A few recent photographs

Entertaining myself at the farm while Laura rides her horse.

The First Loaf

After we'd squared away the kitchen, it was time to see how it baked. I made two loaves of Heart of Wheat, and they turned out pretty well. The oven in our Providence apartment is the same model I'd been using in Boston. This is my current favorite bread. It's simple, forgiving, and delicious. It's made with white flour and added wheat germ, which gives it delicious flavor and texture. It's a relatively moist dough, resulting in small-to-medium crumb. I start with a sponge which ferments 4 hours on the counter or overnight in the fridge, then mix in the rest of the flour and yeast and all the salt. Knead, rise with three business-letter turns, shape, proof, slash and bake in a steamy oven.

Forays into local commerce

While Laura unpacks in a frenzy, I've been wandering around our new neighborhood. I cannot yet corroborate the assertion that the West Side is "the best side", but I have seen some promising things.

First, some downsides: On the streets around our apartment people are few, but dog shit is many. Granted it's been chilly, so I expect to see more folks around when the weather gets better, but man there's a lot of poo everywhere. As to be expected in a neighborhood covered in canine BM, there are also lots of dogs. Poorly-behaved dogs. I was walking up the street on Sunday when a dog in a fenced yard began barking hysterically at me. As I drew alongside the yard, a woman came around the corner with her border collie/husky mix, who immediately began barking and lunging at the dog in the yard, who followed suit. As I passed by, another woman walked around the adjacent corner with her Dalmatian, who proceeded to lunge and bark hysterically at the other dogs. Needless to say, this makes Laura and I feel much better about OUR lunge-and-bark dog. However, we clean up after her. Ahem.

On the other end of the spectrum, it took me less than two days to find the nearest awesome ethic food store. Friendship Market on Messer Street is the size of a quick-e-mart, but has a mind-boggling array of fresh and unusual produce (thai basil, persimmons, enoki mushrooms, zillions of chilis, fresh tamarind, many many unidentifiable things), frozen fish and fish products (salted/smoked/barbecued fish, humongous squid), sauces with no English on the labels, and--best of all--bags of fresh chow fun noodles at the register. Nothing like rubbery sheets of slightly sticky tapioca noodles... yum. Laura and I filled our arms with delicious things and made a yummy mass of stir-fried craziness. I can't wait to go there all the time.


Speaking of "I can't wait to go there all the time", allow me to introduce my new favorite coffee shop, White Electric Coffee. Best americano I've ever had. Good art. Free wi-fi. Um, yeah. But the joygasm of the day came when I stopped in at Paper & Provision Warehouse. It's a sublime combination of restaurant supply store (cheap durable & attractive pans, Wall o' Ladles) and industrial-grade Costco (50lb bags of donut mix, cases of canned San Marzanos, gallon jugs of bbq sauce). I found myself walking through aisles of quart-sized bottles of maple flavoring and frantically thought "what do we eat a ton of?" I bought a restaurant-sized tabletop box of plastic wrap, and a fifty-cent jigger.

Tomorrow: face down the haughty hipsters at my new local bike shop!

Big stuff

The last of the goods came off the truck at 2:30 yesterday afternoon. I have, for the past 26 hours, been a resident of Rhode Island. A Rhode Islander. And a, um, Providential. Providencer. Providenconian. Providenciac. Hmm... none of those really roll off the tongue. Google wasn't super helpful on that question. Anyone know? Please. Tell me what I am!*

On Saturday morning my father and I drove to Hyde Park, where a friendly-to-the-point-of-scarily-manic rental truck company employee furnished me with a twenty-six foot truck. That's a lot of truck. Luckily, I enjoy piloting such behemoths, and was even undeterred upon learning, shortly after driving away, that the brakes were a bit... fey. They were on their own schedule. Driving a truck that big is a perspective-altering experience. Not just because you're pretty high up, which is helpful for medium- and long-distance visibility but terrible for short-distance, but because you have to think about yourself in a completely different way. When driving a passenger car, it's easy to stop thinking about the dimensions of the car, but when you're swinging thirty feet of American beef around narrow residential streets, you find your self-awareness a bit more keyed up. In any event, I got the truck back to our Jamaica Plain apartment without incident while my father stopped and loaded up on donuts and coffee for the crew.

And what a crew they were! Many thanks again to all who did such great work. Our friends arrived in droves, early and often. They drank coffee, ate donuts, and hauled our crap out to the truck. It was a beautiful thing. After the truck was loaded, a few of them went home, but many brave souls came with us to Providence to help unload into our new apartment. This was particularly welcome, because our new place is on the third floor.

On my first trip up the stairs with a load of boxes I (and my knees) thought, "Oh lord, this is going to be terrible." But many hands make light work, and I was mindful to heed the words of a drummer/cheesemonger friend who, when asked to describe his astounding ability to eat massive quantities of food, said "You just keep the fork moving. Don't stop to think about what you're doing, just keep moving steadily." As it turns out, this advice also works well for moving into a third-floor walkup. Drag the futon up the front steps, plod down the back steps, haul a crate of LP's up the front, stagger down the back. Repeat.

At 2:30, we were done, and I took the truck, my mother, and a dear and helpful friend to return the truck at the nearby rental place on Broad Street. It was so close that we decided to just take the truck over and then walk back. The area we traversed was mostly empty lots and possibly-operational light industrial space. And chain link and broken glass. But then, we crossed a street, and suddenly the glass was gone and there stood a massive mill building that had recently been turned into unaffordable housing. It was jarring--don't we do transitional spaces here?

Back at the apartment, the crew sat around on boxes, drinking cervezas and waiting for Laura and her team to come back with pizza. They'd been gone so long we all started to wonder how lost they'd gotten--then the door opened and there appeared my wife behind the largest pizza box I have ever seen. It didn't fit through the door. That's worth repeating: the pizza was so large we had to turn it on its side to get it through the door. Twenty-eight inches of insanity. The girls made great topping choices: tomato and broccoli on one side and pineapple and hot peppers on the other. (Quick aside: after working at an artisan pizza place for a year, I came to believe that two toppings is optimal--granted a good margherita on its own can be sublime.) We set upon this pizza like a swarm of angry Lilliputians.

Among the great many joys of a 28-inch pizza is the wide variety of slice shapes. A grid cut resulted in many even square slices throughout the middle of the pie, but around the edges lay bizarre and delicious rectangles, inscrutable scalenes. I even caught a glimpse of the rare and delectable rhombus just as it was being devoured by a hungry laborer. Like birders of yore, we hunted these prized species, and killed them.

...and the first point goes to Providence.





*Of course, this is America, so I should probably have my possessions to tell me what I am. Lessee... turns out, I'm books, tools, and pans. And A/V equipment.

OMG packing blows

This blows.

Our dog Olive

I was walking the dog up Eliot Street earlier today when I passed a yard in which a middle-aged lady was standing with her little furry looks-like-an-ottoman dog. She looked up hopefully and asked, "Is your dog friendly?"
"No, she isn't," I said, adding, after seeing the lady's crestfallen look, "sorry."

Laura and I adopted Olive, our Lab/Pyrenees/Borzoi/Anatolian Shepherd/Etc mix, just over a year ago. One Sunday last January we were hanging out with Laura's sister and her husband. Us men were watching football while the ladies trawled petfinder.com. Occasionally one of them would turn the computer around to face her respective manfriend and say "Oooh, look at this one!" To which one of us would distractedly reply, "Oh yeah, nice." The following Saturday--six days later--the four of us found ourselves at a park-n-ride in New Hampshire with fifty other people waiting for the Puppy Bus.

The dogs the ladies had found on petfinder that day were being offered for adoption by an organization called Adopt-A-Lab. As we learned, Adopt-A-Lab is an interstate dog broker, connecting unwanted animals from America's fecund Heartland with (presumably barren) Northern Liberal Elite families. Olive came to us from a shelter in Cookeville, Tennessee. When I mentioned this to my father--a Nashville native--he made a face and said something like "Cookeville, that's real flavor country." Adopt-A-Lab's screening was rigorous. Want a dog? Got $400? Great, we'll put her on the Puppy Bus tomorrow.



The Puppy Bus turned out to be a modified livestock trailer pulled by a pickup containing three very large, very jovial, and very Southern men. They hopped out, the fifty or so of us waiting for our dogs hesitantly queued up at the trailer's side door, and puppies were shoved into trembling hands. Each person would approach the door, give the dog's name, and would without ceremony become the owner of a nervous, wriggly animal. Laura and I picked up Olive (nee Julie, nee Jewel, nee Cinderella), and the in-laws became the proud owners of Tonks (nee Bailey).



Olive is a wonderful dog... but. She's crazy, see? I mean, she loves us and all, and is able to eventually appreciate other people (given months of exposure), but she does not like strangers. In some circumstances she's great with other dogs, in some she will bring the whuppin'. She and I did doggy obedience class, we even had a consultation with a specialist (her assessment? "It's not that bad, and it will never be right"). It's pretty clear she was abused or traumatized in some way during her months in Cookeville--she'd apparently been rescued from the home of an animal hoarder who one day decided he/she had enough animals and started shooting them. So, we're happy to give her some leeway. And in the past year she has gotten much better--she's a happy dog. We love her dearly. But still, she crazy.

An abbreviated list of things that Olive is afraid of:

1. Flapping flags
2. Flags that are not flapping
3. Plastic bags
4. Batting practice
5. Rolling luggage
6. Buses (but not subway cars)
7. Crowds
8. People bending over to say hello
9. Anyone or anything that wants to be friends
   
10. Children
11. Noises
12. Objects
    

Aeronauts

For my going-away Man Party I invited some dudes over and we went to the clearing by Jamaica Pond to fly airplanes. My brother-in-law and I had both been given RC airplanes for Christmas, and I felt it would be appropriate to try them out. These little blue Styrofoam airplanes with two electric motors in the rear. Another friend brought over his RC helicopter, and I bought a cheap balsa glider to round things out.

The opening of the Vance Memorial Airfield had a strong start, with the little RC helicopter gleefully buzzing around--until it got too far from its controller, shut off, and crashed to the ground. Steering was ineffective, but still the device flew and was greatly enjoyable.

The RC planes, however, never got off the ground. Upon the first launch, the wings came off mine. Granted, they wings were held on by decals, so that was not a great surprise. When designing an airplane, I think load-bearing decals might be an element to avoid.

Shortly thereafter, the other plane went down hard and its nose sheared off. They did not fly. Mostly, they crashed shortly after takeoff. Soon, wreckage was strewn about the runway. Eventually we got some decent results by tearing off the wings, turning the planes upside down, and heaving them as hard as possible, where they would catch an updraft and float along for a dozen feet or so, their engines whirring madly. The two planes were on the same controller frequency, so one controller would affect both planes, leading to some near-misses with fingers and propellers. Eventually, the planes were mostly just wreckage, and we retired to a nearby bar. It was great fun.


Later that night, Ben teen-wolfed a can of Oranjeboom.

Changing Tastes

I love scallions, just love 'em. But it was not always so. As a child, I wasn't a picky eater per se, but I surely hated scallions. I became excellent at avoiding them. It wasn't until about a year ago that I ate some and it was like a switch had been turned: what was I doing avoiding these little gems?? Now, scallions are one of few things that I always have in the fridge. Slice them on the bias and sprinkle over any savory dish before serving and they add an elusive lemony greenness. Chop them into three-inch lengths and use as a pizza topping. Toss whole with a little oil and heave them directly on a hot grill and let them caramelize. They're grrreat!

But I can't help but wonder: when did I change my mind about scallions? For that matter, what about all those other foods I didn't like but now do? I used to loathe olives until one night when I was twenty-two and a friend brought over a jar of her own cured olives. I tried one, and from that first bite I have been an ardent olive-lover. What changed?

Some of this, of course, can be attributed to the quality of ingredients. I expect most or all of the olives I encountered as a child were those presliced canned atrocities. So there is a reasonable argument to be made that I essentially never tasted an olive until that fateful night. But scallions? How about mushrooms? Button mushrooms have not changed since I was pushing them around my plate in the eighties.

Sometime in my youth--I'd guess I was nine or ten years old--I was sitting at the dinner table and began to ponder this sort of thing. My sister likes swiss cheese, I thought, but I can't stand it--does it taste the same to the two of us? If we were to somehow eat the same slice of swiss cheese, would it even be the same substance in each of our mouths? I sat at the table, hating swiss cheese, transfixed with this incongruity. You could call it my "Being and Nothingness" moment.

I can't say what bizarre forces are at work in our changing tastes. Life is change, so I suppose it shouldn't come as a surprise that I now love scallions. Maybe the moral here is: keep trying things.

Swiss cheese, however, will always be disgusting.

Some quality time with Boston

This beautiful morning I left early with my friend/roommate Dan and took the train with him to Mass Ave. He went to work (chump) and I strolled around Back Bay, enjoying the gorgeous weather, enjoying Boston. I hiked all the way up Comm Ave to the Public Garden. There are so many amazing buildings on Comm Ave. I was interested by both the number of the gorgeous row houses that are single-families ("whoa, that's a single-family??") and by those with a zillion units ("whoa, that slim little building has eight buzzers??").

The Public Garden is still under piles of gently melting snow, oozing into muddy streams that run along the walkways. Perhaps not the best time of year for a visit, but the day was so clear and bright it was wonderful to stand in the middle of the garden and see Boston all around me. It's a lovely city.

I headed back on Boylston Street. Boylston is always interesting. That big, bland new building where the big, bland courtyard used to be in front of the Prue. The bizarre Apple store. The way the insane feng shui of Trinity Church mashed up against the Hancock Tower never fails to amaze (It's jarring! It's beautiful! It's jarring! It's beautiful!).

Near the Trader Joe's, I passed an old woman pushing a shopping cart full of stuff. She looked at me and screeched, "Souvenir of Boston?" pointing at a loose paving stone in the sidewalk.
"No thank you," I demurred.

Back on Mass Ave, as I was passing Berklee, a middle-aged gentleman in a coat and tie came up to me and began to semi-coherently explain something.
"Excuse me, can you help me with something? My car's parked over there, you see, and I've uh, I've gotta get a plug kit from the hardware store. You see my son and I'm trying to I'm not a beggar. I work for the Church. I just need, uh, my car, you see."
"Um," I replied, "I'm not entirely sure what you're asking of me."
"See, my car, see, I need thirty bucks--I'm not a beggar--and I'm trying to uh..." He waved around a wad of bills.
I pulled out my wallet, and turned it toward him so he could see its meagre contents. "Okay, as you can see, I only have a dollar on me. But you can have it." Feeling somewhat magnanimus, I plucked out the bill and offered it. He became very angry.
"A dollar?!?! What the--what am I supposed to do with a dollar? Go up to thirty people? A dollar? What the hell, man??"
"It's all the money I have. Do you want the dollar or not?"
"What the--no! No I do not want the dollar! What the hell? I need thirty!"
"Okay," I said, pocketing the bill, "then this conversation is over." I turned and walked down the street.
"Hey fuck you man!" He hollered after me.

There was a time that an episode like that would have pissed me off, but I found myself smiling. Dude, I think you're doing it wrong.

Getting our Feet Wet

I've been reading the Providence Journal online, a publication with the unfortunate url of projo.com, and specifically lists "ads" as one of its features. Having grown up reading the Burlington Free Press, a paper that regularly leads with photographs of moose, I can appreciate me some middlin' local news. Among the expected tidbits about girls high school basketball was an interesting item about the new MBTA commuter rail link to TF Green airport. Scheduled to open in 2010, the station will be the closest-to-terminal commuter rail stop in the country. I expect the folks at Southwest Airlines are pretty chuffed. Also, it seems that the cost of the project has quite unexpectedly risen from $25M to $267M. But hey, that's pretty close.

Laura and I, being huge chowhounds, have been ravenously (get it?) absorbing any information about Providence eateries we can. You can be sure that, as soon as I've eaten one, I'll tell you all about the famous New York System hot weenies (apparently a man's bare sweaty arm is a critical component in preparing these babies). In the meantime, we're looking for a place to kick off our gustatory introduction to the city. The front-runner is La Laiterie, a bistro offering seasonal, local deliciousness. Plus, c'mon, how can you not get excited about a restaurant that's name translates to "The Milkatorium"? I imagine we'll perch upon giant curds while suckling directly from the teat of a goat who doubles as a tantric yoga instructor on her off days. Or perhaps we'll walk in, and the maitre d' will solemnly issue us each a paddle. Set sail upon the river of dairy!

Fennel Taralli and letting it all go

Some of these taralli turned out a bit funky. Shaping them was sort of a bitch, and it surely didn't help that I'd divided the dough inexpertly, and therefore many of the pieces were a hard-to-roll amalgam of a few little dough chunks. It all ended up well, since they're tasty. Apparently they keep forever, but I can't vouch for that--this batch will be gone by sundown.

Laura and I have started packing. We have just under two weeks before we move to Providence, and are trying to balance getting a head start with not wanting to have boxes everywhere for weeks. We went to Target and bought ten plastic tubs; they're full. It's always a funny exercise to examine all the crap you've accumulated and reassess how it at some point could have seemed necessary. I've been embracing getting rid of things. Farewell, 80's movie soundtrack LPs. So long, Beadazzler (we had a good run).

For much of this shedding, it is clear where an object should go. "The OC" board game: Goodwill. Three-year-old bottle of blowing bubbles: trash. But some items, some, tantalizingly hint at monetary value. And once in a while, something will emerge from under a pile in the basement and whisper, "I might be worth money!" Thus begins my tale of woe.

The autographed Tom Brady poster had languished in our basement for over a year, deposited there by a Brady-loving friend who was moving to California. It was a hideous thing: a large, poorly framed photocollage of Brady about to hand off the ball to an unseen running back, while his gargantuan disembodied doppelganger floated nearby, serenely observing the action. Swift, decisive Sharpie strokes announced "#12 Tom Brady". I couldn't wait to get it out of the house.

The Tom Brady poster's erstwhile owner had indicated that it cost a lot of money, and so I poked around on sports memorabilia sites. Why, such signed knicknacks were selling for hundreds of dollars! This is where I made my first mistake: I decided to sell it. I agreed to split the take with the Tom Brady poster's erstwhile owner, as technically I'd merely been babysitting it for her, and posted it on ebay.

I started the bidding at $10 (no need to get greedy, right?). Ebay helpfully had a shipping cost calculator, that asked me to input the Tom Brady poster's vital stats. It suggested shipping would cost around $18, and I added another five for handling. That was my second mistake.

There was but one bid, for $10, and a week later Paypal notified me that $32 had been deposited into my account (after ebay selling fees). A pastor from Maine had bought the poster to use as a door prize at his church Super Bowl party. So, my wallet fat with thirty-two clams, I dragged the Tom Brady poster to my nearby UPS Store. The gentleman behind the counter looked at the poster. Measured it. Tapped some things into the computer. Measured it again. Then he looked at me. Something terrible was about to happen.

"Well," he said, "to pack and ship this to Maine, well, that's gonna be right around $87."
"My god," I gasped, "you can't be serious. Eighty-seven dollars?"
"Forty to pack it and forty-seven to ship it. Look, I can sell you a box that it might fit in, and you can pack it yourself. That would save you some money."

Eighteen dollars later, I left with the Tom Brady poster and a large cardboard box. 32 - 18 = 14. On the drive home, I allowed myself a brief temper tantrum.

I packed up the Tom Brady poster, struggling to temper my desire to destroy it with my desire to have a good ebay user rating. Packed, it was huge. The box was the size of twelve large pizzas. I hauled this behemoth to the post office, figuring it would be cheaper than UPS. The people in line stared. The postal workers stared. I began to perspire. When it was my turn, the postal worker took the box. Measured it. Weighed it. Tapped some things into the computer.

"Forty-seven dollars. And it's gonna take ten days." 14 - 47 = -33.

But by god they took it.

Broccoli Soup

Last night I made Gordon Ramsay's recipe for broccoli soup. It is as follows:

1. Boil florets from two heads of broccoli in generously salted water until al dente
2. Remove florets from water. I used a spider; alternately you can strain the broccoli into a colander set in a pan--save that cooking liquid!
3. Place broccoli in a blender; add cooking liquid until 1/3 of the broccoli are submerged.
4. Blend until very smooth. It's best to put a towel over the lid and start with a few gentle pulses so you don't get hot liquid everywhere.
5. Season to taste and serve. I topped it with a sprinkling of feta, dried cranberries, and a splash of olive oil. Served with fresh baguettes, it was a feast.
   

It's delicious, creamy, and alarmingly simple. Even with just water, salt, and broccoli it's wonderful. Who knew?

Further enumeration

Five things I won't miss about Boston

1. The Boston Redevelopment Authority. Hey, I've got a great idea! Let's turn over the authority to accept or reject any land-use decisions throughout the city to a shadowy cabal of unelected unaccountable rich people!
2. Leaving Trash in the Street (aka saving "your" parking space). If you wake up in the morning and spend half an hour digging out your car, I believe you should be able to return to that space, or one equivalent, that evening. If it's four days later, you haven't touched the shovel since that snowstorm, and you're still putting a trash can out in the street to save "your" space, you're just childish and arrogant. There's a woman here on Halifax Street who leaves a trash can in "her" parking space year-round.
   
3. The Moat Effect. I've lived on both sides of the Charles River, and have noticed the strange effect it has on people, particularly people living in Cambridge/Somerville (or, as I like to call it, NoCha). For some reason, crossing the Charles for recreational reasons is extremely trying. I know people who have lived in Cambridge for ten years and have never been to, say, the Leather District. Or think that Mission Hill is somewhere in Bermuda. Bizzare.
4. The BU Bridge. Vortex of Misery. Possibly responsible for the Moat Effect.
5. Housing Prices! This one gets an exclamation point because it's a huge part of why Laura and I are leaving. That's right, Boston! Two more young, educated people are leaving the city because of the stupid cost of living! We're even planning to start a business! Yeah, hear that? We're going to be creating jobs, but not here! Go to hell, crummy $995 studio in Allston. Screw you, $2,500 two-bed in Huron Village!
   

Utilities

Everybody moves a lot during college. I think I averaged one move every eight months. But I always kept the same phone number. This was before the days of cell phones, mind you, when we all had to own telephones and kept slips of paper in our wallets crammed with dozens of scrawled phone numbers. When you got someone's digits, you actually got someone's digits. My phone number was 865-0175 for four years and five apartments. I came to be on a first name basis with the nice people at the phone company:
"Thank you for calling New England Telephone, this is Larry."
"It's Vance."
"Oh, it's you. Where's it gonna be this time, Mr. Wandery-Pants?"

Since moving to Boston, however, I have lived in three apartments in eight years. It's been five years since I've owned a telephone. Yet still, there is an inordinate amount of calling utility companies going on. Gas, oil, electric, cable, internet... that's a lot of service providers. What irks me, though, is not the having to do it, or even to pay for it, it's that mostly, you have no choice as to whom you hire to provide these services. For instance, I obviously HAVE to own an iPhone, yet only AT&T carries them. That's just wrong.

Where was I going with all this? Bread, of course. I've just taken a loaf of Heart of Wheat out of the oven, and boy oh boy is it glorious. Bread is the perfect example of utility (staff of life and all that) becoming beauty. Beautility.

I think I'll take my beautility to Cleveland Circle and share it with friends. Try doing THAT with your hot water heater.

The Beginning, Wherein Our Heroes Leave Boston

So this is goodbye. After eight years and five jobs, the time has come to leave Beantown. My final Boston employer, an alternative-energy engineering firm, laid me off in November. And so, like the Joads before us, my wife and I will shortly pack up our two cats, one dog, and five bicycles into the Corrolla, and move to Providence.

I plan to use this blog to chart our discovery of the Ocean State, discuss the bicycling in Providence, and generally rant and rave about food and food issues, urban planning, cycling, DIY projects, and more as I explore Providence, learn to garden and play the harmonica, and work toward becoming the best bread baker I can be.

Let's start with some lists. Everyone likes lists. Here's one to kick things off:

Seven Things I Am Going to Miss About Boston

1. The Parks. The Public Garden in summertime, Jamaica Pond, the Arboretum, Spy Pond. This city has some wonderful parks. And don't forget, you can still legally graze your livestock on the Common!
2. Jamaica Plain. The Centre/South corridor has everything you could possibly want to buy, look at, and eat. And nothing you don't (trolleys, undergrads, chain stores). I realize there are lots of great neighborhoods in Boston--in fact "the Neighborhoods" almost made this list--but JP is the best. Sorry, poseurs.
   
3. The Subway. Sure, it's a serious Hub-dweller pastime to bitch about the T, but something about not appreciating things until they're gone... yeah. I love me some public transportation, and for all its quirks, the T gets you where you're going. Plus, you've got to admit it's a cool name: don't stand for nothin' just a big F-ing T. Boom.
4. The Accent. Okay, so they talk funny in Rhode Island too, but there's just something so satisfying about saying, "Hey, let's go find ourselves a baahh, I could totally use a Hahpoon right now."
   
5. The Drivers. This one probably comes as a surprise coming from a cyclist, and, sure, they honk too much, and sometimes get spooked and angry and stampede, but there's something reassuringly bovine about Boston drivers. I came to eventually feel almost like a cowboy while cycling amongst the herds of massive, stupid, gentle beasts. Git along now.
6. Lionette's Market, that salumeria on Prince Street, Capone Foods, Kurkman's, Brookwood Community Farm, the Copley Farmers' Market. There are other delicious places to get food out there, but these are closest to my heart.
7. The People. Y'all bitches better come visit. We have a proper guest room and everything. Er, but there's no overnight street parking. Awkward.