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Good thing nobody was waiting for a bus
By adamg on Sun, 08/28/2011 - 1:17pm
Tom Myers took this photo of the Cambridge Street bus stop in Inman Square, adds:
Worth closing the T.
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incorrect location
This is actually taken in front of Roosevelt Towers in the Wellington-Harrington neighborhood across the street from the King Open School (f/k/a Harrington School). Anything that could reasonably be called Inman Square is several blocks west.
Kind of nitpicky
You're right it's not Inman Square, but that's the closest point of interest if you're trying to summarize where it happened. It's certainly closer than Lechmere, and it's better than citing "Area 4" or something else not very well known.
Not Inman Square and not Area IV
Call it "the big housing project on Cambridge St." or maybe "East Cambridge".
It's Area 3. Not quite East
It's Area 3. Not quite East Cambridge, would have to be east of the train tracks to be called that.
Area 3?
Hey, it's my first UHub neighborhood boundrary argument! I still think for ID'ing an address to the general public, Inman Square is the right name for it. It's an 8 minute walk(http://tinyurl.com/3n48q3w) to the heart of Inman from there, and probably only a few minutes from the beginnings of all the restaurants area. Meanwhile it's .75 miles to Lechmere.
If you were talking about voting maps yeah this would be "Area 3" but for a blog post I think Inman Square makes more sense. I'll conceed that area really doesn't have much of an identity, but it's probably more Inman than anything else.
It has an identity
It's a housing project dropped in the middle of a disproportionately Portuguese-speaking stretch of Cambridge Street. And it is not in Inman Square, and it has little in common with Inman Square, and the people there don't go to Inman Square, and the businesses across the street are not in Inman Square.
Cambridge spends massive amounts of money on services for the disadvantaged, and I'm sure there's someone who'll decide that the disadvantaged are further disadvantaged by being considered to live in a housing project, no matter how nice, and that wouldn't it be great if the housing project could be called part of hip Inman Square, no matter how ridiculous that would be, and no matter how damaging to the coherence of Inman Square that keeps people coming to the few-block center even though it's not on the subway. But no amount of money or paid activists will make Roosevelt Towers actually be in Inman Square without making Inman Square meaningless.
I know you know that people care about neighborhood boundaries
Do not confuse Inman Square with the housing projects that are way over there towards East Cambridge. Inman Square is a great little place at night.
I used to work for an afterschool program...
...right around this spot. People called it part of "East Cambridge" back in the early 70s.
I'm siding with the nitpickers this time
"The Cambridge Street bus stop in Inman Square" means just two things -- the stop in front of 1369 Coffee House, or the stop across the street in front of Cambridge Savings Bank. If you'd said "bus stop near Inman Square", I don't think anyone would have objected.