Worcester, Mass.

So I up and decided I should visit Worcester, Massachusetts. I had a random day off I hadn’t expected, so what better way to start the day hungover off a sour mash ale than visit the dentist’s office, say hi to grandma with a bruised wrist after she fell the next day (and will tell you 900 times how she used her arms to brace her fall) and then go visit Central Mass’ largest city. What. A. Day.

As many times as I’d driven on the Pike to ODP and Bolts’ stuff, I never noticed how pretty some of the towns are in between here and there. The Drive-Through States if you will. (You don’t have to.)

Shimmering lakes abutting concrete lanes carved through the Bay State. Rolling hills and marshy lowlands and a secretly pretty valley. I guess I always had my face buried in math homework or a GameBoy or a story called Gorgoth that I wrote with Nick Calabrese on the way to soccer practice.

True story. It was a nonsense story about a dragon named Gorgoth that we alternated writing *some* portion of. Either a paragraph, sentence, word or letter. It must’ve been brutally stupid.

Anyhow, in between kickstarting learning Spanish again for the 400^th time and these    sneakily pretty views, getting to Worcester was sneakily…okay.

Reputation.

Worcester has a rep of being a fucki*g shit****. (I censor that correctly?) It’s a dirty concrete wasteland, that has some cool goings-on, but ultimately has a ton of concrete. Like, too much concrete.

Driving through the city as a young’un, I always noticed the highways were under construction. Just perpetually under construction – jackhammers pounding, dump trucks dumping, temporary bridges temporarying. It’s always been like this, from the first moments when my hippocampus could effectively record memories until today (though I’m not sure it’s working anymore, which is why I write).

Once on the way back from a game at Ft. Devens, an old army basement turned into Mass Youth Soccer’s home base, I had a cramp – as I did every game. Except this wasn’t an ordinary cramp. This was both calves, both quads, both hammies and both groins. I’m unclear if the human body has two groins, but if it does, then all of mine cramped.

Muscles work in pairs. Hammy contracts, quad expands. If you have a cramp, you stretch one side and the other contracts. Which is why having a hammy-quad dual cramp is very bad. Very, very bad. And I was stuck on the Mass Pike, in a car, with a pain-stricken lower half. So, we pulled onto the shoulder, barely wide enough for a sedan while pickups and SUVs and 18-wheelers barreled down a narrow, tortuous highway not designed for these speeds.

As I tried to straighten out muscles that couldn’t simultaneously be straightened out, and I gesticulated like an over-caffeinated stick bug on the side of the road, rocks, glass shards and debris stuck to my sweaty skin. It wasn’t pleasant and from that moment on, I knew I hated that faraway city with the weird pronunciation.

Expectations.

that’s my expectations of the city. That said, these days, I do go into every city with a blank slate. Yes, it might not seem that way considering everything I just said just now, but yeah. Truly, I was/am/will be open to anything on offer in Worcester.

So, I get into the city and it takes me through Kelley Square. I know nothing about Worcester really, but I had just read, in fact, about Kelley Square. It was apparently a horrendously designed intersection that they were trying to fix. But I live near the famous East Longmeadow rotary that is featured on Ripley’s. Surely, it can’t be worse.

But it is. Because unlike East Longmeadow, people actually live in Worcester. And apparently the thing that makes intersections dangerous is cars, which generally require people to move. (For now.) And as I went through it, it was under further construction rendering it utterly confusing. Shitty.

So, I missed my turn, go down the road (also under construction), turn around, find a Burger King, park there, and get out.

Within seconds, I hear a woman motherfucking a red truck backing up. Angry Bostonians.

That’s the other stereotype about Greater Boston (of which Worcester is sorta, kinda, not quite on the periphery of): angry, angry people. Particularly angry Irish, but let’s leave century-old tropes out of this for now.

Don’t Judge a Book by its Cover.

In fact, I tend not to judge all that much. Well, I do. A lot. But I try not to anyways. I just watched a TED Talk describing how linguists don’t judge accents, they just acknowledge them. They say something about you and it’s not that you’re right or wrong. You’re just you.

I take the same approach with cities. A city isn’t right or wrong. (Okay, maybe Flint, Michigan.) It just is. It has its own history, approach, people, leadership that has led it to its present state. Just take note and only judge sparingly. Or, actually, don’t judge. I forget.

So, judging Worcester not by its cover but its character, I started walking through Kelley Square and discovered quickly, it’s not the most walkable place on earth. Crossing eight lanes of Beijing traffic or just one lane of New Delhi traffic will lend some perspective. Those are certainly not walkable, but this is not a fantastically friendly, this square.

But I had a few spots in the city in mind I wanted to check out, and fortunately they were and are great. The first, Birchtree Bread Company, located in a small shopping center is a sweet café, the likes of which I wish my lovely hometown, Springfield had. Alas, it does not.

It’s modern yet homey. It’s comfy to sit and work. The food is New Americana takes on breakfast and lunch, and my house toast was simple yet flavorful. It’s the Italian approach to Americana: the magic is in the quality of the ingredients. Fresh, snappy, popping flavors. My toast was a chicken liver mousse, with arugula, pickled red onion, and house-made bread. Dazzle me with quality; don’t sedate me with over-complexity.

Next door is Bedlam Book Company. I love used book stores. I found one in Quebec City that was fantastic (if you speak French) and of course, there’s Shakespeare and Company in Paris. I find used books wonderful, illuminating, enchanting. So thank you for that. I got one on North Korea because of course I did.

Smoke Weed in the Library.

In the last few years I got way into libraries. Or they got into me. Either way.

They still serve a purpose, very much a (potentially) important one. I visited one in Springfield, MA; Worcester, MA; and Troy, NY. In each one I noticed a trend – the almighty Mary Jane. What a gal.

I began thinking what a shitty thing. People coming into a public place like this and just lighting up. Or vice versa. Either way.

How can folks enjoy books with a head high? And then I had a moment of clarity. The type you have when you smoke pot. I sometimes have a beer and read. Or have a beer and write. (Like I am right now at Wormtown Brewery. So meta.)

There’s much, much worse things people can be doing than toking up and reading a book. Readership has been on the rise, with young people reading more and more; so is it truly a societal problem?

You heard it from me people. Go crazy with marijuana and frequent your local library, will ya?

Train Station.

A YouTube video by City Beautiful recently heralded the benefits of the recent trend of mid-sized to large-ish cities renovating their old train stations into central hubs. Young people (and people in general) are going back to public transit. Municipalities are realizing the positive externalities of having a convenient central station for bus, Amtrak, commuter train, light rail, whatever.

The benefits are obvious and numerous. It makes it easy for folks to get into the city. It entices transportation companies to offer their services to your city. It becomes less confusing for people entering the city to orient themselves. (Okay is it this bus station or this one on the other side of town?) And shops and business pop up around the station. Further it makes it easy for the final, connecting leg of your journey. Ubers/Lyfts/taxis are readily available.

The Worcester train station has a gorgeous interior and an abysmal exterior (at the moment). As is the motif of this entry, the city is under perpetual construction. Scaffolding adorns the entirety of the building, the interstate zooms overhead, and a concrete wasteland of roads crisscross in every direction radiating outwards from the entrance. Gross. I’m such an urban planning snob.

Church on a Hill.

There was once a time when the church was the central gathering point of a town or city center. It sat high on the hill so that locals could always be reminded of God’s role in their lives and to get their quad workout in every Sunday. Not necessarily in that order.

It took me a while to realize the prevalence of religiosity in the US. I had always thought of Europe as the bastions of the Catholic church. And, well, it is. The Vatican. La Sagrada Familia. Jerónimos.

At the same time, religious fervor in Europe wanes while it strengthens in many communities across the Atlantic. Though I suppose it could also be across the Arctic if the pilot is drunk.

In any case, Christianity plays an integral role in American life nonetheless. Our president places his hand on a Bible. Every public speech these days blesses God. Politicians try and prove their merit by how Christian they are.

The idea of a church on a hill still being prevalent isn’t that far-fetched. While the suburban United States pushes churches into what essentially look like rec centers, gorgeous churches of yesterday may sit idea.

Worcester has many such beautiful churches. As I walked down Main Street and looked left, I saw pointed arches and rose windows. I had to go.

I make the trek up the one-block hill. Traffic barriers, cigarette smoke and creaking parking garages lined the way. As I got to the church, there stood six enormous wooden doors on a lovely stone church. The centermost door had one of those large iron rings doubling as a handle. I pulled and it opened slowly.

Excited the door was open, I kept pulling about six inches until it lurched and quit budging. It wasn’t bolted shut, it was chained and padlocked from the inside. Huh?

I walked around the side and saw paper and plastic littered about and a courtyard devoid of priests. A woman walked by and went, “Thought the same thing. Oh well.” She exits stage right, the same side as a stumbling man carrying an opened bottle of beer. Amen.

Palladium.

Years ago, in middle school (as I remember it), my older brother took me to my first real show. It was Save the Day and Alkaline Trio. Those were the years when power chords and pop punk ruled the day. Then Alk3 turned shitty and Fall Out Boy released exclusively anthem rock.

Memory is a temperamental thing. You think you remember something. But you don’t. I promise you don’t. You might remember most of something. You might remember the most poignant, imperative information. But you forgot some aspect of that memory. And each access of that memory has deleterious effects on accessing it again in the future.

The very act of memory recall erodes at the periphery of your construction of a given event, like DNA replication eats at the telomeres until the double helix ceases to function properly and you die. That got grim, but such is life.

I remember the Palladium being a grand palace, an old theater revitalized to the fullest, bringing an entire community together. It was the expression of all that is great about pop punk and metal and old American theaters.

It’s not.

It’s kinda a shitty building from the outside. And from the inside, I can’t recall. But that’s fine, because in my mind it was the greatest concert of all time and nothing can detract from that. And to be honest, its appearance is just the way I want it. And I bet everyone cares what I think.

Beer Makes Everything Better.

It does. Verifiable fact. Look it up.

I walked on and on, beyond the train station, under the interstate to a little strip of bars and restaurants.

And walked across four lanes of a two-way street not really designed for pedestrians, but containing a crosswalk nonetheless. (Add a bike lane, narrow the streets, slow the traffic if you have zebra crossings. God damn it.)

And found Wormtown Brewery.

There are several local New England breweries I love, and Wormtown is one of them. They make good shit. Support them.

Being in Worcester, I obviously had to go and it didn’t disappoint. They had two beers on tap, in-store only. One was a caramel stout that was delightful and the other was a bitter ale that quite frankly wasn’t great, but threw me some light on a new flavor palette.

But if I traveled to experience only things I liked, I would stick to like Chili’s and Applebee’s. And no one should do that.

So what?

Walking around Worcester was great. In the last few years I’ve walked around a bunch of smaller New England cities trying to revitalize and reinvent. Hartford, Albany, Troy, Chatham, Hudson, Springfield, Holyoke, Worcester, Providence, New Haven, New London.

They all do it in their own way. Some are more enticing destinations than others. Some governments simply have more money and sway with state governments.

Worcester is wildly under construction. The roads suck. The sidewalks are broken. The buildings old. But it’s got spunk. There’s a *ton* of restaurants and sweet little spots that I saw in my short, short day here. I’m sure there’s plenty to discover elsewhere and odds are high I do.

As millennials make the journey back to cities like this, it is imperative municipal governments continue to react/proact so that they provide and allow for vibrant communities.

Because as much as older generations lament us tech-driven, cell phone-obsessed, immediate-gratification millennials, the reason we move back to cities is communities. That’s something we can all get behind.

Let me know what you think in the comments below! Do you agree? Is Worcester fun? crummy? both? 

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