Confessions of a South End Character

A. Alison Barnet, the South End News's first editor from 1980-1981, returned as the author of the bi-weekly column South End Character quite serendipitously in 2009, when she answered a challenge posted in a South End News advertisement. "DO YOU HAVE A COLUMN IN YOU?" the ad's headline asked. Co-Publisher Sue O'Connell wrote, "My response has been that everyone has a great idea for one column. Many people have great ideas for ten columns, but can you write after you've run out of those ideas?..." The talented, keenly observant, militantly nostalgic Barnet proved an ongoing font of provocative positions and engaging reminiscences, drawing on her long habitation and involvement in the South End since settling here as a Boston University student in 1964. Barnet's resume includes positions that have allowed her to view the sea change our area has undergone through a variety of professional lenses. In addition to helming this paper, Barnet was an award-winning reporter for Boston Neighborhood Network's (BNN) Neighborhood Network News in the mid-1980s, a proposal writer for the South End Community Health Center and a social worker for both Massachusetts General Hospital and the Massachusetts Department of Public Welfare in the 1970s. Her column, first called From the Old South End, then Alison's Adventures and most recently, South End Character, has celebrated local personalities from Viviana Muñoz, whose fight to save her home from condo conversion was a cause célèbre in the 1980s to Mitch the Mailman, who delivered to the South End for 31 years. However, Barnet's column is not just a rose-colored view of the South End's yesteryear: it also carries her acerbic commentary on the upscaling of the neighborhood.

Barnet dates her writing back to age 9, when her mother gave her a locked diary. Her literary endeavors got off to an unintentionally lurid start when she recounted a grisly accident: a boy in her Staten Island neighborhood was accidentally shot in the eye with a BB gun, his eye dangling on his cheek while Alison and her brother looked on in horror. The unfortunate boy lost the eye permanently, and the story had an even more unfortunate epilogue when the parents of the shooter gave the injured youngster a Superman costume, and while he was wearing it, the newly-blinded child crashed into a glass window and broke his hand. Perhaps such dramatic, hyper-local foibles set the stage for Barnet's column.

Barnet's columns paint a picture of the South End in the 1960s, '70s and '80s in which diversity meant neighbors of Syrian, Italian, Jewish, African-American, Polish and Irish origin not only lived and socialized but started families together; shopped at mom-and-pop stores representing every culture and heritage; talked and laughed on each other's front stoops well into the night; and local merchants and mailmen knew everyone by name and face. Barnet recalls fondly the days when "tenant" was a respectable residential status, when rooming houses provided lodging for musicians and students, and when row houses were single-family homes for middle-class people who stayed and raised families there. By contrast, she laments the real-estate speculation, the replacement of affordable and practical businesses such as hardware stores with an explosion of pricey cafés and boutiques and the increasing insularity of the neighborhood's socio-economic groups. In an early column, titled "Out on the Stoop" in her new book, Barnet writes, "how compartmentalized by class and race we've become: a sidewalk café on one side of the street, the Cathedral Projects and the Dollar-A-Bag grocery truck on the other!"

Barnet began her February 6 talk at the South End Historical Society by acknowledging her friend Judy Watkins for the impetus to publish the book. "She really was the person who pushed me to take my columns from the South End News and put them together in a book. I was a little resistant, but I did it. I take on subjects that people don't know much about." The first reading was the aforementioned "Out on the Stoop", which elicited memories from audience members from elsewhere as well as from the neighborhood. A woman named Jane recalled chatting nightly on the stoop with neighbors and friends in Queens. After Barnet read "Close to the Heart of Boston" about her days as a student living in the Franklin Square House, then a residence for young women only, an audience member recalled with amusement visiting there and seeing the "beau parlors" where residents entertained male visitors in spaces enclosed with curtains short enough for chaperones to ascertain that both the young man's and young woman's feet were on the ground.

Having sold over 300 copies of her self-published tome since late November, Barnet is doing very well at indie marketing, selling most of her inventory at personal appearances. Barnet has given readings and talks at the South End Branch Library, the Harriet Tubman House, the South End Historical Society and a meeting of the South End Seniors group. Ever enterprising, she braved the bitter cold to meet neighbors and sign books at a table at the Worcester Square Area Neighborhood Association's Tree Lighting on December 8. She recently returned to Neighborhood Network News, this time as a guest to tape a segment on South End Character. Barnet's salesmanship includes a personal touch, as each book she sells at appearances is autographed with a personalized message. On the recommendation of local poet Lynne Potts, Barnet placed her book at the South End Food Emporium, which has sold 30 copies since late December. South End Character is also for sale at Blunch.

A Luddite like so many historians, Barnet does not carry a cell phone or subscribe to an Internet provider. Instead, she goes to the South End Technology Center periodically to check e-mail. It follows logically that her book is in print only, not available for Kindle. At her South End Historical Society talk, she asserted, "The reason this is not an e-book is because I am not an e-person."

Barnet and her cat Honegger, named for a Swiss composer, share an apartment in the Worcester Square-area house that she co-owns. Her place is neat and well organized yet packed with local and personal history. Two drawings by the noted South End artist Allan Crite (1910-2007) grace the ground-floor entrance hall. A focal point in her bright, traditional kitchen is a large, framed poster from, one of the productions of her great-grandfather, a businessman-turned-theater impresario who was the subject of her first book, Extravaganza King: Robert Barnet and Boston Musical Theater. Her living and dining rooms are lined with book shelves, a generous section devoted to local history. At the entrance to the parlor hangs a weathered sign that says Trotty Veck, advertising the popular and inspirational Trotty Veck Messages pamphlet series published in the first half of the 20th century by her great-uncle, Charles Swasey "Beanie" Barnet. Framed wall hangings include a sign posted by the MBTA redirecting passengers from the old El to the current Orange Line, antique city maps and a photo by the late South End photographer Elliot Lee.

A retiree herself, Barnet lives frugally and worries for neighborhood residents who do not have deep pockets to keep up with the rapidly rising cost of housing and living here. She refers to the South End as a "food desert" due to the proliferation of pricey restaurants and the only supermarket, Foodie's, which was ranked in a 2012 price comparison by Patch.com the most expensive market in Boston. She also decries the elitism of realtors and homeowners who look down on tenants as irresponsible and unstable, pointing out that before the rise of condo conversions, many families rented the same apartment for decades, while many of today's condos are bought with profit, not community in mind. Barnet writes, "There are neighborhood associations that do not welcome tenants-an absurdity and a contradiction in terms...I know another woman-a GASP! tenant, whose neighborhood association thinks it's funny that a tenant was elected to the board, and they won't let it alone, making constant jokes." She warns, "How soon homeowners forget that condo are often bought for investment and have a high turnover, attracting owners who sometimes aren't involved in the neighborhood and don't stay long...Then there are absentee investors. Although they own part of the same house, other owners may not know their names or even how to find them in an emergency."

Since Barnet is somewhat at odds with so many of the South End's recent developments and changes, why does she choose to stay? "That's an interesting question. Dick Vacca (author of The Boston Jazz Chronicles) read a manuscript I wrote and asked me the same question," Barnet responded. She thought a moment and continued, "Why should I think about going anywhere? I have a backyard, I have a lot of space, and I have a lot of books. I love this house." Referring to the letters she occasionally receives from realtors offering to appraise her house for its resale value, Barnet added, "I feel pressure, and it's frightening. Selling this house for $6 million or whatever the realtors are going to offer me is not going to get me where I want to go. I don't want to live in a condo. One thing about condos is that you don't have control. If there is a problem with the roof, you have to fight with the other owners to get the work done. I don't have a car so I don't want to live in the suburbs, and I don't like the country." Moreover, despite all the change, Barnet still relishes her lasting friendships with longtime neighbors and friends. "When you walk down the street with me, I know a lot of people and they know me. I thrive on that. I am not close with my family, but the people here are my family."