Wait, Cindy Adams is still alive?

By adamg on Tue, 07/05/2011 - 6:49pm

In any case, the dowager queen of New York gossip (she was writing gossip when our own Track Gals' parents were still just a glimmer in their parents' eyes, I think) is offended by our provincial ways.

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This broad is a hack

By Will LaTulippe
Tue, 07/05/2011 - 6:56pm

I got through three paragraphs. She legit makes Shaughnessy look like Dave Barry.

Wow

By anon
Tue, 07/05/2011 - 8:27pm

Would have loved to see how you precious little darlings would've handled a scolding from Liz Smith.

Yet another example of something Bostonians get all in a huff about that New Yorkers basically ignore. You know, like the Red Sox-Yankees "rivalry" of the 80s and 90s.

You only complain because the truisms are especially painful. The tourist spots and hotels take great pains to make New York comparisons. The student body takes of for New York, Chicago, Austin or just about anywhere else but here once their diplomas are in hand. Those who stay behind won't admit that they like this place small and don't tout gems like the Wilbur because it makes them feel small.

Besides, Ms. Cindy let you crybabies off light. You don't hear Newark or Philly complaining. Except maybe Philly, but they only complain about how obnoxious Boston is.

Touche, but ...

By adamg
Tue, 07/05/2011 - 9:05pm

If we're so insignificant, why does she devote an entire column to us? I thought there were 8 million stories in the Naked City.

You know the answer...

By anon
Tue, 07/05/2011 - 10:28pm

She's old enough to have told all of them. Somewhere there's another Highlander that'll take her out.

That was great... True

By anon
Wed, 07/06/2011 - 7:00am

That was great... True bostonians got a laugh outta that..not mad... Real bostonian women hate Yankees...even if it's just by principal...

Weak

By Johnny
Tue, 07/05/2011 - 9:27pm

Meh. The only accurate comment here is the sox yanks "rivalry" of the 90s. Boston tourist destinations trying to be like NY? Nah. Everyone leaving or embarrassed to stay. Nah. What town are you from in Nassau county? Or maybe North Jersey? Bergen county?

Go to Copley, the Pru or Newbury sometime

By anon
Wed, 07/06/2011 - 8:53am

All of the hotels and retail in that area are doing their best to emulate the New York experience and have no problem saying so. The overwhelming majority of the area's college students leave here after graduation. That's just a fact. Those who stay and event the longtimers don't talk about or revere non-Colonial treasures like the Cutler Majestic, the Locke Ober or the Copley Plaza they way they should and a lot of that stems from the area's inferiority complex.

Let me ask you something, sir: Did you choose this town or did it get stuck with you?

Obviously the city isn't big

By Johnny
Wed, 07/06/2011 - 10:45am

Obviously the city isn't big enough to house multiple generations of students if they all chose to stay. Some might even want to go back home to be near family or don't like East coast weather or like the country or suburbs in the Midwest or like the West coast better or whatever. To say that people don't revere local treasures is rubbish. Where do you get this information? I chose to live here 15 years ago and I'm raising a family here.

to: anon (not verified) - 7/6/11 - 8:53 am

By anon2
Wed, 07/06/2011 - 4:06pm

The majority of college students can't afford to live here once Mommy and Daddy stop paying for them to live here after they graduate. That's just a fact.

I love NYC. I love Boston. I live here because I like it better than other cities where I've lived.

Why the chip on your shoulder? Are you upset that you can't afford Manhattan? ...like Cindy Adams said, maybe when you grow up.

Well, yeah

By Will LaTulippe
Wed, 07/06/2011 - 1:20am

Of course we want to be like New York. They're a great city. I want Boston to be like the best cities. I certainly don't want my city emulating a crappy city.

Not aimed at you personally

By anon
Wed, 07/06/2011 - 8:55am

Quite frankly, you're a New York story taking place in Allston. An outspoken area trivia host who runs for City Council? That's a Brooklyn story or a West Village one at the very least. You'd have been in papers and on television there (at least on NY1). Here, you're scoffed at by the comments field peanut gallery.

Oh my

By Lanny Budd
Tue, 07/05/2011 - 6:57pm

Sniffing with disapproval, I peer down my long patrician nose at thee, barbarians. My telephone is ringing. It must be the Times, at long last, calling me home.

Writers for the Post got, like short people, no reason to live.

She and her husband

By adamg
Tue, 07/05/2011 - 7:00pm

Joey, used to be like the Norm and Norma Nathan of New York, only without all that annoying talent and humor.

The USS Constitution is

By AlertNewEngland
Tue, 07/05/2011 - 7:19pm

The USS Constitution is nowhere close to being our first ship. The US Navy started in 1775, the Constitution began construction in 1794. It's just the oldest commissioned warship.

Oldest surviving US naval ship....

By Michael Kerpan
Tue, 07/05/2011 - 8:17pm

...commissioned or not -- or is there anything older that still exists?

Also true, and the oldest

By AlertNewEngland
Tue, 07/05/2011 - 8:29pm

Also true, and the oldest commissioned warship in the world still floating.

Good

By Kaz
Tue, 07/05/2011 - 7:38pm

I don't want anyone who takes this moron's opinion seriously to come here anyways.

Did you know the reason she stopped writing and almost died is because she had simple appendicitis? But as a good Christian Scientist she didn't see a doctor to get diagnosed until some of her showbiz friends forced her to...at which point she got well thanks to modern medicine.

Funny how the Christian Science Center didn't make the paragraphs of her catty comparision as "a modern day cement children's playground when compared to the likes of St Patrick's Cathedral or the Cathedral Church of St. John the Devine"...or something like that.

I guess Boston does have something you care about, eh, Cindy, you old shrew?

Call me contrarian

By JohnAKeith
Tue, 07/05/2011 - 8:29pm

I kinda liked it, was cute.

She confuses the South End with South Boston, and has some other grammatical / spelling errors, but overall she hit the high notes.

Or, at least what Wikipedia includes.

People actually read the NY Post?

By rsybuchanan
Tue, 07/05/2011 - 11:08pm

Who knew?

I'll give the Post this much credit...

By anon
Wed, 07/06/2011 - 8:57am

Every CVS, Walgreens and corner store in this town carries it. The same can't be said for the Herald in the five boroughs.

Interesting.

By Pete Nice
Wed, 07/06/2011 - 7:26am

I never knew New York was bigger than Boston.

It's not that hard

By scollaysq
Wed, 07/06/2011 - 8:46am

to look up the correct spelling of the name 'Louisa May Alcott'.

Perhaps she was mistakenly thinking of Mae Murray, the actress with the bee-stung lips, who joined the Ziegfeld Follies in 1908, as I understand Ms. Adams was in the audience at the New Amsterdam The-ay-ter on Murray's opening night.

Get me fact check, stat!

By Cynic
Wed, 07/06/2011 - 9:32am

I'm compiling a list of Cindy Adams' errors; feel free to chime in:

where Washington snacked in 1695: He wasn't even born for another forty years
Boston's Lenox Hotel was by whoever designed the Waldorf: Its developer owned the Waldorf at the time; they did not share designers
Concord, our land's back-then largest town: Not back then; not ever.
a hung lantern signalled Paul Revere: No, it didn't. Actually, Revere had the lanterns hung to warn Charlestown patriots
Our first ship, the 1794 US Constitution: Not even close. Not even the first of its class.
Fenway, smallest and oldest stadium: It's the oldest MLB park, but the fourth-smallest
there's the cemetery for those who arrived on the Mayflower: The Mayflower went to Plymouth; Boston was part of the Bay Colony. No Pilgrims buried in Boston.
Louisa Mae Alcott: That's Louisa May
against 77 young patriots: Most of the 77 were over the age of 30; the oldest was 66.
Their Louie's men's store: That's Louis, Cindy, the way the French like to say it
South End killer Whitey Bulger: Err, South Boston. That's the difference between the East Side and the Lower East Side.
There's John Adams' 1775 letter: Actually, that was Abigail, writing to John. Remember the ladies, Cindy

In her defense, I should add that she offers a factually accurate description of Fenway Franks: "Skinny beige hot dogs. They look like Chihuahua poop."

13

By Michael
Wed, 07/06/2011 - 9:40am

13. when you grow up, New York's where you want to be.

Relevant Onion article

When I first moved here from NYC

By FrancescaFordiani
Wed, 07/06/2011 - 11:32am

When I first moved here from NYC, I was surprised at how many former New Yorkers I met who had also moved here.

I know a lot of people . . .

By Chris Dowd
Wed, 07/06/2011 - 11:50am

. . . who did the "Manhattan thing" and lived there for a few years. They all came back besotted, unhealthy, and tired with the memories of their time there a blurry haze.

Glass niggle

By massmarrier
Wed, 07/06/2011 - 9:43am

I enjoyed the column and am willing to provide some license for her effort at wit. Too many of us here are too puffy and can use the deflating.

For the Arlington St. Church, that could use a small refinement. It's the world's largest collection of thematic Tiffany windows. The upper windows are based on the Beatitudes.

That aside, the Guild Memorial Window on the lower level, commonly known as Our Lady of the Flowers, may be the Tiffany Studio's highest achievement and is worth a look and touch. When the international stained-glass society met here maybe a decade ago, they saved the ASC tour and that window for their last stop to appreciate that particular work.

More Tiffany windows

By adamg
Wed, 07/06/2011 - 9:48am

In the Theodore Parker Church on Centre Street in West Roxbury, which Cindy probably wouldn't want to bother because of all the crime and all, snort.

The biggest window is especially cool during certain parts of the day - it shows a sunrise (or sunset?) and when the real sun hits it just right, it really glows.

De gustibus...

By massmarrier
Wed, 07/06/2011 - 10:07am

The Parker windows are many, but not all that impressive in the main. However, those sunsets are always crowd pleasers. The ASC has one, titled The Good Shepherd, featuring a sunset background.

Stained-glass mavens snort at that window as trite, but visitors rant about it and often ignore what the experts say are superior examples. The Lady or Madonna of the Flowers includes intricate color interplay, as well as gown fabric you can see and feel. We like what we like, eh?

I don't resent her swooping

By Cynic
Wed, 07/06/2011 - 10:09am

I don't resent her swooping through to stop and sneer. That's a writer's privilege.

But if she's going to take a bunch of tours, transcribe their high-points, blend them together into a long string of facts, and call it a column, I'd appreciate it if she took the trouble to write them down correctly. And then, to check their accuracy.

Some of her mistakes are minor. Some are not. But all of them attest to a mind-blowing carelessness. Here's the paragraph that most ticks me off:

To celebrate the USA's birthday, I toured Concord, our land's back-then largest town and the site of the Minute Men and the Redcoats' bloody battle. Ragged Colonists took up arms in defense of their rights and began a struggle against the "Regulars," the uniformed Imperialists, to create this blessed country. Marching up our very road 700 British soldiers against 77 young patriots. Not good odds.

This is pietism, and it's ignorant. Concord wasn't the largest town. The 77 militiamen faced off against the Regulars in Lexington, not Concord. They weren't young; their median and average ages were about double that of the population as a whole, and 5-10 years older than the Regulars whom they faced. The militia that gathered in Concord actually outnumbered the Regulars, and it was far from 'ragged'; it formed neatly, and smashed the vanguard by the bridge.

The trouble lies in where this sort of ignorance leads. If we think of the Lexington and Concord as a spontaneous uprising, the work of a 'ragged' bunch of 'young patriots' facing 'not good odds,' we get it badly wrong. The colonists prevailed that day because of their careful organization; their years of drilling and practice; the presence, in particular, of older men with substantial experience in combat in previous wars; and their discipline.

If we're going to revere the past, it helps to appreciate it in all its complexity. Cindy Adams wants to admire rugged individualism and anti-tax fervor; she pays less attention to government mandates, communities, and collective action. But the past is interesting precisely because it defies simplistic accounts. It's a shame that Cindy Adams is so deeply incurious.

yeah...

By John-W
Wed, 07/06/2011 - 10:39am

...all that and she's a clambag too!

Fenway opened April 20, 1912

By anon
Wed, 07/06/2011 - 10:01am

Fenway opened April 20, 1912 - five days after the Titanic went down.

It's another half-truth

By Miss M
Wed, 07/06/2011 - 1:06pm

It took five days for the Titanic's sinking to reach the newswires, so the headline the day Fenway opened was TITANIC SINKS.

You're good here, except for

By mike
Wed, 07/06/2011 - 12:13pm

You're good here, except for "4th smallest". I have no idea where you read that, but you're wrong. It's the smallest.

Smallest in dimensions, seating capacity, or total capacity?

By Ron Newman
Wed, 07/06/2011 - 12:24pm

I suspect each one of those would give a different answer. Wikipedia says Fenway has the fewest number of seats, but not the lowest capacity when standing-room is included.

Vice Versa

By Cynic
Wed, 07/06/2011 - 1:06pm

Actually, it's the other way 'round. Fenway does not have the fewest seats - it can currently seat 37493 for night games and 37065 during the day, when the tarp is on in the bleachers. That's well ahead of the number of seats that can be used at Tropicana Field or the Oakland Coliseum. So it's third, not fourth.

Should 'total capacity' count? Maybe. The other two stadiums have more seats; they simply choose not to use them.

And Fenway does have the smallest field dimensions.

So I take it back. It's a defensible claim.

"Can be used" for baseball in

By mike
Wed, 07/06/2011 - 1:24pm

"Can be used" for baseball in Oakland? Nah. They just have tarps over the 40,000 or so seats in the upper deck. To say that it's smaller just because they won't sell those seats would be similar to claiming that the Revolution play in one of the smallest stadiums in Major League Soccer.

Smallest field dimensions is also tough to really rule on. Smallest square footage in play? I guess, maybe. But I'm not sure I'd agree without a cite.

My understanding is that they

By Cynic
Wed, 07/06/2011 - 4:51pm

My understanding is that they can't use the seats during the regular season - that they have to commit, at the beginning of each year, to the total size of the park. So, this year, the number of seats is fixed; even if they want to pull the tarps off, they have to wait (at least until the postseason). I don't think the Revolution operate under similar constraint.

The Sox play on a field with roughly 99,000 sqf of fair territory, the shortest average distance from home plate to the outfield walls, and which also has the smallest foul area in the major leagues. Any way you want to slice it, the dimensions of Fenway are smaller.

Which is to say that Adams has, at the very least, a plausible claim, and on that particular point, I ought not to have called her out.

And Tampa can't even claim

By mike
Wed, 07/06/2011 - 1:26pm

And Tampa can't even claim that they're really, truly enforcing their seating limits:

Currently, the top 1/3 of the upper deck seating is tarped over, artificially reducing the stadium's capacity to 36,048 for the 2008 regular season. It was further reduced to 35,041 for the 2008 postseason since the tbt* Party Deck has been reserved by Major League Baseball as an auxiliary press area. On October 14, 2008, the Rays announced that the upper deck tarps would be removed for the remainder of the postseason, starting with a Game 6 of the 2008 American League Championship Series. This increased the capacity of the stadium to nearly 41,000, depending on standing-room-only tickets sold.

That thing reads like she

By anon
Wed, 07/06/2011 - 10:03am

That thing reads like she threw darts at a dictionary and compiled all the words she hit. Sentence structure much?

Really, now?

By anon
Wed, 07/06/2011 - 10:46am

But when you grow up, New York's where you want to be.

If that overcrowded, overpriced, pompous urban wasteland is where I'll want to be when I 'grow up', then I'm ringing Tinker Bell and flying to Neverland.

One wonders why she even

By JeanneM
Wed, 07/06/2011 - 10:55am

One wonders why she even bothered coming here when she had such an obvious bias against us to begin with.

Paging Dicky Barrett to save us from the Evil Queen of Bombast!

By issacg
Wed, 07/06/2011 - 12:52pm

Once again, Almost Anything Goes.

(yawn)

By anon
Wed, 07/06/2011 - 3:49pm

It's so amusing that NYC feels it has a supposed rivalry with Boston. With the exception of the Red Sox v. Yankees rivalry, no one in Boston gives a damn how Boston measures up to NYC. However, NY'ers are regularly getting their knickers in a twist trying to prove their superiority over Boston.

Wait, Cindy Adams is still alive?

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