evan p.
Yelp
The main problem with pavement isn't that it's bad, it's that it's insulting. It's the bait and switch the car salesman tries to do on you. It's being led on by that surly partner of yours, just so they can find something better in one of your best friends next week.
Bagel rising was the darling on Allston. All weekend they would have a line of the colorful Allston residents out the door, buying 1,000 calorie "Tequilla sunrise" or "Chia" bagel-sandwiches to soak up the booze cruise they went on the night before. Pale skinned, occasionally pajama clad club-goers from the night before would come in droves. They would come like they had earned it. It was practically an unsaid thing, that when they would wake up in the morning, hungover, unshowered, disgusting, they would drag themselves to bagel rising, and tell the war stories of the night before.
This is all gone now. The independent own daughter of Allston, our very own bagel sandwich store is now seems like some kind of corporate-feeling starbucks clone. I don't think this is the offensive part though, the offensive part is that this monstrosity is the same company. It's not that Bagel Rising went down in some sort of blaze of glory, greedy landlord raised the rent, lived many years past it's usefulness, or was closed by the heath department. There's no easy narrative to say "oh man that's why it closed! what a bummer". It's that the owner "upgraded" it to be this way, on purpose.
The modern white "minimalist" store layout practically mocks you as you come in the door. It looks too neat and tidy to get comfortable in. The lighting is of that dishonest sort of school-cafeteria-too-bright-to-be-good-food sort. The bare-wood benches and tables are comfortable enough I suppose, but there is really no place to get cozy or sink in, or sit and talk to a few of your friends. It's a place where boring 30something loners go on their way to work to get a coffee now, and nothing more.
What if also definitely isn't now is a place to get bagel sandwiches. The core business of the previous regime has gone the way of the dodo now. READ: THE THING YOU WANTED TO BUY THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE? THEY DON"T EVEN HAVE THAT ANYMORE. How considerate of them. They have a half-hearted list of four bagel sandwich options, all of which are super standard. Bagel with arugula and cheese. Bagel with bacon and cheese. That's about it. Know the reason they had a line out the door? That's completely dead.
I got a Bagel Bacon Egg and cheddar sandwich. The bacon and the cheese were a vast improvement from Bagel Rising, but putting the same bagel and maybe a dollars worth of toppings into the EIGHT DOLLAR+ range just isn't forgivable. Way way too expensive. I can get dinner for that much.
When i was there at SUNDAY 10:00AM, total ALL HANDS ON DECK time for a breakfast/coffee place, there was no epic line. The place was a ghost town. There were, at the highest point, four people waiting. The cashier rudely forgot to give me my drink, and proceeded to tell me i was wrong in asking for a bottle opener, since my bottled coke "has a screw off cap" (which it clearly doesn't) and couldn't even find the bottle opener. A nice lady in line lent me the one on her key-ring.
The offensive part of this conversion of the BAGEL RISING to a PAVEMENT is the sort of arrogant corporate insistence that "hey you know that thing you like? we're going to change it into this new thing, and you are going to go to it instead because there isn't anything else!". That's the offensive part.
If it weren't for the great memories of bagel rising, It would just be a forgettable coffee place I wouldn't ever go to again. But because of them, Pavement is a scar on allston's landscape. It's having Bunratty's become a date-rape bar for BU kids (way to go Wonderbar). It's the phantom pains in a parapalegic's severed arm stub.
Thanks for the memories Bagel Rising. But if I wanted the horrible starbucks type of experience, i'd just go the the starbucks across the street.
