Via Adam, check out this extremely silly blog post from Henry Abbott, an ESPN blogger who has apparently just arrived in Boston for the first time.
Anyone who has lived in New York, I suspect, finds Boston to be unbelievably … tidy. New York is a city where respectable upper class people have favorite graffiti artists. It’s also a place where you can hardly go a block without hearing an epithet or two. It’s salty. It’s grimey. (I once heard some comedian say that New York is the only city in the world where you have to say “Hey, that’s mine. Don’t pee on that.”) I’m sure Boston is like that to some degree too … it’s still life … but I have been here about 24 hours, but I drove around a little last night, through a dozen different neighborhoods. In every one of them everything seemed so tidy. I guess you’d call it gentrifed, but I’m not sure it was ever not like this. Just about everyone I saw seemed to have on something plaid, or something khaki, or most likely both.
It would be funny if it weren’t so sad. (Do the streets of Boston really have to reek of vomit to not qualify as “gentrified” and “tidy”?) Actually, it’s funny anyway. In any event, help out poor Henry by telling him where he should drive around next time — apparently, he didn’t venture far from Charles Street on his first try.
Discuss
14 Comments . Leave a comment below.Walk down past the Hong Kong and Sissy K's off State Street. Smells like vomit and horse pee every night if that's what you're looking for.
Where he can discover the correct spelling for the word "grimy." (Interestingly, Urban Dictionary gives the following usage example for the word: "I pissed in this dude's mouth wash w/o him knowing so he still used it... 2nd Person: Thats Grimy!")
Next, he needs to review this website.
when was that site last updated? 1997?
The man obviously needs help at a profoundly basic level ;-)
I never wear plaid or khaki. Where on earth was this man?
the neat grid of streets and avenues in NYC. Boston's tangled mess of paved cow paths is anything but tidy.
Sure you can find some life if you know where to look, but Boston is a quiet provincial capital, always has been.
Even our supposedly tough neighborhoods were built as suburbs and most still operate as such.
No, he's right. NYC is incredibly dirty by American standards. New Yorkers get used to it and completely fail to notice it. When you visit, and point it out to them, they're genuinely surprised. Those who don't get out much to other cities will definitely be surprised by how "tidy" all other cities in the US are.
I don't think that's exactly what he meant by "tidy." I didn't include the last line of his blog post, but here it is, to give you a better idea of what he's talking about.
Har har.
It's not gentrified, it's gritty, it has live music clubs and drunks and hippies and other non-tidy stuff.
walked through there without seeing pigeons pecking at yummy pools of puke.
Really?
I'm not very old, and I remember a very, very different Central Sq. (still love it though)
I can remember when Washington St downtown was kinda ratty and the South End was to be avoided at all cost.
Still, Boston neighborhoods are pretty well kept up. Many homes and apt's have grass and shrubs/hedges/ bushes/flowers. There are many other cities in USA that are incredibly neat but would not come close to passing muster viz a vis Singapore, Adelaide, Copenhagen, Dusseldorf, Bern, Stockholm.
New York City? The last time I was in New York City was twenty years ago for a funeral. Upon leaving the city I turned to a brother and stated that I would never return to this "cesspool" again.
Plaid and khaki's. Wear them all the time . Are plaid and khaki now gauche?
Head out Rt2 past Williamstown, and you don't need a sign to tell you when you've crossed into NY. The housing goes from neat & tidy to one step shy of a rural trailer park with rusting trucks on blocks in the front yards. The plastic lawn ornaments bloom and the whole feel is completely different.
Having said that, whenever I return from an overseas trip to the EU, I'm always struck at how "rusty" Boston seems. Things might be old, even ancient, in the EU, but they're clean and tidy. I come back to Logan, get on the Blue Line and it's like stepping into the rust-belt.
I haven't been to NYC in decades, but if Boston is tidy by comparison, I really don't want to experience NYC.
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