Manoman, I need to get back and visit Boston some more.

You should! Then we could have Excellent Boston Adventures Part 2!!!

You know what else is dripping with history? New Orleans.

It's dripping with history and sweat. It's a sweaty history.

It's a sweaty history.

Well, with all the brothels, are you surprised?

It's dripping with history and sweat. It's a sweaty history.

And a sort of undefined smell. It's smelly sweaty history.

Really doesn't smell except for certain times of the morning NOnbufiistazF2F 4evah!!11!

So in the competition between who was gonna show Nilly the best time ever, The City of New York kicked all our asses.

Well, The City of Chicago wasn't in the race this time.

Well, The City of Chicago wasn't in the race this time.

Those of us in the midwest should start calling our region nil-Nillyland.

Hell, it's got to be better than 'The nation's midsection.'

I thought I really disliked New York, and I have been proven thoroughly wrong on that account.

It was The Enchilada that put it over the top, I know. I'm glad I got you lost enough to enjoy the city.

Damn, she didn't get to see more of Boston? That's a pity. I couldn't live in it - the winters would kill me - but I love the place massively, the look of it, the geography, the hills, the history, its pride in its age.

And Boston didn't get more of Nilly, either. She got in on Monday afternoon, and left Wednesday morning. She had a lovely shindig at Nora's Monday night, and sight seeing and a restaurant Tuesday, that's it. We wuz robbed.

Love,
Red Sox Nation

P.S. Neener Cubbies, you didn't even get that.

Hil, I lived in NYC in the sixties, the era of John Lindsey. The stated goal was to be "the most forward-looking city on EARTH!" There were citywide essays sponsored about it; I remember being shown designs that would "help us beat out all the other cities in the world!" and shuddering. The designs eventually became (I do not love irony, and never less than on this subject) the WTC. It wasn't my perception: it was hard politics. The motto was a sort of cutthroat competitive "first into the future!" thing. Looking for bits of the past was not encouraged. Neither the competitive thing nor the "let's look forward only!" attitude of the city's administration appealed to me in the least. I'm a history tutor.

There always seemed, back then, to be a sense that the city had completely reinvented itself to be the ultimate 20th century town. It was literally as if there was a 100-year gap in New York's personal diary: the entire 19th century was sort of shaken off in the schools, the papers, and it all became about whoosh, starting again at the year 1901, a kind of fin de siecle rebirth. Local history talked about Peter Stuyvesant and Lafayette, went up to the end of the 18th century, and then nothing, until the 20th. It was really weird, and very schizophrenic. I mean, WTF? NY has this incredibly rich 19th century. Where'd it go?

The older parts of the city, the pre 1900 landmarks, were trotted out for the tourists. As a historian, I couldn't understand why anyone wanted to bury so much richness under the need to be new; I still don't get it, and not just about New York in the sixties. London, another large city I can't make myself spend too much time in anymore, has 1700 years on New York, and it nearly did the same thing: the London skyline is dotted with the need to be moderne, a proliferation of completely inappropriate skyscrapers. It looks much worse in London, I think, just because there's so much more antiquity.

But hell, I'm always going to prefer the smaller, the more eclectic, the less aggressive and competitive, when it comes to cities. Florence over Rome, Barcelona over Madrid, Geneva over Zurich. Just, in terms of antiquity, I think Boston (and Philadelphia, as well) wears it better than most, in terms of east coast cities. An argument could probably be made for sections of the south, as well, but I can't claim having spent any major time there. I can speak to NY, though. Seven years, from a month before JFK was assassinated until 1970.

Oh, and I'm with Heather. The Big Easy has got it going on for its own history.

We wuz robbed.

Ah, the tag line for the Boston fans. Whiners.