Society

FROM THE CRANK FILE: I’m Shipping Down to Philly

James R. Van Houtte

Boston was forgotten by this country for about forty years after Sam Giancana and Fidel Castro and Jack Ruby and Don Cheadle and Fall Out Boy shot Jack, and they’re never going to let us all live it down. Then, in the first decade of this century, something clicked. The Patriots and Red Sox stopped being impotent crybabies and went out there and spent all kinds of money on championship teams. The Bruins remain pretty lackluster. The Celtics even managed a return to glory and won the orange ball game award. Good for them. I have no idea how the New England Revolution are doing, but honestly, you don’t either. Don’t go over to Wikipedia and find out. Pay attention. No other tabs should be open while a gentleman is expressing a civil opinion.

What was it about the go-go neoconservative 2000s that made the traditional New England seat of power so appealing? Was New York too dangerous with its high profile targets and Disneyfied Times Square? What about one of the newer cities on the East Coast, like Jacksonville? I know that nobody’s ever been there, but they’ve got a relatively high profile, and on Google Maps, I found a laundromat there with Street Fighter II: Turbo. I doubt that you could even find an upright SFIIT cabinet in Boston. First person who can send the Polymath editors photographic evidence of one in Boston (and not in some backwater like Methuen) will receive a bounty—what it is will be revealed upon completion of your quest. It could be an adult male chicken, or a Homie figurine, or half a Powerade. Don’t just slap on a Sox hat and think I’ll believe you. They sell those at my Target too, why I don’t know. Your address had better be pretty close to the 617 for me to waste money on a stamp.

Anyway, back to my original point: why Boston? There are any number of more interesting places on the East Coast. Philadelphia has Cheesesteaks, D.C. has Five Guys, and Dover has a Subway restaurant now, I think. But it’s not food, because nobody’s shoving Chowder and Lobster down their throats in Omaha, Moline, or Columbus. So what does Boston have to offer?

It’s not the sports, because the only people who wear a Red Sox hat outside of New England are pretty easy to peg. They’re the middle fifty percent of Americans who fuck us over every other electoral cycle. They’re the undecideds with high interest mortgages on their raised ranches that I take time to laugh at every morning over my breakfast of Scotch and Eggs. They’re petty and materialistic, and frankly, not interesting enough to continue discussing in this parag...

So, if it’s not the sports, then it must be something else. It’s not sex, because people from Boston are not, as a category, good looking. For every Matt Damon, there’s two thousand guys who look like Jimmy Kimmel with a hooded sweatshirt pulled down over their eyes like they’re a monk in the order of St. James the Surly Southie. But after having watched five minutes of The Departed on basic cable today, I think I get it. It’s the Dropkick Murphys. Now, I have no problem with the Murphys. They’re an excellent band, particularly when you’re angry or intoxicated or both. However, their song “I’m Shipping Up to Boston” features prominently in The Departed and has been used ever since to refer to both the American Irish and Boston by the media juggernaut. So, the diasporic Irish, and the people who get drunk on March 17th just for shits and giggles are those who flock to Boston. Being a dubious percentage Irish myself (who isn’t), I could take offense, or umbrage, or a piss all over the Erin Go Blargh way the white folks in this country have repeatedly abused the Irish and then flocked to them when they want to feel ethnic too, but you are a smart, kind reader, and you did that by the time you got through paragraph two.

Absurd as it is, I can’t fault people for liking a good song. I’m listening to it right now on a continuous loop with “The State of Massachusetts,” which is superior for my money. But when I see the Murphys music being used in an NFL promo for the Patriots’ field trip to London against the piratical pansies from Tampa Bay, I got on my high horse, and I needed a place to put all of that anger. Now to misplace the rest of it by slashing some tires and egging some houses.

James R. van Houtte writes FROM THE CRANK FILE, a regular American Polymath column. He lives and works within a 500 mile radius of Chicago, IL, and that's too damn close.