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Old 10-31-2017, 12:33 PM
 
1,642 posts, read 1,380,442 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by massnative71 View Post
Even that is legit. Boston and Cambridge are separate and unique cities, always have been. Now if you are talking in the context of Greater Boston, I would agree.

This whole Western Mass. purity test would be more similar to when some people in Greater Boston imply that "Massachusetts" does not exist outside of say 495. When I first started working in Franklin many years ago, I cannot tell you how many people from my area of Boston would say "oh that's not really Massachusetts". I think the boundaries have expanded by now, to maybe 10 miles outside 495. Mendon/Upton is part of the elite Mass. club, but Uxbridge is still a stretch. LOL.



Yeah and come to think of it, I also had a college friend from North Adams who would always say he was from out in 'Western Mass.". Never "the Berkshires". But again I guess let the folks from Springfield/Holyoke, etc. define it for everybody else.



Maybe that's just the media market they serve? Does Pittsfield have it's own stations? Or do they feed off Albany? That would be my guess.



Where I live it's 120 miles to go for major shopping, medical care, etc. That's actually further than from Springfield to Boston, although most of the way the speed limit is 75 and never any traffic (meaning you can hold 80-85 the entire way, which is unheard of on any road in Mass. outside of 2 a.m. ), so it actually "feels" a lot closer. But people do it all the time and don't think anything of it.

But even when I lived in Worcester County, there was rarely anywhere to go that was more than an hour away. Boston, Providence, Gillette Stadium, Xfinity Center, Salisbury/Hampton, Wachusett... The beaches of RI/SE Mass are probably the only exception, they are just over an hour. The Cape was typically an overnighter anyway, same thing with NH/ME. So between having most everything you could want/need that close anyway, and driving in MA being a lot more stressful in general...it's totally understandable.
Where do you live? Even Williamstown MA on the Vermont/NY border is less than 120 miles from Springfield. We're you going to NH/ME or the Cape for medical care?
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Old 10-31-2017, 01:09 PM
 
23,066 posts, read 18,197,535 times
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Originally Posted by The_General View Post
Where do you live? Even Williamstown MA on the Vermont/NY border is less than 120 miles from Springfield. We're you going to NH/ME or the Cape for medical care?
I live in Maine. My point was that while people think you need to pack a bag to go from Springfield to Boston, people up here drive FURTHER than that just to go to the mall or a doctor's appointment. Even Williamstown in the farthest reaches of Western Mass is not that remote by comparison.
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Old 10-31-2017, 01:36 PM
 
1,642 posts, read 1,380,442 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by massnative71 View Post
I live in Maine. My point was that while people think you need to pack a bag to go from Springfield to Boston, people up here drive FURTHER than that just to go to the mall or a doctor's appointment. Even Williamstown in the farthest reaches of Western Mass is not that remote by comparison.
OK my bad, I was looking on this as Massachusetts conversation.
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Old 10-31-2017, 02:02 PM
 
23,066 posts, read 18,197,535 times
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Originally Posted by The_General View Post
OK my bad, I was looking on this as Massachusetts conversation.
It is, you just weren't following the conversation...
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Old 10-31-2017, 05:42 PM
 
Location: North Quabbin, MA
1,025 posts, read 1,515,535 times
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Speaking of it all being relative perspectives, Western Mass has its rural parts but it's really not all that rural compared to, say, northern New England states. The four western counties in Mass, despite often being compared to Vermont, combined have more people than Vermont. Western Mass has at least a half dozen "small" (by MA standards) cities that are larger than VT's largest "city" of Burlington (Springfield, Chicopee, Holyoke, Westfield, Pittsfield, Amherst all have more people than Burlington). West Springfield, Agawam, Ludlow, Northampton, or Greenfield would pretty much all comfortably displace the second largest "city" in Vermont - Rutland. Like I said, there are obviously very rural areas in Western Mass, but it's not so desolate as eastern Mass folks make it out to be. There are not just rural concerns here, but plenty of urban and suburban development patterns and issues in Western Mass too, just on a smaller scale than a major metropolitan area. And these places don't have the state government orbiting around them, so they get quite forgotten and neglected.
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Old 10-31-2017, 07:26 PM
 
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Good points, FCMA, but Amherst isn't bigger than Burlington, at least not yet.
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Old 11-03-2017, 03:28 PM
 
2 posts, read 1,294 times
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when I lived in cent VT - the NYer were my pet peve
now in WessMass the NJ/NYers are a pain.
Lots of EMass folks out here now, like them beddah den the "New" guys (NJ/NY).
Just a different vib admitted by the MidLantic crew...
so many here now the traffic is bein effected!
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