The pumpkins were part of the scenery during a weekend trip to Boston, during which I ate some stupendous blueberry pancakes at this place:
Which initially apparently frightened my dining companion, who, admittedly, has a more refined palate than I do. Once I got the recalcitrant lad inside, however, he had to admit that it was nothing short of awesome. Aside from being picturesque:
It had black rubber rats in its Halloween-themed window display, as well as one of the best waitresses who I have had the pleasure of dining with in...years, possibly! (What was special about her, you ask? Well, first of all, she was a really good waitress. Like took her job seriously, and wasn't busy looking over my head when talking to me to see if someone more fabulous than me was in the vicinity. She refilled my coffee conscientiously. She made small talk, but wasn't annoyingly chatty. She wore a Boston Red Sox shirt that she had refashioned to better suit her. And she had a pierced nose. That's what.)
Following the eating of the delightfully puffy with-blueberries-on-the-inside-and-not-slathered-on-the-top-with-a-gross-compote pancakes, I set off on foot with my Bostonian host. We marched around the South End, which was strewn with fallen leaves, and thus gave me--for the first time this year--a very autumnal feeling.
I was momentarily nonplussed when I spied this place...
...which was so cute that I feared maybe I'd made a hasty decision when dining at Mandy and Joe's. Once I discovered cute place #2 had been profiled in the New York Times, however, I changed my mind. Somehow cute doesn't seem so cute once the New York Times has branded it as cute, you know?
The South End was kind of interesting, albeit massively gentrified, and featured a good radical bookstore, and a very perplexing optical illusion building...
...which is probably all famous and shit, but I'm too lazy to look it up.
After this semi-pleasant stroll, it started to rain a bit...lightly at first, and then rapidly becoming a torrential downpour. After crossing this bridge:
in what was rapidly becoming a monsoon, we ducked inside for a few moments
before giving up and heading out onto a windswept river-front area that is probably swarming with business suit types during the week. But during a monsoon? Only yours truly, and the dashing Bostonian in a raincoat:
The downtown business district was even more deserted:
and for a brief moment, I had a glimpse of a World Without the Dudes in Business Suits. It could have only been better if they'd been turned into zombies. Zombies who only ate each other, that is. Otherwise I'd be dead.
