By Willem Santry II
For the most part, Bostonians fit into two camps: those who follow the rules (mostly not from here) and those who don’t; there is no in-between. Since the Coronavirus took hold of the City in March, this division has become even more pronounced. Take, for instance, a couple of weeks back, the Mayor’s just announced a 9 pm curfew – no man, woman or child allowed out on the street except for essential business. I’ve got to walk the dog, it’s 10 pm, and I figure that this has got to be “essential” business. Of course, the curfew doesn’t apply to me. The street is eerily quiet, the usual sounds of cars and planes completely absent.
As I head out, I am thinking about the coyote I know I saw at the end of our Dorchester street last week. When I look up, I see a guy walking towards me. He’s got a ball cap with the brim pulled down low, a Carhart jacket with collars up, smoking and talking through air pods on the phone. Ok, this guy’s a weirdo, move away, cross to the other side. Then I hear him shout over to me and wave with a big gesture, “Hey, how ya doin,” then I know who it is—it’s the Mayor. He lives six houses up, and he’s out because he obviously doesn’t think the curfew applies to him either. I want to ask him why he’s out, to tell him that he isn’t being a good role model, but figure I don’t want to push my luck. I wave back.
The guy’s under a lot of pressure these days. Nearly 200 Bostonians dead from the virus so far, and he’s got to worry about jokers playing golf in Franklin Park and stupid millenials packed in at Castle Island. “Not cool,” he shames us at his press briefing. “We’re not going through this exercise of shutting down society because it’s a game. We’re doing it because we want to keep people alive,” he says.
Hoping to show solidarity, I figure the least I can do is to keep our late-night walks a neighborhood secret.
