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Fall advice

Students? There are lots of them downtown.

We also have another large group of newcomers. They are the newly minted and less-newly minted college graduates on their first or second job. They want to live within walking distance of their work in the downtown, Back Bay, Kendall Square, the hospital areas or the Seaport District. From Charlestown to the South End and in between, these neighborhoods offer that easy commute as well as bars, restaurants, museums and sports. Who wouldn’t want to live here?

These young people are more permanent than students. They live here year-round, and they are more likely to stay for several years until they get a new job, marry, have kids or move to another city. They used to be called “yuppies.”

Sometimes these young people, though, remain outsiders in the neighborhood. Long-time residents can look upon them with suspicion.

It’s not because of their color or their styles of life. A wonderful aspect about the new Boston is that all the downtown neighborhoods welcome diversity. What the long-time residents care about is neighborliness.

So young people, I have suggestions for you that will make you love and be beloved in your neighborhood.

  1. Learn the rules about trash and recycle storage and pickup and follow them. The rules are different in every neighborhood, but they are all online on the city’s web site.

We have these rules partly because of rats, which are plentiful in downtown Boston. To keep the rats away, put out your trash and recycle containers just after 7 a.m. instead of the night before, as city regs allow. Rats can get into buildings if they are enticed by what is lying outside. Surely you don’t want them in your living room.

  1. Throw good, safe parties. Now that you are old enough to legally consume alcohol, you can have a grown-up soirée. But stay off your roof. Every once in awhile a young person falls off, and the survival rate is poor.

While you are at it, notice the time. Most neighbors, even the old, crotchety ones, are familiar enough with city life to tolerate music, chatter and the clinking of glasses into the evening. But if the party is too loud and late at night, those old, crotchety neighbors will sic the police on you.

  1. Dogs. You may decide that now that you are an adult, you should have one. When visitors come to Boston, the comments I hear most are not about the history, architecture or walking convenience. Instead they say, “I’ve never seen so many dogs!”

With so many dogs, if owners are not responsible, we’ll have a big, smelly mess. So pick up after your dog. Your IQ is probably high enough to remember to buy one of those little plastic bag dispensers for your dog’s leash so you’ll always be prepared. After you pick up, take the bag home with you and drop it into your trash. Do not put it in your neighbor’s tree pit. It’s not just for the cleanliness of your block. Dog poop is a taste treat for our rats.

  1. Get to know your neighbors. If you go to work, hang out with friends, and go back to your small, pricey, downtown abode, you’ll never meet anyone new. Join the neighborhood association — they all have special events or activities for people in their 20s and 30s. Participate in neighborhood cleanups or holiday decorating. A few people have met their mates while hanging laurel ropes. Local newspapers have extensive neighborhood calendars.
  2. So read your neighborhood newspaper, which also might be online. You’ll learn about neighborhood matters and concerns as well as activities.
  3. Ditch your car. You will spend time and gasoline driving around trying to find a place to park unless you can afford a monthly parking space. Walking, T-riding, Zipcar-reserving, Uber-calling and taxi-hailing should get you around just fine. Rent a car for the weekend if you want to get out of town.

After you’ve become a good neighbor and love your neighborhood, you might have a revelation. City living isn’t just good for people your age. You’ll notice all ages—kids, old people and everyone in between—live downtown. Instead of that boring style of life that previous suburban generations practiced, there’s a better way. Stay.

Stay while you change jobs. Stay after you get married. Stay when you have kids. It is possible. Many of us did it.

Then you won’t have to move back into town when you have that empty nest and long for the city life you left while raising kids. You’ll already be here.

City Council blahs

So last Tuesday, I go to vote in the city council preliminary election.

I think I’m pretty smart, but not smart enough I guess. There was no election—at least in my precinct. My district city councilor had no opposition. There were not enough candidates running at-large to hold a preliminary election anywhere.

“For an at-large preliminary election, there must be at least at least nine candidates,” said Elections Department chair Dion Irish. The preliminary winnows the field down to the eight candidates who will be listed on the ballot for the four at-large seats in the general election. This year only five candidates are running at-large, including incumbents Michael Flaherty, Stephen Murphy, Ayanna Pressley and Michelle Wu. The fifth candidate is Annissa Essaibi-George, a teacher and Dorchester shop owner. No winnowing needed.

Two city councilors, Frank Baker and Timothy McCarthy, faced only one challenger, Donnie Palmer and Jean-Claude Sanon respectively. So these districts did not need a preliminary election either.

Only two district councilors, Charles Yancey and Tito Jackson, had two or more challengers. So in their districts the preliminary was held and reduced the number of candidates to two. Yancey came in a far second behind newcomer Andrea Campbell but will face her in November. Jackson will face Charles Clemons Jr., who came in a distant second.

According to Irish, the turnout was only seven percent of the 78,000 eligible to vote in the two districts, plus me.

Walking home after my failed voting attempt I wondered why there was so little interest this year in running for the city council, no to mention voting.

The official barriers are low. Candidates must be 18 years old and registered to vote. District candidates must have lived in their district for a year. At-large candidates have to live in Boston at the time they apply for nomination papers, which was May 11. They had to fill them out and return them by May 19.

At-large candidates had to gather at least 1,500 registered voters’ signatures. District candidates had to submit at least 200. These were due on June 23. Candidates who wanted to withdraw had to do so by June 30.

Pretty straightforward. Since you now know how to do it, you too could run. Two years ago, with a heavily contested mayoral race, there were plenty of city council candidates. What’s this year’s problem?

Demographics, reduced local news coverage, expanded opportunity for minorities, fewer kids and air conditioning, said attorney Larry DiCara, a city councilor from 1972 through 1981. These factors have reduced interest in local elections.

The people who consistently vote, he observed, are older folks, public employees and political junkies (like him and me.) But the city’s population is bifurcated, he said, between poorer residents, who tend not to vote, and up and coming, well educated or wealthy residents who tend to vote only in presidential elections.

Mayoral elections might also attract some of those people. About 140,000 voters turned out for the last mayoral election, DiCara noted. But 255,000 voted in the presidential election the year before. “That’s more than 100,000 people who vote only once every four years,” he said.

Another factor in a declining interest in the city council is an unfamiliarity with city politics. “The reality is that young people understand national issues, but don’t understand what is going on down the street,” he said. Part of the reason might be that more Bostonians are from somewhere else, rather than having grown up here.

When DiCara grew up in Boston in the 1950s, “working in campaigns was part of what you did.”

Reinforcing the unfamiliarity are the news outlets. When DiCara was on the city council, he remembers the city’s newspapers each had three or four reporters covering City Hall at all times, and the radio and television stations were on hand, enjoying what was then a new building with enough electricity and lighting to run their microphones and cameras—not true at old City Hall.

Such coverage meant that Boston residents knew the city councilors and what they did. How many of the 13 city councilors can you name?

No longer is politics the only way up for smart young people. DiCara remembers when Catholics, not to mention other minorities, were unwelcome in the city’s law firms. “But now, if you’re a bright young person like Deval Patrick, you go to work for Hill and Barlow,” he said. “You don’t necessarily aspire to be in local politics.”

As for air conditioning? DiCara said that in the hot summer months of his youth, everyone sat on stoops because it was cooler there. They knew their neighbors and spent time discussing local matters. Now people are inside, isolated from the others on their block.

Fewer kids is another isolating factor. People often get to know neighbors through their kids, and the number of kids in the city has been declining.

We could hold elections on weekends, provide free air time for candidates, and try other methods to attract voters and candidates. “But I don’t know if there is away to make people care about what’s going on down the street,” DiCara concluded.

Donald O’Trump

It started when the nine-year-old in our family misheard Donald Trump’s name and called him, with disgust and outrage, Donald O’Trump. She hasn’t been the only one disgusted and outraged. Globe columnists, Times columnists, television commentators have been spewing disbelief, abhorrence, indignation and revulsion. They parse his “policies” as if they actually mean something.

At some point, I started laughing. These people are so steamed up. They’re taking Donald O’Trump seriously.

I’ve got news for them. He’s spoofing. He’s taking us for a ride. He’s making fun of the Republican candidates, mocking them. He’s exposing the hard-core Republican electorate for what it is. He’s trumped us, and he’s laughing all the way to the primary. Calling him O’Trump is my way of honoring the half-aware guise he has taken on.

His modus operandi, perhaps unconsciously, has been to take Republicans’ prejudices and perversions to the max. Consider immigration. A couple of years ago US Rep. Steve King, a Republican from Iowa, said, “For everyone who’s a valedictorian, there’s [sic] another 100 out there that weigh 130 pounds, and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert.”

No one in O’Trump’s party called out King for that remark, and there was little comment from the Republican presidential candidates when Trump accused Mexican immigrants of being rapists and criminals. They finally pushed back only when Trump demeaned Sen. John McCain’s war record—a suspect reaction since some of those same people had no trouble demeaning John Kerry’s war record in 2004. Criticizing immigrants pushed up O’Trump’s poll numbers, and mocking McCain didn’t hurt him.

Women? There is another topic that could get Trump in trouble but hasn’t. He has taken the insulting attitudes toward women displayed by several of the candidates and simply exaggerated them. Some of the Republican presidential-hopefuls have fought vigorously to restrict contraception and abortion, apparently believing American women’s only task is reproduction, which they can’t manage without government interference. Trump’s put-down of Megyn Kelly is no different from the insulting attitudes toward women displayed by such women-demeaners as Rick Santorum and his fellow travelers.

I haven’t the imagination to come up with the future shenanigans O’Trump is capable of.

That’s because he doesn’t know himself. He’s having a good time. He loves getting people steamed up. I suspect several of the Republican presidential candidates didn’t give him enough respect in the past year or two, so his “candidacy” might have been sparked by a bit of revenge on his part.

Now however, it’s just fun. He has nothing to lose. He was bored with his life—he’s made plenty of money and his empire is led by others who are able, so he had little to do. He might not have expected to be so popular when he got into the race, but now he’s enjoying a little payback along with causing a jolt to the system.

He signed a pledge to support the Republican candidate. But can’t you just imagine some candidate annoying him enough to cause him to renege on that promise?

Does O’Trump really want to be president? Doubtful. It’s a serious job and hard. But being a candidate is not hard or serious—just look at the Republican presidential candidates, of which only two, maybe three, are actual grown-ups. O’Trump is taking a cue from them and ramping it up.

Some in my family say O’Trump is not smart or ironic enough to invent such a plan. My answer is that it doesn’t take much intelligence. It takes only a need for distraction and fun. His “campaign” is not carefully crafted, but for his purposes it doesn’t need to be.

I don’t know how long O’Trump will be entertained by his public venture. I don’t know how long enough of the public will support him. I don’t know what his exit strategy will be. But the long campaign was boring even for a political junkie like me. With O’Trump causing fury everywhere, I’m just going to enjoy the ride.

More children downtown. Now what?

Karen is taking a break. This column from January 2012 still has relevance three years later. New mayor, but same problem, and a new school in the North End and an expanded school in the North End is not enough for downtown families.

Mayor Menino has once again focused on the schools, and we hope he is more successful this year than in the past. Transforming Madison Park into an effective technical and vocational high school with adult education at night is inspired. Reducing busing and creating new improved neighborhood schools is necessary. And it’s obvious that many schools are actually improving.

But the mayor is still missing a cohort of kids whose lives would be better if they had a school and appropriate housing. The city has so far hardly noticed downtown Boston’s kids, a growing population compared to the rest of the city.

The 2010 census shows the state of affairs. As a whole, Boston lost children in the past decade. In 2000, 116,559 children under 18 years of age lived in the city. In 2010, the number of children under 18 totaled 103,710, or 13,000 fewer kids.

But downtown Boston goes against the trend. Here, in all but three neighborhoods, the number of children is rising. Go figure.

The Back Bay, Bay Village, Beacon Hill, Downtown, Leather District, North End/Waterfront, and the South End have seen increases in the under 18 population from about 14 percent in the North End to 700 percent in the Leather District, which admittedly had only 6 kids living there in 2000. In raw numbers, the increase has been as disparate as 10 more kids in Bay Village to 399 more in the South End.

Curiously, Charlestown, a family-oriented neighborhood with slightly more affordable housing and the appealing Warren-Prescott elementary school, lost 139 kids. Chinatown and the West End also had reduced numbers of children. Alvaro Lima, director of research at the Boston Redevelopment Authority, can’t explain why these neighborhoods have fewer kids, and neither can their residents. In fact, Laura Carroll, a Charlestown Mothers’ Association board member, believes the numbers are wrong, since her group has seen an explosion of mothers seeking membership to CMA.

Despite disputed figures, it’s clear the downtown is attracting families with children. Almost 10 percent of the nearly 100,000 people in downtown Boston are under 18.

Lima doesn’t yet have an explanation for the decline of the numbers of children in the whole city or the downtown’s increase. He said he expects the decline is partly due to the economic crisis, the cost of living in Boston, and the trend for families to have fewer children. Perhaps the downtown increase has to do with the growing awareness in general of the convenience of cities.

Given such growth in the number of kids in one part of the city, one would expect the school department to be thinking of how to educate them. Given the attractions of downtown Boston for families, one would expect the city to be encouraging construction of family-size housing.

But it’s no on both counts. Downtown parents have clamored for more downtown schools for almost a decade. But no new downtown schools are planned, said Matt Wilder, BPS spokesman, although the Eliot in the North End is bursting at the seams, and there may be ways to increase its size. [Since this column was written, BPS has designated the old Romney for President building in the North End as a future public school.] Both the Eliot and the Quincy in Chinatown are good schools, but they have waiting lists. The few available spots plus the uncertainly of school assignments in general discourage parents from even registering for the Boston Public Schools. Private schools then become an attractive option for families who want to stay downtown.

But private schools don’t solve every problem. Lacking parking and adequate, affordable family housing, many families in downtown Boston leave for Brookline and Newton, municipalities with cheaper housing and excellent, easy to figure out schools, when the kids get to be school age.

The mayor and the BRA see increased family housing as a goal, according to Randi Lathrop, deputy directory of planning at the BRA. [Lathrop is no longer with the BRA.] But it’s hard to see progress on that front. New building projects have difficulty accommodating families because of downtown’s smaller sites and the greater need families have for storage, Lathrop said. But New York developers, who surely face similar challenges, routinely build multi-bedroom units. Just look at the New York Times magazine’s advertisements each Sunday.

So far the BRA has mostly let developers off the hook. One example is at The Victor, a residential building going up in the Bulfinch Triangle with a completion date in 2013. The Victor has no units with more than two bedrooms on a site that surely could accommodate more. This is a missed opportunity.

At least one project—Hayward Place—will feature 54 three-bedroom units, or about 20 percent of the total, when it is completed on Washington Street across from the new Ritz in 2013. It is the exception.

Fighting for schools and housing, it’s the one percent who stay downtown. They are the only ones who can afford the pricey digs and private school tuition.

Why is this bad? A uniformity of income makes a boring community. Having to provide for children in retail shops, restaurants, parks and schools makes neighborhoods more livable for everyone. Seeing children on the street makes most people happier. Few downtown residents want to live in what could, without action on the city’s part, become an old folks’ home. The Boston Public Schools will be better for having parents in all neighborhoods in the city engaged.

Mayor Menino, tweaking school busing and building skills in the trades for youth and adults at Madison Park will help alleviate some of the city’s problems. Meanwhile, set your mind to helping the growing number of kids and their families who need good schooling and good housing in the downtown.

 

 

 

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Summer problems and pleasures

Karen is taking a break. Here is a column from 2011 about Charles Circle, one of the significant entrances to Boston. The problems are still there. Actually, so are the pleasures.

We’re in the denouement of summer. New Englanders are said to eagerly anticipate this season, since after a long winter we feel we deserve it.

Does our anticipation of summer mean it can never live up to our expectations? This summer has been wonderful in one regard. While much of America has been sweltering [or drowning], we’ve had mostly lovely weather with tolerable heat and low humidity, if we don’t count about five days.

Otherwise, however, summer in Boston can be disappointing. It’s enough to make everyone succumb to that characteristic Boston attitude—grumpiness.

The first problem is that so few take advantage of the possibilities for beauty that summer brings. I don’t see this in other cities that I visit.

At Charles Circle for example, two businesses degrade the area. CVS is the first one. The trees are dying. The tree pits were planted years ago and are uncared for. The sidewalk isn’t swept. It’s a dump. The manager, when I asked him, had no idea he was part of a neighborhood. He said the landlord was responsible for taking care of the outside.

Actually, no. If a landlord agrees to do so, fine. But to be welcome in the neighborhood, CVS, you must take care of the area outside your business. CVS’s store windows are also the subject of lots of complaints I’ve heard. Banal pictures of models? How much more interesting the store would be if the windows were left open so we could see movement of the people inside. My only recourse is to not patronize the place, and I don’t. But that’s not good for the business or the neighborhood.

The second culprit is the Liberty Hotel. I love the hotel—inside. Its restaurants are fun. We take out-of-towners there to give them a thrill.

But what are they thinking about the outside of the hotel? For pedestrians the place is a disaster. Bare spots. Weeds. Tree pits, again uncared for—not even noticed in fact. The whole thing is shabby. Perhaps the hotel management doesn’t look outside and see scores of pedestrians using the sidewalk along Charles Street extension to get to the hospitals, the West End and the Science Museum. Perhaps the hotel owners don’t realize how bad things are. (I called them to tell them.) Such conditions are disrespectful of our neighborhood.

Charles and Cambridge streets aren’t much better. Charles Street merchants had to hire help to get the street swept, and even then many don’t contribute. If you’ve got a tree in front of your business, it’s yours. Water it, and plant the tree pit. The flowers will be stolen, you say? Have backups. [One business person in 2015 told me it cost her $500 to plant her tree pit and then someone took the flowers. It costs about $40 to plant a good tree pit, and that pays also for a few plants to replace ones that get stolen. She was fleeced and naïve both.]

Also, store owners, sweep your sidewalk. You don’t have time? It takes ten minutes a day. Anyone who complains about lack of business, and has a blank tree pit and an unswept sidewalk should get no sympathy.

John Corey of the Beacon Hill Civic Association set up a program to help business owners do better in their tree pits, and good for him. [And in 2015, he actually planted the pits for them.] He has more patience than the rest of us, who can’t see why the merchants don’t just do it. Why do they need direction to stick in a few plants, which they can get down the street at Top Shelf for a song?

Perhaps if I went away for the summer, as some people do, I’d be less grumpy. But little by little, I notice that not all is lost.

First, let’s compliment the Hill Tavern. I chastised them last year about the condition of their tree pits, and this year they’ve actually planted flowers. [But they didn’t in 2015.] They need about twice as many, but they’ve tried, and I’m hoping they’ll be better next year when they plant ten plants in every pit rather than three or four. Plants are cheap, fellas.

The Esplanade is another place that gets better every year. The people who founded and run the Esplanade Association have done much to give us pleasure.

The Red Sox are the icon of summer. It’s not just Jacoby Ellsbury and his winning ways. (That was then. This is now.) It’s the way the business is managed, the care with which the playing field is kept, the feeling you have when you are at Fenway Park that the owners care about your pleasure, not just about making money—which, coincidentally, makes them money.

The garden in back of my house gives me pleasure too in summer, and it’s not just the plants. A few nights ago, the weather was warm, but not oppressive. The darkness was coming on sooner than it had a month ago. Our next-door neighbor had her door open. The neighbor at the rear of our garden, whose house is on another street and whom we don’t know, was grilling up a storm. In the walkway on another side of our garden wall, the young renter was hosting her boyfriend and a couple of girlfriends in her small set up along the walkway. On a deck one story above our garden were several friends eating outside. We could hear bits of conversation and laughter from everyone.

Here we were, several neighbors, some long-term, others not, all crammed into a few square yards in the middle of the dense city that we were all enjoying. Now that’s my idea of a good summer.

 

Is there hope for Downtown Crossing?

Karen is taking a break. Here is a column from 2010. Isn’t it interesting how times have changed?

Even though Downtown Crossing’s central location should make it a convenient destination for Back Bay, Beacon Hill, Charlestown, North End and Waterfront residents, few choose to go there, even though a good number work nearby. I bet we can all agree on what’s wrong with the place.

Let’s start with the most recent problems. The intersection where Summer and Winter streets join at Washington is book-ended by a hole in the ground on one side at Filene’s (John Hynes and Vornado, developers) and an empty parking lot on the other at Hayward Place (courtesy of Millennium Partners). Holes in the ground and parking lots are bad for business.

Filene’s hole and the parking lot didn’t cause other vacancies along the streets—well, actually the failed Filene’s development did eject Filene’s Basement—but they highlight the loss of Barnes and Noble and other businesses that might have attracted residents in surrounding neighborhoods to the area.

Next, take a look at the 19th– and early 20th-century buildings—handsome, solid things they are, with delightful detailing and the scale that many Bostonians favor. The buildings are shabby, but the rentals aren’t much cheaper than those in the city’s best neighborhoods. You realize these buildings suffer from the same kind of community-destroying mentality that afflicts the back of Beacon Hill, lots of the North End and other downtown properties here and there. That mentality decrees that owners may suck every dime out of their buildings while putting not one penny back into them.

There’s also the loss of the old Boston. Winter and Summer streets once were the crème de la crème of the city. Filene’s, Jordan Marsh and other Boston department stores were dignified landmarks with a sense of place. But with Jordan’s now Macy’s and the other department stores gone, the area is no longer a destination for anyone who can avoid it.

Then there are the kids. They hang around without anything to do. Passers-by think they look threatening. Why aren’t they in school? Why aren’t they studying, working, playing a sport? It’s a touchy subject since most of the kids are black and most of the complainers are white. And you know that in the city’s richer neighborhoods, teenagers have little time for hanging out, since their private schools keep them until 4 p.m. with all kinds of activities. The fact that the kids are there reminds passers-by of the unequal opportunities we offer our young people, and it’s another reason for the guilty discomfort of the downtown Boston resident who cares about the next generation.

One little thing, but it is irksome, is the neglect and, once in awhile, the erasure of narrow historic passageways that amuse pedestrians and invite them to explore further. With another kind of vision, these passageways could be to Boston what the delightful glass-covered shopping arcades are to Paris and London. (Recently, WalkBoston has led tours of these passageways and they may in the future. Go to www.walkboston.org to follow their walking tour schedule.)

Then there is the Downtown Crossing name—imposed by the city’s PR faction to try to make appealing an area already going downhill. Now the name, attached seemingly forever by becoming a T station’s name, stands for a trashy section of the city where you don’t want to go.

The name is only one of the civic failures. In the late 1990s the city tried to establish a Business Improvement District, a scheme in which the property owners are taxed extra to keep an area clean and safe. Naturally, the slum-lord style property owners objected, and, surprisingly, so did the police department, over a proposal for private security guards to be included as part of the safety campaign. So that plan went nowhere.

Which leaves the city at where it is now with a dumpy central commercial core that you’d never take your visiting friends and relatives to.

But even with no current hope for the hole in the ground and the parking lot, there are signs of change. Next week I’ll give you a run-down of a few steps being taken to improve the area. The remedies are squeezing in from the sides and slowly emerging from the middle.

Predicting the future

Karen is taking a break. In 2009, she asked several Bostonians to predict the future. How did they do?

 Last June, I bet you didn’t think we’d be here now: Obama as president, Hillary as secretary of state, the economy gone bust, General Motors in bankruptcy, Lehman Brothers no more, Sal DiMasi under indictment.

So, in an effort to prevent us all from being blindsided again, I’ve asked several common-sensical Bostonians to make predictions for the next few years.

Nancy Mayo-Smith, a long-time resident of Beacon Hill, predicts that people are going to be nicer. “They realize we’re all in this together,” she said. “People in stores and in the service industry have changed. They’re interested. It’s a result of the economy.”

Mayo-Smith hopes everyone will keep up the good habits after the economy recovers.

She also thinks race relations will improve since people of all races are proud of our new president. “His character and his race have helped race relations tremendously,” she said.

What she cannot predict, but only hope for, is a solution to crime in some parts of the city. She’d like to see effective methods at keeping guns out of the hands of gangs and criminals. And she’d also like to see new ideas for solving some of our problems, but again she’s not predicting that.

City Councilor Sal LaMattina, who represents District One, which covers a good portion of downtown Boston, was bullish on Boston. He predicted only great things. “There are good things happening in Boston,” he said. “It’s a vibrant city and I think the best has yet to happen.”

He said he expects that all neighborhoods will have beautiful restaurants and shops, and will remain desirable, especially to young professionals and empty-nesters. He also thinks that the families with children who stay in the city will have fewer children. He said he is a perfect example. When he grew up in East Boston, he said, everyone had four or five kids. Now he and his wife have one child. He regrets that other families have left Boston because it is costly to raise children here. But no matter who buys the houses and condominiums, he predicts that the real estate market will recover swiftly.

Another forecaster was also optimistic. Rick Dimino, president of A Better City, a non-profit organization supporting Boston’s economy, said Boston is on track to be the greenest city in America. He credits Mayor Menino with establishing guidelines for new construction and tenant fit-up and taking other steps that reduce greenhouse gases. He predicted that the number of commuters using bicycles will increase dramatically. He also predicted that companies will flock to Boston because of its green status.

Dimino was also optimistic that officials will solve the MBTA’s financial problems in such a way that makes Boston one of the world’s most successful cities in allowing people to move around without their cars. He expects the MBTA to complete the Fairmont line and build the urban ring, the Red-Blue line connector, the Silver Line’s underground link through the downtown, and the Green line extension to Somerville.

He also pointed out that a few unused rail lines, especially one that connects Newton to downtown Boston, will become viable after the post office on the Fort Point Channel moves and opens up space for more tracks at South Station.

Dimino predicts that Boston will become a 24-hour city, which may not sit well with those who moved into the city hoping for quiet. But he points to the residents filling in spaces between the offices in the financial district and Downtown Crossing. He welcomes the liveliness this will create in what are now dead zones after the work day is finished. Although the economy has slowed this trend, Dimino believes it will pick up again because people like the convenience of being near their work.

Don’t changes like this require strong political leadership to ram things through despite predictable opposition? “Boston and the state have a long tradition of doing difficult things,” he said. “We have an opportunity to move forward on a larger scale, and it’s necessary if we want to set the stage for the next generation.”

Since I’m writing this, I guess I’ll make a couple of predictions. First, Mayor Menino will be re-elected even though I have not yet talked to anyone who wants to vote for him.

And in the Public Garden, two of the Metasequoia glyptostroboides, which have now inched over the other trees, will within 10 years tower over the oaks, elms and maples. After all, they are redwoods.

 

Going for the mold

So we didn’t go for the gold after all. Instead we retreated to moldy old Boston where you wouldn’t want to do anything brash, imaginative or interesting. “We have our hats,” said the old Yankee lady, but Boston’s other tribes share her attitude. We don’t need anything new.

I am usually an optimist, which affected my support of the Olympics. Is it a big job? Yes. The effort’s leaders were smart, effective and used to big jobs, even if they weren’t the world’s greatest marketing people. They were not corrupt, as too many leaders were when I first moved to this city. To top it off, they were doing this to make Boston better, not for financial gain or status for themselves.

But, since it is Boston, there were class issues. The promoters were rich, heaven forbid. Too big for their britches, the nasties said. How dare they tell us, the real people of Boston, that we should do something dramatic? How dare they appropriate our city for improvements we might actually like but we hadn’t thought of ourselves? They did not pay enough obeisance to city councilors, state house functionaries, university presidents or most Globe columnists. Those powers were annoyed that someone else was leading a particular charge, when they were too timid to lead any charge.

Since we’re talking timidity, that played big too. The games were too risky. There might be too much traffic. The spectators might tear up some piece of grass. Some taxpayer might have to pay real money. The number of times the word risk was unfurled by the opponents was embarrassing. Isn’t this city, with its so-called world-renowned innovative companies and research institutions, all about risk?

But again we’re back in moldy old Boston, where you keep your principal, and never dip into it, even though it gets divided among subsequent generations until there is nothing left. If someone had dipped into the principal to start a new business, there might have been more for everyone.

Then it’s on to taxpayers. This has to do with risk avoidance too, but it has another meaning—that spending money on a big deal is foolish. Remember the naysayers before the Big Dig began? Sure our taxes are high. That’s because we can afford it. This is one rich city, as studies continually show. When someone spends $20 million on a Back Bay mansion and then spends another who-knows-how-many-more millions renovating it, it shows we can afford all kinds of things we say we can’t.

Ironically, taxpayers alone are now going to have to foot the bill for improvements in places like Franklin Park. We won’t have any Olympics money to help us.

Which brings us to spending money on the needs opponents said we should be funding instead of the Olympics. Does anyone think that will happen?

Already we’ve learned that, despite last winter’s MBTA debacle, the legislature can’t come up with enough money to fix the T or expand it. We’ve decided to apply only a patch. We’re building affordable housing, but we’re still arguing over tax breaks for a downtown project for “working families” that shouldn’t get the breaks, some say, because it is not in a blighted area. Keeping to that principle means no “working families” could ever afford to live downtown, which is discriminatory and wrong.

It would be nice to think because we won’t have the Olympics’ risk looming over our heads, we will spend money on Franklin Park, the T, housing all homeless families, installing kindergarten for four-year-olds across Massachusetts and rebuilding the Northern Avenue bridge. Dream on.

Instead we’ll go back to our desultory ways. Those ways were highlighted this spring when Mayor Walsh kicked off Boston 2030. There was the familiar panel, the recognizable audience, and the sappy tributes to Boston’s universities, research, hospitals, innovation, etc. Except for the speakers’ fondness for the word “millennials,” the forum could have been held 20 years ago when I first started covering such gatherings. The issues were the same. Little had been fixed. It was depressing.

That doesn’t mean Boston 2030 will fail, but an Olympics deadline would have meant we would have worked harder and faster to make it happen. You know that when you throw a party, you clean your house, paint the door and fix the step that broke last year.

The biggest effect of the Olympics failure might be on the most vocal opponents’ careers. Would you hire a risk-averse person who can’t support big efforts?

Boston won’t die because the Olympics died. We’ll still have universities, hospitals, yadda, yadda. We’ll still have a city in which living downtown, the characteristic that first brought me here years ago, is wonderful when it hasn’t even been possible in most other American cities.

But not being able to pull off the Olympics pretty much cements the fact that we’re not world class in any way. We’re just a small provincial city up in the corner of a big country—a city with more than its share of charm, but still with a lot of mold.

Read locally

Whether you go away in August or not, it is a good time to read. Everyone assumes everyone else is away. Few neighborhood meetings take place. Work is easier because some clients, customers and colleagues actually are on vacation. The “livin’ is easy,” as long as you have a beach, an air conditioner or fan and a nice iced tea (unsweetened, as New Englanders prefer.)

Naturally, I have a few suggestions for your reading pleasure. I’ve focused on three Boston authors, two of whom offer the reader many choices. Here they are, in alphabetical order:

Joseph Finder, a Back Bay resident, writes thrillers—scary stories with really bad actors who get their comeuppance from Nick Heller, private investigator. Heller trained in the Special Forces, aka Green Berets, and has a good-looking girlfriend who works for the FBI. He also has a nephew he is close to and a female aide whose computer skills are legendary. Vanished takes place in Washington, DC. Nick tries to find his brother who has disappeared, but he also finds his brother’s secrets.

Buried Secrets takes place in Boston, the North Shore and New Hampshire. One of the pleasures of reading a book set in your locale is identifying the places the characters go. You will recognize the Liberty Hotel, the South End, Louisburg Square, a senator, a familiar name and finally southern NH. I figured Pine Ridge, NH was really Rindge, and sure enough, the credits recognize the police chief in Rindge. The only thing Finder got wrong in the whole book is the way to get to Rindge. From Boston, you’d take Route 3 rather than I-93. But that’s why it is fun to read locally.

Finder employs other main characters too. His books are better than most thrillers for one reason. Unlike some mysteries and spy stories, in which the reader must accept a confusing plot on faith, Finder’s plots are logical and tie together.

His pacing is good. The books follow a formula, but that is why we like them. I’m hooked. A new book, The Fixer, has just appeared.

 

Alexandra Marshall, a former Beacon Hill resident who now lives in the Fort Point Channel area, writes novels about family dynamics. Her characters follow no formula. They surprise the reader at every turn. A humdrum conversation suddenly turns witty and meaningful. Each character is tightly drawn, distinct from others in the story, and he or she grows and changes with the story. Every book has a finely wrought sense of place. Gus in Bronze takes place in Manhattan. The Brass Bed and Something Borrowed take place in Boston. I wanted to go to Cleveland, of all places, after reading The Court of Common Pleas, because she made that city sound vibrant and fascinating. Readers will appreciate her metaphors and similes as in talks between a mother and daughter, “which were always found in unplanned pockets of time like coins discovered in jackets.” I would never think of a comparison like that, and such creativity is part of the pleasure of Ms. Marshall’s writing. I know Ms. Marshall through an organization we both belong to, but I don’t see her frequently. When I do I am always surprised that inside this quiet, poised woman’s brain is a tangle of human understanding, perception and sympathy waiting to be freed by her words.

 

Marc Rotenberg now lives in Washington, D.C. but he grew up in Boston and his family members still live here. Rotenberg, a lawyer, heads the Electronic Privacy Information Center and teaches at Georgetown University Law Center.

Privacy in the Modern Age is a book of essays exploring matters a university must consider, problems occurring when the public has no opportunity to give consent, protecting data collected for legitimate uses, robots that crawl under doorways, consumer privacy and other facets of anonymity and privacy. With all the ways others can grab our likeness, follow our buying habits, tap our phones and learn about our location in 2015, it was comforting to read that our 19th-century forebears worried about such things after cameras were invented.

Unlike the creations of the first two authors, Rotenberg’s book is not a story that will whisk you away. Instead it’s for nerds like me and many of you who enjoy reading about all sides of a topic. You’ll encounter agencies you’ve never heard of with acronyms that confuse you. Because each essay is written by different people with distinct points of view, you’ll find odd statements: “America . . . has maybe one more generation left to make a real difference.” Really?

In the same article you’ll learn that the “Roman standard cart axel of 4 feet 8 ½ inches is still our railway gauge today.” Remarkable.

Later, when a writer discusses “storing sensitive information in insecure systems connected to the Internet,” you’ll be happy you’ve read Finder’s Buried Secrets. In that book, both the good and the bad guys get into their opponents’ electronic systems.

The privacy book is unsettling. Lines are hard to draw. But Buried Secrets shows how such matters can play out.

The vision—where is it?

Ashkenazy Acquisition Corporation, the operator since 2011 of the city-owned Faneuil Hall Marketplace, has been in recent tussles with its merchants, pushcarts, street performers and history-loving Bostonians. After public outcry and several meetings, some matters may be worked out.

The latest round occurred last week when the BRA board, showing little knowledge and only a smattering of interest, approved Ashkenazy’s “vision” for FHM.

The BRA should look at Ashkenazy’s plans more closely and with history in mind. Right now there is little evidence this company understands the market’s early retail success or how festival markets work. It has presented no evidence it can entice Bostonians to return to the market they flocked to in the 1970s and ‘80s.

According to Barry Lustig, Ashkenazy’s executive vice president, the company’s “vision” is to continue to attract tourists, 85 percent of whom visit the market. Plans for a hotel, a compatible use that would operate mostly on upper floors, ought to help increase tourist traffic.

Lustig wants to increase total traffic from 22 million annual visitors to 30 million, so part of his “vision” is to lure back Bostonians, whose interest in the historic marketplace has faded.

BRA board member Ted Landsmark asked Lustig, “What’s the thing that would get Bostonians there?

“Celebrating the architecture,” said Lustig. He waxed poetic about the architecture. Is architecture going to lure Bostonians who already have a surfeit of 19th century buildings to enjoy?

Landsmark did not follow up.

Not that Lustig’s plans for the architecture aren’t good. He plans to light the buildings strategically and reveal the interesting interior walls of Quincy Market now hidden behind refrigerators. But it’s hard to see how good lighting and revealing the walls will entice us to spend time at the market.

What he didn’t mention in answer to Landsmark’s question was that earlier in his presentation he had described ping-pong tables and other games he thought would draw Bostonians. A good park, in other words.

At the public meeting in early July he was even more specific. He described Bryant Park, which he said was a marvel for the nation.

“This property has the opportunity to be second only to Bryant Park,” he went on.

Faneuil Hall Marketplace second to something in New York?

To a park?

Oooooooo!

Did he notice the market is adjacent to an actual park, the Greenway, modeled to some extent on Bryant Park?

He kept talking about a park, but what Bostonians want is a good marketplace.

It was just that in the beginning. If they really are interested in history, as Lustig says they are, Ashkenazy should look at the market’s early success.

In 1976 and throughout much of the 1980s, FHM was quirky, local, vibrant and fun. Bostonians thronged to the place. There was no need for ping-pong because it had retail luster.

The Bear Necessities was probably the best of the best. Its teddy bears, priced from $5 to $500, had something for everyone. Its local owners, Tim and Nancy Atkins, knew retail entertainment. The bears’ names—Scarlett O’Beara, Douglas Bearbanks, Bearishnikov. Those alone made you want to check out the merchandise.

In 1982 the shop held a Bring Your Own Bear contest that drew 150 entries and many spectators. The shop drew children and adults, locals and tourists, who came upon it with delight and surprise.

“The retail was definitely unique,” Tim Atkins remembers of the early Faneuil Hall Marketplace. He recalled the Celtic Weavers, Pave Real, The Boxes, a scrimshaw place and Have-a-Heart—independent stores with merchandise unavailable elsewhere. Secretary of State John Kerry even had a store called Kilvert & Forbes, with hot-from-the-oven chocolate chip cookies. Many of these independent stores were successful.

Then in the late 1980s, when some of the independents faltered, the operator replaced them with chains. Bostonians stopped going. Even the chains had problems. Atkins recalls a national store selling umbrellas with butterfly decorations. A woman loved them. Her husband said, “Let’s wait. We can get this back home in the Scottsdale mall.”

About the same time as the chains came in, the Atkinses closed the Bear Necessities. “We expanded beyond our business acumen,” Tim Atkins said. “We did it too fast and didn’t have the business experience to manage other stores and a mail-order catalog.”

Nevertheless, they never had any problem with sales at FHM. “We had a great response from customers,” he said.

The downside, Atkins acknowledged, is that local, quirky, vibrant and fun retailers sometimes lack experience and can run into financial difficulties.

This is where an expert, hard-working operator would add value—shepherding retailers with unique ideas into businesses where sales go through the roof.

Hearing Ashkenazy’s plans as they stand now, Bostonians will yawn. Sephora—a dime a dozen. Uniqlo may entice a few teenagers.

If Ashkenazy would actually study the history they say they revere, they would find retail models for play, entertainment and attraction for Bostonians. It’s called imagination, outreach and true retail skill. It’s in the history they say they want to re-create.