Town in Massachusetts You’d Least Like To Live In? (Boston: houses, living in)

[redplum33]

Florida looks like a nice place to drive through.

https://goo.gl/maps/xU4HSTLaX3TaZr7TA

[xo_kizzy_xo]

Originally Posted by FCMA

Florida is essentially a half-abandoned rural trailer park plopped on a rugged hilltop. Slightly different idea, still isolated but close to services in North Adams if you consider that a place.

Not just Florida, but also its hill neighbors.

Gorgeous country, no doubt about it. If you want to leaf peep, Rte 2 is where it's at.

However, as the saying goes, one cannot eat landscape.

[thenewtexan]

Originally Posted by FCMA

Ware, Palmer, Orange, Athol, Winchendon, Webster. We’re all peas in an unenviable pod. Small but dense milltowns the economy forgot but the opiates didn’t, and no employment centers nearby.

Florida is essentially a half-abandoned rural trailer park plopped on a rugged hilltop. Slightly different idea, still isolated but close to services in North Adams if you consider that a place.

I would probably put Southbridge on the list before Webster. At least Webster has 395 and you can be in downtown Worcester in 20 minutes (Boston in an hour lol) several supermarkets and shopping nearby. Some beautiful homes along the lake and east of the highway in hidden neighborhoods.

[massnative71]

Originally Posted by FCMA

Florida is essentially a half-abandoned rural trailer park plopped on a rugged hilltop. Slightly different idea, still isolated but close to services in North Adams if you consider that a place.

Are Randy and Lahey running the show?

Originally Posted by in_newengland

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ware,_Massachusetts

Ware, The Town that Can't Be Licked. It got that nickname a long time ago when it actually made a comeback. Look at the lovely picture of its "historic district." And if you look around, remember, it's WORSE than it looks. The people, the housing, the lack of education, the drugs. Of course there are some nice people but I think most who move there don't stay too long. Everyone else has been there for generations. Creepy place and there's nothing near it either.

I drove through there once, after a long day and starving. Was happy just to find a Subway. The only thing that really stood out was that it had a very "un-Massachusetts" look and feel to it (like it got lost finding its way back to Appalachia?). Could be just a Western Mass. thing, I suppose.

[in_newengland]

Originally Posted by massnative71

Are Randy and Lahey running the show?

I drove through there once, after a long day and starving. Was happy just to find a Subway. The only thing that really stood out was that it had a very "un-Massachusetts" look and feel to it (like it got lost finding its way back to Appalachia?). Could be just a Western Mass. thing, I suppose.

Appalachia, lol. Nope, that is NOT a WMass kind of thing at all! WMass is mostly green and hilly with rivers and valleys, pretty towns, a lot of suburbia, some semi rural, some sort of dead, but mostly running along pretty well. Holyoke is our Lawrence, Springfield used to be our "big" city for working and shopping.

Ware? It must have been a small industrial town like so many other MA towns at one time. Then the state made the Quabbin Reservoir back in the 1930s, which flooded a huge area, leaving Ware on the other side all by itself. You have to drive around the reservoir to get to Ware unless you're getting off the Mass Pike in Palmer--in that case, you have to drive on rte 32 quite a way to get there. But there's usually no reason for anyone to get off in Palmer either--not much there and not much anywhere around there, just run down.

Probably Ware continued to roll along through the 1930s and beyond with its inhabitants working in the mills--but it was essentially shut off from the rest of the world by that huge reservoir. Also, with the neighboring towns flooded no one was going back and forth from those towns to Ware either. No new life, no new people, no one coming to shop, and no one wanting to live there. Ware just sort of suffocated and then when manufacturing ended, it mostly died.

If feels more like central MA to me, not WMass, even though it's in Hampshire County. Maybe part of the feeling is of being stuck in decline from the 1930s to the 1950s. It has a 1930s-1950s vibe. Then when the mills truly died, that was the end of it. High poverty, high crime. Nice to see that they finally have a grocery store and someone said a Walmart. Sad town, though.

[massnative71]

Originally Posted by in_newengland

Appalachia, lol. Nope, that is NOT a WMass kind of thing at all! WMass is mostly green and hilly with rivers and valleys, pretty towns, a lot of suburbia, some semi rural, some sort of dead, but mostly running along pretty well. Holyoke is our Lawrence, Springfield used to be our "big" city for working and shopping.

I'm more talking about the appearance (the main street especially), physical layout and how it's kind of tucked right into the hills (as well as the isolation). Central Mass. has its other forgotten industrial towns such as Athol or Winchendon, but I just see them as a MA version of similar towns in NH or ME. Towns I've seen in Western MA have a different look to them, but not quite like Ware. I guess Pittsfield might be kind of the same idea, but that's quite a bit larger and surrounded by touristy areas.

[FCMA]

Originally Posted by in_newengland

I can't rep you again, but you it's so true. Was it Orange that had the airport? Those are places I went a long time ago so they've faded from memory. If you go there, you usually don't go back again. I'm sure you know of (gag) Bondsville. I think it's officially a village in Palmer. What a desolate place that is.

Orange sure does have a municipal airport. It’s a skydiving destination, and about the only thing that draws outsiders to our outskirts.

Bondsville is indeed creepy along with the rest of Palmer. The -villes I can think of in Central and Western MA are totally forgotten industrial hamlets where a socioeconomic hand grenade went off decades ago. Add Baldwinville (Templeton sub village) and Gilbertville (Hardwick sub village) to that list. The latter has a great bakery (Rose 32) and new brewery (Lost Towns) worth seeking out in the middle of Massalachia though. Right on the outskirts of Ware!

Warren is another place in that zone with the total banjo vibe.

[Japanfan1986]

Originally Posted by redplum33

There's a Super Walmart in Ware.

Also, of all people UFC President Dana White apparently spent a big part of his young adult life in Ware. The guy is estimated to be worth $500 million so he may be the wealthiest guy alive to have any association with that place.

According to some interviews I’ve read White left Ware when Whitey Bulger’s associate Kevin Weeks threatened him. I wouldn’t be surprised if that was all bullcrap. With the lack of anything there most likely including police force it seems like Ware would be perfect for a mobster like Whitey and his associates to have a prescience there. However Dana lies A LOT. Also in some interviews where he talks about this he uses Ware and Boston as places interchangeably and as anyone from MA knows the two places couldn’t be more different.

Just a weird little Ware factoid anyway

[StuartGotts]

I thought Dana was running some lucrative "Boxing-Exercise" classes in South Boston and Whitey wanted in on it?

Two towns I've lived in and want nothing more to do with are: Mashpee (Trashpee) and Wareham (Wasteham).

A lot of the old mill towns i.e New Bedford, Fall River, Fitchburg, Lowell etc suffer from dense, low income housing. Who wants to live in a 3 family house without parking or a yard?
If Urban renewal meant tearing down every other house so the remaining ones had a driveway and yard I think their value would soar. I would love to own a 3 family like that.

[Japanfan1986]

Originally Posted by StuartGotts

I thought Dana was running some lucrative "Boxing-Exercise" classes in South Boston and Whitey wanted in on it?

Two towns I've lived in and want nothing more to do with are: Mashpee (Trashpee) and Wareham (Wasteham).

A lot of the old mill towns i.e New Bedford, Fall River, Fitchburg, Lowell etc suffer from dense, low income housing. Who wants to live in a 3 family house without parking or a yard?
If Urban renewal meant tearing down every other house so the remaining ones had a driveway and yard I think their value would soar. I would love to own a 3 family like that.

It’s possible. Every time I read or hear about why Dana left Massachusetts the story seems to be a little different. Surprise. People who move across the country because of some mob involvement aren’t the most reliable sources.