I meet Ashley Lesperance at a bench next to the 66 bus’s N. Harvard St./Coolidge Rd. stop. We immediately go in for a hug before sitting down. Her outfit looks straight from a Raspberry Beret mannequin, with tinted orange glasses and cheetah print pants straight from the ‘80s.
Lesperance is organizing a cat stroll in Lower Allston happening on September 19, where people walk about the neighborhood and see their neighbors and cats in the windows of local homes.
After this conversation, she’s off to a party with her best friend, Cristina, who lives just down the street from this stop. They live close to each other, and such exchanges are not unusual:
“We can come over and share each other’s closets. One time we were on a PlayStation game, and I was like, ‘I’m going to make a margarita,’ and she was like, “I want one.” I was like, ‘Say less!’ I brought her a margarita, came back, and got back on the headset. It feels like kids again. It’s fun to be like, “Hey, you want to come hang out? You want to play?”
Where did your relationship to Allston begin, and what prompted your move back?
I first moved to Boston in 2011, so I’ve been here for 15 years. I started my adventure in Boston in Brighton. It was right over by St. Elizabeth’s, before all the development over there happened. I was right over by St. Elizabeth’s, and I loved it.
My favorite thing about Brighton, and coming to Boston young in my 20s, just having graduated college, was that, especially in Allston Brighton, you really could get to know your neighbors. There was such a friendliness and a way that, as a young adult, was very welcoming. I always really enjoyed that. I lived there for about three or four years, and I loved it. I really loved Brighton.
The only reason I left Brighton was because I was lucky enough to get an affordable unit through the affordable program in the city over in Somerville. That brought me over to Assembly Row for 10 years. I was very fortunate to participate in the affordable program for 10 years. I can’t speak highly enough of the affordable programs in the city. I was lucky enough last year to have graduated from it, so I was very, very happy to do that. But it was sort of scary because it was, ‘Okay, now I’m going to have to pick a different place to go.’
My best friend has lived right there [points down the street on North Harvard St.] for 15 years. Between my time in Brighton, where my unit faced a bunch of homes where people had lived for years and grew up, and then my 10 years in Somerville, I lived vicariously through her and spent a lot of time here in Lower Allston. She’s been there 15 years, her neighbors have been there longer. The people on her street she’s known for years.
Having started in Allston Brighton as a young person in my 20s, and now as a person in my 30s, has been really fun because Allston has such a reputation for being a renter’s haven, and it’s so much more than that. So many people set up roots here. Some people grew up here, obviously, but a lot of people, even if they’re renters, have been renting in their place for a really long time.
When I was deciding where I wanted to move last year, in July 2025, it was very appealing. I had been in one of those new-build high-rises, and I was sick of it because I didn’t really know my neighbors. I lived in a mall but didn’t know any of my neighbors. I wanted a place where I felt comfortable walking around the streets and seeing neighbors and each other’s dogs and their cats in windows.
That’s my relationship to Allston. I decided to move back, and it was so appealing when I found a place right around the corner from my best friend because we kind of feel like kids again. We can come over and share each other’s closets. One time we were on a PlayStation game, and I was like, “I’m going to make a margarita,” and she was like, “I want one.” I was like, “Say this!” I brought her a margarita, came back, and got back on the headset. It feels like kids again. It’s fun to be like, “Hey, you want to come hang out? You want to play?”
Where were you before Boston? I was born and raised in Massachusetts. I went to school in Western Massachusetts at UMass Amherst. I joked the first couple years after I moved to Brighton that it felt like it was really just UMass alum — people who came from UMass — which is still the case. It’s so funny.
Before that, my parents live in Plainville. I’ve always been from Massachusetts.
Isn’t that where the Diary of a Wimpy Kid author is from? Yes! You have to go check out the bookstore. That’s two blocks from my parents’ house. It’s been so cool to see that gain popularity the past couple years. I got a jump scare when Boston’s The B-Side had it in their newsletter, like, “The town to be is Plainville,” and I was like, “Since when?” I go there with my parents and have for years. It’s a very cute little local bookshop.
Did your friendship with your best friend come from living in Allston, or did you grow up together? Right in between. She and I met with our other best friend at a nonprofit where we worked. We trauma-bonded, got the hell out of there, got out of that company, and then stayed best friends. We met at a company and worked together.
How do you view the neighborhood and where it is going? What prompted you to start something that would deepen your relationship with the community? For a while now, I’ve been really obsessed with the concept of third spaces and the way people want to come together in ways that don’t necessarily involve consumerism or participating in capitalism.
I don’t only want to come together with my friends over dinner or drinks. Sometimes I very much do, but I don’t only want to do that. Sometimes I want to get together, and I don’t want to have to spend a lot of money to be in a space with my friends.
But we do want to get out of our homes. What does that look like?
In all my travels, I’ve been very fortunate to travel to Spain and different parts of Europe. They’re full of third spaces. People sit outside. Owners of their shops sit outside with their friends who stop by to say hi, on tiny little stools that happen to be there for that sole purpose. One little two-by-four of wood is their third space because that’s where they gather and have a drink or a cigarette with their friends, whatever it looks like. That becomes community, or, like, a little small park. I think of that with Smith Playground, which is why I’m so excited about the cat walk. I love Smith Playground so much. It brings you so much joy, and it’s the same for my best friend.
We’ll text each other on a day when we want to get out of the house and it’s beautiful, but we don’t want to spend money. It’s like, “Let’s go meet at the park.” Maybe we go to Trader Joe’s and get something picnic-style. Maybe we don’t, and we just go to the park and people-watch. We get to see all these different generations and groups of people enjoying a public space in different ways.
Part of the goal and inspiration of the cat walk was purely cats. It’s purely cats — the joy they bring and getting to know your neighbors — but also this idea of community. I think that’s something really special in Allston.
It has this reputation for being so transient, and it’s really the opposite in so many ways.
The response to the cat walk has been other people so eager to build community.
Beyer from Tiny Doors is a delight, and we’ve collaborated so quickly in a way that I feel like I’ve known Beyer forever. The same with Genesis at Allston Village Main Streets. It quickly becomes this core community, and that’s something really special about Allston.
Even the people at Park Bagelry (280 Western Ave) are delightful. They go out of their way to know who you are and to be excited when you come in. They know Cristina is my best friend. They know her cousin Sean, who lives two doors down, and that we all know each other. It becomes this community. If they don’t see me for four or five days, they’re like, “Where you been?” It’s so nice when you know your neighbors and the small businesses around you check in on you.
When you started planning the cat walk and gathering people into it, were you surprised by the support? Did it take activation energy to get other people involved? Tons of people are behind it: Allston Village Main Streets, my friends and family, and my partner. They have been very supportive and huge in helping.
Allston Village Main Streets didn’t surprise me because I’d heard of it, but it was so delightful that I got to email them and they said, “We’d love to chat. Come in and let’s talk about it.” Genesis, the program manager, and Alex, the former executive director, had so much enthusiasm and excitement. They were immediate cheerleaders. It was immediately, “Let’s do this. Join the promotions committee we have. You’ll get to know some of our board members through that committee, and let’s make it happen. Whatever our resources are, you can use them.”
That said, it has really been a committee of me, with a lot of help from my best friend and my partner. I did think I’d have more of a formal committee, but when I first started brainstorming this, it was small and really grassroots. I thought it would just be a small gathering. I didn’t put together a full committee.
I think next year I will need one. It’s a lot of work, and thankfully I’ve been unemployed for six months, so I’ve been able to pour all my love and time into this. It’s not that my friends and family weren’t ready to be on a committee. There were people who said, “Let us know how we can help,” but it wasn’t really formalized. I think that’s because I asked early, when people weren’t quite sure what it was. I think it would be different if I asked now. People would be ready to join a committee.
Next year I’ll have something formal, like what Ricky [Meinke] did with Rat City [Arts Festival]. It has become so big, and now he has a whole group of volunteers and infrastructure. That’s the gold star to me. That’s my north star and what I want to get to. I want to grow to the level Rat City has.
What was the catalyst for the cat walk? Because sometimes, we have ideas and we just sit with them, and that’s okay. I have many ideas, and I sit on these. What was different about this time. I had seen the Minneapolis cat walk on TikTok, and I was like, “That’s dope. That would be really cool.” I love cats. My partner and I are always looking in windows for cats. One of our favorite pastimes is walking and looking at cats in windows.
One day I was walking from Cristina’s, behind the Rockland Credit Union, toward my apartment on Riverdale Street, and I saw four cats in windows. I was like, “Oh my God, this is literally perfect for this.” At that time, it was just amusing. It was just an idea.
I mentioned it to some friends. My friends know that I have an event-planner bone in my body. I love to throw parties and events, so my friends were like, “If anyone can do it, you can.” It was mulling in my brain for a while. Then I got back from a trip last October and started thinking it through.
I know I would eventually like to build a third space. I don’t know what that would look like. It’s so far down the pipe: rent, what the space would look like, and who it would serve. It’s just a musing at this point. I thought this could be a cool small step to dip my toe into what it would look like to get to know people in the community at a different level. That was one of the purposes. The other purpose was that it would be fun to host an event like this and walk around the neighborhood with strangers.
That was the catalyst. I put pen to paper before I got laid off, but there wasn’t much time between the two. When I got laid off, I was like, “Oh no, we’re really doing this.” That’s what I was going to pour my love and heart into.
What was the timeline for when the idea came in your head and to when it started coming to fruition. I think I got the first idea last fall, walking from her place to mine, and had been mulling over the idea for a few months before I kicked it out.
It was February 26. Genesis from Allston Village Main Streets responded to my outreach and said, “Sounds like a wonderful idea. Let’s meet in March when he gets back.”
In between, I got laid off, around March 6. I sent the email and knew I wanted to do it. I got laid off about a week after sending that email, and when I finally got to meet with Allston Village Main Streets, I was already laid off. I was like, “Let’s do it. I have no job. Let’s put it all into it.”
Maybe it was fate! Someone up there really wanted you to make that happen! I had the energy. You’re so right.
What has it looked like to put the effort into planning this? What have been the challenges and the champion moments? The effort has looked like a lot of event management and project management. It always comes down to thinking through everything I need to get done by September 19 and working backwards.
I knew the time frame when I wanted people to start registering their cats, so I had to get the registration form ready. I wanted to brainstorm and think through what I wanted in that registration form and what I needed to make clear to people. Allston Village Main Streets’ team was incredibly helpful, gave me really good ideas, and thought of things like suggesting that it not be a dog event — making sure dogs aren’t allowed because it would be cat-friendly. They also made sure the form had a safety disclaimer, like, “If you’re going to bring your cat, make sure they’re…” They’ve been really helpful in thinking through things.
The planning has also looked like getting the word out. I’m very fortunate that I have a marketing background, so it’s been a lot of marketing. I reached out to the B-Side and asked if they would want to cover it. I asked Beyer to reach out to you. I’ve really been doing the outreach, although I’ve been fortunate that a couple people have reached out to me.
A really fun champion moment was when the Must Do Boston Instagram account promoted it and increased my followers by a crazy amount in a short amount of time. That was really exciting.
I don’t know if you’ll include this in your article. I think the shadow that’s implanted a little bit for me is that this is just me, as a resident, doing this. I don’t have funds. I obviously have a cheerleader with Allston Village Main Streets. It’s not that they’ve done nothing, but they also haven’t really done much because they haven’t had to; I’ve taken care of a lot. They reshare some of my stories, got the park permit, and have done the logistics. In terms of getting the word out, their approach is that you get out of it what you put into it.
I’ve loved that because they’ll cheerlead it, but they expect the residents to execute on it. That’s exciting because there’s a level of responsibility and accountability to it.
That said, it’s just me as a resident planning this. One of the shadows to it is that the City of Cambridge has copied and pasted my idea. I had an opportunity to interview the creator of the Minneapolis cat walk, which was really cool. When I got on the call, he said, “So you’re not with Cambridge?” I was like, “What? No. I live in Allston, but I’m not with Cambridge.” He had talked with someone from the mayor’s office that week who wanted to do this too.
When that post went out from Must Do Boston, the mayor’s office commented on it and said, “Keep your eyes peeled for something in Cambridge.”
Lower Allston doesn’t get a lot of attention. That’s also one of my points. Lower Allston is the least funded of the Boston neighborhoods. Allston Brighton is one of the least funded. Look at the coverage on Jackson Mann and why that’s so important. There are so many people who live in Boston who have never been to Lower Allston, and everyone has been to Cambridge.
I’m going heavily in the last couple weeks on making sure to market that this is a resident-run event.
A local decided to put this on. There’s no city funding. It’s not hosted by the town. I think that speaks to what people are eager about in Allston: continuing to put back into it. I’ve been so excited to see the people eager to attend because it’s just residents. There’s no budget. There are no frills.
You’ve partnered with the MSPCA. What is your relationship to the pet and cat community? The MSPCA was a no-brainer because that’s where I adopted both my cats. I had my cat Batman for 11 beautiful years. He passed away a couple years ago. He was such a sweetheart. I got him from the MSPCA when I was a baby, in my 20s. We grew up together. I had him in my Brighton apartment, so I got him maybe 600 moving into Boston. It kind of pays homage to him a little bit too.
He passed, and a couple years later I got another cat, Daphne. I got Daphne from the MSPCA because I love the work they do. I love the work they do both for adoption and animal welfare in the city, but I also love Angell and the hospital. That’s where my primary vet is. They do such incredible work for animals at an affordable rate for veterinary care, which is never affordable, but it’s affordable relatively. It was a no-brainer to reach out to them.
I’m just a lover of cats. All my friends have cats. My friend Cristina has a cat. He hangs out in their yard. My other friend Perry has a cat. My partner Kevin has a cat. We just love cats. To be fair, we love all animals. We love dogs, and I love everything that there is, but we really love cats. There’s something special about them.
That’s why the MSPCA. I reached out to other local shelters too — the Gifford one. They decided not to participate, and I didn’t hear from the other ones. I was open to others as well, but the MSPCA felt very Boston, so it was a no-brainer.
Will Daphne be part of the cat walk? She’s going to kick it off. She’s not a leash girly. In New Hampshire, I can get her to go outside and have a line, and she likes it, but she’s not a leash girly. When we leave Smith Playground, we’re going right up Riverdale, the road that’s right there — that’s my road — and she’s going to be the first one.
My partner’s cat is going to stay over too. His name is Elbert. They’ll both be there to kick it off. We’re going to be holding them up, Simba-style.
And Daphne’s a ginger! We’re both redheaded girls, which I love. When I adopted her, I knew I wanted a girl, and I knew I wanted an orange cat. I’ve never had an orange cat, and I didn’t know that oranges are incredibly rare. Only one in four orange cats is female.
What advice do you have for other Allston residents who have ideas percolating? My first message would be not to overthink it and not to talk yourself out of it, because you’d be surprised by how eager the community is for all sorts of different ideas. Allston in particular is a community that’s open to such different concepts and ideas. There’s no bad idea.
If your idea could bring the community together, have neighbors talking to each other, or support local, there’s no such thing as a bad one.
Look to your neighbors. There are so many resources. Look to your community. Start asking. Start pitching the idea and talking it through with your neighbor to see what the response is. That’s what I did before I formalized it. I was with some neighbors on my street, and I had an interest form. It was, “We might do this. If you’re interested, sign up.” There was no set date. People were excited, registered their email, and said they were interested. Start to get the feel. That would be the first thing.
I cannot thank Allston Village Main Streets enough for legitimizing it. They’re the fiscal sponsor. We don’t have any sponsorships, but if we get sponsorships in the future, it would all go through them instead of me as an individual. They provide that, but they’ve also provided more than that.
In many ways, it is just me as a resident planning this, but because I have the backing of Allston Village Main Streets, it feels like I have more. It legitimizes it in a really great way. This nonprofit stands behind this project, is promoting it, and is going to be there. Reach out to them. They’re an amazing resource, and they have a list of resources and people who could help.
There’s one woman, Gina, who does public living rooms. She brings couches out and makes free third spaces every so often. Get to know your neighbors. Don’t overthink it. Just try.
As September 19 approaches, what are you feeling? Is the cat walk part of something bigger for you? One hundred percent. I want to scale this. I would love to see this happen for multiple years. I think it would be really cool next year to have it at Zone 3, where we kick off there. Then I can get more vendors inside and maybe even have Vivant there to sell clothes. It could be much more accessible for small businesses to join and participate.
I could picture helping organize it if people want to do it in Brighton. If someone wants to organize it in Brighton, I’d be happy to help organize it there with them. I don’t think it’s realistic to do a walk between Lower Allston and Brighton. It would be a very long walk. People have asked me, “Will it grow there?” My answer is that I think the event could grow to there, but I don’t think we’ll do that long of a walk.
That’s one way I want to scale it. I want to continue this. I think it would be so fun to do annually, and that’s the goal.
In addition to that, I’m very excited for the connections I’ve made and think I’m going to continue to make, because I want to see what this could lead to. I don’t want to be in the nine-to-five grind forever. I don’t want to be working in front of my laptop forever.
I want to be able to pay my bills doing something I love, and that’s bringing people together.
That’s how I hope to scale up my personal goals.
What do you give time to versus what you don’t give time to? Is there an overarching lesson or mantra that you live by? The people in my life. Everything I do is about investing in the relationships I have in my life and the relationships I maybe don’t have in my life yet.
I’m very much a people-obsessed person. I studied cultural anthropology in college. I got my master’s in social work. I just deeply care for human existence.
Some days are really rough. We hear the news, and everything seems really hard and negative. Some days that can feel really consuming, but my mantra is a reminder that most people are good. Most people want joy. Most people love other people and want to experience that love, and that’s what I want to build up.
My partner knows I can’t watch a zombie movie because all I think about is the downfall of human connection and human love. That’s the hardest part for me. That really is my mantra, especially as I get older. I don’t spend as much time on things that don’t matter. I spend more time with my family and friends.
That’s why I got a remote job in 2019, before the pandemic. I wanted more energy in my day to spend time with people I actually want to spend time with and deepen my relationships. It’s not that I don’t care about my coworkers, but you can’t care about every coworker. I want the energy to spend time with people I love.
My mantra is to continue to pour back into the people I love who love me, and then meet more people that I get to love — more people I get to care about.
