Lost in Boston
"It's not for sissies"
from Boston Globe

Some poor schmuck pulled up next to me at MGH yesterday as I was pulling on to Storrow Drive, and asked how to get to Memorial Drive. Cross the river buddy, a canoe would be quicker.

Lost.

You've all been there, veering off the beaten track, finding yourself lost in twilight zones in Dorchester or Hyde Park and pulling over at a CVS for a map.

You've started following those signs for Franklin Park Zoo -- signs that disappear and leave you -- lost. Navigated those labyrinth-like Chinatown streets to nowhere, finally finding a beacon of hope -- a sign for Interstate 93. You looked for Washington Street in Roxbury but found yourself on one of its sister streets in Dorchester, Charlestown, or Hyde Park instead.

It's enough to drive you crazy.

And the detours that emerge in the Big Dig every few months don't help, either.

"What was once there, now isn't," said one Boston police officer recently. But to at least one native, that's part of being a Bostonian and part of what sets the city apart from other metropolises.

"What makes Boston interesting is also what makes it confusing," said Jamaica Plain architect and planner Gail Sullivan, who for a while couldn't figure out Bowdoin Street in Dorchester because "it turns so much. You don't know where it's going to take you. It is very disorienting. Nothing is at right angles in Dorchester."

Driving in Boston, she explained, "demands that you pay attention. I have to get a mental map in my head. Boston is for people who can grasp a mental map. It's not for sissies."

This comes from the commuter in the Toyota Prius who sees driving into a rotary as a "contact sport."

More

"You come into the rotary, eyeball the competition, size them up in a split-second, and decide whether they are going to cut you off or if you can pass them," she said. "It's the best social interaction."

Many readers who e-mailed Boston.com about getting lost in Boston blamed signs, or lack thereof, for the difficulty in getting around the city.

Sullivan, for example, said she wishes there were signs from Logan International Airport indicating where to exit for drivers heading to Dorchester, Roxbury, and Jamaica Plain.

One commuter wrote, "Everyone gets lost in Boston, especially the first couple years you live here. In California, the signs are posted above each intersection and illuminated, so you can always read them. Also, in most neighborhoods, they indicate upcoming streets with a sign between blocks. VERY helpful! Take a page, Boston."

Daniel Monti, a professor of sociology at Boston University, dedicated a chapter in an unpublished manuscript about Boston civic life to being lost in the Hub.

"My God, the way they do street signs and rework the roads in Boston could throw off an invading army for days," Monti wrote.

Boston police don't track how many lost sojourners they've encountered over the years, according to Officer Michael McCarthy, who said, "You wouldn't be able to. You couldn't create a database big enough."

McCarthy, a nine-year veteran of the Boston force, said much of the confusion stems from streets in different neighborhoods sharing the same name.

"You have three different Washington Streets," said McCarthy. "There is a Beacon Street in Hyde Park, a Beacon Street in downtown; a Park Street in West Roxbury, in downtown, and in JP, which poses a lot of confusion."

One weekday morning last year while on patrol at Downtown Crossing, McCarthy found a frazzled woman looking for 426 Washington St. She was heading to a doctor's appointment and had plugged that address into her computer.

She ended up at a department store.

"She got directions to Filene's instead of the Codman Square Health Center in Dorchester," he recalled. "She was panicky."

The woman had not specified a neighborhood when she turned to the computer for directions, said McCarthy, and that highlights how cybermapping can steer people far afield.

The same thing happened last summer to Tufts University student Jeff Hamalanien of Westford. He thought he'd drive to Fenway to buy some tickets to a Red Sox game.

Let's just say he struck out.

"My worst experience driving in Boston can be blamed on three things: Boston's confusing roads, Mapquest, and my stupidity," Hamalanien said, recalling that summer day when he was headed to Fenway in his white Dodge Caravan van. "I knew a place to park near there that was free. I just didn't know exactly how to get there so I went to Mapquest that morning. In my rush, I didn't check the directions it gave."

Hamalanien ended up in Dorchester, and in efforts to find his way out, rear-ended another car because "I didn't know where I was going.

"After getting out of Dorchester, I wind up in a maze of streets in Chinatown. I'm probably lost there about 20 minutes before I see a sign that points to 93, which I take having never made it to Fenway and barely into Boston at all."

Hamalanien later realized that Mapquest gave him directions "to the wrong place because it had a shorter street name."

Even asking directions doesn't guarantee you will find your way.

Charla Rudisill of Brookline remembers when she had to rush to Cambridge to pick up the keys to her new apartment.

"New to Massachusetts, we stopped at a tourist information office on Interstate 90 to get directions," she wrote. "The agent told us to take the second Cambridge exit off 90 (after the Allston/Cambridge exit). Well, there isn't a second Cambridge exit."

Rudisill found herself sitting in her car idling on Atlantic Avenue at 4:30 in the midst of Friday afternoon rush hour.

"We actually made it to Harvard Square by 5 p.m. by following a map and not asking for directions," she wrote.

Somerville's Derek Peplau arms himself with a Boston map but says that some of the main drags he uses routinely are not identified. He calls it "a phenomenon which seems to be unique to Massachusetts." "Main streets do not have any signage whatsoever; only the sidestreets you pass as you try to figure out where you are, seem to be labeled, but not the street you're actually on. It seems like the philosophy is: If you're not from here, you deserve to get lost," said Peplau, a product marketing manager for a software company.

AAA hears from lots of out-of-town lost drivers, though they don't tally numbers. The most troublesome spots to find seem to be Fenway or the Longwood medical district, a spokesman said.

"It's tough for people to get, say, from the Central Artery to those areas, because there is not a major highway exit for Fenway Park," said Art Kinsman, a AAA spokesman. "We have streets that used to be cowpaths by the Boston Common that are now major thoroughfares. Even for locals, it's just not that easy."

Some out-of-towners remain haunted by their lost experiences years later.

Art Wolinsky of Barnegat, N.J., remembers the time he was visiting Boston with his wife, daughter, and her friend to scope out a prospective school: Boston University.

"That night after the visit, they wanted to go to a teen nightclub" on Lansdowne Street, he recalled. "We found the address, hopped in the car, go to the block it was on, and saw it halfway down a one-way street. We thought we'd go around the block, but 45 minutes later we headed back to the hotel in frustration."

Wolinsky said he made a U-turn and tried to get back to the block.

"We saw that nightclub at least 10 times from that corner, but we weren't able to get around the block the other way," he said.

So he surrendered and realized "the expression 'you can't get there from here' was absolutely true in Boston."

The story does have a happy ending. His daughter, Randye Kerstein, graduated from BU with a degree in communications, now works as an art director for School Sports Magazine, and lives in Roxbury with her husband.

When Wolinsky and his wife now come into town to visit her, he said, "We make sure she or her husband is driving."

posted by prof_booty | 08:16 AM