Otherside Café
Is there a sight more discouraging than the
butcher-paper-covered windows of a shuttered business? When an establishment
closes, it conjures a slew of worst-case scenarios: shattered dreams, lost
money, the breakneck passage of fashion and time, our inevitable lapse into obsolescence,
irrelevance, and eventually death.
Take, for instance,
the moribund Otherside Café. For a while now, the incredibly loud bar and
restaurant had feared for its safety. Then last week, they announced the news:
come May, there'll be no place in Back Bay for vegetarians to be served craft
beer by diffident hipsters.
But when the Otherside at last passes to the other
side, it will be in excellent company. In the last tax year, a goodly number of
Boston
establishments have disappeared into the infinite.
These are their stories.
BIRD BY BIRD Used to be, Inman Square yuppie parents who wanted to
buy an organic cotton Ramones onesie for their little bundle of joy knew where
to go. No longer.
BORDERS Independent bookstores trembled when Borders and
its gargantuan selection came to town. However, in the past few years, the Newbury Street
monolith came to resemble an empty warehouse dotted with notebooks and novelty
covers for its
ill-fated e-reader, the Kobo - and now the mighty has fallen.
BOSPHORUS Why would a perfectly decent, reasonably priced East Cambridge Turkish
restaurant come and go in less than a year? It could have been our fault -
Robert Nadeau's indifferent review couldn't have helped - but our money's on
the fact that its opulent bar served nothing harder than white wine sangria.
DADDY'S JUNKY MUSIC The
venerable musical-instrument retail chain - and its popular Allston outlet -
said auf wiedersehen after nearly 40 years in business, due to reported
legal issues. Sad trombone.
FLOATING ROCK Last
May, this family-owned Cambodian restaurant floated from a Revere storefront to a space in Central Square four
times as large. It closed less than a year later.
FRIENDLY'S EXPRESS Contrary to their motto, not everybody was going
to Friendly's - at least, not everybody in Brookline. After 18 months, the Coolidge
Corner burger joint went into the great beyond. Goodbye, sundaes with every
meal.
GARGOYLES ON THE SQUARE Blue-haired Hell's Kitchen contender Jay Santos must've endeared himself to the owners of this Davis Square eatery
- they waited to close this restaurant until after his successful TV run.
KELLY'S ROAST BEEF The family-owned chain closed its Allston location
after less than two years. Apparently, drunk college kids don't crave roast
beef sandwiches, preferring instead to gobble chicken nuggets or just vomit
quietly beside Great Scott.
MCINTYRE & MOORE This antiquarian bookstore was the last remaining
holdout from Boston's
once-vibrant community of shops catering to the musty-leather-and-first-edition
set. Now it's gone. Thanks, Internet.
THE SAVANT PROJECT Seems like New American tapas never took off. How
we mourn those truffled polenta logs.
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