On Davis Square

The Davis Square station is not too bad, if there's some good musician playing there. The trains still have some seats open, the system does work for weeks maybe months without total system collapse, the other passengers smell good and they dress well. There's not at much of the dog-eat-dog mentality of the Orange line, at least not until Harvard Square anyway. And outside, there's good music on summer evenings, the Honkfest is incredible, cool people strolling about and generally there's this air of chill low-key ambition. These are not your California hippies, they're still East Coasters, but they're chill and the heavy presence of Californian kids in the nearby Tufts campus does help.

The food places are great and always getting better. JP licks and Boston Burger Company are institutions here but other places can stand on their own too. Good bars, most of them expensive and snooty, but there's still a reasonable presence of old-style dive bar. And right on the Square, in the smack middle lies Mike's, an eatery and divey bar with its affordable 32 ounces of beer. The food's gotten quite pricey there in recent years and to be quite honest it's not that great. And the mixed drinks are seriously overpriced and not well -made. But if you're the sorta person to order mixed drinks at a place like that, it's on you. It's a place for beer and pizza, and fries, loud conversations. Easily, you can shut down the place even on slow evenings, it closes at 2.30 am in the weekends. The choice of beer for a place like that is quite varied; they'll even sprinkle cinnamon and sugar on the rim if you ask nicely.

There's a bowling place that also is known for its flatbread pizza. It's called flat bread. Great drinks and great goat cheese pizza. The southern food place called red bones may not compare to actual southern food from South but it's one of the best we got and on weekends you'd be hard-pressed to find a table there.

Winters are a lot slower in Davis Square and not much happens. It's cold dreary and often dead and the hordes of Tufts students out and about on weekends play a big role in giving the little life it has.

There was a bank robbery at the local bank right on the square last year or so. Made it to the local news and everything.

I will miss Davis Square when I'm gone. I'll be back to see you, though I suspect not much will have changed, just as it hasn't changed too much in the last ten years.