People. We are our best kept secret. Human beings - your barber, your mechanic, your kid’s teacher, the bus driver, the crossing guard and the meter maid - everyone gets a fair say in how we move forward.

Let’s leverage our best asset - each other.

I also like the pretty colors.

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The shared experience of shared space invokes a feeling of trust - in strangers, in society - we’re all just waiting in line for our bag of chips.

Cities are our greatest and longest running experiment. Problems grow, successes multiply, empires fall - they remain constant. What’s the secret?

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You learn to embrace the constants of city life - if you aren’t on a nickname basis with your closest bodega owner and/or bartender, do you really live in the city? Are you really living? The best of us comes out when we’re in a community - even if it only exists within the walls of a bodega

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With hand-drawn elements, the human touch - the “neighborhood character” often invoked about but never defended - shows in addition to running for office, they’re people who live in our neighborhoods, who frequent the bodegas or the pubs checking the weekly specials just like the rest of us.

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By showing the much needed humanity that everyone can relate to - a sign of life in a sea of sterilized, corporate design - Mamdani and Connolly caught the attention of people focused on kitchen table issues - and sealed the deal with charm and good design.

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For a long time politics has been sterilized of the human element. Policies meant to fit as many people as possible into the tent while tiptoeing around hard issues has left everyone on edge and hesitant to join.

The one thing we share - regardless of political preference, are our centers.

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Pru and Hancock present - post ‘76 at the earliest.

Missed opportunity to really lean into the whole “dirty water” thing. I respect it.

My point is this - an age gap and wealth gap leads to the nativism anyone in #mapoli sees every election cycle. My one wish is for people who are the first to criticize to actually understand that a lot of the work being done by the city is for them - and everyone else. And that that’s a good thing.

By no means am I a two wheeled crusader - I take the train to work every day and drive in the city more than twice every week. To deny your neighbors safety crossing the road or riding their bike on the way to school or the library is cruel. To try and crucify them for it is very, very unusual.

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Despite all of this - there’s an ongoing push to end safer streets in the interest of speed and convenience for drivers.

Call it what it is - these people don’t want to be a part of their community, they just want all the benefits in it.

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Trying to manage this was a razor blade balance beam. But - in the end - I’m a firm believer that government is here for everyone’s good. Not just the vocal minority.

Speeding is down more than 75%(!!!), travel time is almost the same, and we even added ADA parking spaces.

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Death threats, the invisible hand of the “bike lobby”, stand outs in the middle of constantly backed up rotaries - it went against almost all logic and common sense. But for some people who have lived in the neighborhood for decades - any semblance of change is an attack on their way of life.

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Even with this great data from @streets.boston.gov,there was still pushback. In an area with the highest concentration of senior citizens in the city, pedestrian safety seems like a slam dunk. That said, a ton of people made it clear that they didn’t want anything to do with it. In many ways.

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Centre Street is undeniably the spine and central nervous system of West Roxbury. Everything flows to or from it. Multiple schools, churches, community centers and dozens of businesses.

Centre Street was also one of the most dangerous roads for pedestrians in the state.

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