First trip back to Mass in almost three years... (Boston: apartment, city hall)

[MrDee12345]

I'm back in Mass for my first time in three years and I thought I'd share some of my observations during my first week home:

1. Immigration in Logan was fast and even kind of friendly. The guy who took care of my daughter and me was very nice and he even joked around a bit with us. My wife had to go into the other line because she's not a US citizen or visa holder, and she said they were pretty nice to her as well.

2. Got picked up from Logan and the first thing I noticed when we got on 93N was how bad the highway was. I just came in from Kuala Lumpur and I don't know any roads there that are as bad 93 N near Boston.

That being said, as we got closer to 95, the road smoothed out a bit.

3. Route 3A in Billerica, Burlington and Lowell is in pretty bad shape.

4. A lot of sidewalks in Lowell have weeds coming out of them. Not a great look.

5. People in the suburbs in Mass and NH have actually quite friendly. Been out many times where people have struck up conversations with us - that rarely happens back in Kuala Lumpur. Admittedly, during my trip to Boston, people were less likely to engage with me. They weren't necessarily unfriendly, just not interested in making small talk.

6. Went to Salisbury, MA and Hampton, NH - Salisbury is starting to come along nicely, but the roads suck there, too. The moment we crossed into NH, the roads got smoother.

7.I still love Greek pizza - Giovanni's in Billerica has the best pizza in the area.

8. Just spent the day in Boston - WOW! The city looked beautiful, clean and vibrant. I spent a Wednesday during work hours in the city and from morning til night, I saw people all over. There were tourists going to the Harbor Islands and Quincy Market, Office workers in the Financial district and a good mix of people in Back Bay. It was great to see.

9. Businesses in Boston were booming, but I couldn't help to notice the gaps in certain areas. Saw some missing bars on Boylston and in Quincy Market and Downtown Crossing still can't seem to fill in some of their retail space.

10. Masks - We still have a mask mandate back in Malaysia so it's been refreshing to be able to go to businesses and not have worry about wearing one. In the businesses I've been to in Billerica and Nashua, few people wear masks.

When I took the commuter rail to Boston, it was kind of mixed. Few mask wearers got on in Billerica and Wilmington, but it seemed like there were more masks on people coming from Woburn, Winchester and W. Medford.

Also, I never saw more than 20 or 30% of riders on the T wearing masks at any given time. Around Boston, masks were pretty scarce.

11. Hub Hall is an amazing addition to the city. I love that they have a Mike's Pastry, still my favorite bakery.

12. Bought legal weed for my first time in Massachusetts. After having an edible, I'm reminded as to why I don't like weed. At least I did it once and I probably won't do it again.

13. On my trip in Boston, I rode all four T lines and one bus (1). New orange line cars are awesome, but the old ones are decrepit. The Green line is the same and the Blue line is always a pleasure. I got stuck in a delay on the Red Line. Ugh.

14. I can't emphasize it enough just how beautiful Boston looks these days. And the places that aren't pretty, they seem to be under construction to make them look nicer (city hall).

15. I love the outdoor seating everywhere. They had better keep this up!

16. Central Square seems to have more businesses and it seems more vibrant. It also seemed to have more homeless.

17. Harvard Square wasn't nearly as dead as some on this board would have you think. There were plenty of open businesses and people walking around everywhere.

18. It seems like cities and towns in E Mass have gotten serious about bike infrastructure. That's fantastic!

I think that that is it for now. I'll post some more as I think of them.

[Remy11]

#6 is spot on. I live one town over from Salisbury and the roads up this way are miserable. They desperately need to be paved and the plowing is a joke in the winter. I’d love to know where my tax dollars are going because they’re certainly not going to paving or plowing.

Salisbury has definitely come a very long way and there are more plans in place to add a welcome center and some condos and retail spaces downtown and by the beach.

[htfdcolt]

Originally Posted by MrDee12345

I'm back in Mass for my first time in three years and I thought I'd share some of my observations during my first week home:

1. Immigration in Logan was fast and even kind of friendly. The guy who took care of my daughter and me was very nice and he even joked around a bit with us. My wife had to go into the other line because she's not a US citizen or visa holder, and she said they were pretty nice to her as well.

2. Got picked up from Logan and the first thing I noticed when we got on 93N was how bad the highway was. I just came in from Kuala Lumpur and I don't know any roads there that are as bad 93 N near Boston.

That being said, as we got closer to 95, the road smoothed out a bit.

3. Route 3A in Billerica, Burlington and Lowell is in pretty bad shape.

.

Yes, especially given our affluence, our roads absolutely suck. Starting with the roads in/out of Logan and through the Sumner, which is our "front door" (how embarrassing). And improvement projects, few & far between, seem to take a lot longer than what I know from the Midwest.

[masssachoicetts]

I think I started a thread on this, not too long ago.

My initial reaction coming from NJ to MA, and back in MA after a while and really taking a look at the surrounding towns and infrastructure, and being appalled at how terrible the roads were.

For as wealthy as MA is, it is very run down. I keep saying this, but living in both Central CT and Northern NJ we don't deal with that at all. This is a MA thing....

But Boston looks light years better than it did just five years ago. It is such a dynamic, vibrant, clean and posh city. Literally can't get a better aesthetic than Boston these days.

[charolastra00]

If you can get into Boston without your train catching on fire.

It truly is amazing how far Boston has come. I remember my first time in the city when I came here for college in 2006. I called my dad for directions of how to get from the Common to Chinatown and, beyond being absolutely delighted to get to fire up MapQuest from home, his biggest thing was to avoid the Combat Zone. It's hard to imagine the Combat Zone now!

I start my new job in the Seaport next week, and have done a few dry runs to get there (happily didn't take more than an hour and 15 minutes from Marlborough - and one run leaving at 7 am only took 45 minutes!). It's still unbelievable to me what the Seaport is like now compared to just a few years ago. When I tell my family, whose experience in the Seaport has largely been trips to Harpoon or graduations at the everchanging bank Pavilion, they still think it's a bombed out zone of parking lots and are incredulous when I tell them I would have to more than double my already expensive rent to move there. My work covers parking, but my monthly parking costs almost as much as what it cost to rent a bedroom in my last apartment in Medford a few years ago. I took a video driving down Seaport Blvd and sent it to some family who could not *believe* that's what the Seaport looks like today.

Downtown Crossing is the big question mark for me. It's had a hard time keeping businesses and is one of the grittier areas of downtown Boston, but it's not clear to me why.

[lrfox]

Thanks for this - as someone who lives here, I don't get the snapshot perspectives and I really appreciate it. That said, the roads seem worse than usual, even to me. They're just brutal. It's got to be especially jarring (literally) for visitors from outside of the area.

I don't know if it's just that the isolation from COVID changed things, but I feel like I've noticed that people around here (city and suburbs) are a bit friendlier and a little less standoffish. I've definitely run into situations where more random people are saying "hi" or striking up conversations than I remember in years past.

And yeah, Boston does look really nice and it only seems to be improving. Sometimes I think we've got a little blight in places here and then I visit other places and realize that we just don't have it on nearly the same level as most other American cities. Some ugly architecture? Absolutely. I don't love the old triple deckers. But I'd take those (even the ones that need some work) over blocks of blighted brownstones, neighborhoods of one-story ranches with bars on the windows, or the worst - urban prairie.

[bricka]

are people still wearing masks? i haven't seen one in public in while

[htfdcolt]

Originally Posted by bricka

are people still wearing masks? i haven't seen one in public in while

You obviously haven't run into me then. I still wear one indoors in public places.

[charolastra00]

Originally Posted by bricka

are people still wearing masks? i haven't seen one in public in while

Where are you based? It's about 25%, myself included, here in metrowest, and trending upward.

The lack of masks is a big reason why I'm driving to work rather than taking the commuter rail.

[bricka]

Originally Posted by charolastra00

Where are you based? It's about 25%, myself included, here in metrowest, and trending upward.

The lack of masks is a big reason why I'm driving to work rather than taking the commuter rail.

about 30 min drive northwest of downtown.

you say it's trending upward?

what is the purpose of the masks at this point genuinely curious