I walked there, past several colleges (I swear, Boston has more institutions of higher learning per capita than--well, anywhere...), following a line of park the wound (and several times, nearly disappeared) past Fenway Park and down around the edge of the city.
Jamaica Plain has something of a reputation for being a "lesbian neighborhood"--which I wanted to see, because I'd never really seen one. One of the first people I saw was an exceptionally large, exceptionally butch young lady, walking two very small terriers. I smiled at her. She glowered at me.
... is the visual equivalent of testing someone else's grip. I looked down--but I bet I've got better forearms. Scratch. I know I do...
... terriers don't have a lot of torque, if you know what I mean.
Jamaica Plain was not quite the oasis of organic produce and pastries that I was hoping for (thus problematizing the lesbian-cupcake nexus I've been theorizing. more cases and a broader comparative approach, I think. including, I suppose, one from Africa--always throw in one from Africa...) I did manage a decent cup of coffee...
What was truly fantastic about that area, though--was the spur of hills rising between the main street and the railroad tracks. Steep and twisting, they rose to a high point above the city--so that, from the summit, you could see the streets falling away towards the city-center, to the north. And rising and falling, with the hills--was a fantastic collection of houses. Some of them had been completely renovated, and some were a few steps away from derilection. Most of them were somewhere in between, and as I walked up and down the side-walk, I could smell the scent of wood dust and oil, mixing with the smell of pine-needles and wet dirt.
I circled a few cul-de-sacs, making furtive eye contact with people leaning over hobby-horses in the open garages, or hanging out of the windows. Jamaica Plain is a neighborhood on the move.
It reminded me, as I was really stretching my legs--for the first time in months--a bit of Silverlake. Silverlake is just off the center of Los Angeles, off Sunset Boulevard, when Sunset Boulevard turns south and east. With the tall buildings and the clubs off in the distance (sometimes you catch a disoriented club-kid, who has come too far--wandering the sidewalks in flash of skin and befuddled glitter)--Silverlake is still money, but it's arts-and-entertainment mid-level industry professional money. And some of the money goes into the houses...
... which rise up and down the green hills and ridges encircling the valley. There are differences--in Boston, it is more modernizing victorian and in California, much more strongly mid-century, with its askew squarishness and tendency to thrust various bits of itself off into the ether. And Silverlake has been "renovated" for longer, and so has been subject to that accretion of additions and porches and odd bits of landscaping (terraces) that builds up over time in places like that.
Still though--what I like about both places is the sense of possibility. Something very utilitarian about a city, and something a little alienating (I'm not the first, not the last...) about that usefulness. But in places like this, you see all the oddments--both intellectual and sensual--of the human mind made "flesh", architecturally-speaking. If great buildings, really well-thought out--masterpieces--are music, then places like Jamaica Plain and Silverlake are conversation. Chatter, in fact, within a large group of friends (some of whom hate each other)--comfortable and easy-going, and really, not so important, but out of the whole mess you get something like that weird sense of the "spirit" that rests in, you know, most people. Rather than being raised and abstracted so far from the seething mass (it's not really seething--more like milling, aimlessly. ambling masses!) that it sits apart from them.
Clutter. The very best of clutter.
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