I'm also a BU grad from that era. Loved reading this. Don't know the author, but I did know many of the places mentioned. Not sure where the loft was located, but it sounds like the area around Fort Point channel which used to be an artists colony (and also near the site of the infamous Channel nightclub) which is now one of the most expensive pieces of luxury real estate in Boston, the "Seaport" district.
One observation about 80s and '90s tech communities: it's fascinating how groups of people would coalesce around interests, schools, small businesses, or whatever.
In Taiwan, my landlord's eldest son eagerly showed me "Yamnet" which was a local BBS and hacker group he belonged to, I think through his college. I was listening to "How I Built This" podcast interview with one of the founders of Alienware, and his group in Miami was included a lot of second-generation Cuban Americans who got into 90s LAN games and building custom PCs. Even my hometown had a little group of teens who gravitated to the local indie computer store, "The Bit Bucket," to hack on TRS-80s, Commodore-64s, Apple IIe's and early PCs.
These communities seemed to be everywhere, even if they were largely invisible to most people.
> Don't know the author, but I did know many of the places mentioned.
I was too young to be involved at this particular point in time, but my parents would bring me to that Au Bon Pain and The Garage as a kid in the late 80s/early 90s. I totally know that pizza spot the author mentioned. It's funny to think that not too long after, as a teenager in the late 90s, I'd be aware of those hacker handles, completely unaware that they had been gathering in those places too!
When I finally was allowed to roam Cambridge by myself (late 90s) I remember I'd make my friends stop off at the newsstand in Harvard Square near The Garage to pick up copies of 2600. Really interesting to fill in a little of that history with landmarks I'm familiar with.
One observation about 80s and '90s tech communities: it's fascinating how groups of people would coalesce around interests, schools, small businesses, or whatever.
In Taiwan, my landlord's eldest son eagerly showed me "Yamnet" which was a local BBS and hacker group he belonged to, I think through his college. I was listening to "How I Built This" podcast interview with one of the founders of Alienware, and his group in Miami was included a lot of second-generation Cuban Americans who got into 90s LAN games and building custom PCs. Even my hometown had a little group of teens who gravitated to the local indie computer store, "The Bit Bucket," to hack on TRS-80s, Commodore-64s, Apple IIe's and early PCs.
These communities seemed to be everywhere, even if they were largely invisible to most people.