Boston Cross

One of the first things that Sarah and I observed when we were out here in Boston was the traffic situation. I'd been told that Boston was a horrible city to drive in, and I had assumed that people said that because they thought the drivers here are bad. But after walking around Boston for a rather brief time, it became apparent that there is another major reason for traffic trouble in the Bean Town. The streets are, how do you say... really dumb?!

They say you can't make four right turns anywhere in Boston and end up where you started. Now, I don't know who this "they" character is, but "they" are certainly on to something. The streets here seem to intersect at every imaginable angle except a right angle. The only thing around here that's even close to 90 degrees is the temperature on the train when I get on in the morning on my way to work and have to shed multiple layers in order not to sweat out all the vodka from the bloody mary I had for breakfast.

Honestly, the poor street design in Boston plays a major role in the bad traffic. And parking is a whole 'nother mess! But strange angles of intersection (that sounds like a good song or album title) are not the only peculiar thing about the Boston streets. If I want to cross the street from my apartment to the other side of Commonwealth Avenue (or, as we here in Boston like to say, "Comm Av"), I have to cross 8 (eight) lanes of traffic. That's right. Just outside my front door are 8 lanes of traffic. Commonwealth Avenue itself has two lanes running in each direction for a count of 4. But there are also two sets of train tracks to cross, bringing the count up to 6 alltogether. And add to that the two one lane, one-way streets that run parallel to Comm Av on each side and you've got 8 lanes of traffic total. Right outside my front door!

This situation is a perfect example of where the term "Boston Cross" originates. Sarah and I came up with this on one of our first days in Boston, and it refers to the harrowing-but-fun-if-you're-a-little-bit-crazy game of trying to cross the streets in Boston. The prevailing attitude is a little bit like that of brave, soldiers who have been left behind enemy lines and know they have no cover and no help on the way: "What the hell, let's go for it; and if we survive, great, we can go to Filene's Basement!"

And don't worry about the walk/don't walk signs when you try to cross the street. When Sarah and I first moved here, we would wait until the little walking person made of white lights lit up before we would start to cross the streets. That's what we'd do back in lil' ol' Rohnert Park! But here the little walkie guy means about as much as a Giants baseball hat (you're not the Red Sox and you're not the Yankees, so it doesn't really matter who you are) - people just don't care about it!

So every day Sarah and I engage in that age old threat to sanity that can be referred to generically as "crossing the street in Boston." But we call it the Boston Cross - BX for short.