There are sunbathers and readers and yoga-doers basking on the lawn of City Hall, the only good green space on Mass. Ave. for quite a stretch. There are people speaking Arabic, Chinese, Portuguese, Russian, new immigrants and old, homeless and fortune-seekers, yuppies and yippies.
There was a time, some say, when Harvard Square had it all, too, back in the days of all-night cafeterias and such.
Perhaps, as some have suggested, it is Central Square’s incomplete gentrification that makes it such a mixture. Someday soon, many suggest, Central Square too will be like Harvard Square—expensive and far too homogenous.
That would be a big loss for this town.
Lauren R. Dorgan ’04, a history concentrator in Quincy House, is an executive editor of The Crimson. When she’s not people-watching, she’s at the Schlesinger Library reading the papers of Ruth Handler, the woman who created Barbie.