Boston Sightseeing

A box of overripe tomatoes: $6 cash

Another box of slightly soft cucumbers: $7
The look on your face as your fridge starts progressively smelling like a homeless guy...priceless :)

On a recent trip to North End this past weekend, I reminded myself of its not so distant neighbor, Haymarket, in the West end of Boston. It is especially popular on weekends as thousands descend on this fruit and veg market for bargains on produce that is perhaps slightly imperfect... here is an experience recently noted by one of the lucky visitors:

"The produce sucked. I made my purchases on Friday morning. Here's an update:

By SATURDAY morning, I threw out one and a half pints of raspberries. They grew MOLD. And yes, they were in the fridge...and no, I hadn't rinsed them yet.

By SUNDAY I threw out 5 tomatoes. They ALL had MOLD and soft spots on them.

Today, MONDAY, I threw out 4 cucumbers. I reached into the veggie drawer of the fridge and I put 4 fingers and a thumb right through a cucumber. It oozed everywhere. I dragged the trash barrel over and threw them all away. THEY WERE ALL DISGUSTING...soft, squishy, oozing cucumber guts everywhere.

Seriously, did I go on a bad day or something?? "

That was a good laugh.. how is this ..

"Crowded and touristy, smells like fermenting tomatoes and bad fish, most of the produce is crappy, and yet the Haymarket still gets three enthusiastic stars from me because I love buying fruit off a guy in a pit-stained beater who just told me to go fuck my mother."

Ahhh priceless

I took these photos as evidence of the mayhem caused by mounds of garbage overflowing into the street post the produce fest.

Cnet Buzz Report

gotta watch this

New(ish) Travel Site

As I was reading boston.com this Friday, I came upon an article in the travel section that caught my attention. Although published back in the spring, I haven't seen much publicity or fanfare around InsideTrip.com.  According to Boston Globe " For each search, InsideTrip provides not just fares but also evaluations of what Pelter calls 12 "pain points." These include the amount of legroom in a cabin, how often the flight is on time, the aircraft type (larger jets get higher ratings), how crowded a specific flight typically is, and if you can walk to your connection. It even considers how long it usually takes to get through the security checkpoint nearest the gate.

Each flight is given an overall trip quality rating, which is displayed on the right side of the search results as a score out of 100. There are also Consumer Reports-style symbols rating speed, comfort, and ease in five levels, from poor to excellent."

Pluses: Easy to customize scoring system to eliminate things you dont care about such as security wait time, for instance.

Minuses: Summed up again by Boston Globe
"This system is not perfect. For example, for its lost bags ratings, the site uses Transportation Department statistics, which track mishandled bags by carriers, not by individual flights. Another ratings category - aircraft age - is the average for an airline's fleet, rather than for a specific flight. And lost luggage rankings and security wait times aren't available for international flights.


Because InsideTrip uses Orbitz for airline ticketing and customer service, it doesn't include some airlines like Southwest. And since the site is still in test mode, users could experience site shutdowns, slow search times, and other issues as the site works out kinks. For now, it is accessible only using Internet Explorer 7 or Firefox 2.0 and later versions."