Hipster Towns outside of Boston (Cambridge, Somerville: buying, elementary schools, hippest)

[kingeorge]

There are parts of Cambridge, Somerville, Arlington, Medford, JP, Downtown Boston, and potentially Brookline that have some flavors of what your brother is possibly looking for. But overall we are not hip, just mostly well educated, aware, and busy.

We are traditionally family oriented, fast paced, often conservative, but with live and let live, reserved overtones. Most people are stressed and overworked, due to congestion, rat race, and high COL. Our saving grace is location abundant with wonderful nature and opportunities to ski, swim, hike etc...

My advice is to look at places they can afford--Reading, Arlington would be very good fit. Arlington probably the best of all, if they can swing it. Melrose and West Medford could be good as well.

However, as most people here do, even with much bigger budgets--he will have to compromise on location, size, or condition. He will not get it all. There is chronic shortage of home for sale, and sellers have an upper hand.

Good luck.

[bohemka]

Boston doesn't really do hipster, at least not like New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Austin, and on and on. And the communities outside the usual suspects of the neighborhoods already mentioned are even less likely to support a "hipster scene."

That said, many of the values likely to be popular with hipsters are probably well represented in just about any community. Farm-to-table is a big thing here, cycling as a mode of transport is very popular, tons of community-related activities around, and with a decidedly academic influence that can easily be tapped into there is always someone interesting to talk to and interesting events, lectures, etc., to talk about. So while he's not likely to find any neighborhoods with fellow bearded and tatted up fixie-bike-riders outside Boston/Camberville, he may still end up with neighbors with which he is completely in line.

To be honest, though, if he's looking for anything similar to the scene in Austin he'll be horribly disappointed.

[brienzi]

Would they prefer a town or city? That's a huge part of the equation in sorting out where to live.

Arlington isn't that hipster (now that i've read the official definition) working there often....i don't get that vibe from arlington.


IDK, i like newburyport as good place to live. It's somewhat close to Wakefield, within an hour of Boston and has a vibrant downtown that caters to the arts and such. Very diverse with the benefit of the ocean and beaches.

[life4orce]

Take a look into Lowell. Old Mill city. Very affordable. Definitely has bad parts of the city, but it is a college area and an OK night life. It's about 1/2 hour-45 minutes from Boston. Has public transportation to Boston. It's not for everyone, so definitely check it out first.

[gf2020]

Originally Posted by DaHubbyHub

He works from home. His wife will be near Wakefield. I understand the commute times are hellish. I think he wants to be able to get into Boston easily for the "cool" stuff that isn't around in the small town burbs.

Ok, if your sister-in-law is working in Wakefield and they have a $500K budget, we can narrow the landscape considerably. There is nothing particularly "hip" about Northeastern MA but towns like Ipswich and Georgetown will meet the requirements of budget, commute, small town amenities and schools. Melrose or Wakefield and Marblehead or Swampscott are more dense but they are closer to Boston if that is of greater importance.

[just_because]

Not much different from Austin where you really need to be in the more central areas to be in a hipster community. Difference though is that single family homes are more affordable in the cooler Austin neighborhoods. Boston suburbs get uncool (by hipster standards) pretty fast when you have the balance of further away from Boston / more affordable / reasonable schools / "family safe". Having a very young child in an 'alternative' urban area is easier but as I'm sure you can appreciate, the older they get in elementary school, the more you need to make a choice on that balance between lifestyles. I'm not making any value judgement as everyone is different and many alternative types follow different rules. Very broadly speaking, traditional logic in Boston is that when you have or plan to have kids you move to inner ring suburbs (very roughly just inside or outside i-95) if you have the cash and want a more cosmopolitan/sophisticated life with better schools - e.g. Belmont, Arlington, Lexington, Lincoln, Concord, Newton, Needham, Wellesley, Weston, Wayland, etc (varying degrees of 'hip' in these places but generally you can find most anything). Or you move out to the i-495 belt if you have less money and/or want more house and want schools that are a safer bet - Hopkinton, Franklin, etc, etc (cosmopolitan/sophisticated lifestyle and proximity to Boston quickly go out the window in this trade-off). This predictable formula might be boring and can be maddening but it's like this for a reason - schools. How far from this traditional formula are they willing to stray?

Too many people want what they want (hip, cosmopolitan, urban-ish, family safe, good schools, enough room for family and outdoor space) but can't afford the relatively few places that provide this so trade-offs are usually made.

Hipster to me means 'urban' but maybe that's not necessarily the case here? And within the realms of 'hipster', there are many varieties from 'cool' armani types to grungy alternatives living closer to the edge.

I think they need to ask themselves how grungy he can deal with and the natural trade-off with a child in tow. Allston / Brighton are hipster heavens (or hells) and you can easily get a small abode there in that budget. But the grunge factor is pretty high and have a lot of student and early 20s transients rather than being traditional family destinations.

You imply that he is willing to follow a path that's not the normal family playbook but it's not really clear how 'adventurous' he wants to be. Schools obviously come into play here as you point out. But I don't understand what you mean by the 'school requirement' kicking him out of certain towns - do you mean that he would have to do private schools in those towns? From that list, (at least) Brookline has good schools so I don't really understand how high their bar is for schools. That's a big consideration as there is clearly a tradeoff required at this price range between hipster lifestyle and schools.

For areas that are further out of Boston proper, Cambridge, Somerville, etc you probably need to modify your problem statement - where can a hipster be (sort of) happy? And this requires seeking out particular neighborhoods/pockets in individual towns and I'm sorry but I can't really help there.

But I think you should be able to get a 3 bed condo in JP for around 500k, no? E.g. Green Street area - close enough to the Pond and Center Street?

What about Charlestown?

What about Portsmouth, NH? Lots of hipsters there - just under 1 hour from Wakefield.

West Roxbury? I wouldn't call it hip but not ridiculously expensive, closer in and OK for a family.

Salem fits the bill of early-ish in gentrification (you could argue it's far past 'first wave') and would have parallels with East Austin. 'First wave' on the gentrification ladder and good, established schools don't generally go together so I don't fully understand that one. Swampscott is much less hip but has better schools and it's more established for families.

One thing to consider in the Boston area is that different towns can have wildly different property tax rates.

In many southern cities with lots of creatives like Austin, Atlanta, Ashville, etc, etc it's much easier to find affordable hip areas and you have many more options. In the Boston area, as you know, there are many hip places where you can raise a family in a balance between decent schools and relative safety but they are in extremely high demand by people with much higher budgets than 500k unfortunately.

[Scriptkitten]

Tell him that he will just have to deal with being the only hipster on his street. He will cool up the place.

[DaHubbyHub]

Excellent, thanks for the help.

[in_newengland]

Probably not fancy enough, but Gloucester has its own art colony. Anything around that Cape Ann area--Ipswich has arts, Rockport (but it's hard to get to and is townie), Essex. Very good school systems but the towns are just towns, not sophisticated cities. They are accessible to Boston by train and not too bad by car. The Cape Ann area is on the artsy, hipster side.

[sfosyd]

Originally Posted by in_newengland

Probably not fancy enough, but Gloucester has its own art colony. Anything around that Cape Ann area--Ipswich has arts, Rockport (but it's hard to get to and is townie), Essex. Very good school systems but the towns are just towns, not sophisticated cities. They are accessible to Boston by train and not too bad by car. The Cape Ann area is on the artsy, hipster side.

Funny, your right and I never even thought about it. Just came across this and it is sort of true:

https://goodmorninggloucester.wordpr...ad-thing-rant/