Diary of a Low Budget Superhero

During one of its incarnations since it began a whirlwind decade ago, this unevenly-penned, self-indulgent, occasionally-entertaining online wordfest of mine briefly featured a section devoted to my neighborhood. Anyone 'memba that? It's gone now, obviously. Unless you're reading this in the future and I've put it back...I might have done...soooo, if something says "Rock City" in the menu anywhere, such is the dynamic of blogs. Things change.

Follow up:

In fact, "things change" is the reason I tried to chronicle my neighborhood in the first place, and it's also the reason I had to drop it. Things changed too damn fast, and as you know, this ain't no "up to the minute with Michelle." I'm too inconsistent. It's the day job.

So my neighborhood, yes. Well I live in the Allston section of Boston, specifically in that stretch that's called Upper Allston, dubbed in some recent urban renewal program as Allston Village, but traditionally among my (rock) people referred to as Allston Rock City. On a map, you're looking at the section of town whose apex is Harvard and Commonwealth Avenues, meandering down past the intersection of Brighton Ave, to Cambridge Street...for the rock people, that means from Great Scott to O'Briens. It's a colorful cluster of city blocks, half-ratty, half-funky, pretty safe, pretty fun, sometimes a little too bedbuggy 'n beer bottled (because of the students) but endearingly peppered with a worldly range of music venues (because of the rockers) and studios (because of the artists) and cool shopping and food options (because of all the Asian, Brazilian, Columbian, Russian and Jewish influence). There's a head shop where they post very clearly that the two hundred kinds of bongs you can get are NOT to be used in any, um, illegal way. People in bands have opened a couple of tattoo places. There's an entire boutique devoted to Hello Kitty.

Part of the "funky" element of Allston is our smattering of secondhand stores. For my erstwhile Allston chronicle, I kept intending to write a guide for any thrift shoppers who might seek out Allston for the gently used, the vintage, the treasure. I never got around to writing that guide. Too bad, it woulda been cool. We have Cheap Chic on Harvard Ave, Urban Renewal on Brighton Ave, a Goodwill too, but I liked it better when it was Hadassah Thrift, which closed, which is exactly the kind of thing my Allston chronicle would have covered...

...we also had History Repeating. History Repeating was quite a place. Now, I will describe History Repeating, but first I must go back to how I happened across these people. (The store and owners' names have all been changed for this story).

In the mid-1990s I lived in Somerville, in Inman Square. It was pretty much just about a perfect walking-around neighborhood, and easily connected to other walking-around neighborhoods...about mile walk to Central Square (TT's, the Middle East) and Porter Square (Toad, Lilli's) and Kendall Square. On a mild night we would walk from Inman Square to the Kendall Cafe. In fact, parking was near impossible, so walking to the Kendall was the better choice. This was way back in the day when that little place had a "scene" going on...Allan "Winterboy" Winter working the door, collecting the $5 cover charge and dotting our hands with a Sharpie, heavy wooden tables crammed with laid back people enjoying creative pub-style food, beers, and low key pop and folk acts on a very tiny stage. Oh, Kendall Cafe, you were so cool.

Well, walking back from the Kendall I would drift past this scrappy little secondhand shop. It bore no name that I could see, but it must have been called something. Its chaotic front window, alight on a comparatively dimmed street, made this place a beckoning sight. A place that you didn't notice at all during the day, but come nightfall when most other businesses were closed, spilling from the doorway were twinkling strings of lights draped around a mannequin, glinting off sequins and illuminating feather boas. It was genius to put some stuff out on the steps like that. It at once gave the impression that there was just too much of a treasure trove inside to be contained, it must burst forth like a theatrical cornucopia -- plus, the stuff itself was just the right level of weird. The mannequin was bald, even though there were wigs and hats aplenty. The whole scene just drew you inward to a shop that promised baubles, beads, pretty things, hats, bags, wigs, costumes, albums, dolls, lamps...

But I never went inside. Why not? The feeling I had, always a few Tequila shots helping it along, was that the twinkling beacon was as good as it could get. Like a stage set a split second before the overture begins, everything visible is shiny and waiting in the future, and there's only possibility.

And one night it was all gone. Crap, I'd missed it. Stupid Tequila.

Jump ahead five years, I'm now living in Allston. One day, oh, probably in summer 2005, walking home from work, on Brighton Avenue I see...is that...it is! The same bald mannequins.

I went inside. I spoke to the man and woman I found there...were you...did you have...didn't you used to be...?

Over the next few years I would get to be friendly with Brad and Jiggles. Brad was a big fella, whose face looks exactly like the actor Colin Mochrie (from Whose Line Is it Anyway?). Put a giant black curly wig on Mochrie, add about fifty pounds and that's Brad. Jiggles, formerly quite fat by her description, had recent stomach surgery and was reveling in her new thinness, which she celebrated with a lot of slinky, shiny outfits. Envision a small-boned cross between Susan Sarandon and somebody's aunt Joan, but not a soccer mom kind of aunt Joan. An aunt Joan who dabbled in fortune-telling and collected cat stuff. Jiggles' fat clothes, she had added to the inventory of the store. (I bought a couple things.)

Brad and Jiggles were both very nice people. As they got to know me, as I took more and more trips through their crazy shop, they became even nicer and warmer than before. They were very cool about putting my rock show posters in their store window. They in fact were quite supportive of the local rock scene. They knew some of the old school rock names, and they liked being surrounded by artists and musicians. They knew Leah, later they knew Casey, several times they had dressed a lot of the Dresden Dolls army. They even donated a gift certificate to the Rock and Roll Social. I would stop in on my way home from work, I'd talk with them, I bought trinkets and jewelry and candlesticks, they would act glad to see me coming in the door. It got to be a regular thing, and in this natural way, I learned more about their lives. It was like opening a hundred tiny drawers in some complicated chifferobe, one or two a day for years.

I could never figure out the relationship between Brad and Jiggles. I know that sounds strange, and it was strange. Maybe they thought I knew from the start, maybe they thought it obvious, but then after some years had passed we'd known each other so long it would have been awkward for me to ask. Wondering about it played a kind of undertone to all my visits to the store. I'm so short that I'd be lost in the back, practically afloat in the racks of dresses, but all the while I listened for clues. This only made it worse. Just when I would be sure they were a married couple, he would refer to her boyfriend trouble, so I would re-cast them as siblings. A week later she would refer to his father dying (not "our") which in itself doesn't rule out siblinghood. I mean, me and my brother have different fathers. When they both talked about quite a fleet of cats at home, it was implied that they lived together, which is odd in siblings clearly approaching their fifties, so back I'd revert to thinking of them as married. Then again, anything could have been possible. Words like "eccentric" and "quirky" only begin to describe this pair.

They drove a windowless black van that looked like it was just towed to a junkyard. I'd see it around town, always with Brad at the wheel, his great size and unmistakable bush bomb of black hair visible from blocks away. This van, I understood they used to pick up unwanted items from people's basements, attics and trash heaps.

They would bring the haul back to their store, pile and cram and stash it any-old-where, and then, no matter what it was, they would call it "vintage" and try to get an exorbitant sum for it.

Here's what I think. I think when they had their first store, the Inman Square place? That it was cluttered but normal. Shoppers could move about the place and browse there. But then they were forced to move. They were extremely depressed at having to shut down, and when they reopened in Allston, they hauled out everything they'd packed...but this time it wasn't so organized.

They moved two more times in three years or so.

With each move, the state and condition of the store worsened. Each successive location got fuller, and that meant it got dirtier. By the time they moved to the third location, the store was impossible to navigate, so crammed with every imaginable item you can think of, and some you wouldn't.

Everything was dusty, you could barely squeeze between racks stacked against boxes leaning against shelves heaped with junk.

It reeked of body odor and cat piss.

It was absolutely a fire hazard.

It was also fascinating.

(Continued...)