Jenn Martinelli Blogging in Boston

Two lovely scenarios that I just witnessed taking Billy the dog outside:

Scene 1

There was a girl standing outside talking to a friend when her rather excitable dog (maybe a puppy) pulled its leash out of her hand and took off. She was chasing it around in the road amidst kind of a lot of traffic in a panic while the dog of course merrily ignored her, loping around the general area.

Some fucking douchebags on the stoop next to mine called out "Get hit!"

When a guy who I think was the person the girl was talking to before the dog escaped said, "Shut the fuck up!" on his way past to go help her grab the dog, the original douchebag continued, "I'm just saying, that dog is all 'that bitch keeps me locked up! I want to run around!'"

What the fucking fuck? Seriously. That guy needs to get whacked in the face with a fucking baseball bat.

Fortunately, she quickly caught the dog and all was well. But she then sat on the curb looking panicked and distraught petting the dog. Obviously upset. Because, you know, she's probably a human being unlike the piece of fucking garbage yelling from the front step where it's apparently AWESOME to hang out at 12:30 in the morning.

Scene 2

On my way back across the street with Billy, I walked past a guy sitting on the curb at the gas station screaming into a cell phone, "Oh there's gonna be trouble if you don't leave right now. If you don't leave I'm calling the cops. Are you leaving? You're not leaving? You better come pick me up right now. You're not picking me up? Oh, you're not picking me up? You're seriously not picking me up? YOU'RE SERIOUSLY NOT PICKING ME UP? YOU BETTER PICK ME UP RIGHT NOW!"

Um.

Awesome.

Lately you are all pissing me off. Yesterday many cars blew through a pedestrian crosswalk on E. Berkeley Street while I stood in the middle of it waiting to dodge them like fucking Frogger. Hey, assholes, it's a state law that you have to stop at crosswalks. I feel like carrying a camera with me and taking shots of people's license plates and calling the cops on every single one of you.

Oh, I'll start doing it, bitches. Just try me.

(For the record, I'm talking about a crosswalk with no light at it so yes, the rule with those is the pedestrian can cross and cars have to stop - there's no walk signal.)

Then, at the corner of Columbus and Dartmouth just as I got a walk signal, a car illegally turned right on red (there is a clearly posted "no right turns on red" sign at that intersection). If the guy next to me and I hadn't been paying attention we would have stepped out and gotten hit by said car. The guy next to me looked at me, gestured at the "no right turns" sign and said, "What does that sign say?" in an annoyed/bemused manner. I said, "I know, people are such assholes at this intersection. It makes me crazy."

So, I have this to say to all of you: FUCK OFF. Seriously.

By the way, we recently tried a new little shop not far from us called Sweet. robreed wrote a much better review than I could, and also put up a nice photo gallery of our first expedition there, so check it out.

Here's the info on the place:

Monday through Thursday 11:00 am until 7:00 pm
Friday and Saturday 11:00 am until 9:00 pm
Sunday 12 noon until 5:00pm

617-247-CAKE (2253)
orders@sweetcupcakes.com

Although there were definitely some pigs next door to us on Beacon Hill, the trend continues in our new neighborhood.

We have a compactor at the back of our building which is awesome because you can throw out your garbage any time you want, not only certain days of the week, plus it's kind of excellent to activate it and watch it smash all the garbage.

Anyway, but almost every time I go down there, someone has thrown in too much garbage without running the compactor or lazily put their garbage somewhere in the general vicinity but definitely not inside the compactor, or something similar. It's really ridiculous.

And here's a new one. It's one thing, I suppose, if it's very full. But just now I took garbage down there and it barely had anything in it and everything was all crushed down to the bottom - plenty of room. But there was trash strewn all over the ground and other parts of the compacter, not in it. The reason?

From what I can tell, everyone was too lazy to lift the rubber doors to place their garbage inside. I mean really, how lazy are people? That's kind of like being too lazy to open your own door so you can leave your apartment. WTF?

This morning I was awakened partly by a weird chemical-y burn-y smell in the apartment. It kind of freaked me out, I was half out of it wondering if something was on fire or melting on a radiator or something but couldn't find anything to attribute it to in the apartment.

Then, I took Billy out and discovered the smell is much worse outside the building. However, do you think I could locate the source of said smell? No.

It kind of smells like it might be a road being paved somewhere but I saw nothing all up and down Boylston or within my view of Park Drive so whatever it is, it smells so bad that without even being in my sight it's smelling up the whole neighborhood and the inside of my apartment.

Awesome.

Thanks, Boston!

Did anyone know about the South Bay Tower?

What about the South Station Tower? A giant tower being built on top of South Station? It looks really stupid in the rendering.

And of course they're building a residential tower right near downtown crossing at 45 Province, redeveloping the Filene's site including a big tower, and hey, what about Columbus Center, right?

I think maybe the city needs to calm down a little. Can it really support all these new buildings?

Hey, I'm not anti-modernism or opposed to change in general; it can be exciting. I'm just a little concerned that this is too much too quickly. I hope not.

Apparently there are plans to build yet another luxury condo building in Copley. Hey, I don't know, maybe the building will be cool. But I really am just astounded that there's a market for so many luxury residential buildings in this city. I assume developers think so anyway, if they keep building them. But I personally would say about 1% of the people I know could afford these. So where are the rest of us schmucks supposed to live?

Here is a graphic if you're interested.

Also on that note, I don't know what Transnational Place is. Does anybody? (Note: Nevermind, I looked it up. Wikipedia, I heart you. Now I remember what it is. I think I'm kind of upset about this. Isn't it going to ruin sweet little Winthrop Square?)

I just think maybe it makes more sense and is better for the majority of Bostonians if some smart developer builds some more affordable places. Hey, they can be really cool and designed really well, they just don't have to be luxury high-rise towers with 24-hour concierge service, etc., etc.

Isn't there anyone who wants to build a condo I can afford someday? Because I'm never going to be buying one of these.

Sigh.

Ha ha, serves you right. Sorry, but it's true. You don't own the spot for the rest of time because you shoveled your car out once.

I think this is hilarious.

Hey, scammer, whoever you are and whatever your objective is - you might want to try to be a TINY BIT more realistic.

No one in their right mind is going to seriously believe there's a 2 bedroom apartment in Boston for $800. If you said $1600 you might get some takers.

Give me a break.

So looking for an apartment sucks, as has been previously mentioned.

The most frustrating thing of all is how few places take pets; or specifically, our pets. Of the places that take pets, which are few and far between, many of those only take "small" pets, usually defined as pets under 30 lbs. Billy is more than twice that size.

I don't understand the size limit. If you just don't want dogs, then say no dogs. I don't know what they think is better about a 25 pound dog than a 75 pound dog. In my experience tiny dogs are more likely than large dogs to do all of the following:

1. bark a lot
2. have accidents
3. snap at people

Next, I really don't understand why so few landlords take pets. I mean, if you have a really irresponsible pet owner yeah, they might let their pets trash the place. But if they didn't have pets, guess what? They'd trash it themselves. Seems to me what makes more sense is having a security deposit for everyone and/or asking for references. If I have 4 landlords who all say I lived in their buildings with pets and left the apartment in excellent condition, what more do you want?

And as someone I talked to about this recently was saying, I think in a lot of cases people our age (30's) with pets are likely to be more responsible than people without pets. We have to come home and take care of them. We're not very likely to have people coming and going at all hours or have a ton of people over. We are used to the responsibility of pet ownership.

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