Tuesdays with Tom: A True Bostonian
There aren’t many scenarios when you’d want to wake up from a peaceful slumber at 2 a.m. Not that being awake at 2 a.m. on a Saturday morning is out of bounds for me, but it’s different when you’re punching in the “2:00 AM” into an iPhone alarm and setting it intentionally. In this particular instance, I was more than happy to do it. Why? Because I need to ship up to Boston on this upcoming Saturday morning. Yep, you’re getting another one of these posts! I am a morning person to begin with so adding the excitement of a trip to this gave me a burst of energy and freshness you rarely see at this hour of the day. With two of my friends in tow and another one meeting us at the gate, we made our way to the airport for our 5:20 am flight. It’s the beginning of a long day and an eventful weekend in Beantown.
This was my first trip to Boston. It’s always been a city I’ve wanted to spend time in. With the exception of maybe Washington, D.C., no American city is more vital in the story of America’s roots than Boston. The city’s history is directly intertwined with the history of the United States. We fully plan to immerse ourselves in a walk through the past while taking in the current pleasures of the city too. If you think I meant that metaphorically, think again. After we landed in Boston the first thing we did was embark onto Freedom Trail. This dummy initially thought Freedom Trail was an offshoot trail full of historic landmarks in the woods. As it turns out, Freedom Trail is all over the heart of downtown Boston. Historic landmarks and seminal moments in American history are seamlessly woven into the fabric of modern day Boston. It’s very Wizard of Oz-like. You follow the small red-brick trail road throughout town and discover something like the Paul Revere Memorial. It’s a graveyard with tributes Benjamin Franklin’s parents, John Hancock and Sam Adams. Dozens and dozens of people who were laid to rest well over 200 years ago. Keep walking along and you might pass a Dunkin’ Donuts next to King’s Chapel, a church established in 1686. That’s where I learned that in the 1700s, church pews were bought like you’d buy season tickets for a sports team and they were decked out to withstand frigid winter temperatures. No AC or heating in the time of the Colonies. George Washington’s pew was off to the side to avoid being disturbed by the public. If you’re remotely a fan of U.S. history, you’ll find walking through the city to be a pretty great tour.
Of course not everything in Boston is something out of a school textbook. Along this same trail we wound up at Mike’s Pastry. It was recommended no less than three different times by a variety of people we asked prior to the trip. One thing I should mention is that never once did I feel like I knew where I was the entire weekend. Boston’s narrow, windy roads remind me of my hometown and don’t follow any kind of linear structure. Luckily, being on vacation is a perfectly acceptable time to feel lost. And being lost in a group of friends makes the time pass by with ease. Back to this pastry place, we have been told this is the best place to get cannolis in town. Cannoli is one of my all-time favorite words. Some would argue that it’s in poor taste to have dessert at 11:30 am before having lunch. I’d argue those people are idiots and I didn’t think twice about eating my Oreo Cannoli in about 3 minutes. It was hands down the best cannoli I’ve ever had. Cannoli, cannoli, cannoli. I can’t say it enough! Boston’s Italian Village is a vintage non-US related time warp. There’s something very European about the layout of that neighborhood and many other areas of the city. Perhaps that is influenced by the city originating before the country existed. We made a quick stop at the Paul Revere statue and I have to give Ryan Hood credit for calling Revere “the best jockey in U.S. history”. I don’t know about best, but he’s certainly the most important one. That one will be hard to top. A few more history jokes later and we decided it was time for a proper lunch. Ernesto’s Pizza might not be the fanciest place, but for $5 you can get two excellent slices of pizza. No disrespect to Chicago pizza of course.
Along Freedom trail, you can find the oldest rooftop bar in the country called Bell In Hand Tavern. This is a popular area with really old bars that are filled with young people every weekend. We spent some time there before moving to the site of the Boston Massacre and later the Boston Tea Party exhibit. The Boston Tea Party happened on December 16, 1773. That’s also the same date as my mom’s birthday. You learn something every day! Happy future birthday Mom. After a quick break at the hotel, we took a very entertaining Uber ride to the most famous college in the country. Surprisingly, I was unqualified to be a Harvard student as a youth, but I am qualified to walk around their Cambridge campus. Too bad you need a Harvard ID to go into any of the buildings. Our group also struggled to name more than three or four of Harvard’s most famous alums without using Google. One of us even said Elle Woods, the character from Legally Blonde. I might not be smart enough to attend the school, but I am plenty smart enough to pretend like I am for a few hours. We closed the evening with a great meal in the Faneuil Hall area and cracked a few Boston-related jokes to local patrons all over the Seaport area. I might have been awake for a full 24 hours, but it was a wicked good way to start the weekend.
One of the primary inspirations for this trip was taking in a game at Fenway Park. Since history is the primary theme of the trip, where better to continue this then at the oldest ballpark in the MLB. There was a lot of hype for this place and I have to say, it lived up to all of it. We couldn’t have had better weather for a day of baseball. It didn’t hurt that the Red Sox are playing incredibly well this year and the crowd, unlike say a Wrigley Field (yeah I said it), is into the game the entire time without fail. Shout-out to Red Sox center fielder Jackie Bradley, Jr. for making one of the best web gems I have ever seen in person. An even bigger shoutout to the audio company JBL for giving me a bluetooth speaker for doing nothing but dancing like an idiot for 5 seconds on camera. It was an incredible brand experience!! Back to the game, we did the traditional singing of Sweet Caroline in the 8th inning stretch and the Saux won 4-0. We wanted to check out a view from the top of the Green Monster and weren’t sure if they’d let us up there post game. Turns out they will let you go up there to get a spine-chillingly cool view of the park. Millions of digital photos have been taken from this perch and I joined the fray in that regard. It’s also tradition to head out to a local watering hole to hear live music after Red Sox wins and the on-the-nose named Baseball Tavern did the trick for us there. They have a rooftop view of the park and the city at large. You couldn’t script a better day for baseball. I hope every sports fan gets to have this experience someday.
We’re not quite done with old things. Union Oyster House came highly recommended and it’s one of the oldest restaurants in the country. Their wall of fame is so long, Mark Wahlberg made the list four different times. I’d like to think that our names will be added to the wall before we all croak. I’ll never forget the shrimp and scallops I had over a bed of white rice and covered in sundried tomato sauce. Every bite was “close your eyes and make audible noise” good. Apparently JFK used to come to this place all the time to the point where they named a booth after him. We sat in a different guy’s booth and we had never heard of him. More reason to switch the names for our own. That was one of the best seafood dishes I’ve ever had.
It was at this point we decided to try a dive karaoke place called Hong Kong Boston. If you’re confused by that name, you should be. You’d be even more confused to learn that this place is full of the most eclectic group of people I’ve ever encountered. Two of those people were a lovely couple celebrating their engagement from a week ago. They are Penn State alums from Pittsburgh and therefore are Steelers fans, which is the greatest thing I have heard all weekend. I’ve been keeping my mouth shut being surrounded by citizens in Tom Brady jerseys. But after learning this, I couldn’t hold it in anymore. The next song I did I interjected a trolling anti-Patriots rant calling the Steelers “the greatest team in NFL history” and that Brady was overrated. Let’s just say the crowd quickly got off my bandwagon after that one. Ryan and Alyssa are my favorite couple from Pittsburgh. Other great Hong Kong patrons include Big John, a straight out of a sitcom middle aged man who sang a country cover of “Baby Got Back” and then later followed it up with Fetty Wap's “Trap Queen” flawlessly. We also met two men from Trinidad and Tobago who we could barely understand, but acted like we had known them for years. Those two have lived in Boston for 30 years. Pretty fitting that we’d met Americans like them in the place that birthed the Revolution of our country. For all the tropes I’ve heard about Boston, the people here have been exceedingly nice, refreshingly blunt and funnier than most people you meet as strangers in a new city. These are my kind of people. I’ll sing songs and eat chicken skewers with these people any day. I hope to do so again soon. Just make sure to bring some Steelers fans again so I can feel as alive as I did in that rant.
Tom’s Thoughts of the Week
Top 5 movies set in Boston (in order): The Departed, Good Will Hunting, The Town, Mystic River, The Fighter. That’s a murderer’s row of great movies.
Fun fact that I learned this week. The original name for Google was Backrub.com. The company decided that it wasn’t a good idea to bank on the entire planet searching “www.backrub.com” whenever they had a question. Or say things like "Oh just give it a Backrub". I’d say that was a good call.
If you are reading this on typical send day, that means it’s July 31st. That is my cousin Kimberly’s birthday so happy bday to her. She used to call it the “Dirty 1st” as a child and I think of that every single time this day comes up. I officially move to change the name of all 31st dates to the Dirty First.
The oft-discussed Millennial generation is moving away from beer, according to this story from Business Insider. Alcohol monolith AB-InBev reported that their top two brands, Budweiser and Bud Light, dropped 3.1% in revenue this last quarter. Additionally, since 2006 the beer market compared to wine and spirits has dropped 10%. I might not be contributing to this trend, but I am curious why this is happening. From my perspective, there’s been a big trend in Truly consumption this summer which would potentially cut into this. But I don’t think the executives of Bud Light need to be worried about losing any sleep just yet.
People always talk about “living your best life” either in passing, a social-media led photo or self-deprecating manner. But what if I told you that there’s a 7-year old kid who is living the best possible life of anyone in the United States. “Ryan Toysreview” is a wildly popular YouTube channel starring this kid named Ryan (his parents keep his full identity very private). All this boy does is play with toys on camera, to the tune of 1 billion monthly channel views, and he raked in $11 million last year! He will have generational wealth before he gets a driver’s license. Now Walmart is creating a line of toys under his name. What a life.
The never-ending run of bad press continues to Movie Pass. The company is now under fire for blocking the latest Mission: Impossible movie from users this weekend. They will continue to block opening weeking major releases as well. This is a bad look. The peak pricing thing was enough of a major shift to annoy users, but intentionally blocking popular films to save money isn’t going to build them any goodwill. We might be in the 11th hour with this wild company.