Hi,
Welcome to Looking Around Boston, a newsletter about art and culture in Boston and beyond. If you aren’t already signed up, you can do that here.
Last week, I found myself looking around downtown Boston for the first time in over two months. I wanted to share some photos and explain why.
The art walk I did down the Greenway (and documented in this newsletter!) in early March was my last carefree public outing before stay-at-home orders descended. On Monday, March 9, I got an email from my office manager saying that we were testing work-from-home protocols the next day. Everybody had to stay home and make sure their tech setup worked, in case we eventually had to go remote like our China colleagues. Our tech support team had been working remotely for two weeks due to possible Covid-19 exposure and the cramped size of their workspace. Our kitchens were banning reusable water bottles and only supplying single-use, individually wrapped plastic utensils. When I saw these precautious for the first time that Monday, I thought, this might be something real, that actually affects me. This was the last thing my (extremely environmentally conscious) office would do in normal times. And yet, it was becoming increasingly clear to me that these were not normal times. It was unsettling that something was coming and we were living in the period before it hit.
On Tuesday evening, our “practice” work-from-home day, and also the day that Harvard announced classes were moving online—swiftly followed by almost every college and university in the greater Boston area—the office manager emailed us again. Our whole building was shut down. Employees could get special dispensation to go in and get equipment they needed to do their jobs at home. Otherwise, my company was protecting us and our households from the virus by keeping us apart.
Around the time she emailed us, I was sitting in my Tuesday night class when a journalism student who works on my university’s undergrad paper interrupted my professor to share the news. We would be remote for the rest of the semester. For reasons that I still do not understand, we were asked to come in for classes on the rest of the week, risking exposure on the T and in university buildings, even though the administration had gauged the threat as severe enough to make the unprecedented shift to remote learning. Later we found out an infected NBA player had used facilities on campus that week, and that multiple employees and students had a positive diagnosis.
All this is to say that I took the train home the next evening, Wednesday, March 11, after class. I haven’t been on public transit since. I hadn’t been downtown, either, until last Thursday. I hadn’t fully thought through the implications of our work-from-home trial, no conception that the current situation would come to pass, and if it did, certainly not so quickly. And so the two pairs of black leather flats that I keep at my work desk had slipped my mind entirely. I didn’t even notice they were gone until mid-April; I have no reason to wear them now.
Like many recent graduates, I’ve been thrown into this new world without a job, as many companies and institutions pull back on hiring. My last day in my current role is today. While the job has had its ups and downs, I’ve been grateful for the virtual companionship and for the work that occupies my brain and hopefully prepares me for my next role. I’ve missed seeing my coworkers in person, stopping by the Boston Public Library, walking down Stuart Street from school to work and back again. Now I won’t even have the virtual substitute, for I’m not sure how long.
I don’t think I realized how much I missed downtown Boston until I was back. I drove in last Thursday around midday; it was warm enough to walk around in jeans and a t-shirt. I easily snagged a spot on Commonwealth Avenue, a street that in this weather would normally be jammed with cars of residents, visitors, ladies lunching on Newbury Street. My walk down Stuart was hushed, and I remembered photos I saw in 2013 of empty city streets during the manhunt for the Boston Marathon bomber. I was away at college at the time, but I always wondered what it would be like to be in the city when something like that happened. Now I was getting a sense.
My office was dark and quiet. Only the two female security guards, who are always there, were at the front desk. On my floor, it was like the middle of the night—dark corners illuminated with emergency lights only, soft humming from the air ventilation system, but otherwise silence—except for the sunlight streaming in through the windows at the edges of my floor. There were piles and piles of monitor boxes obstructing the halls. Maybe they were to send to workers who needed a better setup at home; I’m still not sure.
My shoes were just where I’d left them, underneath my too-small desk, looking neglected. I quickly grabbed them, took pictures of the sweeping South End views from our conference room window, and left. I didn’t want to hang around any longer than I had to. On my way out, I noticed the elevator had three yellow tape marks on the floor. They must have thought employees could social distance in the elevator to stop the spread of germs. Given what we know now, it’s hard to imagine that would have helped.
I retraced my steps through the Back Bay and looped through the Public Garden on my way back to the car. The flowers were still beautiful, but they obviously weren’t as meticulously maintained as in past springs. Whole beds of tulips had exploded and wilted. I didn’t even recognize them as tulips at first, they looked like an entirely different flower.
I saw more people in the Garden than I’d seen anywhere else—people on their lunch break from their work-from-home jobs, people walking their dogs, construction workers. Everyone was masked and staying far from others. I took a picture of the skyline to remind myself what it looks like.
I’m not sure when I’ll be back again, or when I’ll have a chance to wear those shoes I grabbed back to an office again—or what office that might be. Like everyone, I’m facing lots of uncertainty right now. But while we’re here, I plan to continue looking around and sharing what I find.
Thanks for reading. Comment below if you’ve been in the city recently, or tell me how the place where you’re living looks different these days.
Cordelia