Posts Tagged “boston”

Once again, I’m in danger of falling seriously behind on posting about events that I’ve attended or noted, so I’m going to get proactive and blog about some events that are upcoming and maybe drum up a few more attendees.  Perhaps I’ll see you there.

First up, next Thursday, October 16, is the Photographic Resource Center’s Young Professionals kickoff event, a cocktail hour and informal gallery talk focused on the beginning or thinking about becoming beginning photo collector.   It’s $10 and you can sign up by getting in touch with Cate at the PRC.  I’ve seen the PRC auction preview exhibition, and I can tell you it’s spectacular.

You’ll have just a week to recover from that and then it’s time for the DeCordova Museum’s Young Members of DeCordova (YMOD) Gallery walk around the South End on October 23.  It’s also $10 ($15 if you’re not a member of the museum) and you can sign up by getting in touch with Joanna at the DeCordova.

YMOD is a more established group with a good lineup of events planned (I attended a great one back in May), while the PRC’s group is just getting off the ground.  It’s a good thing that we don’t have to choose.

The Northern Avenue bridge was illuminaled in orange and blue but I didn’t get even halfway across when a security guy called out that we had to clear the bridge because it was going to open.  Open?  I had no idea it could.  Turns out it’s the spinny kind of drawbridge.  Here are some shots from the adjacent Moakley bridge as the Northern ave slowly turned to admit an invisible ship.

Update: check out Lance’s different perspective on the same bridge swing.

Tonight was supposedly the last night of Boston Illuminale (warning: annoying flash site, see also more photos on flickr), wherein several Boston sites were festooned with fancy lighting.  I didn’t get to all the sites, but I’m not sure if they were all in fact illuminaled.  The Moakley bridge over the Fort Point channel was lit up in blue, but I thought that was a year-round thing.  Either way, here are some pics of the area.  Stay tuned for further shots of the more dramatic goings-on at the Northern Avenue bridge.

I’m pretty sure that’s the planet Venus up there in the lower right picture, not any kind of extraterrestrial craft or paranormal phenomenon, but the spotlights were scanning the sky just in case.

Yesterday was the official grand opening of the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway, the strip of urban parks that has replaced the elevated route 93 and changed the face of Boston.  I might quibble with the execution or the cost, but I can’t say enough good things about the whole idea of creating this green space in the most built-up part of the city.

The Greenway echoes the Emerald Necklace and provides about ten times the park area of nearby Post Office Square.  The project isn’t done - there are plans for two museums and an Armenian Heritage Park - and it’s not clear that it ever will be, but it’s done enough, and it got a pretty good crowd yesterday.

I was helping out at the Hudson Street Gallery most of the afternoon, so I wasn’t able to see the whole thing, but there were a few performance stages and at least one farmers market, outside of South Station, where I saw my old friends When Pigs Fly Bakery and Shy Brothers Cheese, among others. Closer to the gallery was the Chinatown park, where there were cultural performances all day, including lion dances, noodle-making, several kinds of martial arts, and Cantonese opera.  Click on the maplet at right - to which I’ve added the location of the Hudson Street Gallery near the bottom - for more information about the Greenway and more comprehensive maps.

Further along the Greenway, near the Aquarium, was a fountain of sorts.  It’s a spiral-patterned circle of stone and brick, with water jets that fire in patterns, creating mini-geysers in various patterns.  And inviting passers-by to tempt fate by first running through, and then, oddly, just standing still in the middle.

There’s lots more to explore in the Greenway, but I have to leave you with a final cartographic note.  The grand opening events included some kind of text-message scavenger hunt, and the map for that event included one unusual feature: the thick black line represents the approximate coastline of Boston in 1775, which is itself already much extended from the land profile at the time of European arrival.

Click on the map for more information on the game and the full-size PDF map.  And be sure to enjoy your local urban greenspace, wherever you are.

After an evening of lengthy and expensive marketing research, there’s really only one place to go: Chinatown. I dragged about half a gaggle of co-workers and some hangers-on to one of my favorite seafood joints, Peach Farm.

This is not the sort of place that has a website, so I’ll just give the address: 4 Tyler Street, although you can find countless reviews online. It’s a half flight of stairs down and past some dingy-looking tanks of fish and crabs. This is one of those places whose Zagat rating for food is about four times its decor rating. The service rating is somewhere up the middle, and that corresponds to my experience. Our table was equipped with a lazy susan and a teapot with the lid attached by a length of plastic cable.

On this occasion they were on top of their game. We ordered scallion pancake and potstickers to warm up and because were were starving. But Peach Farm really shines when you start ordering seafood. We chose the steamed bass from the tank and the salty fried softshell crab. To balance out, we added beef lo mein (they were out of the usual fave dry-fried beef chow fun) and peapod stems with garlic sauce.

They brought over the plastic bucket and showed me a couple of striped bass squirming around in it. They were on the small side so we had both. If you go to Peach Farm and order fish from the tank - and you really must - they will do the classic Chinese thing and let you approve the live fish before cooking them. If you don’t like the look of them, this is your last chance to send them back for an exchange.

Cooked, the fish were served in a soy-ginger sauce with plenty of ginger, and not much else. The flavor of the fish itself was subtle but delicious. Serving it off the bones without flipping it (that’s bad luck) is a trick worth learning. I’m still working on it, but nobody choked.

The soft shell crab arrived in a heap of golden fried morsels with some chiles and scallions scattered about. Hot and fresh, with equal measure of salt and spice, the sweet crab meat was about as good as I’ve ever had, and soft shell crab is wonderfully simple to eat compared to all the cracking and prying involved with tougher exoskeletons.

I usually go for the dry-fried beef chow fun even at this basement of seafood miracles. It’s just that good. But they were out so I switched the order to lo mein just in case one of the guests wasn’t up for the seafood. You never know, sometimes it happens.

Last to arrive were the peapod stems in garlic sauce. A welcome and delicious bunch of roughage, peapod stems have a cut grass kind of smell and a nice taste to match. The garlic sauce was light but assertive. An excellent break from the greasy crab and noodles.

If you find yourself in or near Chinatown - perhaps visiting the Hudson Street Gallery - in need of fresh seafood and a relaxed good time, Peach Farm is an excellent choice. These four dishes are a good place to start, but there’s a lot more to explore there.