Restaurants can be kind of dirty
Who would want to live next to a restaurant anyway? Their clientele can be noisy, there are plenty of smells, and they attract rats. Not to mention, have you ever had to deal with valets? There’s never enough of them so there’s always a line of cars waiting, often double-parked, often blocking crosswalks and fire hydrants.
I live on Tremont Street in the South End. It can be very busy - we live across the street from two restaurants, one with valet parking, the other that attracts families with young kids who like nothing more than running around and screaming for hours at a time while their parents ignore them.
My block of Tremont has a corner market and offices for a lawyer and interior designer. Not bad. The Eagle bar is three doors’ down. I knew the bar got busy late at night but didn’t much think about it. They’ve been a good neighbor for the past six years. There was a porn video store downstairs that closed after a couple years and I can tell you, I wasn’t unhappy it did. It was run-down and had a seedy kind of look to it (especially from the inside …)
Living in the city requires patience and understanding
I’m under no misconception of what it takes to live in our city, in any city. To me, there’s a give and take, an understanding - an agreement - that not everything’s going to go my way. Sometimes I’ll be happy about living here and sometimes I won’t. Most of my neighbors are rational people, and they know this to be true, too.
It’s the odd person who pushes and pushes for something that makes no sense to the rest of us, or is unwilling to bend, to yield, to compromise, that sets off all of us.
Does it make any sense for a neighbor to be against a new building on Washington Street that would replace an “underused” retail shop, that would bring new housing to the neighborhood and a nice place to eat, too? To me, no.
But, does it make sense that, if you live on a block where your back door overlooks a community garden, you might not want a restaurant to open up two doors down with outdoor seating until 1 a.m. Well, yeah, kind of!
Unfortunately for us all, or, probably, fortunately, there are differing shades of gray in most situations and compromises can be made.
Oh, and the reason that things happen (or don’t) in our neighborhoods? It’s because people show up at meetings, talk to neighbors, write letters, and talk with their city councilors and state senators and representatives. Usually, these people get their ways.
There’s a lesson there.
