The students are coming! The students are coming!

It's Labor Day Weekend here in Boston, also known as the invasion of the freshmen menace. Non-Bostonians have trouble understanding the breadth and scope of the sheer chaos in Boston this weekend. Something like 76 percent of all housing in the region turns over between August and September -- it's a madhouse in slow motion.

Christopher and I have a little game we play this weekend every year: Boston Bingo! (One year we actually printed up cards but this year we're just playing it in our heads.) Sights that can get you a square on the Boston Bingo Card:

Three different moving trucks (from different companies) all visible from one location.

More than four couches being thrown out on one block.

People asking for directions to Tufts... while standing in front of Tufts.

People asking for directions to Tufts... while standing in front of MIT.

Guy with three cases of beer walking home.

Strange things on the T! Worthy of its own category, we've seen people carrying some strange things on the T this weekend. Seven foot tall lights. Bookshelves. Rugs. A twin mattress.


Speaking of mattresses: the central gimme-square on the Boston Bingo card is: Car driving down street with mattresses strapped to roof.

Hand-lettered sign in the window of the local beer store that says, "We have boxes."

The freshman guy in the Fez who wants to be known as "the guy in the Fez."

The Guy in the Fez meeting one of the other fifteen guys every year who buy a fez at the junk shop in the garage.

The faces on the folks from Kansas as they try and wrap their Cartesian-grid minds around the non-Euclidean roadways of Cambridge and Somerville.

And that's not including the fun that is Freshmen in the Grocery Store! We avoid all grocery and hardware stores this weekend.