Units of Measure

As I’ve been tweeting at you for the past few years, yes.

https://youtu.be/-scs_yF59YE

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Heh, yeah, back when I used to attend Anime Boston. Occasionally I’d stay across the river from the Heinz in Cambridge and I’d walk across the smoot bridge. What this usually meant is I’d get all excited when I remembered the story and the girlfriend would roll her eyes.

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Fun fact: that bridge has two names: Most people call it the Mass Ave Bridge, as it’s the only major bridge on the length of Mass Ave, but the official name is the Harvard Bridge, after John Harvard, founder of the university. Rumor has it that they WANTED to name it the MIT bridge (the Cambridge side of the bridge dumps traffic right in front of the iconic MIT main building in the middle of MIT’s main campus), but MIT thought that the bridge was structurally unsound (which, the original one was, kinda, and it was replaced in the 80s after a similar bridge collapsed).

Originally, it was thought that the smoot marks were going to go with the original bridge, but BPD and CPD find them so useful for locating incidents on the bridge (which looks shorter than it is; it’s well over half a km) that they insisted that the semi-graffiti continue.

(I have a soft spot in my heart for dumb Boston history)

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I have never heard anyone call it the Mass Ave Bridge. The video brings up that MIT wasn’t on that side when it was originally built and named.

The video is actually pretty great. It accurately covers most of the trivia I know about the bridge proper. The only part I would have added would be the Halfway to Hell mark.

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Weird, i call it the Mass Ave Bridge all the time, as does everyone I know.

When we used to walk across it I remember noting that it was weird we couldn’t find a name for the bridge in any nearby signage. I just called it the smoot bridge. Also went and found the plaque on the MIT side.

Street signage being at a minimum is the Boston way.

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I’ve legit missed meetings in Boston due to lack of signage on streets and buildings.

If you don’t know where you are, you ain’t supposed to be here.

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In a massive development, Le Grand K is being deprecated!

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