The first night in town I went around to the three sites with two of my professors (one is my studio professor the other teaches my graduate level class). It was actually nice to hear their input on the sites as we visited them for the first time together. My group ended up choosing a site near the Rose Kennedy Greenway (the Big Dig) right downtown in Boston. After visiting said sights we went and got food at the Quincy Market. I ate a bowl of Chowda' with a kosher kielbasa chili dog. My one professor went upstairs for a pint and bar food whilst we dined on the cheaper fare of the market. When we went looking for him we stumbled upon him at the New England Patriots Cheerleaders Calender release party... Pretty dang lucky but awesome (and a terrible night to have left my camera back at the hotel... Damn)! After much jaw dropping and stuttering conversations with gorgeous women, we booked it back to our hotel stopping on the way for a pint of Samuel Adams (the most prominent and Bostonian thing imaginable, an actual identity to the city that people have massive pride in.)
The next day I toured the ICA art Museum on the waterfront for its collection and architecture, followed by dinner at the nearby Barking Crab and a tour of two Arch firms that afternoon. In between I tried to make it to MIT, but caught up with Steve Jobs speaking on the street. Drew and I would later go back to that campus and even meander through the campus of some school called Harvard. I really can say that I liked MIT and its similar sort of identity to ISU (at least the engineering and sciences portion of the campus that really felt like an ISU transmuted as infill into the Boston Harbor). I hated my trip to Harvard. If a person could make a collegiate university into a Disneyland-esque park where you walk around and gawk at buildings and placards of famous people... That is what Harvard is. There is also a preening arrogance to the students we saw sitting out enjoying the masses of Asian tourists photographing them as they "studied and read and chatted" in the Yard. It just left a bad impression on me, even though I dearly hope it was just a portion of the student population. I did thoroughly enjoy the brutalist architecture present at both campuses (ala CY Stephens and Fisher Theatre). Stark, severe and brutally effiecent buildings by Kahn and Pei (plus a Vander Rohe set that could count in this context...) that truly made the trip worth it.
On Sunday I went to a bookstore near the Boston Green and ate at the infamous Union Oyster House. I got the plate of fried seafood (scallops, clams, oysters, cod, shrimp, kalamari and octopus) smothered in fries... That was pricy and greasy but amazing to taste seafood that amazingly fresh and good. The rest of the trip was walking around, a Red Sox game and documentation of the site we chose... Things that are rather less interesting to write about, but here are some pictures and videos!!! (More pictures to come later again...)
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