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EDITORIAL
Op-Ed; Hub won't be center of much fun in 2004
Thomas M. KEANE, Jr.

01/10/2003
Boston Herald
All Editions
021
(Copyright 2003)

So, Boston gets the Democratic National Convention. Republicans are going to New York.

I wonder how many Democrats will end up defecting to the Republican Party.

Don't get me wrong. I love living here. I'm just not sure I'd want to visit.

Start with the nicknames. The Big Apple, the Capital of the World, the City That Never Sleeps. Sounds like a gas.

Beantown. Sounds like gas.

New York has the songs. "New York, New York, it's a hell of a town." People yearn to go there: "I want to be a part of it . . ."

Boston? We have the Standells singing about the polluted Charles River: "I love that dirty water." When we really get going, we'll start belting out Charlie on the MTA. "He never returned, no he never returned . . ."

Exactly.

New York has Broadway. So does Boston.

New York has Times Square, cleaned up to be sure, but still awash in peep shows and strip joints. Boston has Providence.

It is, of course, a good thing that the Combat Zone is gone. Except for a couple of hidden-away places - Centerfolds and the Glass Slipper - Boston has put sex back where it belongs: in plastic sleeves behind the counters at 7-Elevens.

True, we have the adult section in each week's Boston Phoenix. Publisher Steve Mindich pioneered the 900 phone lines and conventioneers will be burning up the phones when they're here. It makes one so proud.

But enough about sex. Democrats at the convention will be occupied by other, grander matters: war, education, the economy and drinking.

Ah, drinking.

New Yorkers can drink all night (save for the hours of 4 a.m. to 6 a.m., when one buys several rounds, puts them on the table, and hopes they last 120 minutes until the bar "reopens"). In Boston, we start looking at our watches at midnight.

The Standells again: "Frustrated women. Have to be in by 12 o'clock."

Not that we're slouches in the drinking department. With such early closing times, we've mastered the art of rapid and massive consumption. New Yorkers, with no time pressure, drink at a more leisurely pace. That means we're blotto earlier.

Advantage: Boston.

Still, people don't come to conventions just to indulge in sins of the flesh. They visit for the history, the culture and the neighborhoods.

"And this is the North End. Here you can get any kind of Italian food you want."

"Kind of like the Olive Garden."

"Right. But without parking. And much more expensive."

And then there are the tourist attractions, like the Freedom Trail.

Has anyone ever walked the Freedom Trail more than once? A duller experience is hard to imagine. The trail itself is hard to follow - sometimes it's faded red paint, other times it's differently colored cobblestone. But if you manage to stay on the path, you're rewarded with sights of old buildings with plaques telling you why you should care.

But you don't care, so eventually you cut the tour short at the James Michael Curley statues by Faneuil Hall. Finally, a chance to sit down. You pretend to talk to the bronze figure next to you while your compatriots take photos for the folks back home who undoubtedly will find the whole thing terribly amusing and will book the next plane out so they too can sit next to Curley while their friends take photos for folks back home and so, as Disney would say, goes the "circle of life."

Now that you're by the statues, you might as well visit historic Quincy Market, where you can buy from an enormous selection of T- shirts. Of course, in Boston we're particularly proud of the Limited store: A whole building devoted to Limited Brands Inc.'s retail lines. Plus there's a Victoria's Secret.

"Wow. I've seen the TV show, of course, but never actually been in one."

All right, so perhaps all of this won't be too impressive to the conventioneers. But there's one attraction that easily trumps New York: The Big Dig.

I know it sounds like fantasy, but by summer of 2004, much of it will be open. The Zakim Bridge will glow blue every night. I'm anticipating a big trade in tour buses that start in Quincy, go through all of the tunnels, over the bridge and eventually finish up by the Home Depot in Somerville.

But it's not the tour itself that will amaze the delegates. Rather, it is this: The Big Dig was largely paid for by taxpayers from across the United States.

I can hear the Democratic conventioneers now: "What a great idea! Take money from people and give it to others they don't know, have no connection to, and don't care about . . . Now that's why I got into politics."

Tom Keane can be reached at tomkeane@tomkeane.com.