Pizzeria Uno? Cheesecake Factory? It must be the Boston Marathon!

The wedding is less than two weeks away and Saturday I had to pick up my new suit at the tailor. I brought it in last weekend and he told me to pick it up in a week, and since I was blinded by the quick turnaround I said "Great!" Wish I had consulted a calendar though (a Massachusetts or Maine calendar, that is), in which case I would have said "Great! But I'll come the following Tuesday instead, thanks."

For today is the regional holiday know as Patriot's Day. Otherwise known at my company as an optional holiday (used them up already, rats). Otherwise known in Lexington as Fuck You, Concord, We Started the Revolution Day. What this manufactured holiday has really become, though, is Boston Marathon Day. (Also, Crazy-Early Red Sox Game Day.) It is truly shocking what happens to this city every year for a few days—it gets mobbed almost as badly as New Year's Eve, with Back Bay close to non-navigable.

So that greeted me Saturday. Not only were they setting up the bleachers in front of the library and closing off streets (thankfully I don't live around there anymore), but the mob was out. International mobs too, you can tell by how rude and oblivious they are. Say what you will about Americans, but for the most part we are a friendly and courteous collection of people. We generally take our backpacks off in the subway and walk in single-file on the sidewalk instead of side by side, thereby blocking people who might need to pick up his suit before he starts slugging everyone. Plus (again, for the most part) our sunglasses are not nearly as ridiculous as everyone else's.

Never mind. Visiting Americans and non-Americans alike were flocking to the chain restaurants. The tailor is right above a Pizzeria Uno on Boylston Street, a block from the finish line, and apparently everyone was afraid they'd lose their prime real estate if they ventured farther than that. So yeah, I had to plow through a crowd of people just dying for some deep-dish, or otherwise too lazy to see if this "Boss-tin" has any other restaurants.

And they do… they also have a Cheesecake Factory! After picking up the suit and getting the hell out of there, I went to the Prudential Center mall because I still needed to get shoes for the big day. (No luck. I've determined that my fashion tastes run about a year or two behind, because I was and still am looking for some square-toed shoes. Unfortunately the style now seems to be sissy pointy-toed things. Also, my initial suit idea was for one with four buttons, and several people came just short of laughing in my face. Ah, fat cats.) So after recognizing that Johnston & Murphy and Florsheim are stores that I will never again patronize (not that I ever did, but I had high hopes because they sound like good shoe-brand names) I decided I would rather go home and drink beer (perhaps I could have borrowed one of the dozens of fanny packs I saw that afternoon and stuffed a couple of drinks in there). Of course, the Prudential subway stop is adjacent to the Cheesecake Factory, and there was another lazy mob waiting to eat exactly what they could eat at home. Even though there have to be a hundred restaurants within five blocks of there. Side streets and quaint neighborhoods be damned, I guess.

Now, I understand the safe familiarity of a chain restaurant—wasn't that the idea behind McDonald's in the first place, and didn't that work out alright?—but if I'm visiting San Francisco or Chicago or something I really hope I'm bold enough to look for something with a little more local flavor.

Like Chili's!