Boston: Day Four (April 10th)

1) Institute of Contemporary Art

I was not sure what to do with myself today until I walked up to Kenmore Square and saw a bus painted up to advertise a 80's exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), featuring, amongst other artists, Robert Mapplethorpe. I am currently reading 'Just Kids', Patti Smith's recollection of her formative years in New York City during the late 60's/early 70's, when she formed a deep, life-long bond with Mapplethorpe.  Serendipity, I thought... until I got to the ICA to be told that the exhibit had been over since late March. I ended up seeing an exhibit by Barry McGee, some San Francisco part graffiti, part multi-media artist (because, well, I was there). Now, while I'm fairly certain it was the language gods punishing me for using the word 'serendipity', it threw a bit of a wrench in the rest of my day, which was mostly spent ambling...

2) On Top of the Green Monstah

Bliss.

Pure... Wait, I've used that one before...

For Wednesday night's Orioles-Red Sox game, I was sitting in a Monster seat, thanks to Ticketmaster randomly selecting this as the best available seat for the game about a month ago.  The view from section M6, Row 1, Seat 13:

The above picture may not do justice to how great the view is.  These must be some of the closest seats to the field of play in the Majors, at the very least horizontally, as I was sitting, oh, about a foot behind the actual surface of the wall. Now given that you are 37+ feet above the field of play, they are clearly blind spots (i.e., and obviously, deep left field, and some parts of left-centre field) but the added height (and relative closeness) gives a great perspective on both the battery and the infield action. 

Two home runs were hit roughly 12 seats or so to the left of me. If you go to the 0:23-0:24 mark of this video of Daniel Nava's 6th-inning home run, and look to the top of the screen, you see me looking over at the fans who caught the ball.

Of course, it started raining promptly at 7 PM, drizzling for the first couple of innings, and then pouring until the end of the 5th, when the umpires called for a rain delay.  I was drenched and cold, given there really is not a lot of cover up there. So to sum up: I basically burned in the sun for five hours on Monday, and got shiveringly drenched on Wednesday night.  Gotta love Boston in April.

Random observations:

- Before the game, I had a beer at the Cask'n Flagon, which is situated right across Lansdowne Street from Fenway Park.  I was expecting something in line with Sully's (i.e., somewhat run-down and 'lived-in), but was surprised to find a fairly nice, clean place, with a lovely triangle-shaped bar, wooden fixtures, and a menu that was far more extensive than what you'd expect from a sports bar across the way from a stadium. While they arbour a banner proclaiming that ESPN named them the US's 'best baseball bar', I still like Murphy's Bleachers better. 

- Wachusett is the local brewery that produces Green Monster IPA, which is available both in draught and in cans, I'm hoping just at Fenway. 

- The Fenway sell-out streak ended tonight after 794 regular season and 26 (I think) play-off games over 11 seasons, notwithstanding quibbles about how the team defined a sell-out.

- Americans, well at least Bostonians, do not seem to sing along to their national anthem at sporting events.  I noticed it on Monday night at the Bruins game and again tonight.  They do cheer wildly at certain parts ('our flag was still there' being one of them), but certainly do not wildly sing along like Canadians do, at least in our hockey arenas.  It is not something I had noticed before, but I will pay attention in later ball park trips. 

- I had meant to go back to Bukowski's after the game but was feeling a bit like a wet dog after getting rained on for a good part of the evening. I ended up at Boston Beer Works instead to have a couple Back Bay IPAs, which were nice and hoppy.