“A First World Problem”

Egg-throwing is a time-honored dis in Somerville, a nasty and hard to clean up communication to ‘ville newcomers: “You are not welcome.”  (A couple of impossible-to-reach places on my house still bear eggy scars from an attack on Halloween a few years ago.)

So walking past Brooklyn Boulders Somerville to see egg smears all over its fancy-shmancy windows recently wasn’t a surprise. Once the Ames Envelope factory, BBS is now a multi-story climbing facility. These days when you look through those fancy-shmancy windows, you’ll see crowds of tethered Millennials spidering up, up, up. (Definitely click on the link to see for yourself.)

My personal connection with that valuable bit o’ Somerville real estate dates from the nineties. Still a vibrant, bustling factory, Ames Envelope contracted the adult-learning center where I worked to offer on-site classes for its employees. It was a terrific, part-time gig. Most of my students, some of them neighbors, were from El Salvador and a joy to teach. (Let’s face it, that they were getting off from work for a few hours certainly enhanced the classroom mood!) Besides being the kind of employer that offered these and other amenities to its employees,  Ames also gave away reams of colored paper to local teachers and generously sponsored a variety of community projects.

So, yeah, although I can’t condone them, of course, I get those tossed eggs.