We’re starting to somewhat mythologize Boston. It still has strong working class roots and all the loyalties and conflicts that go with that. As for the universities, a friend of mine pointed out that, sometimes, in any city with a strong university presence, there’s often a sense those parts of town can have a transitory feeling, such an influx of people who come and then, in a matter of years, go.
mcat2,
Chinatown is close to the Combat Zone and the downtown shopping district. South Boston is a few miles away.
To show how much the housing market has changed in South Boston, around 1980 I was at an auction in Southie. A triple-decker house was being auctioned off and my friend bid $12,500. We did a walk through and it was in poor shape. He won the bid and fixed it up. He lived on one floor and rented out the other two floors. It’s probably worth a million dollars today.
There are lots of excellent seafood restaurants in the Greater Boston area.
Agree w looking forward. Boston is one of my favorite cities, but at the end of the day it’s just a city like many others.
The film “Good Will Hunting” is a great example of how Southie used to be. Its hard to believe its grown and become so gentrified in the last 20 years!
Grew up in Boston, now live in a suburb. 15yo goes to a private right in Boston, 22yo graduated from a Jesuit school in the Dorchester. I love, love, love Boston. It is so walkable, fairly clean, and fun. So much going on in part due to all the colleges. Two big areas seeing lots of development right now are the Fenway and Southie. You can find a map of the various neighborhoods here. http://www.cityofboston.gov/neighborhoods/ (Chinatown is not in Southie). Some of the cons: T shuts down at 1PM, (but there is Uber), weather, parking (I would not own a car if I lived in areas like Charlestown and Southie unless I had deeded parking).
The “Combat Zone” is completely gone, replaced with a Ritz-Carleton hotel and high end condos.
The Boston I grew up in in the 50’s and 60’s was a backwater in every sense of the word: economically, socially and even culturally. Times have certainly changed. If you have the time and inclination read this:
http://www.amazon.com/Strangler-Novel-William-Landay-ebook/dp/B000NJL7MS/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8
It is a story of the not so old Boston that will give you an idea of how far the city has come.
I heard the T had expanded to run later - past 2AM on Fri/Sat staring this past summer:
suzy, you are correct, the fiscal control board is only considering cutting service back to 1AM in an effort to balance the budget. My mistake.
Moved to the Boston area in 1981–newly married and H had a great job offer.
Pros: Lots of cultural and recreational activities in the Boston area. Excellent public and private schools in the surrounding burbs. One downside to Boston is that housing is expensive. Homes in good suburban school districts are easily over $500K. Also, winter weather can be really awful, e.g., last winter we had 108 inches of snow.
@abasket: you can see more and have more options if you rent a car to get to the beach. I like the the Cape. Lots of fun areas–Provincetown, Chatham, National Seashore (Nauset Light Beach) or go to one of the islands–Martha’s Vineyard or Nantucket. Both are magical.
Seems parts of Charlestown, Dorchester, and now Southie are changing in almost the blink of an eye. I used to commute through the city and occasionally detour through D. One day, oops, what happened?
I had clients, over the years, downtown. And my family runs deep in Boston, the nice 'burbs. I remember my grandfather taking me to Durgin Park (an ancient restaurant,) when Faneuil Hall was a near empty building. People can be very loyal to their neighborhoods and the sports teams, but I struggle to find the street vibe. Sorry. But yes, great seafood, great museums.
And mcat, it might help to google a map and look for some of the markers, like where the main train stations are or what’s near what.
I will be there mid May for work. Only wanted to possibly extend from end of conference mid afternoon Friday till flight time Sunday - so, a short time. Don’t want to add too many expenses for that short of time…so maybe if I stay I should just consider staying in Boston. We just love the beach though (doesn’t have to be bathing suit weather!) and would love to snag some good old east coast fried clams/lobster delights from a seaside shack!
There are beautiful beaches with wide expanses of sand. Just not the Yankee Magazine sort of New England. Can’t abasket take the ferry from Boston to Hull? Nice seafood shacks there. http://www.mbta.com/schedules_and_maps/boats/
You can also go whale watch.
@emilybee The issue for my son has been getting to Logan Airport before the T starts running. Apparently, Uber is prohibited from going to the airport for some “political” reason. (Probably strong taxi drivers union.)
We once went whale watch on the other coast. Even though it was near the California coast, it was still freezing (and in the summer, I think)! It is definitely too cold for our taste. I guess the temperature could be even lower in the Atlantic Ocean. (I always like warmer weather.)
The boats have large indoor spaces here. (They have to.) Not a problem. Mcat, just asking: have you ever been to the east coast? Because, it really has its own flavors, depending on the city, isn’t easily comparable to other places or the experiences they offer.
I grew up in Dorchester and we had a garden and fruit trees in our back yard. I drove by my street 20 years later and my jaw dropped. Almost every house was falling down and in disrepair, and all the vegetation was long gone. A few years later that section of Dorchester became a leader in drive-by shootings on the East Coast.
Maybe it’s time to go back again and see what it looks like today?
I miss fried clams with bellies, quahaugs and Boston Baked Beans.
@lookingforward, I have visited DS’s campus in NE, and not anywhere else in NE. But DS toured NYC with my wife at one time (but I did not visited him at that time.) So I only know one city but my wife knows two cities in NE.
I think we will visit his campus for his commencement end of May.
The boat I was on did not have large indoor spaces. It is not a large boat, as far as I remember. It did not go far away from the coast. (Hmm…not sure whether we watched dolphins instead of whales, or both?)
For a student coming from say Southern California, Texas, Arizona etc. it can be a bit of culture shock to take the T around town.
This is the ultimate guide to Boston driving Wild in the Streets:
http://www.amazon.com/Boston-Drivers-Handbook-Streets—Almost/dp/0306813262/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1451850733&sr=8-1&keywords=wild+in+the+streets+boston
You can get the lobstahs and steamahs and fried whole clams right in Boston at many good places, and some by the water.
@lookingforward, I got my graduate degree and taught at one of the local universities. I left a number of years ago, though I still have an affiliation (I teach executive ed courses once or twice a year and am invited to private events at some of the professional schools). Many of the people I knew as grad students or young faculty are still there. My mentors have retired and/or died, but many folks from a generation older than me are still there as well. So, I find a surprising amount of continuity. So, while I take your point – a Nobel Prize winner I knew took a position elsewhere in the last couple of years – there is a surprising amount of continuity. Plus, the folks who migrate to business anywhere tend to be mobile (but in biotech and pharma R&D, Boston is the epicenter). I find that just by being here for over 30 years, the people I know because I randomly ran into them have risen in many institutions to leadership positions. It seems surprising to me that I know people as I am not a networker (and am pretty bad at it) but it suggests a surprising amount of continuity.
When I moved to Cambridge 30+ years ago, I used to describe it as a collection of groups that didn’t mix: Irish, Italians, Blacks, Portuguese with a veneer of intelligentsia and the Boston Brahmins over then. The implicit class structure was almost at the surface. If you were one of the first four groups, you didn’t go walking into the others’ neighborhoods without likely being beaten up. By now, things have changed dramatically, and mostly for the better. Globalization and the rise of Information and Communications Technology and Biotech has meant that massive amounts of wealth have been generated by others than the Brahmins (whose only real qualification was inherited wealth). The Brahmins have essentially been eclipsed – they are irrelevant – and you can even see this by who donates the new wings in museums these days and who owns the sports team (Krafts who are Jewish, John Henry whose family were soybean farmers, . Scientists and computer scientists and others who generate useful intellectual capital have been rewarded by global demand for their services. This has created high income jobs and the beneficiaries have bid up the value of the real estate.
The influx of high-end jobs and knowledge workers has thus caused significant dislocation (but some transfer of wealth) for members of the original four groups. Working class neighborhoods have really transformed or are transforming. I’d say that Boston (not Cambridge) is still more segregated than most cities and that the blacks (now African-Americans) have benefitted the least from the rising tide as the economy transformed from factories owned by the Brahmins to a knowledge-based economy. Many high-end Boston-based suburbs are lily-white – diversity means a few Indians or Chinese families. A couple of years ago, I was counseling a young African-American family who are economically quite successful about various towns in which they might live and it was pretty clear that few affluent towns have significant AA presence (Milton is maybe the exception).