The Daniel J. MacDonald Building turned 20 years old this week.

It’s hard to be anything but positive about having the Veterans Affairs Canada as a neighbour (if I squint and angle myself just right, I can see the building out my front window).

DVA employs thousands of Islanders (and pays them well). Their mission of supporting veterans is hard to argue with. And having DVA as a major presence in Charlottetown’s downtown is perhaps the primary reason the neighbourhood retains the retail and restaurant community it does.

So, happy birthday DVA. Thanks.

I have occasion to visit Boston about half a dozen times a year. Because Air Canada charges as much as $1000 more if I don’t stay over a Saturday night, it’s almost always in my best interests to invest in a Boston hotel for a couple of nights and return home Sunday.

As a result, I’ve had a good overview of where to stay in Boston. Not a complete one, of course, as there are many hotels I’ve missed. But enough to perhaps be of help to others looking for an inexpensive, clean, well-run hotel in a city where “inexpensive” starts at $100. All prices are in U.S. dollars.

My favourite hotel in Boston, although it’s only “seasonally inexpensive” is NineZero. It’s a new-style “boutique” hotel, which means good design (running from lobby to the typography of the room service menu), cool facilities (CD player in each room, etc.) and comfortable beds (really, really comfortable beds). I’ve stayed here for as little as $129 for a small room, but summer rates can range as high as $299. Central location on Tremont Street, near four ‘T’ stops (Park, Government Center, State and Downtown Crossing). Free high speed Internet (via Ethernet jack in each room). Kinkos almost next door. Walking distance to the Boston Common Loews Cinema (the best multiplex in the city).

Close on the heels of NineZero, albeit slightly downmarket, is Club Quarters. This actually isn’t a public hotel, per se, but rather a private hotel open to the public on the weekends through travel discounters. During the week the hotel is used by employees of major U.S. corporations and universities; on the weekends they let our rooms to the public. I’ve never had to pay more that $110 for a room, and in the off-season they can be less than $90. Rooms are quite small — about the size of your bedroom at home — but are well-equipped. All that’s missing compared to a regular hotel room is a couch or chair and table; otherwise everything’s there. Very clean. Free high speed Internet throughout (WiFi in all guest rooms and in lounge; Ethernet in lounge; computer for guest use in lounge). Check-in and check-out is completely automatic via a machine in the lobby (swipe your credit card, get a keycard). There is, however, staff on duty 24/7, and they can assist with things like luggage storage. On Devonshire, which is three blocks from State ‘T’ stop, two blocks from the large Borders store, and from Filenes and Macy’s.

The Harborside Inn deserves extra points for actually believing that the Big Dig, Boston’s project to bury it’s downtown elevated highway, would ever be completed. The first time I stayed here, in 1998, they had just opened, and walking out the front door you had to be careful not to fall 50 feet down into a giant Big Dig pit. My first overnight, and at 5 a.m. in the morning the pounding of earth rams shook the hotel to its foundations. Thankfully the Big Dig has progressed, and not only is the pit gone, but it’s been replaced by the entrance to the Aquarium ‘T’ stop, which opens up almost directly in front of the hotel. The Harborside is built inside an older industrial building; there are “city view” rooms, that overlook Fanueil Hall, and “atrium view” rooms, that overlook a central atrium; both are nice. Rooms are clean, and designed somewhere between “modern” and “frilly Victorian.” Breakfast used to be included, but wasn’t last time I stayed. Rates are climbing as the neighbourhood improves, but it’s still possible to pay as little as $125 in the off-season.

For some inexplicable reason, it’s almost always possible, low season and high, to get an inexpensive room at Swissotel. It’s very rare that I don’t find rates as low as $129 on their website. The hotel is very well appointed; it’s really almost a luxury hotel. Of course room service and other rates are never discounted, so you have to be careful to not use the hotel’s for-pay amenities. Slightly non-central, but only very slightly: three blocks from Macy’s into the Theatre District, on the way to South Station. Parking (extra charge) right under the hotel. Usual upscale hotel design. Last time I stayed here, I had a hard time making data calls using their phone system, but that might have been an isolated problem.

The most intriguing place I stay in Boston is The College Club of Boston. The Club is the oldest university women’s club in the U.S.A. They let rooms to the public — men and women both — at their “clubhouse” at 44 Commonwealth Avenue (around the corner from the Ritz, and just up the street from the Public Garden. The building is beautiful — very high ceilings, lovely woodwork, and so on — and the rooms are spacious. Johnny and I stayed here last winter, and had a huge double room we could have played football in. Rates are very reasonable — starting at around $80 a night. Some rooms have shared bath, others have private bath; don’t balk at the shared bath rooms, as the bath is, in almost all cases, right beside your room, and only shared with one or two others, who you will probably never see. Nice simple breakfast, served in the basement dining room, is included in the rate. Book early.

Rooms at the Royal Sonesta in Cambridge are often available at a discount from Expedia and Travelocity; I’ve seen them as low as $99/night on the weekends here. The hotel seems inconveniently located, but it’s actually not that hard to get to, as it’s across the street from the CambridgeSide Galleria, and about 3 blocks walk from the Lechmere ‘T’ stop. The Galleria is a large, multi-floor upscale shopping centre (home to the Cambridge Apple Store; they have a slightly better than average food court, and several chain restaurants, which are a good alternative to room service. There aren’t many other restaurants in the area. Rooms on the Charles River side, which tend to be more expensive, have stunning views of downtown Boston. There’s for-pay Internet in every room.

The Seaport Hotel is incredibly inconvenient, located as it is across the street from World Trade Centre, about 15 minutes walk from downtown Boston. But if you’re driving, and want to be handy to the downtown, that might not matter. Service here was amazing — we stayed here when Oliver was very young, and they were very nice to him, and gave him a very nice stuffed elephant when we checked in. Not many restaurants, or much of anything else, in this neighbourhood, although if you’re going to a concert at the waterside FleetBoston Pavillion, it is very handy — a quick 5 minute walk up the street. Like the Royal Sonesta, inexpensive discount rates do pop up from time to time, and the hotel’s own website often highlights others.

As for hotels to avoid…

Stay away from the Cambridge Gateway Inn, which used be called the Susse Chalet Cambridge. The hotel is located right on the highway (really, right on the highway), the rooms are outdated and depressing, and the walls are paper thin. A friend told me last week that when he worked in Cambridge they used to stash job interview candidates here, often two to a room; it was like a new hire prison.

The Ramada and Quality locations in Dorchester are nice enough hotels, but their claim to be “minutes from the Freedom Trail and Quincy Market” is a hopeful exageration at best: you need to take a hotel shuttle bus to the JFK ‘T’ stop, or, if driving, get on the I-93 north into the city, which is almost always stop-and-go. If you want to be out and about without a car, and don’t want to spend a lot of time getting to and from your hotel, these locations are best avoided. On the upside, there’s a bowling alley, candy factory/store and restaurant, all owned by the same family that runs the hotels, located right next door. The Ramada has an outdoor pool in its courtyard.

I spent some time in the middle of last night doing some spring cleaning here at the website (not much more time to do spring cleaning, after all). Probably most noticeable is that the whole operation should now seem much peppier, as I indexed some database tables that should have been indexed years ago, and cleaned up the design of the site under the hood. This clean-up may result in total chaos for users of Netscape 4.x. Please let me know of any other irregularities you notice.

If you ever have a chance to see the movie Downside UP: How art can change the spirit of a place, take it. It aired tonight on WGBH Boston. It’s a documentary about the revitalization of North Adams, Mass., centred around the establishment of Mass MoCA — the Museum of Contemporary Art — in the abandoned industrial buildings of the fading mill town.

We visited Mass MoCA last summer, in the midst of our summer sojourn in New England. It’s an amazing set of spaces. The film fills in the context very well.

One of those Really Big Cruise Ships was docked in Charlottetown today.

You could tell it was coming because all of the “We Welcome Cruise Ships” posters went up in local shops as they prepared to prostrate themselves to the ephemeral postcard and clubhouse sandwich buyers amidst their capsule ingestion of our delightful Island culture (this map for cruise ship visitors [PDF] is sort of “Charlottetown Lite” — how to lick the frosting out of our civic Oreo© in 5 hours or less; note how “FREE INTERNET” and Province House, the cradle of Canadian Confederation, are about the same size on the map).

Regardless of how soulless cruise ship tourism might be, one can’t help but be impressed by the immensity of the hardware involved. Here’s a picture we snapped this afternoon from Fort Amherst of the Holland America ship Rotterdam docked in Charlottetown Harbour. Click the photo for a larger version, with handy labels.

If you need any additional convincing that our city as seen through the fast food lens of the cruise ship visit is weird, look at how Holland America describes Charlottetown:

A provincial capital with a distinctly English feel. Where red double-decker buses motor along streets lined with gingerbread-trimmed Victorian houses; and tea is served promptly at three.

Exactly where does this Charlottetown exist? “Tea is served promptly at three?” Huh? Apparently they use some sort of automated “Describotron” system to write their copy, as here is how they characterize Victoria, British Columbia:

Stroll through the charming downtown of this very British city, with it’s double-decker buses, turreted castles, fine British woolens, tea and china. Or, just outside the city, visit the lush flora and fauna of Butchart Gardens.

Apparently double-decker buses, tea, and a British vibe go over big with the cruise ship set. Indeed, look how they describe London:

In the East Anglia countryside see the mill, bridge and medieval barns immortalized by landscape painter John Constable. Tour to London, shop stylish Knightsbridge, hop a double-decker bus.

The Rotterdam carries 1316 passengers and 600 crew. It was in port for 9 hours. The ship, in all its crazy bigness, is coming back on June 24, July 2, July 8, Sept. 23, Oct. 1, Oct. 13 and Oct. 21, so if you missed it this time, you can always catch it later in the season. We left Fort Amherst before it steamed out of Charlottetown Harbour; I think it would be quite a sight to see it leaving out there.

I started off the week, on Saturday, stumbling into the middle of the Gay Pride Parade near the Public Library in Boston. My first reaction: “wow, there are a lot more gays and lesbians in Boston than I thought.” I think that’s part of the point.

I was actually on my way to Restoration Hardware, and while wandering around the store (mini-review: there much less there than meets the eye), a prim elderly woman started to ask me a question about whether “we” still carried a particular item. Then she saw that I was wearing a jacket wrapped around my waist, and that I wasn’t actually an employee. She didn’t apologize; she just mumbled and wandered away.

Joining me in Restoration Hardware were a lot of very nervous looking men in short pants and golf shirts looking like they’d just wandered onto the set of their worst nightmare. Thank goodness for a hardware store; they might have exploded if not for that refuge. I’m as repressed about my sexuality as the next guy, but I like to hope it never comes to that.

I returned to Canada to Prime Minister Jean Chretien telling us that “There is an evolution in society,” and that same-sex marriages will soon be recognized in here. This might be the first time that a head of state has publicly recognized that societies evolve and the rules need to keep up. Bravo. Chretien, leading an anti-war, pro-pot, pro-same sex marriage government is coming dangerously close to being a progressive.

If one examines this issue from a purely aesthetic point of view, I’m with the gays and lesbians hands down. Look at this story from Alberta vs. this story from Ontario. The gay couple in Ontario looks happy, content, and casual. The Alberta Justice Minister looks like the bunged up captain of a sinking cultural ship.

Besides, if we’re going to culturally sidle, why not move towards the Belgians and the Dutch rather than our “not yet at the party” American cousins? Who’s got the cooler society?

As a “not married, but living in a longterm relationship and co-parenting a child with a person of the opposite sex” man, I feel like a whole bunch of new people will be joining a club that I’ve choosen, with Catherine, not to become a member of. Nonetheless, equality, including the equality to marry, is good, and I laud the courts and the federal government for their actions.

I have every confidence that our local government here on PEI will take the high road, and not step back into the dark ages as Alberta has choosen to do. Shame on them.

More sexuality news as situations develop…

Here’s Tim Bray on how we search. Interesting.

CDNOW is now an “Amazon.com veneer store,” as are Borders, the venerable Waterstones and Toys-R-Us. Consumers have less choice. Amazon has more money. I don’t have a moral opposition to this, just a malaise that the Amazon Borg is so successful at consuming its competition.

Bruce Cockburn released a new album last week called You’ve Never Seen Everything.

Rounder Records, which is releasing the album in the U.S.A., has a set of song clips from the album. On first listen, it all sounds a little too electronic too me: Cockburn is an inspired guitar player, and taking his sound and mixing it with bloops and glips that sound like they’re coming from a Commodore 64 does not enhance it in any way. Try listening to Tried and Tested, for example (RealAudio stream from Cooking Vinyl).

Part of this feeling might be an by-product of poor digital encoding for web delivery: all the clips I’ve listened to, no matter the source, seem to have been filtered through a thin jaggedy metal sock. Even acoustic numbers (try Open) have this quality. The best encoding — and even it’s very low-fi, are the Windows Media Player versions on Amazon.com.

My favourite track (keeping in mind that I’m strongly in the “Wondering Where the Lions Are” camp, in terms of his career), is Messenger Wind.

I consider myself a rather shy, quiet, and reserved person. The image I have of the “real inside me” is that little kid in grade four who had to be counselled by Mr. Dykstra, my teacher, about the importance of playing with other kids, and not hanging out around the corner alone playing in the dirt all the time.

Or that much elder fellow who, when faced without the careful guidance of my lady love at a party one night at Catherine Hennessey’s, spent the entire night glued to a chair in the corner (something Ms. Hennessey has never let me forget, to the extent where I am no longer welcome to sit in that particular chair).

Needless to say, in this light, I’ve never considered myself a gesticulator. But as this video [10.3MB QuickTime Movie], kindly provided by Daniel Burka, of last night’s session clearly demonstrates, I have somehow become one.

Watching this might force me back into my shell forever…