[2191] in Humor
HUMOR: Bahston
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Charles E. Leiserson, Jr)
Sun Nov 16 16:22:33 1997
Date: Sun, 16 Nov 1997 16:19:56 -0500
To: humor@MIT.EDU
From: "Charles E. Leiserson, Jr" <locutus@MIT.EDU>
BACK ON CAMPUS
Tok of the town
A student's guide to Bawstin for all of you who
weren't bon heah
By John Powers, Globe Staff, 09/11/97
Tell the truth, now. How many of you said "Boston University" to the
cabbie at Logan and ended up at BC? You're right. It wasn't a
misunderstanding. The cabbie knew you weren't bon heah, so he took you
for a ride. By now, you know that nobody in the Hub calls it Boston
University. We don't really call it the Hub, either, except in
headlines.
By the time you graduate, you'll also be able to tell Southie from the>
South End, know how to pronounce Gloucester and who should have been at
first base instead of Bill Buckner.
You'll know who the cahdnal is, how to take the T to JP and what the
blinking red light atop the old Hancock Building means in the summer.
And if you're smaht, you'll know how not to get cahded at the packie.
Here with, a student's survival guide to Bawstin:
How we tok:
We don't speak English. We speak whatever they brought over here from
East Anglia in 1630. The Bawstin accent is basically the broad A and the
dropped R, which we add to words ending in A -- pahster, Cuber, soder.
For the broad A, just open your mouth and say "ah," like the docta says.
So car is cah, park is pahk. If you want to talk like the mayah, repeat
after me:
"My ahnt takes her bahth at hahpast foah. "
When we say: We mean:
bzah odd
flahwiz roses, etc.
hahpahst 30 minutes after the hour
Hahwahya? How are you?
khakis what we staht the cah with
pissa superb
retahded silly
shuah of course
wikkid extremely
yiz you, plural
How we'll know you weren't bon heah:
You wear a Harvard sweatshirt.
You cross at a crosswalk.
You ask directions to "Cheers."
You order a grinder and a soda.
You pronounce it "Worchester."
You walk the Freedom Trail.
You call it "Copely" Square.
You go to BU.
Getting around:
Boston is a mishmosh of 17th-century cow paths and 19th-century
landfill penned in by water. You know, "One if by land, two if by sea."
Charlestown? Cahn't get theyah from heah. And which Warren Street do
you want? We have three plus three Warren Avenues, three Warren Squares,
a Warren Park, and a Warren Place. Pay no attention to the street names.
There's no school on School Street, no court on Court Steet, no dock on
Dock Square, no water on Water Street. Back Bay streets are in
alphabetical odda. Arlington,Berkeley, Clarendon, Dartmouth. So are
South Boston streets: A, B, C, D. If the streets are named after trees
(Walnut, Chestnut, Cedar), you're on Beacon Hill. If they're named
after poets, you're in Wellesley. Dot is Dorchester, Rozzie is
Roslindale, JP is Jamaica Plain. Readville doesn't exist. The
North-East-South-West thing: Southie is South Boston. The South End is
the South End. The North End is east of the West End. The West End is no
more. A guy named Rappaport got rid of it one night. Eastie is East
Boston. The East End is Boston Harbor.
About our "cuisine":
Boston cream pie is a cake.
Frappes have ice cream; milk shakes don't.
Chowdah does not come with tomatoes.
Soda is club soda. Pop is Dad. If it's fizzy and flavored, it's
tonic. When we mean tonic water, we say tonic water.
Scrod is whatever they tell you it is, usually fish.
If you paid more than $6 a pound, you got scrod.
Brown bread comes in a can. You open both ends, push it out, heat it,
and eat it with baked beans.
They're hot dogs. Franks were people who lived in France in the
ninth century.
People without last names:
Dapper
Whitey
Raybo
Natalie
Roger
Julia
Things not to do:
Don't call it Beantown.
Don't pahk your cah in Hahvid Yahd. They'll tow it to Meffa.
Don't swim in the Charles, no matter what Bill Weld tells you.
Don't sleep in the Common.
Don't wear orange in Southie on St. Patrick's Day.
Don't call the mayah "Mumbles." He hates that.
Don't ask what she's majoring in. You don't care.
Things you should know:
There are two State Houses, two City Halls, two courthouses, two
Hancock buildings. There's also a Boston Latin School and a Boston Latin
Academy. How should we know which one you mean?
Route 128 is also I-95. It is also I-93.
It's the Sox, the Pats (or Patsies), the Seltz, the Broons.
The Harvard Bridge goes to MIT. It's measured in `smoots.'
Johnson never should have hit for Willoughby.
The subway doesn't run all night. This isn't Noo Yawk.
Ray Flynn used to be mayah.
It's Comm Ave, Mass Ave and Dot Ave.
Yaz wore 8, Ted wore 9.
The drinking age is 21. If you use a fake ID, make sure it isn't
from Mississippi.
Argeo Paul Cellucci, the governor, is just acting.
To get back to Logan from BC, take the Green Line to the Blue Line
then grab the bus.
Miscellaneous:
The Hub: A Bostonian once called this city the Hub of the Universe. It
was -- in 1775.
The Big Dig: The downtown highway project that's taking longer and
costing more than it should. The latest excuse for why traffic here is
bzah.
The old Hancock Building lights are actually a weather forecast: "Steady
blue clear view/Flashing blue, clouds due/Steady red, rain head/Flashing
red, snow instead." In the summer, flashing red means the Sox home game
has been called off.
- Charles E. Leiserson, Jr.
"Life... is like a grapefruit. It's orange and squishy, and has a few pips
in it, and some folks have half a one for breakfast."
- Douglas Adams
