DEAR READER,

As we go to print, the new GE headquarters update slash press release has been bouncing around local the website walls online and within the respective social media threads that follow. The buzz, of course, has been heavily focused on how it plans on incorporating the old Channel nightclub’s ethos and nostalgia into its design in an attempt to localize its cred. The only thing missing from it is a cafe called the Rat.

The problem with this approach is that it mimics past behaviors of those that have tried to ingratiate themselves within the local culture, and almost all have failed. If only it were that simple. The fact is, using local colloquialisms and hitching a ride on the storied past of our fair city does not convince anyone that you’re authentic. If anything, it makes you sound like an idiot.

I saw a post online that seemed to sum up how this hollow effort will likely play out; instead of defining Boston by the homage to these music clubs from our past, we should do our best to make sure they survive to begin with. We’re at a cultural crossroads right now, and it’s never been harder to define who we are as a city because of it. Let’s make sure the answer to that conundrum isn’t paying respect to it through a corporate eulogy. We already have the Verb Hotel. We don’t need another one.  

Jeff Lawrence, DigBoston Publisher + Editor

OH, CRUEL WORLD

Dear Parking Lot Pig,

What kind of filthy animal cleans out their SUV in a parking lot instead of at their own home or near an actual trash can? You do, that’s who, you goddamn pig. I know, I was at Target too, so I am also worthless scum, but compared to you I am a king, a jet-setting aristocrat extraordinaire. Because unlike me, you pulled an empty shopping cart up to your car door, then proceeded to transfer no less than two dozen coffee cups plus assorted other teeth-rotting trash. Leaving behind a leaking heap of brown ooze on wheels that, if there was a god, would be heated into molten lava and ladled into your eyeballs like gravy.