Everyone Loves A Slinky!
The Teller‘s building (OK, it’s not ours, but our employer’s, The Warren Group) is in Fort Point in Boston. For those of you who don’t know, there is quite a little colony of artists who steadfastly prowl the streets, placing clever stickers on lampposts, showing off their cool hairstyles, eating at the funky little restaurants, and generally livening up the place.
It’s quite a contrast as just across the channel is starch-shirt city, with the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston tower, One Financial Center, and the rest of the financial district marching about, generally ignoring everything else.
October is the Fort Point Channel artists’ open studio month, and this year a local artist named Lisa Greenfield is kicking off the expo with a piece of public art called Coil/Recoil. Basically, Greenfield and her fellow artists have hung dozens of Slinkies on both sides of the Summer Street/A Street bridge.
The piece is to show the "resiliency of the neighborhood and its ability to bounce back." One might ask, ‘Bounce back from what, skinny jeans?’
First of all, these are real artists, not Allston hipsters. Secondly, Fort Point has faced a massive depopulation over the last decade. The development arm of Goldman Sachs, known as Archon, started to boot artists out of buildings with various redevelopment plans dancing in their heads. Then we hit the Great Recession, and those buildings continue to sit empty.
But what does that have to do with Slinkies? Well, she hopes the community will bounce right back up to where it once was, just like the Slinkies now hanging off Summer Street.
"The artists have been through several ups and downs in the economy," she told The Teller (paradoxical, we know). "This is just another bounce for us."
To do that, she said Fort Point needs some help from the city of Boston.
"I wish the city would put more pressure on the developers," Greenfield said. "They should have not kicked everybody out and then abandoned the place. Artist rental space is in big demand."
Greenfield knows all about this; she’s been an activist in the neighborhood for years. In 2003, she got a master’s degree in urban planning from Harvard (she’s one of us!) to better fight paperwork with paperwork.
"This is a little more fun than the planning, and a little more immediate," she said. "But you still have to get permits."
Goodbye, Julio, 
and Good Luck
Dear Matthew and Lisa Golden, now of 49 Woodland Road in Brookline, we would like to take this space to apologize for the mounds of toilet paper that must be draped over your new five-bedroom colonial. We’re sorry about the tattered remains of burned effigies in your front lawn, or the black marks left by bags of flaming yuck left on your front stoop.
The Teller doesn’t condone any of this behavior. These unruly and ridiculous pranks are below the great people of this nation, and are the work of only fringe members and zealots. But even the most conservative elements among us demand results, and your house’s previous owner just didn’t produce them.
We are speaking of former Red Sox shortstop and doormat Julio Lugo. Lugo came into town as a much-ballyhooed, top-of-the-order hitter to prowl the base paths at Fenway Park. Three years later, Lugo had hit .251 in 266 games with the Sox, with an on-base percentage of only .319 (for you non-baseball fans, that’s absolutely terrible). He was shipped to the St. Louis Cardinals on July 22 for a minor league player, who the Red Sox have already cut.
Now, Mr. and Mrs. Golden, we know this is in no way your fault. But we have to consider… maybe it’s your house? On the surface, nothing seems wrong with your $4 million, 8,921-square-foot home you just bought on Sept. 21. It was built in 2005, has 11 rooms, five bedrooms, and four full bathrooms. Brookline’s assessors considered it in "excellent" condition when it was inspected this year.
So, maybe it’s allergy-aggravating dust motes? Off-gassing? Ghosts? Whatever the case, we wouldn’t suggest trying to join the local nine. Maybe you’ll be OK with a softball team – hey, Lugo is still a major leaguer, one of the best 750 players in the world – but don’t push it.
