The CSA has also given consideration to sponsoring its own little league team, and has consistently lobbied against the proliferation of fast-food operations in the Square.

Smith sees the Square's manifold problems as arising from neglect on the part of a neighborhood-oriented city administration. Because Central Square is partially in four neighborhoods, it is actually in none.

"The city divided the neighborhoods, caused friction between neighborhoods, caused them to compete with each other," Smith says.

"I've been trying to bring the neighborhoods together, and the Square should be their logical focal point," he explains. In July, Smith sponsored a three-day sidewalk sale in the Square, and he plans to organize similar events in the future. "We're trying to dress it up as much as possible."

Smith, too, falls back upon the Harvard-MIT Polarity Theory as part of his explanation for the problems facing Central Square. Although Harvard does own some property in the Central Square area, it keeps a low profile. "They turn their back on the Square," Chuck Smith complains of the University.

One of the proposals which Smith hopes to put before the CSA this year is a plan which would help fund University investigations into the problems confronted by the Square. He says he is encouraged by recent studies, such as one undertaken by a group of GSD students in the Joint City Planning/Urban Design Workshop in June, which made policy proposals for greater pedestrian access to the Square and for more public green spaces; Smith would like to see more.

The Square is a veritable repository of various architectural styles ranging from the Richardson-Romanesque City Hall to the Italian Renaissance structure at 719 Mass Ave; it still serves as the ceremonial focal point of the town. The Central Square Office Building, in the heart of the Square, was Cambridge's first skyscraper.

The Square also houses approximately 26 recognized churches, and a panoply of ethnic groups to fill them--Russians, Greeks, Haitians, West Indians, Portuguese, Orientals--as well as a growing number of poor people. There are markets which cater to a world of culinary and other needs. There is the Kamala Devi Indian imports store at 1741 Mass Ave, there is a West Indian music store, a YMCA, an Acupuncture Center at 380 Green Street, and Shelter, Inc., a recently-formed overnight hostel for homeless men and women.

There are also the restaurants: the sit-down places like Ken's Pub and Hunan ("You just can't find places like that in Harvard Square," says Smith), the quickie places like McDonalds' and the 24-hour Jack in the Box ("We've got our choice of 43 dreck places to eat at down here," says Lane), and the widest assortment of bars and discos, like The Speakeasy, the Cantab, etc., etc., this side of downtown Boston.

The quickie shops, whose advent has been successfully forestalled in Harvard Square--including Dunkin' Donuts, which was denied permission to open a branch in Harvard Square two years ago--flourish in Central Square. By and large, the owners of the more marginal junk-food shops have remained out of Smith's organization. And Lane, whose tenant group is avowedly committed to bringing in still more junk food operations, pleads, "Get us a Jewish bakery, please."

* * *

The little traffic island in the middle of Central Square serves as a haven for much of the area's elderly population. On a hot day recently, a number of senior citizens, canes and newspapers in hand, could be seen sitting on the marble blocks that serve as park benches in the triangular island, staring at the passing rush hour traffic and chatting with each other, with policemen, and even with passing strangers.

An effusive man sat puffing on a pipe and talking with a friend, interrupting his conversation every 30 seconds or so to shout greetings to passing motorists. One of the motorists was a Cambridge policeman in a patrol car.

"Hey Frank!" the man hollered.

The patrolman rolled down his window, shook the man's hand, and began to converse heatedly with him, long after the light ahead of him had changed. Middle-Eastern music blared from "A Nubian Notion," an import variety store across the street. Other drivers behind him began honking their horns, and so the officer moved on.