I’ve worked in the vicinity of the Fort Point Channel for over 5 1/2 years, allowing me to observe the Fort Point neighborhood’s amazing transformation from an artist’s haven and underground crime mecca into a viable destination for business and leisure. Honestly, the scene in The Departed that was filmed across the street wasn’t accurate, because when Martin Sheen was thrown off the roof, he didn’t land on an office worker wearing casual Brooks Brothers/Ann Taylor, talking on a cell phone, carrying a laptop and leather gym bag.
Developments since I’ve been here include: the new Convention Center and its string of luxury hotels, the Moakley Federal Courthouse, the redesigned Children’s Museum, the brand new Instititue of Contemporary Art, the Silver Line express bus to the airport, on-ramps to genuine Big Dig tunnels, and perhaps most notably, an outpost of famed bakery Flour, whose sugar brioche buns were the only reason that I went to the office today.
I guess I should apologize to all of the construction workers who I have previously deemed lazy, idling, lecherous, incompetent, and drunk. They have a flourishing cityscape that attests to their efforts. It’s probably just a coincidence that they are on a break every time that I walk by. [Just the other day, I was walking back to my office with a small pizza box, and a pickup truck filled with construction workers drove past me. “I wanna eat your pizza!” one guy yelled. It’s like I get older and older, but the construction workers stay the same age.]
Anyway, my main point: Today I saw two construction workers at lunchtime, SWIMMING in the Fort Point Channel. For those of you who never had the displeasure of seeing or smelling the Fort Point Channel, it’s a small body of water that connects the Boston Harbor to inland industry. Automobile bridges erected mid-century made it unusable for boats, and since then, it has essentially been used as an urban trashcan. Gillette Corporation infamously threw a secret “Boston Razorblade Party” in the channel that was discovered decades after the fact. Peer into the water, and you’ll see a profusion of floating trash and dead jellyfish.
To see humans swimming in the Channel was sort of like seeing humans drink toxic sludge. People stopped, stared, gagged. “What are they doing?” one woman shouted at an onlooking construction worker. “They’re cooling off, taking a break,” the construction worker smugly said in a South Shore accent. “That’s a good way to get a rash,” I said to no one in particular. “I was thinking parasites,” one man answered. “Sterility,” pronounced another. “At least they’re not putting their faces in,” his friend said, “or they’d go blind.”
