The time: The 1980s.

The city: Boston.

The protagonist: Adam Panflick, preppie, iconoclast, sensualist, gambler and failed theologian.

The antagonist: Boston's certifiable commitment to the automobile.

The result: Mayhem and then some.

Stephen C. Rose is a writer and composer who lives in New York City with his wife Kathy and regularly spends time in Boulder City, Nevada. He has written extensively, online and off, on many subjects in prose and song?including urban planning, design and the coming collapse of the oil economy.