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| via BostonInno |
Allston Christmas is here, a fact that you'll no doubt have heard from everyone who just learned about that term this year and is because it makes them sound privy to an in-joke.
It's that most magical of days in the city of Boston where tens of thousands of students arrive to clog up the streets with their dad's van, moving trucks get caught on the over pass on Storrow Drive, and, most importantly where everyone turns into dumpster diving freegans, aka dirty fucking bums.
It's also the day where all the basic laws of physics go out the window. Our concept of space and mass are warped by exhaustion and blind rage at having to hang out with micro-managing parents or deadbeat roommates taking too many breaks all day, and many, many square pegs are forced into round holes, and I'm not just talking about new apartment floor sex later in the night. The rules of economics and supply and demand are similarly warped as well, but on the plus side, it's nice to see real data on how much the people you know actually value your physical labor.
Imagine hearing this at a real job interview?
So, we want you to carry thousands of pounds of shit up and down a narrow, winding staircase where you very well may snap your fucking ankles or fall to your death, and will certainly wrench your back out for like a week at least. And that's in between sitting in an overheating truck you don't know how to operate for about an hour every time you need to move a mile down the street. Should only take you about 12 hours to get it all done if you move fast though.
OK, that sounds like hard work, but I'm nothing if not a go-getter. What does the job pay?
A few slices of pizza and like a beer.
...
It's also the holiday "where we get to go scavenging through all the old crap people moving out of Rock City pads left up for grabs on curbs and stoops throughout the ’hood. And while, sure, a lot of it is just that — crap — every once in awhile you stumble upon pure gold. One man’s trash is another’s treasure and all that," explains the Phoenix. WGBH, for fuck's sake, has a post up asking "What's the best trash you've ever picked?"
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| via |
This is one of everyone's favorite days of the year around here, because it gives us a good reason to do the thing we do best: complain about how everyone else is an idiot.
"As if we were cursed with a second, more tragic, trashy Christmas, we wake up one morning to piles of rotted furniture outside every apartment: mattresses, rugs, clothing, all discarded as residents move on and leave nothing but ruin and bedbugs in their wake. Traffic is backed up for hours, U-Hauls are double-parked blocking already too narrow lanes and horns blare from the break of day far into the night," writes DigBoston
"As if we were cursed with a second, more tragic, trashy Christmas, we wake up one morning to piles of rotted furniture outside every apartment: mattresses, rugs, clothing, all discarded as residents move on and leave nothing but ruin and bedbugs in their wake. Traffic is backed up for hours, U-Hauls are double-parked blocking already too narrow lanes and horns blare from the break of day far into the night," writes DigBoston
Oh snap, it's Allston Christmas for real:
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The Globe has a cute little homage to the storied day here:
'Twas days before Allston Christmas, when all through Gardner, Ashford & Pratt,
Every creature was stirring, many a rat.
Packed boxes were left by the door without care,
In hopes that a rental truck soon would be there.
Each student was restless on a creaky, old futon,
With visions of free stuff -- furniture redistribution.
And workers for UHaul, Budget, Penske and Hertz,
Knew they were in store for a long September first...
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| via Universal Hub |
I remember my own first Allston Christmas fondly. It was around 2000, and I was moving into a dick slap apartment on the corner of Comm and Harvard. The previous occupants had kept a ferret in the apartment, which, also, let's not forget, let's not forget, Dude, that keeping wildlife, an amphibious rodent, for uh, domestic, you know, within the city... that aint legal either. There were cockroaches all over the busted ass marmot piss rug, and three bros inside of a two bedroom, so I did what any sane 21 year old would do and I grabbed the first mattress I saw on the streets, dragged it inside like a clumsy criminal trying to dispose of a dead elephant body, laid it in the middle of the living room floor, and slept on it like a baby. A baby with all sorts of potential skin rashes and bug bites mind you, but a baby all the same. It was the 2kz though, and that's how we rolled.
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| via my fucking life |
Compared to my next apartment, a six bed room flophouse in lower Allston with maggots in the kitchen pantry, a shower that wouldn't drain so you had to stand in someone else's tepid brown piss water to get clean, and like 19 people huffing dukes inside all day and night, that seems kind of luxurious in retrospect. Had a nice roof to sit on for smoking though. ^
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About 70,000 kids are having their chance to live that dream, that demoralizing, shitty dream, this week, nearly all of whom will begin their year in Boston spending their first day just as they'll spend the next few hundred: acting like entitled children who think the streets are their playground/toilet and that mom and dad will be around to clean up after whatever mess they leave. BostonInno chimes in on some of the more annoying habits of moving day here in this list of rules.
Put signs on things that work (or don’t). There has been a giant 1997 Toshiba TV sitting on the corner of my street for four days now, and I bet the owner is curiously looking out his window, wondering why his prized possession isn’t getting picked up by some college kid. Buddy, no one is going to take the effort of lugging that massive TV all the way home, only to find out it doesn’t work (and hasn’t since 2001). Do us all a favor and leave a note telling us the condition it’s in. “Bed bugs!!!” is also a great warning sign if you’ve got an unlucky case of those little critters.
Good point about the bugs. You wouldn't put your infested-ass dick inside someone without warning them first would you? Why would you do the same with your old computer monitor. Actually, don't answer that.
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7 comments:
Everyone moves on the same day in Boston? Non-students too? And what's a duke?
I can't believe marmot piss and cockroaches were part of life.
@Patrick: I think September 1 is a pretty common moving day everywhere, no? We just happen to have a really big student population for a city of this size.
@Raj. Imagine setting foot in that place now, never mind having to live there?
Ah to be young and poor and scratching the living shit out of my scabies infested ballsack. I wish we could have had a roommate trading season back then. I'll give you a smelly dude with anger issues but can score anything for that moody loner that pays rent on time.
Free shit on the curb? SPOOOOOGE! I'm a fiend for stuff I can tear down and recycle. I know it sounds like tweaker behavior but I usually make an extra couple hundred bucks a month on scrap. Trash to cash. It has to be a step above selling blood, right?
Moving sucks. I'd rather give someone my bone marrow than help them move.
Get a load of our own Bubbles up there^
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