Category Archives: Uncategorized

Finally the T did something right. Almost.

The new Government Center T station opened with cheers all around. It finished ahead of schedule despite complicated underground construction, trains that had to keep running while work went on and a setback with glass design.

Everyone heaved a sigh of relief that finally the MBTA did something right. Inside, the new station is bright even down in the Blue Line’s level, underneath the Green Line. It is handicap accessible. Watching the creaky, squeaky, rusty trains come through is jolting in this clean, bright place.

The floors are colorful expanses of beauty, made of epoxy-based terrazzo that used recycled glass and seashell chips, according to Jason B. Johnson of MassDoT. During a recent rainstorm the glass roof leaked, but that can be fixed.

A couple of problems, however, can’t be. Although the design passed muster with the Massachusetts Historical Commission, which determined there was “no adverse effect to any historic properties,” it is now impossible to see the Old North Church steeple from the plaque embedded in the Tremont Street sidewalk near the Omni Parker House. That view corridor, I was told, was written into the federal urban renewal agreement that was signed when Scollay Square was obliterated. Did the BRA and Mass. Historic forget that? Haven’t heard back from either agency, so I can’t confirm it.

Second, the glass headhouse is too big. (If you read this column regularly, you know I usually don’t mind big.) It hides the historic Sears Crescent building —the nicest edge on City Hall Plaza—from viewers on Cambridge Street. The headhouse’s box fights with the Sears Crescent’s gentle curve. An MBTA report justifies the dimensions: “The MBTA worked with the BRA to establish an overall height that balances many issues, including the civic scale of Government Center Plaza [sic], the Sears Crescent, the Sears Block, the view corridor to the Old North Church, and the visual proportion of the headhouse.” Apparently they didn’t work hard enough.

The materials other than the floor could pose a problem. They look cheaper than the materials at, say, the newish Charles/MGH station. That is not necessarily a bad thing. Less expensive materials can be fine. But some money-saving materials and strategies require upkeep. The MBTA is not noted for good maintenance.

Take a look for yourself. Paint attracts scuff marks, and it chips. How often will the posts be repainted? The bright white tile will get dirty. Will anyone wash it? The windows could be even more of a problem. You can’t see the Old North Church steeple now when the glass is clean. What will the glass look like when it is dirty?

Transit systems all over the nation are starved for cash and poorly maintained. The only-40-year-old Washington D. C. metro had to close for a day because it is in such bad repair. Yet city roads and streets are choked with private cars with only one occupant, causing American commuters to waste an average of 42 hours a year in traffic and suck up an extra 19 gallons of gas while stalled.

Commuting Bostonians spend even more hours in traffic—64—than do residents of such cities as Seattle, Chicago and all large southern cities with no underground transit.

I’m still a fan of the T. Dirty, noisy and delayed as it is, it gets me quickly to stations along the Red Line, although it is even noisier, dirtier and slower when I change to another color. I like the convenience of the Charlie Card, although apparently we’ll soon have new ways to pay with our cell phones. I like my fellow riders.

But “world-class” cities do it another way. Go to London. You’ll marvel at the fast, clean escalators, the tidy stations, the quiet trains and the upholstered seats that have nary a rip or a spot on them. Wherever you are in London, you are within a few minutes’ walk of a tube station.

You’ll learn that London is extending its Underground because it knows that the 13 miles of tunnel connecting 40 new and old rail and underground stations under that city on the new Crossrail line are critical to that city’s economic success. (Watch the construction on crossrail.co.uk) You’ll cry with despair upon returning to Boston, which still hasn’t managed to connect one and a half miles between North and South Stations or can’t figure out how to extend the Green Line to Medford.

Meanwhile, take a train through the Government Center station. It’s much better down below than it is above.

Leslie Adam goes shopping

Downtown Boston residents have embraced the Boston Public Market. It arrived along the Greenway at the right time. Food-lovers were tired of the agriculture-industrial complex and wanted their food to be real, local, maybe organic. They were repelled by the whipped-petroleum products lining the shelves in traditional supermarkets.

I’ve been to the market many times. The smoked fish and the lettuce are favorites, but I had never shopped there seriously, thinking it wouldn’t be possible. Then I talked to Beacon Hill resident Leslie Adam, who said she and a Back Bay friend do almost all their grocery shopping for their families weekly at the Boston Public Market.

So I went with Leslie on a recent Wednesday to see how she does it. First, she drives. She usually goes first thing in the morning. This time, however, we left about 11 a.m. and the parking garage was full. After waiting in a short line for cars to leave, we drove in, parked and were off. Leslie said Sunday mornings at 8 a.m. is her favorite time to go. With few other shoppers, she has the run of the place. In the summer, she often bikes over.

Leslie has two children, a husband and sometimes friends to feed. We headed for the back of the market because she likes to buy her bread, located near the main entrance, as she leaves so it won’t be crushed at the bottom of the bags she carries with her.

Sometimes Leslie brings along a list or recipes, but at other times she lets what is available speak to her.

On the way to the back, we stopped at two pop-up shops that spoke to her. Leslie bought popovers from The Popover Lady, based in Melrose, because she knew her kids would like them. She also stopped at ParTea, where owner Sarah Wasser told us she had combined her experience as a bartender with her love for tea and created natural infusions in tea-bag like packets for booze. Leslie decided such drinks might be a conversation starter for guests so she bought a ginger infusion. Like most of the vendors, the women running the pop-up shops ran Leslie’s credit card through Square on their phones or iPads.

Red’s Best was next. The counter man suggested redfish, caught on a Gloucester fishing boat, for good fish tacos. Leslie decided tacos would be tonight’s dinner. She also got salmon raised in the Bay of Fundy.

She pointed out the Spindrift bottles, filled with berries and sparkling water, in a refrigerated case in front of Red’s Best. She has met Bill Creelman, the Charlestown resident who created them.

Leslie bought eggs and both fresh and frozen meats—pork loin, chicken breasts and ground beef—from Stillman Quality Meats and Chestnut Farms. Her kids like the frozen pulled pork from Lilac Hedge, which she heats and piles in buns for lunches. Today, however, because the children’s schedules during the coming week meant lunch would be elsewhere, she went on to choose New Braintree-based Stillman Farms’ fresh spinach, sweet potatoes and squash, already peeled.

She bought roasted red pepper ravioli at Nella’s and smoked haddock for kedgeree—Leslie’s husband is British— and salmon belly at Boston Smoked Fish Company. She got Hardwick Stone cheese at Appleton Farms so her daughter could make the cheese sandwiches she has begun grilling for breakfast.

Around the corner we admired the dramatic tulips, the cider syrup—good on pork, said Leslie—honey and smoked maple syrup and caramels. Leslie didn’t buy any of those on our trip, but she said they were all were fabulous.

We ended our shop with a Harbison cheese from Vermont’s Jasper Hill Farm, salad greens from Corner Stalk Farm in East Boston and two loaves of bread from Mamadou’s Artisan Bakery in Winchester.

Leslie had most of the food she will need for the week. She’ll have to stop elsewhere for such staples as bananas, avocados and oranges, but it takes only a short time, she said, to fill in the blanks.

Leslie admits it is usually more expensive to shop at the Boston Public Market, but she does not want her children eating produce sprayed with who-knows-what. She also likes her money going into the local economy.

We paid only a dollar for parking since we had been there less than an hour and had validated the ticket. A bike delivery service is available for those who don’t want to schlep bags home.

One way to shop at the Boston Public Market in a more frugal way is to buy at the market the products that you really can’t live without and then go out the door. On Fridays and Saturdays, the traditional Haymarket carts and vendors are right outside with the best prices anywhere. You’ll get the best of both worlds.

Heroic?

Mayor John Hynes was elected in 1949, John Collins in 1960. Collins brought in Ed Logue as the director of the Boston Redevelopment Authority, established in 1957.

These men faced a problem. Boston was in trouble. After a depression, two wars, long-time corruption and a changing industrial base, the city was losing manufacturing, jobs and population. The mayors and Logue intended to re-invent Boston.

This is the story with which the authors of Heroic: Concrete Architecture and the New Boston (The Monacelli Press) begin their tale of how, beginning in the 1960s, concrete took over architecture in America’s most tradition-bound city.

The book is arranged in essays by various architects and critics with accompanying photos far too small. Photographs of Boston’s Brutalist buildings in the middle portion of the book are better. Reading the book, you’ll realize concrete buildings are everywhere, many of which were in the background before. (The Colonnade Hotel?)

The authors suggest that, partly because of the mayors’ and Logue’s efforts, heroic could replace the term Brutalism, taken from the French béton brut, meaning raw concrete.

It certainly took guts to defy tradition and take big steps. It was government investing in infrastructure that would jump-start a resurgence. That’s the heroic part.

But the re-invention was mixed. Hynes and the BRA demolished the old West End and built the regrettable Central Artery. But Hynes persuaded the Prudential Insurance Company to build Boston’s first skyscraper over old railroad yards. Its construction from 1960 to 1964 was a hopeful sign.

The real effort, however, was creating Government Center. This is where concrete triumphed with its centerpiece, Boston City Hall.

The authors point out such virtues of Boston City Hall as the city councilors’ offices overlooking the public space of City Hall Plaza. They describe its monumentality and the patterns of light and shadow created by its detail. The authors go into rapture over Paul Rudolph’s Government Services Building. And love for the Christian Science Center spills over like the water does in its long rectangular pool.

They delve into the origins of béton brut, practiced by Le Corbusier and other Europeans before the style came to America. Béton brut was a departure from the thin International Style. They contend it follows a classical tradition.

A problem with this book—maybe it is my problem reading about art and architecture—is what do some sentences mean? “Brutalism tries to face up to a mass-production society and drag a rough poetry out of the confused and powerful forces which are at work.” Really?

“Brutalism has been discussed stylistically, whereas its essence is ethical.” Ethical?

Or “Heroic architecture . . . [was] meant to reveal the realities of its time and forge a new honesty . . .” Does concrete reveal realities anymore than, let’s say, steel?

And “the New Brutalism was an idealism about realism.” Hmmm.

The book brings up many questions. Brutalism is admired by architects and critics. Regular people, not so much. Today a writer describing Back Bay Station, pointed out the “forbidding” concrete wall. Fortress-like is another term commoners use to describe these buildings. Why is there a schism between professionals and lay people? Would lay people like Brutalism more if we were better educated? Or are architects shunned if they don’t follow the line?

How much should we take into account people’s physical reaction to concrete? It gets dirty. It’s cold. We’d rather stand next to tiger maple.

The Christian Science Center is another example of attracting people or not. We learn that the Christian Scientists, behaving like Christians, built concrete Church Park across the street before they demolished the 19th-century row houses along Massachusetts Avenue and opened up the handsome view to the church buildings. This meant displaced residents had homes.

This complex is admired for its geometry and its long reflecting pool. But even in summer, compared to a teeming Boston sidewalk, few people gather along the pool’s edges or walk through the site. Do people have to want to be there for good architecture to take place?

How important is a sense of place to a building’s success? The Brutalist New England Aquarium could be in Framingham for all the nods it gives to its harbor side location. The Hurley Building ignores its neighbors on Cambridge Street. Early Brutalist Le Corbusier designed a building at Harvard that looks as if it belongs in a suburb with two-acre zoning rather than along the low-key urban Quincy Street.

How well does a building have to work be an asset? City Hall’s layout was organized—services on the bottom, offices at the top—but people find it hard to navigate. Worse are the acoustics. The authors gave a talk at City Hall in the foyer, envisioned by its architects as a place for performances and presentations. We could hear only half their talk. In the city council’s hearing room, you can’t hear either.

Finally, would Boston, with its hospitals and universities, have come back from the brink without the heroics of its leaders and architecture? We’ll never know.

One thing is for sure. These buildings are here to stay. Bill Le Messurier, the late, renowned structural engineer, said the only way to demolish Boston City Hall would be “with a controlled nuclear device.”

But the heroic buildings are in dire need. Many of them are government buildings, and we know how hard it is to get money to spend on the public sector these days. We need to clean, repair, enhance, even re-configure these behemoths to make them better fit into the city and make us feel better about living with them.

How soon do you think that’s going to happen?

Gobsmacked by the English language

“Gobsmacked” came to America at just the right time. We needed a word that called to mind being unexpectedly socked in the head with a fistful of some disgusting, muddy substance. It’s what most of us have experienced during the current Republican campaign for president.

Thanks, Britain, and Susan Boyle, the middle-aged Scottish singer who introduced many of us to the term when she described how she felt when she earned fame and opportunity by becoming a winner in 2009 on the television show, “Britain’s Got Talent.”

Gobsmacked is a new term that fit perfectly into the language. Other words change their meaning, develop loaded messages or are used in other ways by other people just when you think you know exactly what a word means.

Not all words are as successful as “gobsmacked.” Take a new meaning of “lifestyle.” Before the Godfrey Hotel opened on Washington Street this winter people who write for newspapers received an invitation to the opening of this “lifestyle hotel.” “Lifestyle” is trite, lacking the complexity that accompanies most people’s lives. A friend once said he and his fiancée were deciding what their lifestyle would be. That people decided on their style of life was a new concept. I had previously thought it was a given, depending on your likes, dislikes, career choice and choice of mate.

So what was a “lifestyle hotel”? It turns out the Boutique and Lifestyle Lodging Association knows. It co-opted the term for big hotel chains’ small, boutique-style hotels.

Other businesses have also adopted the term. At least one downtown retail shop has identified itself as a “lifestyle” place. What does it mean? Who knows? But it surely means to be trendy.

Shepherd’s pie is also peculiar these days. Check out the ingredients in the frozen pies in Whole Foods. Shepherds tend sheep. But the shepherd’s pies are made with beef. What are they thinking?

They aren’t thinking. They forgot what the name means. This happened with a community newspaper I read at some point. Their classified section had small advertisements listing services. But they were all jumbled—they weren’t classified. Duh.

The British supermarket chain Tesco has also forgotten the meaning of a word. It decided to redesign its croissants because the company’s handlers believed a straight shape makes it is easier to spread jam. Really? Then how can you call them croissants, which means crescent? The French sometimes make them straight, but the French ones are so good compared to everyone else’s, especially the American version, they can make them any shape, and it would be okay.

The most interesting new word meaning to watch is “heroic.” It is a term some boosters are promoting as a substitute for Brutalism, the architectural style of Boston City Hall. The term Brutalism comes, most people would say, from béton brut, a French term meaning raw concrete. Unfortunately for its aficionados, brute in English doesn’t exactly mean raw.

I worry that the verb “are” could be an endangered species. Listen to the wording people are using more frequently after “there.” I recently heard a television personality say, “There’s cockroaches in there.” But she isn’t the only one. The pattern shows up frequently. Are the speakers’ brains not processing that they are about to use a plural? Maybe the fossil fuels have finally attacked our speech centers along with our oceans.

Then there are street names. A couple of months ago, I asked Nick Martin, spokesman for the BRA, a question about New Sudbury Street. It extends from Cross Street at the edge of the North End to Cambridge Street and is part of the 1960s’ West End renewal.

Nick pointed out that the street is called Sudbury Street on Google Maps. I pushed back on that name. I asked several people who live near the street. They all said it was New Sudbury Street.

I walked over to look at the sign. Sudbury Street. Tracey Ganiatsos, long-time spokeswoman for the Boston Transportation Department, advised me that the Public Improvement Commission, which manages street names, identifies the street as Sudbury.

But the plot thickened. I chanced upon a page in the MBTA web site. New Sudbury Street. Then I received a press release about the first phase of the Government Center Garage project from the same Nick Martin—in which he wrote about “the 1,300 square feet of ground floor retail space on New Sudbury Street.” (Italics mine.)

So I guess it doesn’t matter what you call it. It works either way.

The seaport. Is anyone there?

Last week this column was about fish. This week there are other matters to consider about the seaport surrounding the Seaport District.

The first is the most heralded.

“The harbor cleanup really only finished in 2000,” said Julie Wormser, executive director of the Boston Harbor Association. “The harbor has had an incredible renaissance. It is exciting.”

Wormser cited the newish, large holding tank under Day Boulevard in South Boston, which allows storm-water runoff that the Deer Island sewage treatment plant can’t handle to be temporarily stored so sewage doesn’t back up in Boston’s basements. She points out that the naval base that closed in the 1970s is now home to many Charlestown residents and such institutions as Mass General and Spaulding Rehab. The Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area has given us destinations within the harbor. Waterfront development and the Harbor Walk construction that has accompanied it has given Bostonians appealing restaurants and walking paths where we can all enjoy the harbor.

She is concerned but also hopeful that the mayor is leading a successful effort to address rising sea levels due to climate change and that saltwater won’t invade nearby roadway tunnels and subways. Her organization has had much influence in harbor improvements.

I was puzzled, however. Residential buildings are rising in the Seaport District to take in the harbor views. A museum and restaurants in new buildings line the harbor’s edge. The Harbor Walk is extended every time a new development comes on line.

But when I looked at the activity in the seaport itself, I saw little. It wasn’t just the lack of fishing boats, which I wrote about last week. It was winter, of course. In summer the water is filled with, private fishing charters, sail boats, water taxis, excursion boats.

But it is Boston’s seaport. Where are the ships that one would expect to see in a port? Where is the activity that the residents of those new, flashy flats will want to see?

No one would claim that Boston’s maritime activity rivals Long Beach’s or Newark’s.

Apparently, though, it isn’t as bad as it used to be or that I imagined. Cruise ship calls are increasing gradually, according to Matthew Brelis, director of media relations for Massport, which has been in charge of Boston’s ports since 1956. In 2015, 29 different ships made 114 calls at the Black Falcon terminal bringing in 328,305 passengers. During the 2016 season, officials expect to greet 33 different ships calling 119 times with about 330,000 passengers.

Cargo has grown a bit faster. Container shipping rose four percent in 2013 over 2012. It grew by 10 percent in 2014 and by 11 percent in        2015, according to Massport’s web site.

Automobiles and natural gas ships come into the harbor on a regular basis. Dredging should begin in 2017, Brelis hopes. Since the Army Corps of Engineers, not Massport, does the work, he can’t predict exactly. A deeper channel will allow post Panamax ships, the larger ships that will be accommodated this year in the expanded Panama Canal, to enter the harbor.

The seaport in 2012 generated $4.5 billion in revenues and supported 50,000 jobs, said Brelis. Seven thousand of those jobs are directly connected to seaport activities, and many of those are blue-collar with good wages.

The seaport also hosts commuters. Ferries from Hingham carry 5,000 people a day in winter and 1,000 commuters between Charlestown and Long Wharf, said Alison Nolan, principal and general manager of the 90-year-old Boston Harbor Cruises, her family’s business. Four heated and enclosed water taxis accommodate a few hundred people daily. Nolan expects to add more ferry routes between East Boston, the Seaport District and the Financial District as those neighborhoods’ density and development grow. One problem, says Nolan, is that the ferries do not necessarily connect with mass transit, so ferry commuters usually work close to the docks.

But winter is challenging for expanding ferry and water taxi service, she said. Sea conditions outside the inner harbor require more specialized vessels and that drives up costs.

Massachusetts exports a good deal of medical equipment and products, but remarkably, just like in the 17th century, we are still exporting hides and furs, said Brelis.

The Massachusetts economy is good right now. That means harbor activity is unlikely to slow and could continue its slow growth. One thing for sure: those who are moving to the Seaport District will have a front-row seat in observing what happens.

 

 

 

Big Pharma? Try Big Fish.

Last week the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center hosted Seafood Expo, a showcase of more than 1,200 fishing boat owners, seafood packagers and processors, fish farmers and suppliers to the fish industry. I went over to take a look.

I became interested in fish when I visited the Seaport District. Everyone knows about the new buildings and fast-moving construction sites in that location.

I knew less about the actual seaport. Some say Boston has the cleanest harbor in the world. We can swim in it and eat the fish we catch in it. So where are the fishing boats? At any time of day, I saw at most two boats tied up at the Boston Fish Pier.

I hoped the Seafood Expo would give me insight into the state of fishing in Boston. It did. The seafood industry is global. It involves airplanes and remote processors. New England struggles to keep up. The industry is so complicated there are many places where things can go wrong.

Expo exhibitors came from Norway, Iceland, Ecuador, Fiji, Vietnam, China, Chile, Indonesia, Turkey, Scotland, Japan and all over North America.

The vendors offered samples of their merchandise. Salmon dominated. Everything, though, was delicious. Several company representatives told me proudly of their success in providing “natural” seafood. One displayed a piece of tuna he said a competitor had infused with food coloring so it looked like the un-doctored “sushi-grade” tuna his company sold.

It was obvious from Expo that, unless chefs or supermarkets label their fish accurately, we have no idea where a piece of fish has come from. We also have no idea where it has been. Most of the fish I saw in the booths was frozen. In fact, most fish people buy, even if it is not in the freezer case, has been frozen.

This is not necessarily bad. Frozen fish handled properly can be nutritious and tasty. But the journey a piece of frozen fish has made could go like this: Unloaded from a boat at the Boston Fish Pier, a monkfish could be trucked to Logan Airport, put on a plane, flown to China, transferred to a processing plant where low-paid workers chop off its head and cut it into serving pieces, packed up again, hauled back to the airport, flown back to Logan, and trucked to a wholesaler, who sells it to a local restaurant or supermarket.

That’s the path of some fish labeled as “from New England waters.” The vendor who described this journey was proud of her company’s management of it, saying it was often cheaper to get fish ready for sale with two intercontinental plane rides than it was to keep the operation in Boston.

Some fish were labeled “organic.” Those were the farmed fish. Other popular words were “artisan,” “ultra-low temperature,” “sustainable,” “certifiable,” “traceable,” and “clean.”

These boasts were a reaction, I guess, to reports of dirty farming practices, false labeling of species and overfishing. Although many vendors claimed their products were traceable, one person told me the systems are rudimentary.

Boston still has a solid place in the industry, but now, as you see when you look around the fish pier, Seafood Way and Fid Kennedy Avenue, it is in processing and packaging rather than hauling in fish.

“Landings in most categories are down. Competition from imported fish is up,” said Bruce Berman of Save the Harbor, Save the Bay and a visiting scholar in public policy at Brown University’s Watson Institute.

He is pessimistic about the state of commercial fishing. “The general conclusion is that nothing is working,” he said.

A few fisheries are healthy. Boston still lands lobsters. Clams and monkfish are also plentiful. Striped bass has seen a successful resurgence, said Berman.

Matthew Brelis, director of media relations at Massport, is more upbeat than Berman about Boston and fish.

He pointed out that over the past decade the amount of seafood unloaded at the fish pier or the lobster terminal has grown. In 2004, 8.8 million pounds were unloaded. In 2014, the haul was 16.4 million pounds.

Meanwhile, a few companies are trying to change the way we who live next to the ocean get our fish. It is partly a return to old practices. But it depends on new technology.

Jared Auerbach, who started out fishing in Alaska and on the Cape, founded Red’s Best, which sells to wholesalers who want good, fresh, local fish. He also has a retail outlet at the Boston Public Market. His 20 refrigerated trucks meet local boats, mostly along the South Shore and the Cape. His staff sort the fish and track them with proprietary software from the dock through processing in the company’s facility at the fish pier and four other locations to the wholesalers who distribute to restaurants and retail outlets. They typically handle more than 100,000 pounds a day.

While there is no consistent supply of any one kind of fish, the hake, black sea bass, mackerel, skate, scup and other native species are all nutritious, tasty and fresh. Local cod is scarce so Auerbach suggests trying lesser-known varieties. “It’s screwy,” he said, “eating junk from other countries.”

Auerbach is proud that his company employs 80 local people, works with about 1,000 local fishing boats and has a smaller carbon footprint than companies depending on Logan Airport.

He rejects the global claims of “top of the catch” excellence. “Who buys the bottom of the catch?” he asks.

 

Meals at your doorstep

You can get just about anything delivered to your door these days.

The question is: Is it worth it? I’d say there are still kinks to be worked out if these companies want to succeed in downtown Boston or any dense city.

I was introduced to the concept of meal-kit delivery by a daughter who gave me a two-week Blue Apron subscription for my birthday. I later ordered a two-week subscription to Purple Carrot. I figured I’d try both services and report what these meal-kit businesses get right and what they get wrong—especially for city dwellers.

My daughter had already placed the order from Blue Apron. But I wondered how they were going to deliver. Fedex, it turns out.

That’s when I got worried. My door is right on the sidewalk. They can’t leave a box there, nor can they slap their sticker above the doorbell saying they’ll return tomorrow because the food in the box is perishable. I would have to be home to receive it.

I discussed this situation with several representatives. They were all polite and tried to help me solve the problem, but all they knew was suburban living. Why couldn’t the driver leave it on my porch? I have no porch, just a step. Right on the sidewalk where people walk by.

Most people are honest, but I remember a man who held my ladder for me as I was washing a window high above the door. When I went into the house to get clean water, he stole that ladder.

Could the box be delivered to my office? Difficult. Not all offices are manned from eight to eight, which is the time slot Fedex reported to me. So there is still the problem of someone having to be there to receive the box. Moreover, it would be hard to get the heavy box home.

Purple Carrot had the same problem—a 12-hour delivery window and a shocked representative when I told her I had no porch. I then had to explain how cities are built.

If your building has a doorman, you’d be okay. Maybe residents of the Back Bay or Charlestown with doors set back from the street could get away with a box left unattended in a covered entryway, but on Beacon Hill and in the North End, it’s not going to fly.

Then there was the food. Blue Apron’s packages were well designed, the food was fresh and in good condition. The meals were the right size. It took only 20 minutes to prepare the food for cooking, most of which took place in only one pan. The meals were excellent.

Purple Carrot, started by the revered food writer Mark Bittman, not so much. Bittman advocates plant-based eating. Purple Carrot’s offerings are vegan. We vegetable lovers thought that would be fine. The ingredients were fresh, but some meals were tasteless. A “frittata” made with broccoli and a chickpea flour and water was inedible. The best meals were inspired by Asian or Middle Eastern recipes and featured lots of spices.

Another problem with both meal-kit web sites was that you didn’t order every week. Instead the companies delivered three meals a week until you asked them to stop. It was hard to find the link to stop on both web sites.

A friend of mine was put off by the environmentally-unsound delivery system. It looked as if Fedex picked up Purple Carrot’s box in Needham, delivered it to a warehouse in Connecticut, and sent the box to North Billerica, after which I got it. When that delivery was delayed by a snowstorm, Purple Carrot did not charge me for it, even though when I eventually received it, most of the food was in okay shape.

I could not check any of these facts because Purple Carrot’s public relations agency could not get back to me with answers even after two weeks. Maybe it’s just that the Carrot hasn’t been in business long enough.

There were other problems. Purple Carrot neglected to put one ingredient, gochujang, in the box. My spice drawer ranges widely through cuisines, but I didn’t have this item.

My recommendations: if these services want to succeed in cities they must learn how to shorten the delivery window or use the USPS, whose postmen have keys that work in all multi-family buildings so they can leave the box safely inside.

They should also redesign their websites to make it easier to stop delivery. After all, people go away.

As I was testing these two services I got wind of another meal-kit delivery service, Just Add Cooking. This husband-and-wife team had a pop-up booth at the Boston Public Market because they use local suppliers. Their kitchen is in Dorchester. They use their own drivers, cutting delivery times to five hours instead of 12.

The owner told me they use less packing and fewer ice packs because of the shorter time between packing and delivery.

I’ve gotten tired of waiting around for meal kits, so I’m letting a couple of months go by before trying Just Add Cooking. If you do so, tell me how it goes.

The world will end

One of the entertaining aspects of living in downtown Boston is to watch the doomsayers. Whenever a new development or a large undertaking is proposed, someone claims it will ruin Boston forever.

Back in the 1990s, it was the structure that later acquired that clunky name, “The Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge.”

A man in the Back Bay was in a dither, and he wasn’t the only one. “That thing will have eight lanes,” he scowled. He predicted that it would be a monstrosity, that it would destroy the river, that everyone would hate it.

We know how that turned out.

My own neighborhood of Beacon Hill has suffered from panic attacks. For years restaurants were denied wine and beer licenses because soused diners would surely go wild in the streets. Then restaurants could apply for a wine and beer license only after a year had passed since their opening. Finally, and we probably owe it all to Julia Child, diners protested enough that the waiting period was eliminated. Most people decided they wanted wine with a nice dinner. And things were fine.

Then several restaurants applied for full liquor licenses. This was a calamity, neighborhood leaders asserted. One restaurateur who had promised not to seek a full liquor license actually sought one. He won in court, and nothing bad happened except that he angered neighborhood leaders. Soon after, most neighborhood restaurants sought full liquor licenses. Residents claimed their property values would plummet, and Charles Street would become raucous. The world would end.

We know how that turned out too. Neighbors themselves showed up at the bars, property values rose, and no one complained about rowdy patrons. A better life for everyone.

We hear similar exaggerations from the presidential candidates (and from messages in my email’s junk box.) Remember how half the country was afraid of Ebola? It was way across the ocean, and Gov. Chris Christie basically imprisoned a woman who had returned from Africa. But no one in the U.S. got it.

Now it is the Zika virus. It seems prudent for women who might be pregnant to steer clear of infected areas, but apparently no one else is in danger.

More feared than anything is ISIS. To hear some candidates, ISIS is right now storming our borders and beheading us all. Marco Rubio roars he will deprive anyone suspicious he catches of those constitutional rights we have so lovingly protected for almost 250 years and throw those guys into Guantanamo. His roar is amusing coming from his baby face. We’ve gone that route before, and it lost us our souls.

Rubio knows his swagger will get some approval since anywhere from 40 to 90 percent of Americans, depending on who’s counting, are afraid of terrorists affiliated with ISIS, according to CNN, the Washington Post and the Washington Examiner.

Whatever happened to the “home of the brave?”

With more than 32,000 Americans killed in motor vehicle accidents each year, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, shouldn’t we be more afraid of getting into our cars?

Here’s what I’m afraid of—the dark, bears, airplane turbulence, streets with no pedestrians, staying alone in a rural area. My fears are mostly irrational. I treat them that way.

One theory—people have boring lives, so fear adds excitement. One piece of evidence is the many horror movies popular now.

Maybe people truly believe one building will destroy the neighborhood, or one new hotel will make traffic so bad everything will stand still. Maybe they don’t want change. Maybe they are right, maybe not.

With Wynn waiting for construction to begin on the Everett casino, the talk of how we will all become crazed gamblers has been redirected to complaints about how bad the traffic will be. Wynn and Mayor Walsh have worked things out, but Somerville’s mayor is suing. Maybe traffic will be terrible. Maybe it will pollute the waterways. Or maybe the growing popularity of Assembly Square will have more effect than Wynn.

Building even regrettable skyscrapers like Harbor Towers or what used to be called the Bank of Boston has not hurt the city much. Paul Rudolph’s monstrosity of a state office building, as badly kept as it is, has not destroyed Cambridge Street. Neither has the city been destroyed by the expansion of liquor licenses, the deregulation of Blue Laws, or the opening of medical marijuana shops. Marijuana shops actually might provide a bit of levity as we watch who goes in and speculate on what medical condition they might have.

Look back at the tragedies that occurred since the middle of the last century—the Kennedys’ and King’s assassinations. Viet Nam. Nixon’s crimes. September 11. Wall Street’s and the banks’ cheating that led to a crippling recession.

It’s what we can’t imagine that we should really be afraid of.

When should a building be landmarked?

Mayor Walsh wants to illuminate Boston City Hall, which opened in 1969. William Rawn’s redesign of architect Philip Johnson’s 1971 addition to the Boston Public Library is coming to fruition.

These two events bring home the complications of deciding what architecture to preserve in a history-obsessed city.

These buildings have commonalities. They are public, built with taxpayers’ money at about the same time. They both employ the Brutalism style, although the Johnson building uses granite, not concrete. Architects and architectural historians appreciate them. The public mostly detests them.

The Johnson building was landmarked by the Boston Landmarks Commission in 2000. Landmarks oversees Boston’s historic districts, imposes demolition delays on historic structures, and designates buildings as landmarks, according to chair Lynn Smiledge. In the Johnson building’s case, this means the commission must approve changes to its exterior, entry hall and the voluminous staircase atrium.

City Hall is not landmarked. When the mayor wanted to illuminate it, however, he had to obtain Landmarks’ approval because the building’s landmark status is “pending.” In 2007, several residents, including Douglass Shand-Tucci, Sue Prindle, and Friends of the Public Garden founder Henry Lee, submitted a petition to landmark City Hall. The next step would be for Landmarks to commission a study describing the building’s architectural and historic importance to the city and to the state, region or nation. That study was not undertaken.

“There has been a drum beat against mid-century modernism,” said architectural historian Keith Morgan, a professor at Boston University. Morgan believes City Hall’s poor condition is a reason the public doesn’t warm to it. He was one of several individuals who urged Landmarks to move forward with the City Hall study.

“City Hall is clearly of landmark quality,” he said. “It’s the exceptional nature of its design and its historic significance. It was the building that reversed Boston’s downward spiral. We owe it a debt of gratitude.”

Such exhortations have fallen on deaf ears. Lauren Zingarelli, Director of Communications and Community Engagement in the Mayor’s Office of Environment, Energy, and Open Space explained it this way:

“Each year the BLC Work Plan prioritizes two or three study reports for pending landmarks,” she said. “These priorities are based on available funding, owner support and perceived threat.”

With little “owner” support—i.e. two mayors—and threats to the building proposed only by them, Landmarks probably saw few benefits from moving forward on City Hall.

The Johnson building’s story is different. Both library buildings were designated at the same time. They were not threatened. No one would probably object to landmarking the 1895 McKim building that faces Copley Square.

But the Johnson building’s architectural significance is unclear. The report said, “The Johnson addition looks reverently to the McKim building for several of its architectural guiding principles and yet utterly disregards it many ways . . . The starkness of the Johnson addition continues the refined grandeur of the McKim without competing with its visual richness. The disdain for the human scale evident in the Johnson design, however, undercuts the effectiveness of utilizing classical principles in its arrangement and renders its academic ideal lifeless.”

Not exactly a ringing endorsement of architectural significance.

The Johnson building’s historic significance is also dubious.

The report said it shows how “library philosophy” has changed. For example, open stacks were the norm in the mid-20th century as they had not been in the 1800s. Perhaps that can be construed as history.

The report dwells on Philip Johnson’s importance as a scholar, a taste-maker, and a person whose “sympathy with the Beaux-Arts . . . [gives] his work an altogether more serious character.”

The Kardashians are taste-makers too. It’s hard to see Johnson’s sympathy with the Beaux-Arts in any of his buildings except maybe in symmetry.

Keith Morgan pushed back on me. Johnson and others like him had a profound influence on other architects, he said. That is important.

These buildings’ stories leave one feeling that landmarking, like much of human endeavor, is fraught with subjective feelings despite the principles in place.

Questions still need to be answered.

  • Should a certain amount of time pass before a building is considered for landmarking—say 50 years? The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s original “palace” and its 2012 Renzo Piano addition were landmarked in 2011, before the addition was finished. The addition is fine, but is this another case of a celebrity architect trumping a measured judgment of how a building works with the city over time?
  • To what extent should the public’s affection for a building affect landmarking? Victorian buildings we now appreciate were dismissed by some 20th century critics as vulgar. A future example could be the Hurley Building and its mental health facility, the Lindemann Center, on Cambridge Street. Keith Morgan praises its sculptural quality, but its unpleasant relationship to the street, even without the temporary, dirty steel fences around it, makes pedestrians want to walk on the other side. Its maker was celebrity architect Paul Rudolph.
  • To what extent should materials be considered? We’ve learned that concrete ages poorly, and it’s not only because the public concrete buildings have been left to rot.
  • Can we consider how a building contributes to a sense of place, a sense of Boston? The old Shreve, Crump and Low building at the corner of Boylston and Arlington did not receive landmark status and sits empty, destined for demolition. Its removal will affect the sense of early 20th century Boston within a whole block.

I don’t know the answers to these questions, but I hope more regular citizens get involved in these matters so we can hash them out.

Jaywalking is safest

It gladdened my heart last week to read that state Senator Harriette Chandler, a Democrat from Worcester and the Senate Majority Leader, proposed raising the fine for jaywalking from $1 to $25 for a first offense up to $75 for third offenses and more. She thinks this will save lives.

I was delighted for two reasons. First, it’s fun to watch when people try to solve a problem with an ineffective solution.

Also, the senator’s proposal gives me the chance to celebrate jaywalking as the Boston pedestrians’ only way to get across a street.

Let’s look at facts. Massachusetts saw 11 pedestrian deaths between January 4 and January 26, according to WalkBoston. Eight were caused by drivers, not pedestrians. Four of the victims were in a crosswalk, but the drivers hit them anyway. One driver was drunk. Three drivers hit and ran. (Full disclosure: I sit on the board of WalkBoston because I care about this stuff.)

Eight fatalities occurred after dark. Older pedestrians were more at risk: seven were over 60.

The irony is that Sen. Chandler would be increasing the fine on the best way to stay safe. Studies in San Francisco, New York City and Florida have determined that jaywalking is safer than crossing in a crosswalk.

In May, 2010, the New York Times columnist David Brooks vindicated Boston pedestrians when he wrote that people take more risks when they believe systems or devices are in place to protect them. “[Pedestrians] have a false sense of security in crosswalks and are less likely to look both ways,” he wrote.

Despite the recent tragedies, Boston’s jaywalkers still make this city the second safest for pedestrians in America. Transportation for America, an organization devoted to expanding transportation options, quantified the most dangerous places for pedestrians. In 50 metro areas of more than 1 million, Minneapolis-St. Paul was safest, but Boston was second.

This is despite the fact that more Boston-area residents (4.6 percent) walk to work than in any American city except New York (6 percent). New York was also safer for pedestrians, with a ranking just under Boston’s.

Putting safety aside, jaywalking is the reasonable option when pedestrians face the challenges the city’s transportation officials put in their way.

The city has installed push buttons at every crosswalk so cars are not inconvenienced if no one is waiting to cross. We doubt that the buttons work since we know how badly the city maintains anything. So we are forced to take matters into our own hands.

Most cities use buttons at crosswalks where few pedestrians turn up. Here, at all times of day, there are as many pedestrians as cars at most intersections. We always need a walk cycle. Take out the buttons, and spend the savings on pre-kindergarten.

Another problem is that even if we get a walk cycle, it is not concurrent with traffic going in the same direction, as it is in every other American city. Maybe those officials don’t want us to slow down the drivers who are turning.

Law-abiding tourists are stuck and confused. You watch them stand on a corner, waiting and waiting for the little white man, wondering why Bostonians are paying no attention.

The next problem is the time walkers are given to cross a street. We might get 18 seconds at a Cambridge Street intersection, while Washington D.C. pedestrians get 47 seconds on a street of a comparable size. (It is nerdy to measure such things, but I do it.)

It is ironic in “America’s Walking City” that city officials are so behind the times in making it more convenient and safer for walkers.         Cambridge and Chicago have instituted a “leading pedestrian interval” at some intersections. Pedestrians get a few seconds head start in crossing the street before the light turns green for cars heading in the same direction. Turning cars are more likely to see pedestrians who are already in the crosswalk.

Finally, drivers should be fined for blasting through un-signaled crosswalks when a person has already started to cross. California drivers on even the busiest roads stop if a pedestrian is in the crosswalk. In Boston, where drivers seem oblivious, a sign helps.

Mayor Walsh has a plan for making our streets safer with his Vision Zero Task Force. It has identified some of the most dangerous locations and made plans to make them safer. His plea for drivers to slow down won’t make a difference. But his plan for speed bumps and raised crosswalks in some neighborhoods is an excellent start, since high speed is the greatest factor in pedestrian deaths.

Making laws and the right of way tougher on cars is the way to go, not blaming the victims.

Meanwhile, I called Ms. Chandler’s office to see how things are going. Haven’t heard back yet.