square peg
Davis Square is a great place to live. The Boston Globe’s online site boston.com did a survey recently of readers’ favorite square and Davis won, running against Kendall (I think), Central, Porter and Harvard. Yes, it beat Harvard Square.
Davis is perfect because it’s Somerville surrounded by Cambridge on two sides, so it’s artsy, forward thinking and yet has its feet on the ground. It’s not touristy, it’s got a real “center,” tons of restaurants and bars and shops and the population is a nice mix of locals, Tufts runoff, mature professionals, families and artists. I wouldn’t be surprised if all of Somerville contained more musicians than any other part of Massachusetts.
All that said, there is something in Davis that scares me. It’s a restaurant/nightclub called Sagra.
As I sit here at my desk in my bedroom, which faces Highland Avenue, I hear the effects of this blight on my neighborhood. Sagra attracts a crowd that simply does not belong here and which is embodied clearly by MTV’s “Jersey Shore.” Club-going partiers, girls almost-wearing clothes and stumbling around in heels trying to balance their cleavage and guys who are more Axe body spray and hair gel than man. All of them are loud loud loud and have so much misdirected or unchanneled energy in them that I’m frightened to even walk past on weekend evenings. With good reason, too.
When Chris and first started dating he was up late and I was asleep (what else is new?) and he heard a commotion on the street. He went outside to check it out and witnessed a fight. Not only did he see some punches thrown, but he saw a guy get hit and then fall backward so hard and so solid that he could hear his head crack on the sidewalk. For months he said that sound haunted him, it was so visceral and disturbing.
Davis Square isn’t for melees and testosterone-filled macho “who you talkin’ to” fist-fights. It’s also not for hoochie mamas and “like, ohmigod” spouting bimbos. Begone foul pestilence! Stay in the ‘burbs or Faneuil Hall and the clubs near North Station, please! I moved here because you were not here. If I had to choose I’d keep my white trash local yobbo neighbors (the ones who were up at 10am last July 4th starting a giant fire in their hibachi and drinking quarts of beer. The ones who never did any actual barbeque’ing and who turned in for the night at 2pm) over this unsavory element any day of the week. My WT neighbors may be ignorant or uneducated, but they keep to themselves and don’t stir shit up. I appreciate that.