nineties

Thursday Doors—Boston’s North End

~ MaryG ~ Leave a comment

There are many beautiful old doors in Boston’s historic North End (aka the Italian neighborhood), but 160 Endicott Street is not one of them.

It’s an old, unrenovated building…
…in a great location in Boston’s North End—just around the corner from the original Pizzeria Regina

It is, however, a meaningful door in terms of my life story. I lived there in the early 1990s with my roommate Bridget, a friend from work. It was the last place I lived as a single woman. After that, I moved in with a boyfriend who I later married.

160 Endicott was truly a dump. It was the first floor apartment over a convenience store that I think was some type of front for a low-level gambling operation. Their most popular item was lottery tickets. They had a few dusty cans of soup and literally nothing else you would ever want to buy. The irony was the hand-carved sign, “If we don’t have it, you don’t need it.” They never had anything I needed. Not a tampon, not an Advil, nothing.

The apartment itself was totally unrenovated and smelled liked cats. The kitchen was horrible. The bathroom had cockroaches. The downstairs neighbors (who lived in an unfinished basement beneath the store) were always asking to borrow my car so they could drive to the dog racing track up north. But it was in a great location in the heart of old Boston and we could afford it on our art museum salaries, with absolutely no help from parents, which was my main objective in moving there. I really didn’t want to be beholden to my parents for anything. I needed some space from them and my troubled sister.

I took my kids back to visit in 2009. It looked much the same from the outside, but the store inside looked cleaner and nicer. New owners had taken over.

I didn’t ask to see the old apartment, but the green exterior bay window looked exactly the same. And the sign was still there:

“If we don’t have it, you don’t need it.”
That was the window of my “bedroom” which was actually the living room. I slept on a pullout sofa.
A return trip to 160 Endicott Street in 2009
In 2009, the humble exterior looked identical to how it looked in 1990.

The twenties are such a formative decade. So many forks in the road. Decisions made. Paths chosen. Roads not taken.

Memories of my time on Endicott Street include gaining a more visceral understanding of poverty (I thought our place was bad, until I saw how the people under the store were living); finally ending a longterm romantic relationship that had been going on and off for years; great authors—like Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou—introduced to me by my roommate Bridget (a reader and a feminist); and food smells—especially Bova’s bakery, open 24/7. Not much in Boston is open all night…but Bova’s is. There are better bakeries in Boston’s North End, but nothing smelled as good as Bova’s at 3am.

Posted for Dan’s Thursday Doors

And Just Like That

~ MaryG ~ 21 Comments

Predictably, I was a fan of Sex and the City and have eagerly watched all three seasons of the reboot—And Just Like That. (I saw both of the Sex and the City movies too.) We now know that this will be the final season of And Just Like That, so fans are getting ready to bid goodbye to Carrie Bradshaw forever.

My obvious connection to the show has been that I am the same generation as the main characters. Sarah Jessica Parker and Kristin Davis are my age exactly—sixty. They are among the group of actresses born in 1965 that I tend to keep tabs on.

I know there are plenty of haters out there, based on very legitimate criticisms of the show, but for me Sex and the City was like an alternate reality. By the time the show first aired in 1998, I was married with a three-year old, living in a somewhat dilapidated antique house in suburbia. What if I hadn’t gone that route? What if I had had the gumption to leave Boston for the real city in my twenties, like several of my friends? Would I be dashing around Manhattan in a tulle skirt, going to art openings and brunch?

The 60-year old versions of the characters in the reboot, still living in Manhattan in fabulous clothes, have been dealing with some relatable GenX problems from bouts of vertigo to ageism at work. Still, they’ve kept it mostly light and escapist. Even when Carrie’s husband (Mr. Big) drops dead in the shower, I wasn’t exactly heartbroken. The female friendships are still central. New York City is still central.

We’ll see what the final two episodes bring. How will my life in an alternate universe turn out?

SJP as Carrie Bradshaw in Season One of Sex and the City (1998)
Me hosting a rather cramped birthday party in our living room in 1998

Your tone

~ MaryG ~ 19 Comments
Daily writing prompt
Do you remember life before the internet?
View all responses

As one of the oldest GenXers, I’ve had the internet for just about half of my life, so I remember pre-internet life quite well.

The turning point was around the time I got married—in 1993. I planned the entire wedding and honeymoon without the internet. Imagine that. I had books, a work friend who loved weddings, Bride magazine, a landline, and my mother as my main resources.

As a courtesy to my mother, I called my childhood Catholic church to inquire about getting married there. At that time, my future husband and I were already living together, which is considered to be “the sin of adultery” in the Catholic Church. The fact that we were cohabitating was clear from the greeting on our answering machine.

Well, the very sound of the priest’s condescending voice on my answering machine when he returned my call sent me straight to the Unitarian church down the street. And that’s where we ended up getting married.

Before the internet, the human voice and all its various inflections, mattered more than they do now. There were no emojis, only “your tone” — and I did not like Father Sheehan’s tone.

Image from Pexels

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