I have nothing to do with real estate. I own property in Dorchester after having lived in the South End for 4 years. In that short time I watched Bohemian Boston get totally destroyed. Everybody who was fun, different, unconventional, interesting, and yes, sometimes poor or old, were displaced. The new South End is full of baby carriages and former suburbanites who got sick of the commute. The place is becoming sterile. It's great that the buildings are being restored, and just in the nick of time, because many were on the verge of collapsing on themselves. But the neighborhood has been lost. Gay people especially, the pioneers of that neighborhood, are not necessarily being displaced but you must wonder "do I want to live here anymore? Are the super-white, super-moneyed, super-entitled suburbanites moving into these once rundown flats capable of participating in a real neighborhood? NO they are not. Bohemia and all its glorys have been wiped clean from Boston Proper. I bailed out and moved to Dorchester where many of my old South End friends now live. I like it here, it's very neighborly after breaking through the ice. Many of these 100 year old 3-deckers are owned by old woman and men who can no longer maintain them, hence the rundown chain-link look. But these buildings are here to stay. They sit on granite foundations with massive cental wooden beams holding up real 2 x 4's that are difficult to drive a screw through. And best of all the unconventional, original, different people are here. Dorchester is becoming Boston's new Bohemia. All I was originally trying to say is that this neighborhood is a good investment, just like the South End of the 1980's. All you need to do is lose the 3-decker stigma.
