The City Record and Boston News-Letter

Don't Call It A Doughnut

Fried cakes somewhere in the Adirondacks, 10 August 2007. Click to enlarge.

We here at the City Record and Boston News-Letter don't often blog about what we're up to personally because we find the lives of others much more interesting.  As an adviser once advised us, "History is nothing but reading other people's mail."  That being said, the Bush administration must  be writing a lot of history (or "spying on American citizens in violation of the Bill of the Rights and our Constitutional liberties" as I like to think of it) but I digress.

Pictured above is the perhaps the most perfect food on earth, a fried cake from the bakery in Inlet, New York.  Don't confuse the fried cake with a doughnut--one need only look at the small hole to realize that this treat provides the ultimate in crunchy surface area encasing a tender sweet middle.  Although they also are available glazed and with chocolate frosting, the plain and sugared versions are the classics, made and served as we imagine doughnuts must have been in a time before mass production ruined something that needs to be fresh and warm.  We eat them every morning here with our coffee and it is a good thing they aren't available in Boston, because we would surely eat a dozen at a time. 

Moleskine City Notebooks: A Review

I've long been a fan of Moleskine notebooks, which I use in a variety of sizes for various purposes, so when I saw a display of their new City Notebooks at Brookline Booksmith, I was intrigued.  I emailed Moleskine to inquire when the Boston notebook would be available and they very kindly sent me a London notebook and a Boston notebook, along with information about their new website, Moleskine City.

So what is a City Notebook?

The concept is that users will create their own guidebook to a city.  Moleskine initially released twelve European cities, with several North American cities, including Boston, having recently become available.  Far Eastern cities are due in 2008.

How does it work?

Those familiar with Moleskine notebooks will find the usual prefatory pages for information about who to return the book to if found and the "Personal Data" section, as well pages for Measures and Conversions and International Sizes.  The City Notebook maps are provided by Lonely Planet, whose London Condensed guidebook is my favorite easily portable guide to London.  I would have liked to have seen slightly more extensive maps in the London and Boston books--Hampstead Heath and Canary Wharf don't make it onto the London maps, for example, but the parts of London which would be most interesting to a visitor are covered and the map scale changes for greater detail in central London although certain favorite places, like Neals Yard Dairy on Shorts Gardens won't be found because the street isn't labelled.  Boston proper has good coverage, but one doesn't get Jamaica Plain or Dorchester, although Brookline Village and Harvard Square are included.  Subway maps are also included for both Boston and London.

Perhaps the most inspired idea in the notebook is the inclusion of reusable plastic sheets which can be layed over the maps. I'm a habitual notetaker on maps, marking off where I've been or wish to go, so the sheets help keep the maps from becoming unusable.  If one uses a slightly waxy pencil, the marks one makes on the plastic sheets can be wiped off or a regular pencil with a good eraser works as well.

The notebooks also have blank pages, followed by a series of tabbed sections, each with a theme, including "Food" "Drinks" "Sleep" "People" Places" "Books" and blank tabs which can be customized using the included stickers including"To Avoid" and "Musts" or you can write your own.  I've started keeping information about my favorite restaurants, books about Boston I want to read, historic sites to visit, and a variety of other information in the Boston book.  At the back of the notebook is an accordion pocket for storing receipts, ticket stubs, and other ephemera.

The City Notebooks attempt and succeed in bringing some of the aspects of blogging and Web 2.0 into a carry along book. The DIY aspect will work well, especially for those who do a lot of initial research before embarking on a vacation.  For those who live in cities which have their own notebooks, I see it as a useful tool, a vade mecum if you will.  I can also see loaning a City Notebook to a friend for them to take along on a trip and having them add to it as well.

One wonders if a cottage industry will develop to create content for City Notebooks. One feature I would like to see added to Moleskine City:  the ability to print out blog posts and other information in a City Notebook format.  For instance, if I were to create a tour of architectural sites in Boston with appropriate references to points on the City Notebook maps, it would be great to have other users be able to download and print that information in a format conducive to being stored in the City Notebook.  Other have already begun to hack their notebooks, to customize them further for certain purposes.  I give points to Moleskine for understanding that Moleskine users are a community and the Moleskine City promises to be a useful adjunct to the City Notebooks.

If you want to know more about all things Moleskine, visit Moleskinerie a blog devoted to the cult of Moleskine.

Cities available include:  Boston, Paris, London, and San Francisco.

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Visit Boston's Victorian treasure, the Gibson House Museum.  Stop by and say hello to me!

The Original Mount Whoredom

J. L Bell investigates the origins of Mount Whoredom in Woolwich, just outside of London.  Woolwich was the site of a royal shipyard and, by happy coincidence, appears in yesterday's entry of the online diary of Samuel Pepys.   For those who haven't seen it, the online Pepys diary is a source of constant  fascination for those interested in 17th Century London.

The history of Boston's Mount Whoredom remains the single most popular post in the history of the City Record and Boston News-Letter with something like 12,000 visitors the day it appeared.

Out of Town News Roundup

Philadelphia Inquirer architectural critic Inga Saffron reviews a related series of exhibitions on New York City planner Robert Moses.  Saffron casts a wary eye on the exhibition creators' attempts to rehabilitate Moses's reputation, writing "like all apologists, they nick away at the margins without addressing the core issues".  I'm reminded of a museum exhibition (The Last Tenement: Confronting Community and Urban Renewal in Boston's West End) I worked on years ago at the Bostonian Society which addressed the destruction of Boston's West End in what we thought was a balanced way.  While preparing for the exhibition I was explaining my take on what had happened to a former West Ender who politely listened and then asked, "Whose side are you on anyway?"  And that pretty much sums up urban renewal--it is almost impossible to be neutral.  if you're interested in learning more about Robert Moses, I highly recommend Robert Caro's biography of Moses, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York.

Still waiting for the link between North Station and South Station in Boston?  Take heart, because the MTA in New York City has signed a contract to begin digging the tunnels for a Second Avenue subway line.  Why should this make Bostonians optimistic?  Because the Second Avenue subway line was first planned in the 1920s and took delivery of ten prototype subway cars for the line in 1949.

Building a Subway--London Style

London has the world's oldest subway system, Boston has the oldest subway in the United States.  London has The Jam's "Down in the Tube Station At Midnight", Boston has "Charlie on the MTA". (As an aside, two-thirds of The Jam are reuniting for a tour.  Neither of the two is Paul Weller, so what's the point?)  London has lots of handicapped inaccessible stations, so does Boston.  What Boston doesn't have is a new game devoted to rebuilding the T system.  On the Underground "is a board game about building the London Underground - the way it should have been built."  We need something like this for Boston--perhaps Charlie on the MBTA will take a crack at it? All we have is 1973's The Boston Game.  Does anyone have this at home?  Perhaps they could dig it out for Exploit Boston's game night?

London's Underground also has a strong design sensibility, thanks to the work of Frank Pick, who directed the construction of the London Underground for many years, the immediately recognizable typography of Edward Johnston, and the cartography of  Harry  Beck, who created the landmark London Underground map in the 1930s.  It is hard to imagine anyone making a rug based on the Boston subway map as has been done with the London Underground map.  At one time, Boston's subway stations looked more like those of London's Underground.  Recent renovations at Arlington Street Station have uncovered mosaic tile work from the 1920s and the walls of the red line platforms at South Station have exposed mosaic, but the last major overhaul of overall T design was done in the 1960s by Cambridge Seven, which was also responsible for the strongest current identifier for the MBTA: the round signs with a black block letter "T" to identify stations.  One wonders how long we will have to wait until an integrated wayfinding system will be put in place in Boston, one which takes into account the street sign system, public transportation signage, historic landmark navigation, and the myriad other ways people locate themselves and find their way through Boston.

Would you like your own London Tube map?  The official Transport for London site has them.

This post was inspired by: LONDON /moleskinecity.com » Re-building the Tube.

Disappearing London

Going to London soon?  Check out the Disappearing London section of London Footprints, where you'll find some interesting things to look for on the London landscape.  The official Disappearing London site is fun as well.  Be sure to watch the clip of Suggs (the lead singer of Madness) and Stephen Fry taking snuff at the tobacconist.  I didn't realize you could even buy the stuff anymore.

What would you nominate for Disappearing Boston?

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Washington D.C.'s Art on Call

Renovated Fire Call Box in Washington D.C., December 2006. (Photo copyright The City Record and Boston News-Letter, all rights reserved).

I was in Washington D.C. Monday for a friend's retirement party at the Library of Congress.  I hadn't been in D.C. for some time and was surprised at the amount of development going on within the city and how clean D.C. looked.  Near my hotel I came across this unused fire call box which has been repurposed as a historical marker.  The front shows a building which doesn't have any relation to the neighborhood (at least I don't think it does) while the photo below shows the text on the reverse (click to enlarge).  Should Boston ever do away with its fire call boxes, this is an excellent way of reusing them for a civic purpose.

You can visit an artist's website for photos of call boxes from the Mt. Pleasant neighborhood or read about the program at the Cultural Tourism D.C. website.

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Stories of Interest (To Me At Least)

An article from the Globe's City Weekly section about station improvments along the Fairmount Line.  This is a project I have supported since moving to the Uphams Corner area in the mid 1990s.

The New York Press reports on the scourge of temporary advertising on construction scaffolding in New York City.

A review of the new Insitute of Contemporary Art building from the New York Times.

A Boston Globe article about the celebration of the 200th anniversary of the African Meeting House, which I attended last week.

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The Amazing Quest of Ernest Bliss (1936)

               

I've written previously about how much I like signs as part of the cityscape and the opening of this Cary Grant film from 1936 has great shots of what I believe to be Piccadilly Circus as well as other on location shots of London throughout the movie.  With the recent call to take down the Citgo sign, I'd like people to think about how much signs contribute to cities.  Feel free to leave a comment about your favorite signs from around the world and enjoy the movie!

[Technical note: I was also testing out the Google Video feature which allows a user to directly post a video to their blog.  It worked as planned.]

Walking Tours of Boston's History and Architecture

The Editor of the City Record and Boston News-Letter on a West End Tenement Fire Escape, c. 1990

Now that the weather is apparently improving (as if it could get worse) the time is right to announce that I will begin leading Boston history and architecture walking tours soon.  I've given hundreds of walking tours of Boston, and the walking tours will include Beacon Hill, the Back Bay, South End, North End, Dorchester--almost any neighborhood in Boston.  I also do a walking tour for children through Beacon Hill based on the classic children's book Make Way for Ducklings--I have led hundreds of school children on this tour during the spring.  Tours are generally 1.5 hours long, and the cost is $10 in advance for adults, $12 day of the tour.  Children aged 6 and up are $5, under 6 are free.  I am still working out a schedule, but in general tours will be an evening or two during the week, and on Saturdays.  With sufficient notice and numbers other times can be worked out and custom tours are also possible.  If you are interested, please email me.  More information and a walking tour website will be coming soon.  We won't be going up on any fire escapes (the building I'm in front of has since been torn down) but you will get my knowledge of Boston's architecture and history for the price of movie and some good exercise to boot.  I hope you will join me.