Getting close to home

Sunday was a gorgeous late spring day. Not a cloud in the blue, blue sky. Temps in the upper 60's. Just lovely.

My sister and niece were going to come into Boston for a socially distanced, masked walk, but with the demonstrations on tap, they decided not to. So I just walked around solo, and did what Trish, Molly and I were planning on, which was buying myself a lobster roll at James Hook. 

On my way to Hook, I walked through Downtown Crossing and saw that Macy's was all boarded up. Prudent move or overkill? Who knew, at that point. 

It was early, but I decided to cut through City Hall Plaza, where a rally was planned for later in the afternoon. All was peaceful. No sign of anything, other than a couple getting married next to the Government Center T-Stop. (After the vows were said, they played the Beatles' All You Need Is Love. To which I might add, Ob la di, ob-la-da, life goes on.)

Once home, I kept tabs on the multiple demonstrations and walks that were taking place. All was calm. The protestors were making their point, which is real and valid. But I wasn't yet ready to breathe a sigh of relief.

Late in the evening, with the choppers whirring overhead and the sirens blaring down the street, I put the news on and started channel cruising. 

All had been calm. And then some jackass decided that calm wasn't exciting enough. So one thing led to another, and too many people - although, of course, a minute proportion of those who had come to peacefully protest - who hadn't really planned on rioting got caught up with the handful who'd come hell bent on mayhem.

And so we got a burning police car. Projectiles thrown. Tags sprayed. Windows smashed. Looting. Looting. More looting. 

I watched until about 1 a.m., when things seemed to be quieting down, and then went to bed. 

In the morning, I texted my friend K, who lives in Downtown Crossing, and we decided to take a walk and see what damage had been done.

Things were closer to home than I had realized. This is the window of the Santander branch that's three doors down from where I live. All smashed in, as were the windows of the offices of The Friends of the Public Garden. Raging against a bank is one thing. But raging against the kindly folks who maintain the flowerbeds in the Public Garden. What???

Downtown Crossing was pretty well cleaned up. No broken glass. The stores that had been vandalized - Men's Wearhouse, a couple of shoe stores, a couple of jewelers - were all boarded up. Turns out Macy's was wise to have boarded their windows up in advance. Oddly, some stores were spared. Like the Army-Navy Surplus store next to the Men's Wearhouse. 

One of the brilliant protestors vandals spray painted this on the front of Home Goods:

Apparently no student of history if they think that life under Stalin et al. was any great shakes. 

We passed the spot where the police cruiser had been torched, but there were no signs of it. At the Park Street T-stop, people - just regular civilians, young people, volunteers - were cleaning the grafitti that was defacing the station entrances. 

The area around St. Francis House - Boston's largest day shelter for the poor and homeless - was completely trashed. The convenience store across the street, the Walgreen's on the corner. Devastated. St. Francis House itself was spared, but it was closed yesterday. St. Francis House is NEVER closed. 

K and I walked through the Public Garden, where some protestor vandal had told George Washington to fuck off. Volunteers were cleaning it up.

The two main shopping drags in Boston's Back Bay are Newbury Street (fancy shopping) and Boylston Street (plain). Then there's the Copley Place Mall (mostly fancy).

On Newbury Street, the Ugg's store was stripped clean, but stores around it were untouched - or barely touched: a smashed window or two. Brooks Brothers had one broken window, but the twenty-something protestors vandals weren't really interested in button down shirts and chinos.

Boylston Street was also hit or miss as far as vandalism went. There wasn't a stitch of clothing, or a box of shoes, left in Concept, which sells Nike's and athletic ware. But the Paper Source (greeting cards) and Talbot's were fine. The twenty-something protestors vandals were, from what I could see on TV, largely young and largely male. Not the target demographic for Talbot's, that's for sure. (K and I. Now, we're the target demo...) Across the street, half the shelves in the liquor store were empty.

Copley Place is the home to both Saks and Neiman Marcus.

I had watched some of the sacking of Saks, and more of the strip mining of Neiman's. People were running out with arms full of clothing which seemed to still have the security tags on them. Good luck getting those suckers off!

Walking back, K & I stopped for a peace and quiet sit in the peaceful and quiet Public Garden. Other than the FU to George, it was serene and lovely to just sit there.

Later in the day, I walked out to mail a letter and saw that there had been some damage on my block.

These places are a couple of doors up. I'm happy that my building was spared, as were the buildings on either side of me. There was no damage to the Hampshire House (home of the Cheers bar) which is at the end of my block. What's the rhyme or reason to any of this, beyond impulse and the madness of crowds.

Word was that there were more demonstrations in the works. 

Hopefully, they'll stay peaceful. 

Anyway, the stuff you sit and watch on TV? Sometimes it gets pretty close to home...

And the worst of it is, it distracts from the important message of the protests, that black lives matter, that there is systemic racism, that there's personal racism that exists on a broad continuum but is there to some degree in almost all of us, and that we can't survive as a nation unless we start addressing our original sin.