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View Poll Results: Does the Worcester area feel Boston oriented?
Yes 14 31.82%
No 30 68.18%
Voters: 44. You may not vote on this poll

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Old 12-06-2014, 05:51 PM
 
Location: North Quabbin, MA
1,025 posts, read 1,516,680 times
Reputation: 2675

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Other known "Entering Pioneer Valley" signs:

Route 9 westbound when entering Ware.
Route 2 westbound just after entering Orange.
Route 2A by the Athol/Orange line.
Route 2 eastbound entering Charlemont.

There are probably others. Route 20 in Brimfield and Blandford maybe? Route 9 in Cummington? They're often on the edges up in the hill country, near Connecticut River tributaries like the Millers, Deerfield, Ware, or Westfield Rivers. Not down in Hadley or Agawam, where you're squarely on the Connecticut River.

"Pioneer Valley" is an invented tourism bureau term for Franklin, Hampshire, and Hampden counties. A naming contest was held, and it beat out "King Philip's Realm" in the 1920s or something. While you enter the "Pioneer Valley" in these locations, you don't reach the "Happy Valley" until you reach the Connecticut River and are north of the Holyoke Range ("Tofu Curtain"), as others said in Hampshire and Franklin Counties, when suddenly you're surrounded by delusionally idealistic and adorable white people with dietary restrictions, healing crystal collections, and yoga teaching certificates or massage therapy degrees, and a moderate-high likelihood of trust funds, in places like Northampton, Amherst, Greenfield, Shelburne Falls, Montague, and Wendell. The Springfield area is the "Pioneer Valley" too, but not the "Happy Valley", because it is populated with pragmatic bluecollar folks and low-income and racially diverse folks instead of vegans with PhDs, and has some dire urban problems.

Brattleboro VT is the northern outpost of the "Happy Valley" but is not in the "Pioneer Valley" because it's not within those three Massachusetts counties.

Last edited by FCMA; 12-06-2014 at 06:05 PM..
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Old 12-06-2014, 06:50 PM
Status: "On my way to sunny South Carolina" (set 1 day ago)
 
Location: Massachusetts & Hilton Head, SC
9,915 posts, read 15,482,556 times
Reputation: 8525
Nothing to do with Worcester, but that has to be the post of the day on the forum!
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Old 12-06-2014, 07:23 PM
 
Location: near bears but at least no snakes
26,637 posts, read 28,446,887 times
Reputation: 50443
Quote:
Originally Posted by CaseyB View Post
Nothing to do with Worcester, but that has to be the post of the day on the forum!
That post is priceless. Nobody needs to read a book about it, this poster is spot on. Maybe needs to WRITE the book on it.
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Old 12-06-2014, 09:45 PM
 
39 posts, read 129,525 times
Reputation: 24
I think people living in towns east of Worcester are still Boston oriented. I've lived in a few and Boston is an easy trip from the Worcester area. Worcester is a great place and we love the restaurants & the culture, etc. It seems more "let's stay local" while Boston is "let's go out."
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Old 12-07-2014, 10:47 AM
 
419 posts, read 1,232,086 times
Reputation: 741
Quote:
Originally Posted by NettaJane View Post
I think people living in towns east of Worcester are still Boston oriented. I've lived in a few and Boston is an easy trip from the Worcester area. Worcester is a great place and we love the restaurants & the culture, etc. It seems more "let's stay local" while Boston is "let's go out."
Boston is an easy trip from Worcester?

No way! There are days when you are at a complete crawl from 495 all the way in to town.

Worcester has no Boston vibe to it at all. Shrewsbury st in the summer months is about as close as you will get and even there feels more like Brighton than Boston and don't blink because it's over before it even starts.

Worcester definitely has some great things about it, (unless you work in Boston) but having a Boston vibe isn't one of them.

Saint Vincent's Hospital in Worcester is a great facility and one of the best hospitals around. The best part about Saint Vincent's is it feels nothing at all like MGH. You are able to make the same comparison throughout the entire Worcester area.
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Old 12-07-2014, 10:38 PM
 
Location: Mid-Michigan by way of Northern New Hampshire
239 posts, read 348,544 times
Reputation: 322
I drove west on the Mass Pike out of Boston towards Worcester a couple of weeks ago. It literally took me 2 hours to get there.

If anyone makes that commute then I salute them because they are more patient than me.
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Old 12-08-2014, 05:33 PM
 
Location: Baltimore, MD
173 posts, read 197,106 times
Reputation: 203
I mentioned this in another post, but I think improving the speed of the Worcester mbta commuter rail similar to the Boston-Providence line (90 plus minutes for Worcester vs 70 minutes for Providence) would make a Worcester to Boston commute more reasonable, assuming the stations are reasonably close to one's home and work. Currently, the commuter rail times don't seem feasible for such a commute.
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Old 12-09-2014, 08:14 PM
 
8,811 posts, read 6,137,816 times
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I have followed the OP on a couple of his threads in the CT forum and knowing that he is somewhat fond of the Hartford area while despising Fairfield County, I wanted to suggest the Worcester area but I held my tongue because he ruled out Massachusetts on a few occasions. I am happy for him that he came to the realization that not all of Massachusetts is Boston-centric in the way that Fairfield County CT is geared towards New York City.

I am going to join the majority of posters in saying that the Worcester area is culturally distinct from the Boston area. In fact I would like to go further and express the view that there are very few communities in Massachusetts, even eastern Massachusetts that contain the social paradigms found on the CT forum, that I can only describe as FFC-ism. I would say that most Massachusetts communities, even those bordering Boston have unique cultural identities and are not just bland suburbs of Boston.

When I lived in Lowell (30 miles from Boston) I always felt like at least half of my fellow citizens were engrossed in their own local endeavors and did not display any Boston orientation on a day-to-day basis. Now I live only 40 miles from Boston and excluding the media, Boston barely enters my consciousness. I believe that people can live anywhere outside the I-95/Route 128 loop with minimal orientation towards Boston unless you end up working in the city.

So OP I sincerely think you can embrace the Worcester area and not deal with the social aspects that make Fairfield County CT so annoying provided that you can find work in the local Worcester area.
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Old 12-15-2014, 11:22 PM
 
2,621 posts, read 3,388,410 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by missionhill View Post
Haha. No, Springfield and the whole Conn River valley identify as Western Mass. Worcester and basically all of Worcester County is central. What in_newengland tells people is that the Berkshires are not Western Mass but something else. I don't know about that but definitely the Springfield to Greenfield stretch identifies as Western Mass.

I think of the Connecticut Valley (Springfield, Northampton, Amherst, Holyoke, et al) as "Western Mass." and of the Berkshires region as "Far Western Mass.". In other words, the Connecticut Valley is part of "the western half of Mass." . . . if you cut Massachusetts down the middle into two halves (the Eastern half and the Western half).
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Old 12-15-2014, 11:33 PM
 
2,621 posts, read 3,388,410 times
Reputation: 3197
Quote:
Originally Posted by missionhill View Post
Yes but I can just as accurately call it the Connecticut River Valley. Also heard "happy valley" but that's only Hampshire and Franklin.

In the 1980s, they had a song about young females from these areas by Frank Zappa. I think it was called "Valley Girl".

Oops, wrong valley! Sorry about that!

Last edited by UsAll; 12-15-2014 at 11:58 PM..
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