What I hate about Boston

About Boston in general, there seems to be a lack of vision for big things or major improvements. We'll never be NYC (thankfully) and I wouldn't want to be like Atlanta, but we could do more to have boosters for this place. We could be more like Chicago or San Francisco, at least in attitude and in a willingness to reinvigorate city life.
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The problem is that the boosters love this place so much that any change is seen as an apostacy. There is no culture urging civic improvement, only pride in what's been long entrenched.

The only time there has ever been a groundswell for the new was when people enthusiastically embraced the idea of a new Fenway - just so that their asses would be more comfortable while enjoying another century-long tradition.
 
Lrfox said:
I'm going to agree and disagree with that one. I LOVE the way people drive around here... In fact, whenever I'm anywhere else, I miss it. Florida is bad, but try Maine nearby; I've been going to school up here for 4 years and two of the most frustrating things are how slow people drive and how oblivious to other drivers they are. I feel like in order to drive in Boston (or Massachusetts in general) you have to be on your toes and alert and I love that...

I have to say the pedestrians here drive me nuts. I noticed this last month while driving in New York: I was on Canal Street and I needed to take a left on West Broadway (I was making my way over to the Holland Tunnel) and I took the left, but there were probably 30 pedestrians in the crosswalk... but instead of blocking me in the middle of oncoming traffic on canal street, It was like Moses parting the Red Sea and they let me go. I was shocked. Not in Boston... oh no... I would have been the main cog in a mess of gridlock because pedestrians would continue to walk across and I'd have to do that crawl slowly through the sea of people move you have to do here (although it's tough with a standard). Pedestrians here generally suck, the drivers do not.
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I find the opposite is true about drivers here. I think they are either utterly clueless and dismissive of other drivers' presence or ruthlessly mean-spirited about road courtesy. Case in point: people here DO NOT know how to take left hand turns. Rather than shimmying slightly to the left of their own traffic lane so that straight-traveling traffic can get around them as they wait for an opening in oncoming traffic, drivers here either sit square in the middle of their traffic lane or -- worse -- actually move a little to the right to do a big swing left turn. People here seem to not give a flying f_ck about anyone else's wish to get around them. I have never encountered this in the NYC area. People there understand car and pedestrian traffic efficiency (and escalator etiquette) so much more.

Which brings me to point #2 -- you are right about the Canal St. story. Pedestrians in NYC understand that you can pause for two seconds to let a car out of an intersection and it makes life better for everyone. Here it seems pedestrians take personal glee at cutting off cars. Believe me, I am a lifelong jaywalker and would never stand at a crosswalk when there's no traffic to stop me from crossing, but there's also such a thing as courtesy. There's no reason I can't pause at a crosswalk so that the car can clear the intersection on a yellow. Deliberately blocking the path of a car is self centered and rude.

It's almost like the attitude here is that no one gets ahead without first sticking it to someone else.
 
Describing Somerville as "most densely populated" has a point -- that the place has very little parkland and green space compared to its neighbors, Cambridge, Arlington, and Medford. It's a result of residential real estate developers having too much political influence during the city's period of greatest growth (circa 1870-1930).

It's something that people who live here constantly notice, and would like to change. Not only do we have very little parkland, but most of the parks are quite small and almost none of them are 'passive' parks (i.e. just green space to enjoy, not occupied by baseball or soccer or basketball or the like).
 
I understand the motivation for Somerville residents, or the city government to make the claim. And I also understand why the same people emphasize that the city only has one subway station when looking for improved transit access. But both statistics are misleading and have very little meaning at the community level. There are sections of Dorchester, Chelsea, Everett, Southie, Charlestown, etc that face similar challenges, but I sometimes think Somerville residents feel like they have been particularly or uniquely slighted due to how the boundaries were drawn.

If Somerville included present-day Arlington, it wouldn't make the recreational or transportation needs of current Somerville residents any less important (although municipal density would decrease). Nor would those needs change if the city lost its "most dense" title due to the North End seceding from Boston and becoming its own municipality.
 
My impression is that most other similarly populated areas have many more pocket- or block-sized parks intermixed through them. If you walk from Somerville into adjoining North Cambridge the difference is easily noticeable.
 
aquaman,
I agree with you. Actually, I didn't mention this in my post, but i think New York drivers are the best in the country. The pedestrians there are equally as smart.

My observation about people being aware of other drivers here was not elaborated on properly i don't think. I meant that people here are aware of other drivers in the sense that they know where someone coming the other way is before they cut them off to make their left, or that they know there is someone behind them before they brake check them. Mass. drivers may not be courteous, they may be self serving and rude, but they certainly are aware (generally speaking) of the people around them that they are going cut off rudely.

The thing I love about driving here, is that it's fast paced. Which is in contrast to places like Florida, and my example of Maine. After living here for 4 years, I have had more people pull out right in front of me without even looking, then act surprised when I honk; or people who sit in the left lane of the 65mph highway going 55 without so much as glancing in the rearview mirror. I guess it's the pace of driving in MA that I like, not so much the method in which the drivers aggressively move. New York has the best drivers and Pedestrians, no question. But for New England (and anywhere outside NYC and maybe L.A.), the speed and pace of Massachusetts drivers is great in my opinion.
 
Ron Newman said:
My impression is that most other similarly populated areas have many more pocket- or block-sized parks intermixed through them. If you walk from Somerville into adjoining North Cambridge the difference is easily noticeable.
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You may be right about this, but you also prove my point with your comment. Why should we think any differently about a neighborhood in Dorchester that doesn't have good parks but is adjacent to another Dorchester neighborhood that does, than we do about a neighborhood in Somerville that doesn't have good parks but is adjacent to a Cambridge neighborhood that does? It sounds to me like both neighborhoods have the same access to good parks.
 
The point is that the parts of Somerville that aren't next to Cambridge have very little parkland, so these people have to take buses or drive to see any significant amount of green space. My impression of most Boston neighborhoods is that (like North Cambridge) they are well speckled with small parks.
 
Suffolk 83 said:
I hate morons that sit at crosswalks with no cars coming like they need that little white walk sign to light up.
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Amen!

I want to ask each and every person that does that, "do you not know how to think and look for yourself??" I mean sheesh!
 
I dislike that people come here for a few years, get an education or make their fortune and never have a nice thing to say about anyone or anything.
I ask you, how many of these students or business people ever get outside the Boston Magazine ghettos and actually meet people unlike their privileged selves? Common people... good people, hard working people who have rebuilt this city from ashes time and time again. These would include my Father, my Grandfather, my Great Grandfather...etc.
Not the warmest and fuzziest people but among the kindest most authentic.
 
Scott said:
I dislike that people come here for a few years, get an education or make their fortune and never have a nice thing to say about anyone or anything.
I ask you, how many of these students or business people ever get outside the Boston Magazine ghettos and actually meet people unlike their privileged selves? Common people... good people, hard working people who have rebuilt this city from ashes time and time again. These would include my Father, my Grandfather, my Great Grandfather...etc.
Not the warmest and fuzziest people but among the kindest most authentic.
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Bud Fox: That's because you never had the GUTS to go out into the world and stake your own claim! ...
 
One of my pet peeves came up on the Fox 25 Morning News show today. They were discusing tolls on I-93, and someone said that it would just be another thing to drive people out of Massachusetts. Why do people always use this as a point of argument, and even more so, why do people let people use this as a point of argument? It's absolutley untrue, but people say it all the time, and it drives me crazy! Under any measurement (city growth, metropolitan growth, statewide growth, and regional growth) our population has risen in the last 10 years, not dropped. All you need to do to figure this out is spend 5 minutes of Wikipedia. Sure, our population hasn't risen as rapidly as many other places, but if you mean that, then say that!
 
The expanding number of worthless free publications: Improper Bostonian, Stuff@Night, Barstool Sports, Metro, and BostonNOW.
 
^ Yep. I find it cute how BostonNOW loads its paper full of random blog postings. Soooo with the times.
 
underground said:
One of my pet peeves came up on the Fox 25 Morning News show today. They were discusing tolls on I-93, and someone said that it would just be another thing to drive people out of Massachusetts. Why do people always use this as a point of argument, and even more so, why do people let people use this as a point of argument? It's absolutley untrue, but people say it all the time, and it drives me crazy! Under any measurement (city growth, metropolitan growth, statewide growth, and regional growth) our population has risen in the last 10 years, not dropped. All you need to do to figure this out is spend 5 minutes of Wikipedia. Sure, our population hasn't risen as rapidly as many other places, but if you mean that, then say that!
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And many of those places that are "growing faster" are growing in all the wrong ways... I'll take a slow rate of growth over Las Vegas suburban sprawl any day. Why people assume that this area should grow like Phoenix, I will never understand.
 
The Boston Globe Sunday magazine recently suggested Shanghai as a model for growth.
 
bosdevelopment said:
Bud Fox: That's because you never had the GUTS to go out into the world and stake your own claim! ...
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LOL!

"I don't go to sleep with no whore, and I don't wake up with no whore -- that's how I live with myself. I don't know how you do it."
 
The Boston Globe Sunday magazine recently suggested Shanghai as a model for growth.
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The NIMBYs must have loved that.

Yeah, I'm sure they'll be bulldozing the obsolescent Beacon Hill hutongs any day now.

Oh wait, isn't Shanghai employing Boston's model of growth, circa 1950?
 
aquaman said:
About Boston in general, there seems to be a lack of vision for big things or major improvements.
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I'm not sure I agree. Boston has a history of big visionary projects, good and bad. Think how Back Bay was created. Think about the massive cleanup of Boston Harbor. Think about the Big Dig. Good or bad, it is a visionary project. I'm not sure if any city will be able to do a "Big Dig" anymore both politically and financially.

What is frustrating is the bureaucracy and the slow move of developments.
 
I hate how college kids come here, stick to their campus, Back Bay, Fanuel hall, Allston/Brighton, and Harvard Sq. and act like they have seen all of
Boston. Especially assuming that Boston dosn't have real neighborhoods, and real streets. That Boston is fully of pussies. Try walking through Roxbury, or parts of Dorchester, Southie, East Boston, East Cambridge, Charlsetown, shit go to Malden. It's got it's real side too. Boston, demographically and sociol economiclly, is pretty close to NY, just on a minuture scale. Boston actaully has a far higher murder rate than NY (and homicides are terrible). But my point is NY is allways viewed as that tough crazy place where only the strong survive (and I do admit after going through all the burroughs that NY is crazier) and Boston is this preppy town with only colleges. NY is hip hop and were just white boys listening to Irish folk music or Dave Mathews Band (I do like DMB) and its more like were (demographically) pretty much the same just on a smaller scale.
 
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