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Pro tip for condo developers: Check your Web-site stock art carefully
By adamg on Mon, 05/14/2018 - 12:44pm
Nothing like a morning run through the Arboretum palm glen.
The Vita is a new 82-unit luxury condo building going in on Washington Street in Jamaica Plain that, based on its Web site, is aimed at the sort of hard-charging set who might feel a tad awkward at the Drinking Fountain across the street, except the Drinking Fountain closed last summer, so it's cool, and in the meantime, they can stand on their balconies and watch the buses at the T yard that's also across the street.
In any case, the Web site has photos of the building interspersed with photos of presumed JP residents enjoying a morning stretch in a grove of palm trees and harvesting radishes at a community garden in front of a giant water tank, both of which are features that show just how interesting JP really is (or maybe that the site was designed by somebody a bit unfamiliar with JP?).
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Comments
The Drinking Fountain
Drinking Fountain was great. Truly one of the last vestiges of a bygone era. That place was the definition of a dive bar. I will never forget the first time I was in there with about 5 friends. I went to the bar and ordered drinks for the group. I was astounded that total was only about $30, and those were some stiff drinks!
"That place was the
"That place was the definition of a dive bar"
Actually, the definition is a place downstairs that you could "dive" into. :) But the name has obviously evolved to encompass places like TDF. Or, in modern white suburban parlance, any bar that has a non-white bouncer.
Huh, I never knew where the
Huh, I never knew where the term came from- cool!
I've always thought of dive bars as a grimy, run-down sort of place, with staff that hardly pay attention to you, and windows that you absolutely cannot see through. Like Punters (which I've heard is also closing).
Punters closing? Nooooooo
Punters closing? Nooooooo
Yes, it's true
Not sure of the timeline, but it will be closing.
Gosh,
I remember living in JP in the mid 1980s when it truly had character. First apartment, a third floor apartment shared with three roommates with a land lord of dubious character who regularly got beat up by his girlfriend on the second floor and the guy on the first floor with an attack dog and a bad cocaine habit.
Nowadays its neighbors with
Nowadays it's neighbors with therapy dogs and good cocaine habits.
She don't lie
I ran into the same dude three times in a single week in Allston bars a couple of weeks ago, and haven't seen him since. I brought up the stock market, and he kept telling me, while grabbing my shoulder, "dude, you gotta show me how to make money."
I resisted the temptation to tell him "maybe try not sticking so much of it up your nose, you jackass."
As long as we're reminiscing
As long as we're reminiscing about JP "back in the day," I'll plug the latest Hub History podcast, about the time a gang of violent anarchists fought off hundreds of armed Boston cops in JP in 1908.
http://www.hubhistory.com/episodes/the-battle-of-j...
Posse? Desperado?
WTF was this - JP night at the OK Corral?
"leaden shower"
"leaden shower"
Gotta love Google image search
The radishing photo (from which Vita cropped a third person, but you can still see part of his leg behind the crouching woman) is titled: "Friendly team harvesting fresh vegetables from the rooftop greenhouse garden and planning harvest season on a digital tablet."
Wasn't able to find the exact source of the stretching-woman photo, but its obviously from the same set as Young female runner stretching arms before running at morning forest trail.
Radishing?
I see tomatoes, a beet, carrots, and a head of cabbage in that basket, but I don't see any radishes! In any case, that's a pretty impressive rooftop garden.
Beets, radishes ...
I clearly have problem differentiating my root vegetables!
"Runner's World Magazine"-Australia/NZ uses the photo set too
.. which makes a little more sense since the article is about tapering--not trying to sell you a condo:
Article:
http://www.runnersworldonline.com.au/i-should-love-tapering/
Familiar Photo:
http://www.runnersworldonline.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/milemark...
Totally believable.
Climate change = palm trees in JP.
50 years
By then it will be a retirement colony.
But If You Live There, You Can Sit In Bed Staring Into An iPad!
Now that picture
Is a VERY fair representation of JP's demographics.
Surprised they used that one
This one is really more representative of their market, I'd think.
Nope
Geezers like me and the Mr. wanna live and play in these places, too.
And we have the money to do it.
Empty nesters
This is one of the options for when your kids move out, especially if you don't already live in a modestly sized home in a close in area.
Some people are happy to sell their 4 br/3 bath home in Sudbury or Weston after the kids fly after 20-30 years of mortgage paydown in an insanely escalating real estate market. Then they split the cash between a country home in the Berkshires or Maine or Vermont, and plop the remainder on a downsized pied-a-terre much closer to where they work.
Since empty nesters bring cash for cash sales, it is wise for these condoplexes to court them with an easy downsized life.
You know what they are looking at?
The Universal Hub webpage.
Grills and a fire pit
on the roof deck? Will those be electric?
Love the palm trees.
Easy mistake to make
They just thought Jamaica Plain was in Jamaica.
Long Standing Problem
Real Estate agents misleading the public is not a new thing. One only need to consider the people that have moved in to JP and parts of Roslindale, and then once they start to figure out that they bought into a bill of goods, they rally to make all kinds of changes.
Had they done their homework and truly scoped-out the neighborhoods they moved into, they would not be trying to make so many changes, and get upset when the lifers push back.
I think the funniest one I read here (and elsewhere) was the people all scared and peeking through the widow shades when some kids set off fireworks back at the 4th of July at one of the ball fields. Take Fallon Field for example.
Illegal ?? Sure. But it has been going on for generations.
So after all of the posts about the sky falling, I sat back and reflected, "Yeah... but it's the 4th of July and it's Fallon Field." Same thing happened to Healy down in Roslindale. You'd think some volcano was going off.
Do your homework. It's a city. It's not Amherst or Pepperell.
So idyllic images on a real estate site? Yeah, I guess that's what the problem is.
Clearly, "fake news."
Urban noises
I really don't get it. I've lived at a busy Brighton intersection for a decade and a half and I sleep like an infant. And all I do is run a fan.
It's like people who bitch about airplane noise. I honestly can't point out when in my lifetime I've discerned the sonic waves generated by any commercial flight from my residence.
Airplane noise
The newish problem is that the FAA/Massport narrowed the glide paths, so once a single plane approaches over your house, then you usually get an hour or more of them, every 3 minutes, right the fuck over your house. Before (like pre-2013), the glide path fanned out a lot more once you got away from Downtown/Winthrop/Hull/Chelsea.
I only notice it when it happens at 5am, or after 11pm. And then it does really, really suck.
Sleep like an infant
So you wake up twice during the night to eat two of your eight large meals in a 24 hour period?
I mean I used to get up during the "night"
Then I stopped drinking tequila. Nature's alarm clock, y'all.
Airplane noise changes from
Airplane noise changes from block to block. I live in a quiet zone but the next block over it is like the world is coming to an end every half hour. Worst part is that line can change.
So you can't really downplay someones complaints about airplanes unless you have been in their home for when it happens.
Hey, why not?
I mean, developers look at our neighborhoods as nothing more than resources to be exploited, so why sweat the accuracy of the locale?