Psycho Chicken Crosses the Road
Created | Updated Sep 22, 2003
I've been to Boston before. Once. For a weekend. The unfortunate thing is that I drank so much that I have very patchy memories of the nights, and the days were spent in a hungover haze. Hardly the best way to see what is almost certainly the most beautiful city in America. So, I pledged when I left that time that one day I would return, and experience Boston properly. I kept my word.
Friday
The Freedom Trail
If you want history in America, then you head pretty well for Boston. If you get confused when you get there, don't worry, they've conveniently painted a big wide red line on the pavement which you can follow to all the things you 'must' see when in town. This line is called the Freedom trail, and it visits many of the best sights in town and tells the story of the American war of independence, which apparently we1 lost. It also covers a Borders bookstore, 3 McDonalds, about 25 branches of Starbucks and approximately 350 tourist information offices..
No, I am once again being over cynical. It is well worth doing, if only to get all the tourist stuff out the way in one day. The trail takes you from Boston Common, up past the State House, Feneuil Hall and Paul Revere's house, before winding its way (via the big dig) through the city's North End. The North End is the 'Italian' part of town, and is characterised by endless Italian restaurants, with fat miserable people sitting on deckchairs outside. The roads are narrow, and not helped by the amount of cars and trucks attempting to navigate them. This area is also home to a few beautiful old churches, and very peaceful gardens where you can sit down and relax with an Italian Ice (Slush Puppy to you and me) or a cappuccino.
For just quality wandering around value and character, the North End is top of my list of Boston districts. Finally the trail crosses the Charles River to Charlestown, where the Bunker Hill monument and the USS constitution can be climbed and explored respectively. Unfortunately following a line down the road pretty well breaks every rule of travel I live by, and I was finding it extremely difficult to actually stick to the trail when faced with endless choices of beautiful streets, interesting parks and inviting local bars. Fortunately Dougie was on hand to keep us on track, and by around 3pm we'd wandered our way through most of the touristy bits of Boston..
The Purple Shamrock
All that wandering's thirsty work, so we decided to jump into a bar known as 'The Purple Shamrock'. I know what you're thinking - you're thinking he went all the way to Boston and drank in an Irish pub, but the problem is that practically every bar in this town is an Irish pub. Even the ones that aren't out and out plastic paddy joints have a very 'oirish' feel to them. The Purple Shamrock however comes complete with Guinness on tap, boxtys on the menu and Connor and Denise, from Dublin and Belfast respectively, behind the bar. None of this makes it authentic, of course, but never mind.
The Shamrock also has a place in Psycho Chicken history, for it was here that I succumbed to the alcohol monster on my previous trip, before hitting most of the bars in the Quincy Market area, and subsequently redecorating a hotel room. It wasn't big and it wasn't clever.
Joe, our buddy at the bar was quite a character. He introduced us to his best friends Connor and Denise (who seemed to barely tolerate him, as long as he was giving out the tips) and we had a long conversation about the differences between UK and US sports, and the growing drug problem in professional golf (I'm not making this up). Talk turned to world domination and the pros and cons of the various cable porn channels to name just a few topics before we acquired another drinking buddy who talked to us instead about living in Boston, house prices, and the problems of working for a global corporation. Like I don't know those already. Anyway, he sipped his Merlot, while we knocked back several pints of Sam Adams at an alarming rate. I turned around and discovered that it was 9pm, and the place was full of pretty young things dressed to the nines. We, however, were in scruffy jeans, t-shirts and trainers from our trek around town that afternoon. What had been a quiet neighbourhood pub at 3pm was a heaving trendy joint by 9. We were hideously underdressed for the place, and were beginning to feel very conspicuous indeed.
We stuck it out until about 10:30, when a mob of young ladies (the self-titled 'future nurses of America') came in celebrating having just graduated from nursing college. Their custom printed shirts bore the quote 'Celebrate we will - because life is short, but sweet for certain' which I (in my extreme anorak-ness) immediately recognised as from Two Step by the Dave Matthews Band. That was enough to spark a music conversation and possible dragging round more bars, and it seemed that history was to repeat itself, but it was obvious that we couldn't stay without (a) looking like underdressed pillocks, and (b) getting very, very drunk. Neither of which was appealing at the time, so we bid our drinking buddies goodbye and retired to the hotel for the evening, taking in the Bull and Finch (the pub/tourist trap used as the outside of 'Cheers') for a 'facilities' stop on the way - frankly the only thing it's good for.
