We had a party on the last night of the conference, and afterward I picked another cardinal direction in which to wander. I walked south along Main St., and finally found the interesting part of the city. I walked through a block or two jammed with coffee shops and luncheonettes, then a residential area, out into the automotive district.
It seems like every major city has an automotive district or two. Boston certainly does. Salt Lake’s was especially comprehensive, though, with repair shops, rental outfits, and dealers for everything from assorted used trucks to Ferrari, Maserati, Lotus, Porsche, and Ducati, all side by side.
On the way back North along State Street I passed out of the automotive and into a seedy zone, complete with two taco stands, still open in the freezing cold at 10 PM, exceedingly disreputable-looking clubs, one guarded by a giant and a midget, three tattoo parlors, and a porno shop advertising used magazine trade-ins (yes, really) in two-foot-high letter across the side of the building.
Then, gradually, seedy became trendy, with boutique/artisanal/vintage clothing shops, tiny recording studios, and intriguing international restaurants. Trendy was shortly followed by mainstream, and then I was back at the hotel.
Now I’m back in Boston. Overall, I think the conference was productive enough. I didn’t do anything there that I couldn’t have done here, but as another attendee put it “at home there’s no time pressure, so you put things off for tomorrow until somehow they never happen”.