A professor walks into a bar in Somerville...

Spring 2008

The whole staff gets an email from Josie that a friend of hers from WGBH told her about an upcoming event that sounded a lot like Soap Box. Tuesday evening at the Thirsty Scholar, on Beacon St. in Somerville near Inman Square, they are going to show a video, have a scientist giving a short lecture, and get a discussion going. Free appetizers, buy your own beer. I decide to go.

The Thirsty is a grad student kind of place, not too far from MIT and Harvard but far enough to be cheap. Somerville edges into working class Boston inner suburbs, but around here there are a lot of people like me: young, educated, friendly, and awkward. There is a excellent selection of beers on tap and the room is dark and loud. A baseball game is playing on the facing plasma screens, but not the Red Sox, and the place is a little more than half full.

A few guys are standing around looking official, fiddling with connecting a DVD player to the TV, and the right kind of awkward seems to permeate the nearby tables so I take a seat. I introduce myself to the guy on the bench next to me and yell a greeting to the woman opposite and sit back and join the silent watching in the midst of music, shouting, and baseball.

They get the DVD set up and the host introduces himself and the evening's sponsor, Nova Science NOW. He promises a sneak preview of an upcoming episode on climate change and has on hand a geologist with expertise in the giant CO2 increase linked to the Permian extinction. 10 or 15 people are actively listening, and maybe another 10 its hard to tell. The guys standing around the cocktail tables near the bar are watching the game. Some appetizers come out, putting the program briefly on pause. We snack on jalapeno poppers and bland quesadilla wedges. I order a Blue Moon.

The video is five minutes of talking heads and animations about a giant volcanic eruption half a billion years ago that covers Russia in a mile of lava and releases a ton of carbon into the atmosphere. Shortly thereafter, 90% of species go extinct. We discuss, briefly and loudly, among the three of us at the table.

The scientist, with an adorable British accent, turns out to have consulted on the computer simulations. He shouts out a few minutes of additional background and takes questions. He moves about, tries to ask questions back of his interlocutors, fights the background rumble of the bar. The bar has its own rhythm and roar but never gets quiet enough for normal conversation. Questions are all over the place. Where do the rock samples come from. What is it like to work at Harvard. Does this mean we're headed towards another extinction event. An older guy in a beat up denim jacket and a beer gut looks down from the game and asks if 90% of everything died, was it just bugs that survived.

I finish my beer, thank the host as things are wrapping up, and go home.


Yesterday's biking destination: Cafe Luxxe, 9th and Montana

Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: donuts
lunch: leek and mushroom frittata, greens salad
dinner: bowties and ragu redux, Yorkside style