Downtown Crossing’s infamous Littlest Bar is closing its grimy doors after 60 years of service to Boston’s booze-bags. To make way for, you guessed it, detestable yuppie condos. Gentrification usually isn’t a bad thing, as far as I’m concerned. I’d rather live in close proximity to Biff and Buffy than crackheads and hookers any day of the week. Especially after my well publicized incident with a crackhead hooker. And by ‘any day’ I’m referring to Saturdays – because that’s when their rates go up.

But now we’re talking about the demolition of a stagger-inducing institution. A lowly liquored landmark loved by lots of lushes. I’ve written about this wonderful and historic establishment before, and there’s also a gallery of photos from Jim’s b-day that were taken onsite. My first date with a former girlfriend took place at the Littlest. I took Triconi there the night before his engagement party. I’m seriously bummed. If you have any memories of the Littlest that don’t include Monster necking with a sea donkey, please share them in the comments below. Good night, sweet pub.

“Mem’ries, Like the corners of my mind. Misty water-colored memories, Of the way we were.” – An Awful Harpy.

10 years ago, I was on a 24K dial-up connection at University which was constantly being interrupted by lovesick housemates. I used something called PINE to read my email, and my address was dpye@uoguelph.ca. I frequented mIRC instead of instant messagers, used Altavista.com as my search engine of choice and would happily wait over 5 minutes for CNN.com to load. And by CNN.com I of course mean Danni’s Hard Drive.

If you’re feeling nostalgic for the early days of the gold rush, have a look at this collection of screenshots to see how some of your favorite sites looked as recently as 5 years ago. It’s hard to believe, and it’s only going to get crazier. By the time I’m forty, I fully expect to be surfing the net on the inside of a pair of sunglasses whilst video IM’ing with people on my wristwatch. As well as hopelessly addicted to Nuke.

I’m zipping along the tracks on the 8:45 out to Fitchburg. Jim is picking me up in Lincoln, after which we’ll spend another in a long line of evenings getting silly at the Red House. Saturday, we’re all headed down to Newport for Harko’s bachelor party. Golf in the afternoon, and Foxwoods in the evening. Gambling and golf are two things at which I most certainly do not excel, and I fully expect to return to Boston Sunday night with a sore back, a light wallet and a stab wound. And a new stripper girlfriend who is extremely mad at her father for something.

Jeeps the train’s speaker is friggin’ loud. Maybe I shouldn’t have sat right underneath it. Must be great for the hearing impaired, though. And perhaps even better at actually making healthy people hearing impaired. I have noticed many such trade-offs during my strange life so far. Like that one about tits and bulls.

You know what this laptop needs? A video game. I need to find a decent distraction for these long periods of internetless travel. Maybe a Tetris clone or one of those Nintendo emulators where you can play old cartridge ROMs on your PC. Yep – me, the open road and Rush N’ Attack. A winning combination if ever one existed.. Unless of course I ever plan on sleeping with a woman again.