My North End Apartment
I painted this circa 1985 painting in the kitchen of my Boston North End apartment, where I lived from 1982 - 1989.
I finished college living there. I was painting all the time then, usually in a large room off this kitchen. In another room I had a desk; the wall above it was shingled in poems, postcards and clippings that mattered to me.
In the time I lived there, I worked doing windows and displays at The Artisans, a Newbury St. store that was the first to introduce French cookware, Balinese Shadow Puppets and Eskimo Art to Back Bay dowagers.
I worked at the Newbury St. Art gallery Stavaridis, and I worked at Tommy’s Flowers in the South End. Tommy’s did the arrangements then for the Ritz Carlton. I waited on tables at Jasper’s and Hammersly’s Bistro. I traveled to Italy three times.
My friend, Stefania, came and stayed with me for two months, her first trip to the U.S..
I paid $225 a month for this apartment.
My landlord, Frank Guicciardi, lived in the building’s basement apartment. He offered me his homemade wine every month when I paid the rent; I didn’t accept, and I actually think he didn’t want me to.
The North End had its race issues - and probably still does - I don’t defend it, but living in this place - paying such nominal rent - allowed me to spend my 20’s experimenting with life.
Particularly, this apartment allowed me the time and space to focus on one creative effort - painting, an effort I believe established a reliable path through life’s currents. I don’t paint anymore, but writing about food and now art still contains for me the problem-solving and surprises I learned to love - and seek out - within the creative process.
This apartment now costs $3,000 a month. A young person paying that rent today would have no time for the urban wandering - and stumbling - for the trying on of life I had in my 20’s; they would more likely be working 60 hours a week to afford this rent. This is just another version of the same story: how the cost of housing - to rent or to purchase - has seriously changed the way people live and work today; it’s an old story, that these costs vacate vitality and homogenize streets. Here’s an image of my apartment today:
