Boston Adventure

Ron Newman said:
I regard the places I named as 'exurbs' because they are substantially rural and I think even have a few working farms left in them. (Contrasting with fully built-up 'suburbs' such as Braintree, Arlington, Melrose.)
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They are in the strictest definition. Perhaps I should have said "new exurbs". The towns you named are too well established, too wealthy at the moment to be affected. Perhaps one day those towns will no longer be for the well-to-do and will turn into "adventurous" places.
 
Ron Newman said:
I haven't noticed Bedford or Sharon or Ipswich running down in this manner -- should I be looking elsewhere?
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Try Dorchester.

It ain't really the "exurbs" --at least not in Boston (if anywhere).
 
I don't think Dorchester is "running down" now any more than it was in the 70s or 80s. Probably much less.

Boston does have exurbs that I imagine might be affected - you have to get out to 495 and beyond to find them. Places like Franklin or Shrewsbury have cheap housing estates filled with McMansions that are probably somewhat ripe for foreclosure right now. But the fact that the regional economy seems relatively stable means that these places probably won't face busts as dramatic as those in Florida or Arizona.
 
czsz said:
I don't think Dorchester is "running down" now any more than it was in the 70s or 80s.
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I guess it got there early. How's Blue Hill Avenue these days?

czsz said:
Probably much less.
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Probably. After all, how far can you sink? This isn't Haiti.

Also, weren't there signs of gentrification before the economic crash? Would that constitute an 'urban exurb'? ;)
 
Have you been there lately? There's a thriving Vietnamese neighborhood in Fields Corner, and lots of investment in Grove Hall.

It's not pretty, but it's not sinking.
 
Still plenty of gentification in Dorchester. Take a walk from Shawmut or Ashmont station into the residential neighborhoods surrounding them. Savin Hill looks pretty sharp, too.
 
tobyjug said:
Those suburban Harvard boys killed most of it. Good or bad? You tell me.
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Wasn't it also those same Harvard boys, in younger days perhaps, who kept Boston's various nefarious areas going for a large part?

I know it all secondhand, mind you, but I've heard great stories from a close family friend (Harvard '58) about the Scollay and the Old Howard; the fictionalized-but-based-on-something account of undergrad Tyrone Slothrop's adventures in roxbury and south end jazz clubs via Thomas Pynchon; i've read about the harvard football murder in the combat zone on wikipedia, and about fights between young Harvard lads and drunken old sailors in the "Murder District" of Ann Street right here on Archboston.

God what a great book this would make, has anyone written a history of Harvard, Boston, and town vs. gown?
 
Pierce said:
Wasn't it also those same Harvard boys, in younger days perhaps, who kept Boston's various nefarious areas going for a large part?
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IAM siting with unkle now. HE saying Presedent DICK close navy yard and BEFORE then it being SEAMEN keeping up employtmiens of Ladies. HE sAYING harVarD boys having "GOOD imaginings but not getting more than TIT thru Lacoste shirt"
 
the fictionalized-but-based-on-something account of undergrad Tyrone Slothrop's adventures in roxbury and south end jazz clubs via Thomas Pynchon
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Yep, alongside a "negro shoeshine boy" named Malcolm, shaw nuff. That famous scene in which Slothrop dives headfirst into the toilet bowl and so forth.

Anyway, none of Pynchon's depictions of that good ol boy Harvard culture are flattering in the least (see also Against the Day on the Harvard-Yale football game). In fact they're kinda sickening...I couldn't imagine how a vibrant nightlife could justify that regime of entitlement, nepotism, racism, dbaggery etc...
 
Ablarc, as much as I typically love all of your posts, I have to let you know what my very first reaction to the first post here was:

"rubbish"

I live in Dorchester. Come visit Field's Corner with me. Let's get my inspection sticker done at the chop shop and talk to the garage flies that will start to pester you with all kinds of offers - for your car, and for your... person. I mentioned to one that I couldn't afford to fix the thing wrong with my car because I needed the money to buy a new laptop. No problem - this guy had three laptops "for sale" right there in the store.

We can play games like dice in the alley between the Vietnamese grocer and... the other Vietnamese grocer. The live chickens will be smelt and heard. The El rumbles overhead. At night the prostitutes walk the auto lots next to Dot Ave. Some of these ladies of the night are even female.

Then let's hit up Upham's Corner. Big, red brick former department stores, now populated with stores like "99 cents 4U". Again, the El rumbles overhead, and you can't walk one block without some kind of action - a catcall, an offer for goods or service. The sidewalks are literally teaming with people. Some friendly. Some not. Usually gathered in an inward circle, as if they are all looking down and studying the same brick. I once turned a corner and there's a guy in a pickup truck - selling frozen steaks. "They were extra from a fancy downtown restaurant". He was selling them for cheap.

These are not postcards from the past - this is any day of the week, in 2010, in Boston.

These are just the two neighborhoods that sandwich my little enclave in Savin Hill. Which admittedly, is quite gentrified and pretty boring. (Even the gay bar (d bar) sells $30 entrees and has a line of well-dressed heterosexual couples waiting for dinner)

But the grit exists. It's gone from what I typically refer to as "the urban core" of the city, as you very accurately describe - but it's alive and well on the fringes.

I can show you, let's get wings at Crazy Fried Chicken on Blue Hill Avenue near Mattapan. When they lost their "Kentucky Fried Chicken" franchise rights (one can only imagine why or how they lost it), they just spray-painted the word "Crazy" over where it once said "Kentucky". That's grit!
 
^ LMFAO!!

I just KNEW Dorchester was where it's at! The in-town exurb!

Problem is, how do you get there?
 
There is an El over Uphams Corner? Since when?
 
"the El rumbles overhead" .... in Uphams Corner? If you mean the Fairmount commuter line, the service isn't that frequent (yet) and it's at the very western fringe of the commercial district. From the central intersection of Columbia Road and Dudley you wouldn't even know it existed.

This is one of the big challenges in trying to attract a new audience to the restored Strand Theatre. Even if Fairmount somedays runs every 15 minutes, you'll need a lot of signposting to get people from the station to the theatre.
 
No one is ever going to take the Fairmount line seriously as urban transit until it strips its commuter rail image and actually looks like rapid transit.
 
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