We Blog

On Wednesday Brooklyn got nearly 3.5″ of rain in a little more than an hour. An F2 tornado touched down in Bay Ridge. Mass transit was flooded. When I got up around 10:30am and turned on the news, not a single subway line was running normally. As of that moment, I couldn’t get into the city by train. And information on where service was being restored was hard to come by. Buses were overcrowded and stuck in traffic. Many people walked. Fortunately by the time I went to work around 3, things were better and it took my normal ~30min to commute (although the trains were PACKED and there was no A/C on a 94 degree, humid day).

But it raised some serious concerns. In the worst weather, when we most need sheltered, quick transportation, me and many New Yorkers seem to be out of luck in terms of getting around. It brings to mind last year’s MTA strike, when we heard those horror stories of elderly people walking miles in the freezing cold. Our apartment is about 4-5 miles from work, which is certainly walkable, but not as easy under extreme weather conditions. I heard a lot of city officials say “New Yorkers are resilient,” so I guess I just cross my fingers and hope I’m enough of a New Yorker to deal with it when it happens again.

I hate to forget my impressions of things. I find initial feelings eventually get warped by bias, external factors and memory lapse, so I want to jot a few quick notes on Boston (which I was seeing for the “first” time, having forgotten any strong or continuous memories from childhood trips).

• The city looks clean and well-kept … very polished (at least the areas we saw).
• The T is nice, but it’s not convenient for travel over short distances.
• There seemed to be an inordinate amount of angry people. We overheard a lot of yelling matches while there. Odd observation, yes.
• They have the most charming alleys ever. The streets downtown are all crooked and winding, and it makes for some corridors that look like they haven’t been touched in centuries. Broken cobblestone, wide brick faces, street lamps and a dark, shrouded mystique.
• Locals are easy to spot and hear. In New York, the tourists are especially easy to pick out. In Boston, it’s the Bostonians who stand out. The accents are awesome.
• The history is inescapable, pervasive and is completely fused with the modern elements. The historic sites aren’t isolated within the city, they’re peppered in with all the rest of the buildings like there’s literally no room to break the past from the present.
• It’s a great walking city. It’s flat, central and seamless from one area to the next.
• There are Dunkin’ Donuts everywhere.
• Lots of homeless downtown.
• Lots of young people.

Overall we really enjoyed our visit. It was nice to have a weekend of dry heat, a welcome reprieve from this oppressive humidity. We also ate a ton of seafood, all of which was spectacular. We’re slowly making our way through our insanely long list of things to do and places to visit. Next? Hopefully Chicago.

I just found this time-lapse video on YouTube — 24 Hours at the Daily Cal:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpHNxhxrd6M

It’s really a great idea, whoever put it together. Not so much for the individual faces — especially because I’m too old now to recognize any of them — but because it captures the essence of the pace, mood and even culture of the paper. We worked frantically, goofed off, stayed late, came in randomly to print essays for class and check email, ate, slept, wandered from corner to corner. It was as exhilirating as it was miserable.

The Daily Cal was like any youthful obsession — we took it too seriously, thought it was the most important thing in the world, invented and inflamed drama, took things personally, couldn’t keep it separate from the rest of our lives … and loved and hated it at the same time. Outsiders didn’t understand. Insiders made it worse.

We were hard-working, ambitious, emotional perfectionists, all crammed into an enclosed space for 50 hours a week with deadlines and — oh yeah, classes to attend. Some of us were depressed. Some didn’t sleep. Some worse. But every day we united behind a common and mandatory goal: putting out the paper. That wasn’t always the upside. Sometimes production was sheer misery. But sometimes it was the highest high, especially on a few memorable nights: when Clark Kerr died, election days (especially the Davis recall/Schwarzenegger win and the Bush re-election), and the first night of fall production in 2004 (my second semester as managing editor, fresh off my Chronicle internship).

Despite any petty factions or problems, production was an unmatchable feeling of belonging, and of doing something important and meaningful.

I don’t know if I’ll ever be that involved at a professional news organization (that requires about three decades of war correspondence another decade as a bureau chief), so I hope I always remember the agony and reward of college journalism. And that’s how a time-lapse video can say so much without using a word for those of us who were a part of it. Bet you wish I were as silent, eh?