Once upon a time, in 2005 when we were shocked that gas was over $2, I had my car in Boston. From the very beginning, it was trouble. For the first few days after I moved, I was waiting on some paperwork to come from my insurance or someone else that prohibited me from getting the resident parking pass from City Hall that I desperately needed.
If you are not familiar with the parking situation in Boston, there is essentially nowhere to park unless you have a resident pass or have the time to play musical chairs with parking meters. Luckily, class had not started at this point, so I did have time to feed the meter and search for spots. Eventually I did get my pass, but my problems did not end there.
Sometime over the Labor Day weekend that year, someone decided to slash all the sidewalk-side tires of the cars parked on my street. After driving to the middle of nowhere to get replacements, a week or two later I found my driver’s side mirror smashed in. I had left some sort of iPod paraphernalia in the car, and I assume that the vandal thought there would be the actual iPod in there somewhere. He was out of luck, and I don’t think he actually took anything other than hours of my time temporarily taping the window up and eventually getting it fixed. The odd part about both of these incidents is the fact that I live in one of the nicer areas of Boston, but I guess the proximity to a row of fraternity houses and Fenway Park are not ideal.
Finally, just another week or so after the window smashing, my car was towed while parked on Commonwealth Avenue during a Yankees-Red Sox series. I parked the car in the spot on a Monday, as I usually do since street cleaning requires you to move it every Monday. Then on the following Friday, after a long week of classes, I decided to check on it and discovered a completely empty street like one of those horror movies where the city is empty. I soon find out that sometime during the week signs were posted instructing everyone to move their cars… by one hour before I went to go check on the car… and this was the start of my birthday weekend.
Needless to say, my car was back in New Jersey the following month.
And this brings us to my favorite song from Kanye West’s Late Registration: Drive Slow. This is probably the first album I got while in Boston as it came out at the very end of August. Golddigger was everywhere at the time, but Drive Slow was my jam. It was eventually quietly released as a single, but since it was the fifth of the album it never really got any attention. According to wiki, M.I.A. was supposed to be featured on this track, and I don’t even know where to begin with that (although the article referenced by wiki doesn’t specifically say she was supposed to be on this track).
P.S. – As a follow up, I’ve actually had my car in Boston since this past January and managed get by with only one towing incident!
