Boston's North End neighborhood is much as I pictured it from Jane Jacobs' description. Running around the outside are big roads, with strip malls and condos here and there; but inside, the architecture seems unreconstructed, and to some extent, the culture is still here, too.

She described it as one of Boston's most alive neighborhoods, and not in spite of, but because of its high destiny, and its narrow streets in their irregular pattern.

Here, I've seen men standing in the middle of the sidewalk, telling jokes and their friends listening carefully to the setup and punchline, men with their chairs set out in the road; families chatting about their affairs on alleys, just off the main street. Great corpulent families cut slowly into the flesh of watermelons. It is a hot day. Everyone seems to be outside.

At an intersection, an old Chevy is blocking the way while waiting for a UHaul to start up; behind him another car wants to get through; he honks (typical for Boston) and yells (less typically): "Just move over! Just move over there!What the <expletive deleted>." And then, with resignation, "Moron." As the Chevy pulls away, I see he is smoking a cigarette out the window, unperturbed.

Just then, seeing me coming, a woman said to her son, "Come here, hon, the street's too skinny." The kid parrots back, "Street's too skinny." The streets here are indeed skinny, in a rather delightful way.

Unreconstructed in most ways, but changed in a few: The woman in the window of the cafe is checking her LinkedIn profile.