I remember one particular night when, after a couple of pots of cold tea, someone dared me to sprint through the Zone alone as fast as I could, which I did. Of course, after a night of youthful boozing, we would occasionally have enough “beer balls” to walk through the red light district of Boston that bordered Chinatown known as the Combat Zone. As far as you (and my parents) know, I (mostly) never did anything more than drink said stolen beer under train track bridges while underage.īut when it came to a right of passage in Boston, if you were a late teen or mostly of legal drinking age in the late 80s, you hit up Boston’s Chinatown after last call to eat food full of MSG and drink “cold tea.” In Boston, (and perhaps where you grew up, too), “cold tea” was code for “beer” (usually flat) that you could order slightly before or after closing time that was served up in white teapots in certain restaurants in Chinatown. I ran with a crowd that was comprised of teenage losers that enjoyed passing the time stealing beer from delivery trucks. And like pretty much like any other teenager, I worked quite hard at the craft of getting into trouble as often as possible.
I grew up in a small town just outside of Boston called Somerville. The Naked i Cabaret in Boston’s old “Combat Zone.”
