This is going to be a long, corny love letter to the city of Boston.  If you aren’t in the mood for that, or are not a reader or for some reason, hate the city of Boston, scroll on down for this year’s wall to wall coverage by Wrong Side of the Camera of the 127th running of the Boston Marathon.

(A month and a half late. Sorry!!!!)

OK the long corny love letter starts here.  On April 15th this year, I’m walking home and getting taunted via text by my chauffeur and friend Fred.  Fred has been teaching me how to drive for a few years.  Ok to be more accurate, he has beaten the driving into me.  As a senior lecturer at one of the most famous universities in the world, I can tell you that Fred’s teaching methods are, um, unconventional to say the least.  When he was teaching me how to parallel park, he would open the door to the car and yell out — you’re too faaaaah!!!  You’re too faaaaaah.  So I’m ready to take my test but due to a bunch of stupidity in my life and because of this stupid rule here that you can only take the driving test in a vehicle with hand break in the middle of it, me taking the test has been delayed a few times.  So Fred was taunting me via text about getting my test done.  The next part is perhaps the funniest.

I’m walking home to my own house on my own street when a taxi stops in front of me and Fred sticks his head out the window and continues to taunt me about the license.  Live. The text taunting turned into in person taunting. Our exchange ended with me yelling out, jokingly that he was psychotic.

I came up the stairs that day laughing about how Boston that whole exchange was.  This is the absolute definition of this city.  Everyone knows everyone.  Your idiosyncratic chauffeur finds a way to taunt you on your street and you retell this as a hilarious story.  Your idiosyncratic chauffeur taunting you on your street, coincidentally driving by your house.  Welcome to Boston.  

I met Fred four years ago when my Lyft driver didn’t come to pick me up to go to Sunday River, for one of my 4am ski trips.  I was pissed to say the least so after this happened, I started calling all of these numbers I found on the internet.  This gruff voice picked up and I said — look.  I have a really weird request.  I need you to pick me up and drive me to Back Bay station at 4am for about five Saturdays in winter.  All I heard was — I put you in the book.  Customer service, level Polish.  But Fred showed up and slowly this friendship evolved.  

Fred is an interesting character.  The man really dislikes the letter R.  I mean really.  It’s a big dislike, I mean I really think it must be because he only really pronounces it when it’s at the beginning of a word but anywhere else, forget it, you are out of luck.  He really has an aversion to this letter.  Fred worked for the MBTA for 20-something years and has an absolutely encyclopedic knowledge of every single corner of this city.  He can tell you in great detail where anything occurred in this city.  He special focus is on crime, the locations of famous crimes.  Sometimes in my correspondence, I call him “noted local crime historian.”  During our driving lessons, he would pick up the phone and take taxi appointments.  The only time when his tone of voice would change would be if his granddaughter called him.  One time he couldn’t take me out to drive because his granddaughter had her ceremony to get into the National Junior Honor Society.  We also reviewed her report card a few times.  

This man is Boston to the core.  I once watched him chase a man down my street in his car, caaah, because he had hit his car mirror.  He cut the guy off and started yelling at him and called the cops on him.  What a scene.  But what it is about people here, is that this is a person who took time out to teach me how to drive and always makes sure I have a ride home.  Last summer when I was traveling, he was watching my flight and texted me to let me know that he was coming to get me.  What was really funny was that we were delayed and his text said something along the lines of — you see, your flight is delayed.  I actually thought he might be sitting behind me at the time. 

We’re getting back to the marathon, I promise.  So after Fred’s texting taunts and in person taunts, I got home and turned on Netflix and saw a documentary about the Boston marathon bombing.  Now I don’t really want to watch this.  I lived this.  I have no interest in reliving this.  But something told me to watch it.  

I put it on and Billy Evans, whose quote is at the top of this entry came on the screen and said those words and I thought — he’s right.  Now let me clarify.  I am not saying that other cities don’t have fine people.  Obviously they do.  But something about the way the guy said it struck me.  Evans looks like another hard boiled Bostonian, like Fred.  But you could tell this guy cares a lot about the people of this city.  

As I’m watching the documentary, I started crying.  I lived this.  I remember every detail.  And I’m crying watching this.

Everyone knows the story about the bombing and probably how I lived that day.  I was actually in Pennsylvania that morning, attending the christening for my college best friend’s son.  It was a fun couple of days and I’d be getting back on the marathon day, my favorite day of the year.  I got up at about 5am to come back in time to catch the rest of marathon.

I met up with a friend and we watched for a while from Kenmore square.  Not too soon after a woman next to me said that a bomb had exploded at the finish line.  I thought maybe it was a man hole cover.  It couldn’t be a bomb.  A bomb at the marathon?  No.  Not possible.

We stood there for a little longer.  Helicopters were flying over our heads.  Then police entered the path of the marathon and told everyone to go home.  Before it ended, I saw two people get to the marathon and find their daughter.  They must have told her that there had been a bomb.  She broke down crying.  I stood some distance away and captured the whole scene.  It was in a French newspaper a couple of days later.

We were all in shock about what had happened.  How had marathon day gone from this happy occasion to this immensely sad one so quickly?  My friend and I ducked into a place to get food.  The impact of the whole thing really hit me then.  It was all over the news.  Obama was on television talking about the marathon.  People were posting Facebook updates in support of the people of Boston.  This was real now.  And incredibly sad.

I went to work the next day.  Everyone was so subdued and quiet.  Two students who I love dearly, a married couple, hugged me when I got to work.  The husband was wearing a Boston marathon jacket.  He put his arm around me.  It was such a nice gesture.

The atmosphere in the city at first reminded me a bit of how Washington DC after September 11.  Copley Square station, that I took the train through every day was closed, completely dark.  I used to go to the Trader Joe’s in Back Bay and it was now a part of a crime scene.

What I saw in the next week in the city was remarkable.  I’m a city person.  The thought of living in a suburb fills me existentialist dread.  I have lived in big cities for most of my life, save for a few forgettable years in an unremarkable suburb of New York City.  I am a city person and a keen observer of cities.  I grew up in New York and lived in Washington DC right after college.  I saw what happened in Washington DC after September 11.  It was really ugly the way people turned on each other.  I remember asking a guy why the cab stand in front of Union Station had moved and he just barked at me about how it was about September 11.  So weird.

Boston was completely different in that week after what happened.  It was as though every single person in the city united to find whoever did this.  There were no conspiracy theories.  No one said anything in support of the bombers.  People were angry at whoever did this and they were determined to find whoever it was.

Honestly I was convinced that they would never find who did it.  I mean so many crimes go unsolved every year and I thought this would turn out the same way.  

On Thursday, grainy pictures of who they thought were the suspects were released.  Looked like a younger man and an older man, brothers perhaps.  

Late on Thursday night, someone reposted on Facebook a strange status update from the MIT Facebook page.  Shots had been fired on the campus, a lot of them.  I went to sleep thinking about this.  What could be happening???

The next morning, at 6am, my home phone rang.  No one has that number except my mother.  I ran to pick it up, just in time to hear that there was a suspect, armed and dangerous running around the city.  The city had put a stay at home order in place.  No one was to leave their house the entire day.  What was happening???  This was unbelievable.  I called my parents and told them what was happening.  I could not believe it.

I turned the television on in the morning and was glued to it all day.  Apparently, these two assholes had carjacked a guy on Brighton Avenue, five minutes from my house at the time.  They had been the ones who were firing guns on MIT campus and they had shot and killed an MIT policeman in the process.  After that, they had engaged in a fire fight in Watertown.  Watertown is two miles from my house.  Unbelievable.  I mean I had been in Kenmore Square for the marathon.  They carjacked a guy on a street five minutes from my house and now one or both of these guys were two miles from my house?  Needless to say, I was scared.  

I saw the governor on television say that we should stay away from the windows in our houses.  The police commissioner would come on the news periodically to update everyone.  I had lived right off of Commonwealth avenue by that point for three years and every single hour of every single day, I heard the green line go by and ring a bell.  All day, I didn’t hear the train.  All MBTA trains had been suspended that day.  Eerie silence.

All day every single person I was connected to on Facebook messaged me.  People I hadn’t spoken to in years messaged me to check that I was ok.  I opened a Polish newspaper called Gazeta Wyborcza, the Voting Newspaper and the front page was a picture of Kenmore Square, completely empty.  Completely.  All of these places around Boston that I go to all the time on the front cover of the biggest newspaper in Poland.  Surreal.

Throughout the day, Ed Davis, who was the police commissioner at the time, would periodically hold a press conference, to assure us that they were looking for these guys. Commissioner Davis has this endearing Boston accent that made it clear that they were looking at all the apahtments in Watahtown. I’m not making fun of you Commissioner Davis, rest assured. There was something about the way he was talking that said — we are looking for these assholes and WE WILL FIND THEM.

At 7pm, they lifted the stay at home order.  I remember the relief I had of hearing the green line outside.  The suspect or suspects weren’t in custody yet though.

Suddenly around 7:30, news started to spread that there might be a suspect in Watertown.  Before we all knew it, this person, the marathon bomber, was being lifted out of a boat in a guy’s backyard.  Again, surreal.

I remember my entire neighborhood cheering when the announced that the suspect was in custody.  Everyone on my street was cheering.  

A couple of day later, Boston’s big beating heart, David “Big Papi” Ortiz gave his memorable speech at Fenway Park.  He thanked all the first responders, the mayor, the governor.  Then he said “This is our f*&ing city.”  I think it brought relief to the entire city when he said that.  I remember as well a few days later that the FCC said that although it is against the rules to curse on national television, they wouldn’t be fining NESN for broadcasting Big Papi’s speech because it was Big Papi and the man could express himself however he wanted.  I remember reading that and thinking only the government would make an exception for Big Papi.

I always look at the days after the marathon bombing as what really sealed the deal for me that I belonged in Boston.  I had only been in the city for two and a half years at that point, but after that, I decided this was my home now.  I already really liked the city.  But when I saw just how people reacted to the whole thing, how it really brought the city together and how everyone behaved, I knew I had found my home.  

I also reflect on how Boston has really become the place that I love.  I saw a meme recently that said “I mean Boston is expensive.  And the weather??  Not good.  And the food??  Also not great.” 

But you just fall in love with this place.  I can’t explain it.  You just do.  

OK marathon pictures. Finally: