I am not the biggest fan of the gym. I can’t get over the non-competitive and non-productive nature of the treadmill. I’m walking (no running, thanks to my asthma), very fast, to…nowhere. And that person next to me, she’s walking really fast….to nowhere. And that women next to her, the marathoner who is reluctantly indoors on the treadmill, whose veins are bursting, is looking like she’s going to pass out while running…to nowhere.
But I want to stay healthy, so I sucked it up and was letting myself be unproductive. Until I decided that instead of toiling annoyingly walking on the treadmill, I can work it into my everyday commute.
I present to you my new gym: The Ugly, Horrendous, City Hall Plaza Stairs.
Architecturally, Boston’s City Hall Plaza is considered a massive joke in a city full of some of the world’s most intellectual figures. The Project for Public Spaces (an architectural history minors’ dream website) lists the plaza on its “Hall of Shame,” lamenting its seemingly endless levels of concrete stairs:
“The layout and changes in grade deny the natural paths that people want to take. There are no vistas here, and natural connections – such as the one to Fanueil Hall across the street – are actually discouraged.”
I’ve found a use for those “changes in grade” that the Project for Public Spaces lament about. I commute between Salem to Brookline every day, so there are a lot of opportunities to work in productive walking, and City Hall Plaza’s stairs make that walking a heck of a lot more fitness filled. I walk from North Station to Government Center, taking a circuitous route up the plaza stairs. At night, get off at Government Center and quickly walk around the plaza and all of its stairs on my way back to North Station.
Does this impromptu workout add time to my commute? No. Only two Green Line trains depart from North Station – the C or E, neither one I can take in the winter. (I can take the C in the spring, because I can add on a walk from St. Paul’s Street to the office.) With the Green Line dreadfully slow, it’s actually just as much time, if not less, to walk from North Station to Government Center and catch my B Line Green Line train that originates there. At night, the B Line concludes at Government Center, and getting off and walking has allowed me to make commuter rail trains I might miss had I waited for a C or E to come along. Even in the winter, this detour works – City Hall Plaza is always plowed.
Thus, my walk through the despised City Hall Plaza is actually productive. A productive workout that gets me to work and home quicker? Goodbye to some of my treadmill time.