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Originally Posted by Parsec
I grew up in NJ and went into NYC 3-4 weekends per month. Not sure why you would move to MA just to be able to save a few bucks getting into Boston vs. getting into NYC. You might save $5 on parking in Boston and $10 on tolls, so it's not a big deal. You drive, park then walk - it's the same whether you're going into Boston or NYC, although driving to NYC can take considerably longer if you are in Central NJ. Bottom line is, if you think it's a hassle to get into NYC then I don't think your mindset will change once you move to a Boston suburb. As for the other reasons, I definitely agree with you on those points. The Cape is definitely better for families and LBI is great for partying. The air is also much cleaner here, but I'm not sure about the water. Many of our lakes and ponds are polluted (catch and release fishing only), but those should be easy to avoid if you look it up on Mass DCR's website.
You'll be able to strike up conversations with locals in both Newburyport and Natick, but I think you will enjoy the larger downtown area in Newburyport. Definitely avoid Harvard - it's beautiful and all, but it doesn't have the active/walkable town center that you're looking for. Nearby Ayer and Maynard do, but I suspect you'd want to avoid those towns due to their subpar school systems.
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This sums up my feelings pretty well. I grew up in Ipswich and Newburyport and lived in Metro Boston for 25 years.
Even though it might not be "that bad" compared to New York, you will still deal with traffic, crowds and high parking prices going into Boston on the weekends. My family lived in Arlington (only a few miles from Boston) but it was still a major production to go into Boston to the Museum of Science or the Aquarium with the kids. The museums are crowded on weekends, the parking is ridiculously expensive and the public transit system is so awful these days that I would rarely consider using it with little kids for any longer trip than taking a single bus from our house to Harvard Square in Cambridge. Driving and paying to park would usually be less of a hassle.
One thing I've heard over the last 10-20 years, which I think is pretty accurate, is that in the Boston area, the cost of living isn't significantly cheaper than NYC, but the salaries are lower, so keep that in mind. It may not be as crazy-expensive as New York but it's still expensive. Can't emphasize that enough.
As for the Cape, it may be nicer than the Jersey Shore (it's certainly less commercial and built-up than a lot of "resort" seashores in the northeast) but to me, the traffic is an absolute deal-breaker. There are only two bridges onto the Cape, and only one small highway that runs the length of it.
If you really love the beach, consider living on the Cape, or on a beach town on the North Shore. The water is a lot warmer on the Cape (the North Shore doesn't get the Gulf Stream). Ipswich has the gorgeous white-sand Crane's Beach, and town residents get to use a separate parking lot, so it's a lot more usable if you live in town. Ipswich also has a nice, small, walkable town center.
Newburyport is a great little city, with, again, a small, walkable downtown (which is right on the Merrimack River). There are beaches on Plum Island but no town-only parking lots like Crane's (that I recall). There's a wildlife sanctuary on one end of the island that's a really nice place to go to the beach but it fills up early on weekends and they close the gate. The rest of the beaches are OK, but they get crowded and you usually have to pay to park unless you know someone with a house on the island. Note that Plum Island also has a really strong riptide and the ground slants off very sharply below the waterline.
Some other random thoughts:
* Don't kid yourself that Boston has anything like the level of culture that New York has. The theater scene is virtually non-existent. There are good museums in Boston but very few compared to NYC and they're smaller. The local live music scene is the pits, and has been since the late 90s. For touring acts, you don't get that much beyond the mid-to-big acts who would hit any decent-sized city. The jazz scene is microscopic.
* I grew up on the North Shore, as I mentioned, so I'm partial to that area. Gloucester and Salem are two small cities on the North Shore with good-sized downtowns, but that part of Mass (Cape Ann and environs) is very far from everything else by car, even though it's not physically that far. Driving in and out on Rt. 128 and 114 gets tedious. You didn't mention those places specifically but I thought I'd throw it out anyway. Right on the coast is where you're most likely to find walkable downtowns, because those towns and cities have been heavily settled since the 17th or 18th century.
* The places west of the city, I think, not so much. I'm sure Natick, Littleton, et al, *have* downtowns, most Massachusetts towns do, but the culture in the western suburbs is much more "typically American" where people drive to the mall for most of what they need. The areas around the coast are more densely settled, with fewer malls (relatively speaking) so you can still find semi-thriving retail centers in downtown areas.
* Where you wind up working will (should?) probably have a lot to do with where you want to live. The public transportation system is pathetic compared to NY/NJ, so if you work in Boston, you're either going to have to deal with unreliable commuter rail or tons of traffic, or else live close enough to take the subway (which is also unreliable these days). Commuting suburb-to-suburb can work if it's not too far, but if you bought a house on the South Shore and found a job on the North Shore (for example), that would be a truly hellish commute.
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