1 intersection. 100,000 people. 1 day.
True to its name, Downtown Crossing is the center point of daily Boston life. It is estimated that more than 100,000 people pass through the brick-paved, pedestrian-only intersection every day.
The area will undergo commercial upheaval over the next year. Filene's is preparing to clear out, and other chains are vying to move in. The city and retailers are planning $1 million in outdoor improvements, which may include sidewalk repairs, wireless Internet access, and a consultant to attract new business. Before the facelift and the shift in the retail core, the Globe spent a day at Downtown Crossing to find out more about who and what make it tick.
7 a.m.
A cool mist hovers over the deserted streets. A low hum of activity has begun. Workers' arms tense and relax as they unload wooden crates of strawberries, melons, lemons, and corn from trucks in front of Lambert's Market Place. A painter crouches in the window display of Filene's, patching up a square of blue paint. A stream of water cascades to the ground from the awning of Vinalia's restaurant as window washers run their brushes down the second-story glass. If it weren't for an occasional noxious whiff from the trash bin next to the Winter Street
8:30 a.m.
Sunlight dries the window panes; voices shatter the early morning trance. Commuters pour out of the MBTA station in giant spurts, moving as though automatically wound and pointed toward the financial district. Many of them are barely older than college age, wrapped up in their iPods.
''Good morning, how are you?" says Paulo Tarso, who helps run the Lambert's stand, to each person who walks past. He gets several smiles of recognition but few takers for fresh fruit.
Blaring radio sounds muffle Tarso's voice. Across the street, at the corner of Winter and Washington streets, a sleepy-looking young actor named Adam Soule fiddles with a boombox, settling on a station playing David Bowie's ''Fame" as he starts working the newspaper stand. His 7:30-to-9 a.m. shift has just picked up, and he seems to need help picking himself up. Soule's boss, Scott Goodwin, who has run the Downtown Crossing newspaper stand for the past 18 years, sits on a folding chair behind Soule, sips a large iced coffee, and avoids eye contact.
As commuters and elderly women taking a morning stroll swarm around Soule, a bulldozer parks itself at the intersection, occupying half of Winter Street. A construction worker sits inside with his feet up on the steering wheel, reading a newspaper.
10 a.m.
A second calm envelops the intersection as people move onward to their offices. Intensifying heat and humidity have made it uncomfortable to stand outside. The construction worker paces impatiently around the bulldozer. Goodwin remains sullenly planted in his chair, watching his next shift helper, a security worker named Mark, shake his hips to the J. Geils Band's ''Centerfold," inspiring a few straggling businessmen to do the same.
Street vendors and homeless drifters dominate. A group of raggedly dressed individuals huddle on the corner of Winter and Washington across from the stand. At the center of this bunch is a wrinkled man with a long, graying ponytail named Daniel Preston. He sits on a cooler that's supposed to contain cold sodas for customers (there's really not much ice in it, he says) and explains that lately he has spent most of his nights at the Pine Street Inn and that his girlfriend just broke up with him. In front of Preston is a beaten-up metal stand with a sign that says ''Freshly Baked Pretzels," but the pretzels inside the warmer look like plastic. Preston gets hardly any customers, but he is a magnet for street regulars who want to gossip.
More polished vendors multiply. Young men push their carts up Washington and line them up around the intersection. They take an hour painstakingly setting up their souvenir T-shirts, cellphone accessories, and sunglasses for tourists to browse.
At Lambert's, Tarso paces anxiously, rearranging fruit and awaiting the lunch-hour rush as the clock bells from Filene's chime to the tune of Simon & Garfunkel's ''The Sound of Silence."
Noon
A pungent mix of grating asphalt fumes and sizzling hot dogs fills the air. A
Within minutes, Balloon Man outdoes all the street vendors camped near the intersection. Children and tourists flock around him, waiting for him to create multicolored balloon hats. A gaggle of Dutch teenagers visiting Boston hangs around Balloon Man for at least 15 minutes as he eagerly makes them hats and poses for pictures, working only for tips.
The less-enthusiastic Goodwin has taken a more active role at his newspaper stand, but not before dumping a gallon of cold water over his head and shaking himself violently to get the excess off. ''Tricks of the trade," he says, winking. He hums to a Beatles tune from the radio (which is now barely audible over live musicians playing Peruvian pipe melodies near Au Bon Pain) and serves a trickle of customers.
Across the street, business at Lambert's has picked up, the 90-degree heat convincing many to opt for a lunch of fruit. Tarso's face drips with sweat as he and six other Lambert's employees incessantly assist customers. Squeezing persuasive descriptions of fruit in with compliments about fine hair, beautiful smiles, and charming dresses, Tarso has little trouble persuading plenty of female customers to buy Lambert's offerings.
In the midst of the motley swarm of commuters, tourists, and drifters, a cameraman from the Food Network sets up a stationary shot facing down Summer Street, capturing a busy slice of Boston life to accompany the cable channel's coverage of Boston restaurants.
3 p.m.
Foreign languages and flashes of color fill the streets. Filing in and out of Filene's, Macy's, and H&M are European high school girls on international exchange programs and women whose husbands and children wait outside the stores eating ice cream or watching Balloon Man, who hasn't taken a break. Some browse at other street vendors but few buy from them. They steer clear of several young men wearing baggy jeans and tank tops who lean against the Bath & Body Works storefront, flashing icy glares at anyone who stares at them for too long.
A tired-looking 19-year-old named Nicole Meuse steps out of Filene's, where she has been working for the past two weeks. Taking out a cigarette from a clear plastic makeup case, her eyes dart from side to side. ''If you really look at what goes on here, you'd see it's way more than shopping," she says. ''There's a whole street scene, drug deals, you name it. I've been shopping here twice a week for the past two years -- believe me, I've seen it all."
Construction at the gas main site now blocks the entire width of Winter Street as the bulldozer carves out chunks of the street and unloads them into the back of a dumptruck. Eyeing another dumptruck that has been parked in the middle of the intersection for about half an hour with no driver in sight, Tarso slips inside Lambert's. When he comes out, he's got a disposable camera. Crouching around the truck from every angle, Tarso snaps away. He says he has thousands of pictures of different impediments to business in Downtown Crossing, and plans to add these to his collection.
Against the backdrop of the bulldozer, a Mennonite woman dressed in a white bonnet and purple gown announces where her entourage from Pennsylvania will be holding church this evening to anyone who can hear her above the din, and she hands out fliers to tourists walking down Winter from Boston Common. From his pretzel stand, Preston eyes her uneasily and starts packing up his wares.
7 p.m.
Clusters of office workers gather on the sidewalk, making plans for dinner and drinks. Although the thermometer on Winter still reads 34 degrees Celsius (90 degrees Fahrenheit), everyone seems looser, cooler. Shirt collars have been unbuttoned. Most street vendors have packed up and trudged off, and Goodwin's radio has long stopped blaring.
Four orange cones surrounding a spot of fresh asphalt are all that's left of the day's construction work. As evening shadows lengthen and more people descend into the MBTA station, it seems that the day's commotion has ended.
But just as Tarso begins to organize Lambert's for closing, two large speakers hooked up to a portable CD player appear in the middle of the crossing, along with several pieces of luggage. A New York Yankees cap perches on one of the suitcases.
A shirtless, well-muscled man stomps into the middle of the crossing, emerging from behind the speaker. ''It's show time! People, we are here!" he yells at full volume, immediately commanding the attention of everyone left at Downtown Crossing. ''We are the DDT Dancers, and we are from the Bronx!" he thunders.
His name is Lawrence Artis, and he and his cousins, as well as his 7-year-old son, Steffon, have arrived in Boston today to test the waters for their break dancing group, whose name stands for Doing Damage Together. They've already stirred a sensation on Bronx street corners, he says. Two other shirtless young men, along with Steffon, jump out from behind the speaker and join Artis as blaring hip-hop music jolts the scene.
They perform backflips and writhe around one another in impossible contortions, all in time to the music. Everyone passing through the area stops to look. Late-working businessmen and evening shoppers tap their feet and clap their hands, enthralled by this ragtag, tattooed bunch, who make sure Downtown Crossing's street life extends into the twilight.
