one New Yorker and a Rolling Stone

The finish-line area for the Boston Marathon is in a neighborhood where I lived during my sophomore year at Boston University.  Also I worked in that neighborhood during two summers -- the first 9-5 typing job after freshman year was in a little office on Boylston Street, somewhere in there near the second explosion.

On a Friday after school (or after work if it was summer-time), I could get off the subway at Copley station and go up the concrete steps, emerge out onto the sidewalk, crowded with other commuters, and right outside the subway opening in the street was a news-stand thick with papers, magazines, and miscellaneous stuff, & I could buy the latest New Yorker magazine and Rolling Stone (on newsprint, then, not slick) and take them home to my "apartment" (room) at 357 Beacon Street.

From Boylston -- a block to Newbury Street, another block to Commonwealth Avenue ("Comm Avv"), another to Marlborough, and then you're at Beacon Street, turn left, and my ("my") building was on the left, couple of doors in.

When I first got to Boston, in the fall of my freshman year, a grad student took me to my first "foreign movie" where you read the dialogue in the sub-titles, at the Exeter Street Theatre, which was also in that neighborhood. 

Several years later, saw the "Rocky Horror Picture Show" at that same theater....

A Paperback Booksmith was on Boylston Street, and a Strawberries (record albums), a few nice restaurants, the Lenox Hotel which had an atmospheric lounge -- think I was in it once....  Baskin Robbins -- a scoop on the pointy, old-fashioned sugar cone, the John Hancock building -- all glass, and the other buildings were reflected in it -- very modern and beautiful, while the other buildings were very old and traditional and beautiful.

It was a big, merry mix:  the BPL (Boston Public Library), right there.

Another movie theater -- a regular, modern one, with new movies (in English) -- was on, I think, Boylston Street, right on the corner, maybe, where I would turn to walk down to where I lived.  The movie Manhattan came out and was to play at that theater, and I went to it with two guys who lived in the same rooming house ("apartment building") as me:  Phil, and Rob, and some of their other friends. 

We stood in a separate line before the first show, to buy tickets for the second show, then went and had a beer, and came back for second show & did not, then, have to stand in the long line because we already had tickets.

After Annie Hall, Woody Allen had made a film called Interiors.  It was serious, and kind of sad -- dissatisfied people trying to find their way.  And it wasn't funny.  (That's when Allen fans started referring to his movies before and including Annie Hall as "the early, funny ones."  Though plenty of them after that were funny, too....)

We all wanted to see Manhattan because we'd heard it was funny.  He was back to doing funny ones.  (Whew!)

-------------- Chapter one.

He adored New York City.
He idolized it all out of proportion.
Uh, no.  Make that "He romanticized it all out of proportion."
To him, no matter what the season was,
this was still a town that existed in black and white
and pulsated to the great tunes of George Gershwin.
Uh...no.  Let me start this over.
Chapter one.
He was too romantic aobut Manhattan,
as he was about everything else....----------------------------

We all liked that movie!

Rob and I liked it so much, we agreed to go back and see it again, while it was still running in that theater.

In one scene, where the character played by Woody Allen has moved to a different NYC apartment and he has issues with it:  "I've got -- these noises -- I don't know, rats with bongos, brown water ["brown waht-uh"] and that noise -- what is that, it's like a trumpet -- like, sawing -- like a man sawing a trumpet in half...."

We took the subway to the Park Street stop, after the movie, and had Italian food at the Marliave, and talked about the movie and our jobs and the city of Boston and stuff.  After that we walked back to 357 Beacon Street.  It was summer, so no coats.  I would not have walked that stretch by myself after dark, in the city -- women were always advised to not do that -- but I wasn't alone, so we walked.

A few days later Rob and I were talking in the hallway -- he asked me if I had heard strange noises coming from the large apartment on the second floor.  I said I didn't know, maybe.  He said, "It was -- like -- someone sawing a trumpet in half...."

(...Uh -- wait.  Let me start this over....)

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