Daring - and Foolish - Cyclist

A guy dressed in black rode a bicycle down terrifying Harvard Ave., where delivery trucks, buses and taxis compete with passenger cars to squeeze past obstacles.

The cyclist wore a black baseball cap, and a bike helmet dangled from his backpack.

Polish Fast Food - Zaps

A Zap is a cheap and delicious open-faced sandwich served at Zaps restaurant on Brighton Avenue in Allston. The slim, 16-inch loaf is sliced lengthwise, topped with cheese, mushrooms, and onions and toasted. The basic Zap costs $3.99, and you can add keilbasa, ham, olives, corn, and other goodies for another dollar or two.

The bread is soft inside, crisp on the outside, and the melted cheese is just gooey enough to be divine.

Zaps, sodas, and chips are all the restaurant serves, but what else do you need?

The young owner of Zaps is from Poland, where the sandwich originated. He faces a challenge because the restaurant is tucked in behind another business, and only the door is visible from the street.

I hope the place catches on. It's getting a lot of buzz with the shop owners and the BU crowd. I love seeing someone walking down the street with a foil-wrapped, torpedo-shaped package under the arm.

Allston coming back to life after holidays

The students cleared out a few days before Christmas, leaving Allston deserted, but now that the holidays are over, they are back preparing for spring semester.

Sunday is shopping day, and the supermarket and sidewalks were jammed with young folks toting packages. Reflecting a new atmosphere of frugality, two students picked their way down the ice-banked sidewalk, each carrying two 12-packs of toilet paper.

In spite of their return, Brighton Avenue was fairly quiet late at night this weekend, thanks to bitter cold temperatures that kept the party people indoors.

Allston graffiti

Here's a couple of enigmatic graffiti declarations found around Allston, both done in an even hand in black spray paint:

JESUS IS A SHOE COMPANY

I AM THE LION KING

Joyless in Mudville

During the fourth quarter of last night’s Super Bowl, the street below our window was eerily deserted. Everyone was indoors staring at a television somewhere. The Patriots didn’t look sharp and never found their steamroller rhythm. They lost by 3 points.

After the game ended, young people trickled onto the sidewalk in twos and threes for sullen walks home from parties and bars. A tiny, bent Chinese lady trudged up Brighton Avenue pulling a tandem of shopping carts laden with black garbage bags of pickings from dumpsters.

In the eye of Hurricane Super Bowl

Red and white signs warn that vehicles parked on Brighton and Harvard Avenues within two blocks of the intersection will be towed between 8 a.m. Sunday and 2 a.m. Monday. Presumably, this will provide fewer targets for over-zealous fans who may have the urge to overturn cars either in celebration of a perfect season for the Patriots or in frustration should they lose the big game.

Six years ago when the Pats won their first Super Bowl, our college neighbors spilled out into the street seconds after the winning field goal cleared the uprights, and within two minutes, the incongruous chant, “Yankees suck,” rose from the crowd. Four blocks away on Commonwealth and Harvard, the revellers turned into vandals, and a couple of years later, a pepper spray pellet killed a college student in Kenmore Square as police tried to control rowdy students after a Red Sox playoff game.

But things should be calmer tonight. With two World Series and three Super Bowl championships behind them, the fans no longer experience the same burst of adrenaline. Brighton Avenue was practically deserted after last year’s World Series.

Other evidence that the big day is near: Printed signs in the windows of the White Horse Tavern urge fans to come in for “The Big Game,” avoiding any licensing problems with the NFL, but the Sunset Grill has no such scruples. Their blackboard on the sidewalk invites people to watch The SuperBowl. Yesterday at the grocery store, demonstrators offered samples of snack foods from card tables scattered throughout the store. We bought two kinds of seafood spread, which was not even on our radar screen until an old lady in a pastel baseball cap offered us a taste.

Snow falls on Allston

Hollywood snow floats down on Allston, fluffy flakes sparkling beneath the streetlights and muffling the traffic sounds. For two desperate hours, cars inch down Brighton Avenue toward the turnpike for a longer crawl to suburban homes. But by evening, the street belongs to intrepid, grinning pedestrians who mince along slippery sidewalks to procure the elements of survival on a snowy night: frozen dinners, beer, DVDs. A shopkeeper sweeps the white fluff away to invite customers inside. Most folks dress as for a polar expedition, but a few women show off their urban winter chic in fur-topped, high-heel boots and pricey felt hats.

A television newscast predictably gives New England winter the “breaking news” treatment, complete with a reporter in a parka standing beside a clogged highway in swirling snow.

A few hours later, the snow has stopped and the spell is broken. Wet pavement whooshes under tires, muddy black strips form along the edges of the pristine white blanket and the neighborhood resumes an ordinary Thursday night.

It’s beginning to look a lot like …

The first glimpse of Christmas in Allston came out a few days ago. Two-foot-wide, shimmering white snowflakes of modish design appeared in the window of Punjab Palace, an Indian restaurant.

The place opened a year ago this week. As if totally unaware of Thanksgiving and the associated emptying of this college neighborhood, baffled waiters in their white-starched best stood at attention amid empty polished tables set with new glistening glassware.

But the students came back hungry for anything but leftovers, and gradually the tables began to fill. Now enjoying steady business, management has seized the holiday season.

The only other Allston storefront with decorations so far is a high-fashion Brazilian clothing store. Tinsel garland snakes through its window display of sexy summer dresses, perfect for Christmas in the Southern Hemisphere.

Afro pick

A young black man on the 66 bus in Allston wore a modest Afro. Though it could not compare the bushy wonders of the 1960s, he had more hair than the average hip man today. A Black Power Afro pick with a handle ending in a raised fist ornamented the back of his ’fro.

Forty years ago his uncles, maybe even his grandfather, nestled picks like that into magnificent globes of hair to remind the world that black is beautiful and they weren’t taking any crap from anybody, no matter how much the honkies ridiculed or even denounced their symbols.

In 2007, the Afro pick bore no revolutionary connotation. The man on the 66 bus sporting the black plastic pick and fiddling with his iPod looked positively retro, even quaint. And he looked like he knew his heritage.


Read about Afro picks at http://www.metalafropicks.com/history_of_afro_pick.htm