It’s been nearly six months since Boston’s big moving day of 2011. Landlords will soon be demanding answers about lease renewals, if they aren’t already, and we will once again begin dreaming of that great holiday: Allston Christmas.
You may remember our call to map the detritus of moving day in 2011, and you may also remember that we never followed up with any results. The wait is over, folks; here are our moving day maps.
POINT:
ALLSTON IS A TRASH HEAP
by Andy
Thanks to the few of you who sent us reports, but it would have taken an army to map and analyze all the junk on those streets—and the bedbug warnings attached to each piece of it. I went on a couple of bike excursions around Allston and kept detailed field notes such as the one at left, but it was an overwhelming task, and it really just amounted to trash everywhere. Everywhere that wasn’t occupied by a U-Haul truck full of next year’s trash, that is.
COUNTERPOINT:
ALLSTON IS A TREASURE HEAP
by Tim
One person’s trash is another person’s treasure. Andy says Allston is a trash heap; I say it is a treasure heap! (No, it is not a ‘trove’; it’s far too large to be considered a ‘trove’.) Allston gets a bad rap for being untidy, noisy and… well, generally unpleasant. But we need to face facts. Without Allston, the rest of Boston wouldn’t seem nearly as nice. Every town needs a neighborhood filled with discarded furniture, derelict electronics and piles of parasite-ridden bedding. It is in light of these neighborhoods that our cities shine. Not to mention—there must be something valuable in that trash heap, right? Right?
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Here are the data points we collected for Allston Christmas 2011. (If you don’t see the map below, clicky.)