That morning's New York Post — on Friday the 13th, of course — carried a wincingly unflattering Page Six item about Mr. English, and food blogs had been a-snicker for days after Boston magazine published a lacerating "breakup letter" with the chef who had once given a drab Beantown food scene a slug of extra-virgin revitalization.
Of course, Beantown fans would never check that scorecard – he's yesterday's news, like Bobby V and fried chicken.
Its nickname "Beantown" has its origin in colonial times, when Boston, as a stop on a major trade route with the West Indies, had a steady supply of molasses from the Caribbean, thus leading to the creation of a popular dish that became known as Boston baked beans (beans baked in molasses).
With pig fat and molasses replacing the original ingredients, it was so relished as a Sunday treat in Massachusetts that Boston became known as Beantown.
Leading food PR Carolyn Cavele, who once lived in Beantown, has unhappy memories of the local legume: "I ate them out of politeness but I didn't find them at all pleasant".
Known as "The Sports Guy" (before coming to ESPN, the Beantown native made his name as the "Boston Sports Guy" for a local Web site), he now writes from Los Angeles.
Midway through the summer, when the Mets' chances had dwindled to historic improbability, I clicked for consolation to the YES ("Yankees' Entertaining Schadenfreude"?) Network to see them battle their nemeses from the north, and was shocked to see that Beantown had morphed into Beardtown.
The local obsession with the Red Sox is such that David Wells, the former Yankee and Red Sox pitcher, and a night owl, likes to call Boston Picturetown, rather than Beantown, because of all the fans with cell-phone cameras in restaurants and bars, ready for deployment like civilian paparazzi.
Hardly a year after ESPN magazine declared Beantown "America's Most Dominant Sports City," it is faced with an uncertain athletic future.
If you've been to Beantown or the Bay Area recently, however, you know it's not a cure-all for the affordability problem.
But Beantown boosterism doesn't suffice to explain the scale of Golijov's triumph.
