Republic of Cambridge
It's been two weeks since I got back to The Republic of Cambridge, the Kremlin on the Charles, the leafy suburbia that also happens to be something of an academic nexus for the entire world.
I just got myself a bike, so that I can finally negotiate the prettier suburbs of this fine city more easily. More specifically, this means I can zip off to read at Darwin's or Mariposa or Dado, and then to Bread and Circus, then over to Blodgett for a swim, and then off again to the Film Archive, all without having to pretend to be a flaneur (which, frankly, is ridiculous in America).
It's true that the radical Cambridge of the 60s has largely disappeared, but this is not nearly as surprising as the fact that some of it has actually survived. Last weekend, I stood on Mass Ave in Central Square, surrounded variously by hipsters, teddy boys, goths, punks, techies, biz school students in khakis, academics in tweed, academics in hoodies, B-boys in hoodies, flannel suited old men, old black ladies in frocks. Juliana Hatfield took the main stage, but there was also salsa, bluegrass, techno, a free jazz trio, a big band with horn section, a purple suited black soul ensemble. People shopped for potted bonsai, Tibetan trinkets, Chinese massages, screenprinted Ts. They were eating Cuban pulled pork, southern fried chicken, saag paneer, pad thai. The World Fair, they called it. And quite a world it was, except there was something about the setting that let me down. It's continually amazing to me how and why Cambridge supports this diversity. In what is supposed to be its heart, Central Square, sure you'll find wonderful ethnic restaurants (and not just of the halfheartedly aligned sort, of ambiguous inspiration - nothing trendy and Manhattanite like Pan-Asian or Peruvian-Japanese: instead you'll find Ethiopian, French-Tunisian, Sichuan, Bengali), specialty bookstores and all the rest of it. This is a district of rich ingredients but poor textures...the layout of this "square" is uncentered, slapdash and suburban. But maybe that's what Cambridge is; the point about it is that it is unpromisingly sparse (but why would we expect it to prove the exception to the lazy, sundry sprawl of American auto-towns?) and identifiably post-urban. Like some kind of post-millenial cultural fallout, here you will find a jumble of peoples and cultures, not conspicuously housed and ordered, certainly not very self-promoting, coexisting somewhat uneasily, wedged into this strip of gas stations, Korean tea bars, greasy spoon diners, Irish pubs, Buddhist centers, Scandinavian furniture showrooms, home furnishing chainstores. This might not be anyone's vaunted vision of a global city, but Cambridge is global, in a sense. It's the vaguely depressing spectacle of the terminal point of American society.
I just got myself a bike, so that I can finally negotiate the prettier suburbs of this fine city more easily. More specifically, this means I can zip off to read at Darwin's or Mariposa or Dado, and then to Bread and Circus, then over to Blodgett for a swim, and then off again to the Film Archive, all without having to pretend to be a flaneur (which, frankly, is ridiculous in America).
It's true that the radical Cambridge of the 60s has largely disappeared, but this is not nearly as surprising as the fact that some of it has actually survived. Last weekend, I stood on Mass Ave in Central Square, surrounded variously by hipsters, teddy boys, goths, punks, techies, biz school students in khakis, academics in tweed, academics in hoodies, B-boys in hoodies, flannel suited old men, old black ladies in frocks. Juliana Hatfield took the main stage, but there was also salsa, bluegrass, techno, a free jazz trio, a big band with horn section, a purple suited black soul ensemble. People shopped for potted bonsai, Tibetan trinkets, Chinese massages, screenprinted Ts. They were eating Cuban pulled pork, southern fried chicken, saag paneer, pad thai. The World Fair, they called it. And quite a world it was, except there was something about the setting that let me down. It's continually amazing to me how and why Cambridge supports this diversity. In what is supposed to be its heart, Central Square, sure you'll find wonderful ethnic restaurants (and not just of the halfheartedly aligned sort, of ambiguous inspiration - nothing trendy and Manhattanite like Pan-Asian or Peruvian-Japanese: instead you'll find Ethiopian, French-Tunisian, Sichuan, Bengali), specialty bookstores and all the rest of it. This is a district of rich ingredients but poor textures...the layout of this "square" is uncentered, slapdash and suburban. But maybe that's what Cambridge is; the point about it is that it is unpromisingly sparse (but why would we expect it to prove the exception to the lazy, sundry sprawl of American auto-towns?) and identifiably post-urban. Like some kind of post-millenial cultural fallout, here you will find a jumble of peoples and cultures, not conspicuously housed and ordered, certainly not very self-promoting, coexisting somewhat uneasily, wedged into this strip of gas stations, Korean tea bars, greasy spoon diners, Irish pubs, Buddhist centers, Scandinavian furniture showrooms, home furnishing chainstores. This might not be anyone's vaunted vision of a global city, but Cambridge is global, in a sense. It's the vaguely depressing spectacle of the terminal point of American society.
posted by D at 21:22
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