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As a kid I remember talk about how racist Boston was after a case in the 80's where a white couple were shot. The wife and their unborn child sadly didn't survive. The husband claimed a black man did it when in fact it was he who did it and later committed suicide. A lot of black men were needlessly harassed. I know several people who are minorities (black and hispanic) that say Boston is no worse than any other large city and that they haven't had any problems. I'll be heading up there for a meet and greet next year so I'll find out for myself what the city is like.
“Bartender. I’ll have a Chuck Stewart. Two shots and a splash.”
He killed his pregnant wife in the car on Mission Hill and winged himself, called ‘911’ from the car, blamed some black assailant, and later jumped to his death off the Tobin Bridge.
My take- Bostonian people are LOUD. Including people with less-than-palatable world views.
I knew a "Mass H*le" who was nice to me but in other interactions in his lifetime, he earned a lot of hatred.
Point blank when there's a racist around, better you know sooner than later.
Soaring housing costs have largely pushed the white working class people out of town. It’s not Good Will Hunting. They all moved to the Trump towns well outside Boston where they could afford the housing. There is a fleet of pickup trucks driving into the city at 6am for all the hard hat jobs.
Soaring housing costs have largely pushed the white working class people out of town. It’s not Good Will Hunting. They all moved to the Trump towns well outside Boston where they could afford the housing. There is a fleet of pickup trucks driving into the city at 6am for all the hard hat jobs.
Weymouth, Randolph, Braintree, Holbrook, Stoughton, Rockland, Abington, Easton and Quincy are loaded with blue collar workers. Those are either just outside Boston, or functional extensions of the city... maybe not to Native MA people, but they really and truly are. Just because they aren't working in tech or STEM making 6 figures by clicking buttons, doesn't mean they don't make money.
I am a white collar worker and a kid I went to Middle School with lives in Holbrook now and makes $220,000 a year in construction. At 26. Hell, even MNBTA Rail Workers have a higher starting salary than Keyboard Clickers (Like Myself). I think they generally gravitate to suburbs for space over your traditional urbanist. They want land. Yards. They may like trucks more than someone living in the South End...
Really strikes me how in depressed areas/cities the things people consider "great" or "fantastic" seem very mediocre and average.
Like....Downtown Detroit was very average, and the Riverwalk was thoroughly mediocre- yet the people are so excited about it and have a glimmer in their eyes. It really makes you wonder what it was like"15 years ago" if this is the cats meow...... Their average neighborhood was just depressing. But the whole place is so struggling you can see how Downtown and Corktown may be a little "revitalized" only because so much of the decay is still glaringly obvious. All the folks I work with from Boston were like ????
It was a huge adjustment going from Chicago to Detroit. Everything changed on a 55-minute flght.
Yeah, it's tough. I was in Detroit many times growing up, and I've seen the changes. It was the worst city I've ever seen, hands down. It was the only place I'd ever been, outside of Gary, that made me truly paranoid to be there. Some people would say that about the South Side of Chicago growing up..... and I'd be like, "no, no, no... Go to Detroit." For the most part, the South Side doesn't feel that intimidating, certainly not like Detroit did.
It's a step above that now, at least...
On one hand, you want to help lift up a city like Detroit when people talk about how much better it's become and how much it's changed. I have no desire to be the guy from Chicago kicking Detroit while it's down. But the reality is, it's a few square blocks of activity surrounded by vast, vast areas of blight.
Like, I wouldn't hesitate for a single second to say that Grand Rapids is the premier city (not metro, but city) in Michigan. So, people putting Detroit in the same conversation as other large cities in the US is pretty wild. Again, I appreciate that it's core has cleaned up a bit, and it draws some people from the suburbs. But, the changes are very modest, relative to nearly any other major city.
They all moved to the Trump towns well outside Boston where they could afford the housing. There is a fleet of pickup trucks driving into the city at 6am for all the hard hat jobs.
“Bartender. I’ll have a Chuck Stewart. Two shots and a splash.”
He killed his pregnant wife in the car on Mission Hill and winged himself, called ‘911’ from the car, blamed some black assailant, and later jumped to his death off the Tobin Bridge.
He actually was shot through the lung by either himself or his brother. He almost died.
This is FAR from a Boston only thing. I'd argue Boston doesn't even have it that bad outside the African American community. You should hear what people (especially white people in places like Portland or the Bay Area) say to me when I mention I live in Houston. They don't know much about Houston but they know its in Texas and that it isn't Austin. All kinds of things like "its just white conservatives there", "why do you hate black people?", "why don't you guys just leave?", etc. They don't know the first thing about Houston, but they already have in their minds exactly what it is.
Here is my point: people LOVE to make generalizations about places they've never been or places have been but don't explore. It just is that way. People like to feel like experts because they watch MSNBC or Fox or some other online news source which like to $hit on places that don't share their politics. Our politicians love to keep us divided because were easier to control that way so they also demonize places that don't share their politics. People are already tribal in nature and this intensifies out tribal instincts. As a result, we get an environment where half the country doesn't want anything to do with the other half and that includes the places they live.
It all boils down to the human ego IMO. If you have told yourself a place sucks or is racist or whatever, you don't want to be proven wrong because it damages your ego. So the instinct is to protect the ego and only engage in opinions that mirror yours. That is what the 24 hour news cycle and our politicians have figured out. They have learned how to profit by pandering to our egos. That is why when we want news, we don't look for objective news, we look for the news that will be spun in ways that reinforce what we already think thus gratifying the ego.
When it comes to cities, its the same deal. Most people love to feel that where they live is superior to somewhere else. I laugh because Texas and Florida are perfect examples. My more liberal Texan friends love to say "well at least were not as messed up as Florida" and my liberal Floridian friends love to say "well at least were not as crazy as Texas". I've heard similar dynamics with California and the East Coast. So when we talk about stereotypes of a city, there is a subset of people who love to have strong opinions about places they've never been and those minds will never change.
That's so on point about coastal elitism. I grew up between the St. Louis and Tampa area. I remember when I would go to California or New York, people would would say "Wow you're from Missouri? How do you deal with the racism out there?". I was thinking, I'm sure the average black person in Metro St. Louis is way more comfortable than the Bay Area. I grew up seeing black suburbs, where people had big houses, big yards, BBQ every weekend, finished basements, new cars, etc. Yes, St. Louis does have a large ghetto area, but most cities with large, historically, Black communities have that part of town unfortunately, but the average black St. Louisan definitely lives a typical suburban lifestyle these days. When I go home to St. Louis, it is not very hard to find large concentrations of middle class black people. I'd imagine that Texas, being an even more successful state right now, has a very large black middle class. My ex-wife was from the East Coast and I remember her being really surprised when we went to a Red Lobster in suburban St. Louis where literally all of the customers and employees were black. It was a major culture shock.
LOL. I don’t think about Buffalo much either; I’ve never even been aside from passing through a bare handful of times transiting to elsewhere. I’m hardly a homer for this area, and I doubt I’ll ever be the guy you’d want to call on to defend it. It’s kinda dreadful in a lot of ways, I’m just grateful it has a fair handful of OK things (I’m really just here for family stuff). At least Buffalo has wings that you can order basically anywhere, so the name at least is in the public consciousness a bit?
Boston baked beans? Boston creme pie? Dunkin Donuts? New England Patriots? Red Sox? JFK? The Boston Tea Party??
This is FAR from a Boston only thing. I'd argue Boston doesn't even have it that bad outside the African American community. You should hear what people (especially white people in places like Portland or the Bay Area) say to me when I mention I live in Houston. They don't know much about Houston but they know its in Texas and that it isn't Austin. All kinds of things like "its just white conservatives there", "why do you hate black people?", "why don't you guys just leave?", etc. They don't know the first thing about Houston, but they already have in their minds exactly what it is.
Here is my point: people LOVE to make generalizations about places they've never been or places have been but don't explore. It just is that way. People like to feel like experts because they watch MSNBC or Fox or some other online news source which like to $hit on places that don't share their politics. Our politicians love to keep us divided because were easier to control that way so they also demonize places that don't share their politics. People are already tribal in nature and this intensifies out tribal instincts. As a result, we get an environment where half the country doesn't want anything to do with the other half and that includes the places they live.
It all boils down to the human ego IMO. If you have told yourself a place sucks or is racist or whatever, you don't want to be proven wrong because it damages your ego. So the instinct is to protect the ego and only engage in opinions that mirror yours. That is what the 24 hour news cycle and our politicians have figured out. They have learned how to profit by pandering to our egos. That is why when we want news, we don't look for objective news, we look for the news that will be spun in ways that reinforce what we already think thus gratifying the ego.
When it comes to cities, its the same deal. Most people love to feel that where they live is superior to somewhere else. I laugh because Texas and Florida are perfect examples. My more liberal Texan friends love to say "well at least were not as messed up as Florida" and my liberal Floridian friends love to say "well at least were not as crazy as Texas". I've heard similar dynamics with California and the East Coast. So when we talk about stereotypes of a city, there is a subset of people who love to have strong opinions about places they've never been and those minds will never change.
True. Honestly, as someone who grew up on the east coast, all I knew about Texas is the stereotypes - everyone walks around in cowboy boots, not very progressive or educated, a place where people have extreme bias, etc. Then I visited Dallas for work and I realized most of the people I encountered were nice. People actually said hello and waved, they actually hold the door for you when they see you coming, etc. Would I ever live in Texas? NO but what you realize is that stereotypes aren't based on anything real or anything tangible and they very rarely encompass a full holistic experience.
I haven't been to Boston in years but I've heard the stories or even read things online that's gone viral... I mean, no specific area has ownership of intolerance or racism. I do think some areas or places are worse than others however that's another conversation but ultimately people are going to be people, no matter where you live.
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