towards the street, per the insistence of the residents, who knew that the housing authority would be more likely to prematurely stop development once improvements were visible from the street.  I remember more recently my aunt, who raised 5 kids and not a few grandkids at D Street on AFDC and worked her way up from a clerk to a property manager at the Boston Housing Authority, complaining that the redevelopment of D Street failed to reflect some of the daily realities of how people lived, for example, in its awkward placement of utility hookups that made it difficult for families to do their laundry.  And I wrote about how, more recently, the M.A.S. listened to 2 of my cousins his age laugh about how they shoveled some snow at D Street one winter, only to receive a check from Housing for their services several weeks later. 

In 2005, my uncle gave up the McCormack property that once belonged to my grandmother, an apartment we had in the family for over 40 years.  My cousins still live in other developments in Southie.  And my many cousins and aunts and uncles who have moved out to the suburbs continue to battle problems of poverty, including poor health and healthcare, addiction, homelessness, and insecure housing tenure.  Last night, before my blog crashed, I asked, whose quality of life are we talking about when we debate the ills of concentration and the benefits of dispersion, and the pathologies of public housing and the problems of poverty?  We’re talking about my family, my cousins, my aunts, my uncles. 

I’m sure glad they don’t live in New Orleans. 

What should I/we make of the fact that I went to school with two recurring VH-1 talking heads - Nick Stevens (elementary through h.s. and neighbor!) and Leigh Kessler (college)?   Remind me again why I am blogging in obscurity????  And of course, solving the world’s problems from my living room couch….

In eighth grade I discovered that I get a cold sweat when I’m nervous.  I used to noisily slide my sweaty palms down my desk for my Jr High Boyfriend, cuz I’m classy and attractive like that.  With less than four hours to go and another two hours of work in front of me, I am in a full, cold sweat.  Believe me, it feels AWESOME.  Right.

Fortunately, I’m not really stinky. 

In Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life, one sociologist’s exploration into the “American character,” the “Massachusetts Irish” are “the ethnic group that defines the standard for ethnic groups.”*  (In all our traditional, old world, trusting, close-kin glory)

I’m sayin’.

*From Alan Wolfe, “Democracy versus Sociology,” in Michele Lamont and Marcel Fournier’s Cultivating Differences: Symbolic Boundaries and the Making of Inequality,”  1992, p. 317.

(Meanwhile, perhaps appropriately, on WWOZ, playing quietly on my iTunes, I can only make out the line in some alt version of The 12 Days of Christmas, “5 ROB ROYS.”)

Or so MA Gov. Deval Patrick equates responding to the discovery of nooses within the MBTA (one employee wearing one for Halloween, and a noose found in a subway car by a black carman). Good for him. That’s the aggressive language that municipalities and officials should be using to describe these homegrown acts of racial violence, these hate crimes, including the agnostics at the federal Dept. of Justice who promise to act when “the facts and the law warrant” them to do so. (Duh.)

Based on data compiled from 70% of all police authorities nationwide, the FBI reports that hate crimes increased 8% in 2006. While race-related incidents in the precincts reporting fell about 2% from 2005, they comprise 52% of all reported events. 58% of all offenders are white, and one-third of the incidents occur near or at home. (Sleep well!)

In related event, this past weekend thousands of African-Americans marched at the Justice Dept. to protest the racial (and economic) inequality in the criminal justice system.

The Justice Department said yesterday that it is committed to prosecuting civil rights cases.

“The Justice Department shares with those who demonstrate today their objective of bringing to justice those who commit criminal acts of hate,” Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey said in a statement.

“It shares their vision of eradicating hate in our society,” said Mukasey, who was sworn in as attorney general this week.

Clearly one strategy the Administration has to realize that vision is to shift our hatred to those outside our society. Furthermore, perhaps we should give the new AG some time to get caught up on DOJ’s actual record of fighting hate crimes under Bush & Co. From a June 2007 NYT piece:

(more…)

Legendarily agressive, fearless, obnoxious, and, apparently, stupid too.  Dare we brag, some of the most wicked, f*ckin’ stupid in the nation.  Yeah, what’s up.

Don’t look at me for pointers, I’ve already copped to failing my road test once. Though, now that I think about it, I did pass the written exam for my driver’s permit twice, given I had to renew it after I didn’t get my license on the first try.

Thanks to shame-faced IL driver O. Dear for the tip.

Recently I was celebrating my own unique existence.  As it turns out, my middle and last names are some of the most common in the U.S.

My middle name (my mother’s maiden name) is in the Top 15 of the 5,000 most common surnames in 2000, falling from its spot on the Top 10 list in 1990.  And my last name is #108, down from #104 in 1990.  To add insult to injury, my seemingly unusual first name, in another form, is the most common surname in the world.  (Though I do love when I meet folks who tell me my first name is a “Chinese” name.)

Fortunately, Redstar doesn’t make the list.  You can test your own surname via the link. 

I LOVE these kinds of articles about census data.  But note the total lack of irony in the reporting about the “durability of the family of man” that the persistence of certain last names reflects and the subsequent paragraph on slavery’s contribution to that familial lineage:

But the fact that about 1 in every 25 Americans is named Smith, Johnson, Williams, Brown, Jones, Miller or Davis “suggests that there’s a durability in the family of man,” Mr. Kaplan, the author, said. A million Americans share each of those seven names. An additional 268 last names are common to 10,000 or more people. Together, those 275 names account for one in four Americans.

…The durability of some of the most common names in American history may also have been perpetuated because slaves either adopted or retained the surnames of their owners. About one in five Smiths are black, as are about one in three Johnsons, Browns, and Joneses and nearly half the people named Williams.  

H/t to Zuzu at Feministe, whose blog moniker is also likely as rare as her last name is common.

In my patriotic high school and hometown, we in the chorus learned all the Armed Forces songs, and performed a Veteran’s Day concert every year.  Firedoglake offers up the much more depressing facts on the state of veterans’ lives in the U.S.

I’m really late in even acknowledging the flood in Tabasco, Mexico (being a Katrina and 9/11 responder has not transformed me into a disaster specialist, by any means.)  Brownfemipower has the info, the photos and links to how we can help. 

Paul Krugman chides Reagan revisionists.  I don’t get the Reagan love at all (theoretically, sure).  Everything historical I read in terms of urban, economic and social policy in this country points to Reagan’s special powers of increasing inequality and insecurity, undermining civil rights, race-baiting, and eroding faith in government.  The guy makes me sick. 

This “newsflash” is sort of entertaining: smart chicks can’t get dates.  Not enough M.A.S.’s to go around, apparently.

Not exactly a disaster, though I’m disappointed Felix Arroyo didn’t get re-elected, here’s a breakdown of Boston City Council at-large voting by ward.  Ever heard of machine politics?

And prior to this post, I’m carrying on about housing as a human right and subprime vs. predatory lending.  Hope you all had a terrific long weekend!!

I’m chest deep in texts as I prepare for my general exams (3 weeks and 6 days and counting!!), hence the relative blog silence. Just now I finished reading the chapter “Los Angeles as Postmodern Urbanism” in From Chicago to L.A.: Making Sense of Urban Theory.* But perhaps more interesting to you, Redstar readers, is my own urban experience, observed with typical Redstar intensity as I extricate myself from my books at various intervals.

We begin yesterday morning, when I woke up to NPR telling me that the MBTA was about to undergo a major budget crunch, because its fixed rate on electricity costs was about to expire. Forgive me if I suggest they might have been prepared for this, and point them to the recently increased fares as a partial solution to their financial woes. It then took 45 minutes to travel the ~3 miles from my apartment to Kenmore Square, where my train abruptly terminated, due to a “medical emergency,” and I was reminded - again - of the unique decline in ridership the T is experiencing. Last night, after belatedly facing the truth that I’d never make it to my N.I.A. class after giving myself only 30 minutes on the T to travel the 5-6 miles between Cambridge and Newton, I disembarked in Cleveland Circle to see that the other refurbished storefront opening beside the forthcoming Citibank is a chain burrito place. Noting that it’s several facades down from Boloco, another burrito shop, I sent the M.A.S. a text noting that burritos (broadly defined) are Boston’s new pizza (we have two of those shops in Cleveland Circle already). Sigh. I had such high hopes for the ‘hood (I am pleased to see that Lint sells Paper, Denim & Cloth jeans, which Louis Boston told me two years ago were totally passe but I still love).

Fast forward to this morning (since my evening at home consisted of getting aggravated that my Comcast internet connection is still not working after Sunday morning’s power outage), where NPR now tells me that MIT is suing Frank Gehry for a faulty design of our egomaniacal Stata Center. Welcome to Cognoscente Celebrity Death Match. The wine and cheese is to your left.

After a morning N.I.A. class in Newton Center in which the group of us 8 or so white women put our jewelry in the middle of a circle in order to pay tribute to it (as symbolic of ourselves, according the well-meaning instructor), I headed off to vote. Having paid little attention to the candidates for the at-large City Council seats (Bad Planner!! Bad Activist!!), I voted quickly for the two non-white-Irish-male incumbents and then tried to recall any distinguishing information about the remaining Flaherty, White, Connolly, etc. choices before me. I did my best, then headed off to school.

Later this afternoon I had lunch with another grad student and friend at a new Sebastian’s in Kendall Square, where we agreed the place was NY-ish in its varied and pricey health-conscious quick fare, but absolutely Boston in its enormous scale (easily two stores deep). Shortly after I introduced this friend, originally from the Midwest, to the term “Masshole,” which I used to describe myself - as I backed up out of a parking lot onto Mass Ave across on-coming traffic and into flowing traffic through a green light - and the other drivers who didn’t stop but just went around me as if they’re used to this kind of bullsh*t shenanigan (they are). When I came out of the library several hours later to move my car from its 2 hour spot into the now available parking lot, I passed a homeless man with “Yankees Suck” licenses plates on two of his shopping carts. And I thought to myself, this is my urbanism.

*For those of you who care, the “Chicago School” has been the dominant theory of cities and urbanism in urban sociology (my field) through the 20th century. It’s modernist idea of the city as an organic, unified whole around which regions and through which individual relationships are ecologically (vs. economically) organized (the latter especially along the black-white “color line”) has been contested - most recently - by the postmodern L.A. School, which proposes that cities and urban form are shaped and linked by a global economic restructuring that emphasizes flexible production, deep welfare state retrenchment, and the subsequent, oft-violent polarization of a homogenized capitalist elite living in technologically-linked-but-geographically-dispersed-privatized worlds atop a multi-cultural, insecure proletariat, with both groups relatively placated by the media-disseminated mythology that this hyper-privatized, hyper-consumer, hyper-polarized world is normative and desirable. (As you can probably tell, I’m still piecing together a working definition of the L.A. school, which is sort of its point.)

Clearly Lucchino didn’t expect to win in four.  (Was he pulled into Game 4 unexpectedly during a quick run to Home Depot?  And what, no one had an extra sport coat lying around?  )

2007 World Champion Red Sox!!!!!  “Surreal,” says Papelbon, “it’s just beginning to hit me,” says Lucchino (yeah, no kidding), Tek chokes up.  Mike Lowell is the cutest ever (we must keep him!).  Everyone had their little moments of zen that they chuckled over after (tonight’s pleasantly surprised star: Kielty….yeah, that was a pretty bitchin’ homerun, he practically giggles into the mike). And of course, they couldn’t do it without the fans, they tell us.  Go Red Sox Nation!!!

It feels WEIRD; the miraculous, earth shattering events of ‘04 left me little prepared for the strong, righteous, kick ass team we watched this season more or less sail to this victory.  No doubt we had the expected highs and lows (my buddy Jake texted me as soon as they won, “did you ever doubt!” to which I replied, “of course! I’m a Sox fan!), but I feel differently stupified that we won again, so soon.  We’re f***ing good, not just beating the odds in a once in a lifetime moment.  Tito and the Nation might ask Belichick for some pointers on smoothly steamrolling the competition year after year, ignoring anything involving hitting the “record” button at any point, of course.  Who knows, perhaps we could do this again next year…

(Or did I just jinx us for eternity?  You know where to find me!)

As we seek cosmic meaning behind tonight’s win (anyone else get a kick out of the astrologers who give Youk detailed descriptions of the planets over at his blog?), Jake states for the record that he got married in ‘04, and had a baby in ‘07.  He and his wife have a long road in front of them if they plan to repeat the latter milestone annually to keep us awash in bling for the foreseeable future.

For me, this one’s for the M.A.S., the transplant who keeps marveling about how we were at Spring Break in March and Fenway in April and August and with Remy through the spring and summer on the radio and parked in front of our respective new cable boxes this fall.  There was even the baseball birthday, complete with the Sox cake, personalized baseball bat and rugby jersey for a fan who looks 30something but could unstandably be mistaken for 11 based on his loot. 

When we won in ‘04, one of the first things my dad said to me was that now both he and his dad had a WS victory in their lifetimes.  Now the M.A.S. has one too.  (Though I have two, which works, since I love winning.  Too bad I didn’t go to Jordan’s last spring!!)

Congrats! Mazel Tov! Hongera!* to the 2007 World Champion Red Sox!!

*Swahili for congrats.

In honor of the Sox in the World Series, sent to me by my OFD* stepmom!!  Note my personal additions to this handy guide in italics.

Welcome to Bawstin!

For those of you who have never been to “Bawstin”, this is a good guide. I hope you will consider coming to “Beantown” in the near future.

Information on Boston and the surrounding area:

• There’s no school on School Street, no court on Court Street, no dock on Dock Square, no water on Water Street.
• Back Bay streets are in alphabetical “oddah”: Arlington, Berkeley, Clarendon, Dartmouth, Exeter, Fairfield, Gloucester, Hereford, no I/J/K/L, Mass Ave.
• So are South Boston streets: A, B, C, D, etc.
• If the streets are named after trees (e.g. Walnut, Chestnut, Cedar), you’re on Beacon Hill.
• If they’re named after poets, you’re in Wellesley.

Massachusetts Ave is Mass Ave; Commonwealth Ave is Comm Ave; South Boston is Southie. The South End is the South End.  East Boston is Eastie. The North End is east of the former West End. The West End and Scollay Square are no more; a guy named Rappaport got rid of them one night. Roxbury is The Burry, Jamaica Plain is J.P.

How to say these Massachusetts city names correctly:
**Say it wrong, be shunned**

(more…)

[UPDATE, 4:11 pm: Just on the phone with customer service rep rolling over my IRA funds.  He noticed my Boston residency and we chatted about how fired up people up here are.  Turns out he’s originally from Quincy; I’m from Braintree, look at that.  Go Sox!!]

I’m already way behind in the on-line whoopin’ and hollerin’ over last night’s pennant win.  The Red Sox are going to the World Series!!!  In my house, this one’s for the M.A.S., a transplant to MA who arrived without a real team loyalty, ever since his childhood Orioles abandoned him after a manager whose name escapes me took over.  Already partial to the Sox by virtue of being a Yankees hater, and a true baseball fan the likes of which my family has not seen since my dad, the M.A.S. has found a kindred spirit in the beer-drinking, baseball-obsessed Red Sox Nation, not to mention an adopted extended family prepared to shower him with paraphrenalia (what 37 year old receives a mini Sox bat with his name on it for his birthday??) in the hopes it will strengthen our attachment to the city and stop us from moving away anytime soon. 

Needless to say, we were up as late as the rest of the region, drinking it in and waiting for the Papelbon post-game victory dance.  And though we agree that Butch Stearns is a clown, I have to admit I loved his “he’s a little whacko isn’t he?” comment about Papelbon.  There’s just so much Fox/MLB hatin’ to do, it’s hard to dish it all out in the midst of all the celebrating. One of my other favorite asides was probably a McCarver malaprop, when he said there were 2 nations watching last night’s game: Red Sox Nation, and Japan.  Given I’m a politics buff, I’m looking forward to hearing Joe and Tim expand on the geopolitical significance of the Sox advancing to the World Series.  

Certainly, the Nation metaphor (it is a metaphor, isn’t it, Josh?) is getting a little out of hand.  Check this comment out in BU’s student paper, The Daily Free Press, re: the police presence around Fenway last night (which may be construed as another affront in the escalating war b/w BU students and local police):

“We figured we’d step out for a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” said Lasell University sophomore Seth Mantei. “There’s no reason to be kicking people out of the celebration. It’s Red Sox Nation, and Fenway is the capital. . . . They wouldn’t close down D.C. during the presidential election.”

Yeah, that sounds about right…except for the part where this kid doesn’t expect to see this kind of performance from the Sox again in his lifetime.

Go Sox!!!