Boston Dopers! What's new?

In My Humble Opinion
1

It must be April 3rd that’s making this come to mind.

It was on this day in 1997, the day the April Fool’s Day blizzard ended, that I firmed my resolve to move out of Boston, the city I called home for the first 30 years of my life. Left that August.

I’ve been out here in Southern California ever since. It’s been real nice (got married, finished my degree, bought a house), but I’ve been back a few times, and I find myself homesick (as is my wife, who never lived there, but whom, as is obvious from her tastes, must have been spirited away from New England by gypsies as an infant). I notice housing prices are through the roof, as they are here. I also notice the Big Dig is actually almost finished, and the new bridge is really cool.

But I’m curious. What if you simply can’t go home again?

What would I find has changed the most in the last, say, ten years in Boston? What neightborhoods and towns have changed the most, for better or for worse? What trends have come and gone?

What’s new?

2

There’s been a ton of building – and not just because of the Central Artery. I think that’s the most conspicuous change – the skyline is a lot busier than it was ten years ago. Whole new neighborhoods – the Leather District, the Seaport District – are being carved out of wasteland. High housing prices have led to wholesale condoization – new buildings, but particularly the conversion of most of the old two-families and triple-deckers. You look in Cambridge, Somerville, Southie, places like that, almost nobody buys a triple-decker to live in and rent out anymore. It’s all quick conversions. Plus, people live farther afield than ever. People commute into Boston from out beyond 495, from New Hampshire, southern Maine even.

Culturally? I don’t know that that much has changed. The MFA is getting bigger, with a new addition coming, and has gone the lowbrow-but-splashy exhibition route at times. I can’t think of much else on the cultural front, but I’m sure I’m forgetting something.

Oh, and there are more Dunkin Donuts than ever before.

3

What would you consider lowbrow-but-splashy. Went to the MFA on a visit a few years ago for the Sargent exhibit, but I don’t know what else they’ve done recently.

I noticed that. I noticed another chain toward the south that seems to be metastasizing as well. Something with a yellow sign or other?

4

Yeah, see I’ve never even heard of these. Where are they?

5

The most shocking things for me, as a 13 year resident, have been:

The elevated green line track over Causeway Street is gone. Gone! It really opens up that whole neighborhood. The Harp looks so exposed and vulnerable now that actual sunlight is touching it. And below ground, the green line and orange line platforms allow easy transfer from one line to the other.

The Mass Pike extension to the airport is brilliant. Never has it been so easy to get to the airport from the western side of the metro area. You drive along on the pike and then, suddenly and seemingly without warning, you’re at the freaking terminals! It’s so weird! Nice, but weird.

T tokens are being phased out in favor of fare cards. The changeover isn’t complete yet, but monthly passes & some stations have already switched to Charlie Cards.

The new Silver Line buses from South Station to the airport finally connect the Red Line to the airport. And the Silver Line buses don’t even drop you at the airport station and make you get the shuttle - theytake you to the terminals.

Strange things are afoot here in Boston.

6

Um, the 2004 Red Sox? And a few Patriot’s teams from the past few years? :cool:

7

We bought our house right inside the 495 belt roughly 40 miles from Boston 4 years ago. Apparently a lot of people saw us as trendsetters and the outer suburbs are growing like crazy. As mentioned, that applies to New Hampshire as well. There is a paradox in that Masschusetts is losing population and there is a huge building boom going on at the same time. People really want land and the true suburban life an Medford just isn’t cutting it. McMansions are everywhere and it seems that you impoverished if you can’t afford a nice little 4000 sq foot custom built job.

The weather still sucks.

Housing prices really are insane and (see above) that is a huge reason why the state is losing population. In reality a huge number are just relocating over the New Hamsphire border for the same reasons they are pushing outward.

The Big Dig makes driving much easier in many places although it has shifted serious congestion to places that didn’t really have it before. The Ted Williams tunnel is really big and really nice. You don’t realize how nice until you take the Sumner tunnel again. What a piece of crap that thing is. It looks like an amuzement park mine-train ride now.

The tech boom died down and is just now coming back as a smaller but more stable industry. Biotech is booming again.

This winter was pretty warm overall and it didn’t snow that much. Still sucked though.

8

Let’s se:
The Big Dig, of course. You can’t miss the new Leonard P. Zakim/Bunker Hill Memorial Bridge. And you won’t miss the Central Artery.

The Boston Garden’s gone, of course. Replaced by the new sports arena that was several things, including the Fleet Center before TD Banknorth got the naming rights and renamed it The Garden again (Yay!)

The Computer Museum is gone. The Museum of Science has its collection and has a smattering on display. The Children’s Museum is still there, has morphed several times, and is (I think) prepaering to expand.

New buildings along the waterfront, including a nerw one visible across Fort point channel from the Children’s Museum.

Several new buildings around the Prudential.

Lots of changes along Newbury Street. (The Avenue Victor Hugo book store is gone – sob! – as are many used book stores in Cambridge) The used book shop on West St. near the common is stuill there, though.

New buildings at MIT, including the Stat center, which must be seen to be believed. Also a new dorm and the new Center for Brain Research.

Polaroid is virtually gone. Its buildings in Cambridge either belong to somebody else, or (like the former World Headquarters) got torn down. Tech Square is substantially changed.

The CITGO sign is still there, but it’s now lit by LEDs, which (one hopes) won’t fail as often as the neon tubes did.

A lot of NEW bookstores are gone, sadly, including the Waterstones books that used to be at the corner of Exeter and Newbury streets. In fact, Waterstone’s is gone from urlington, Quincy Marketoplace, and everywhere else in the US except airports.

Editorial Humor AKA The boston Comic News is no more. [i[The Phoenix* is now free. The Dig is a new free paper appealing to the college crowd. Both Harvard and BU have erotic magazines (!) which you cvan get at Newbury Comics.

9

I’m very curious to know if that’s gretly changed the “second banana” complex Boston seemed to be in for years. Any thoughts?

10

What second banana complex? We can kick anyone’s ass any time and place that we choose in the new mantra.

11

I was in town last October leading a school tour. I didn’t recognize the neighborhood AT ALL until I saw the sign for the Garden.

That’s so good it already seems normal to me. I fly in, and before I know it, I’m on the SE Expressway. Love it!

12

I saw an article that mentioned the decliing population in conjunction with lambastin the Gay Marriage issue. Is there any sense that the population shift is due to “traditional marriage advocates” relocating, or is it just the housing prices?

Good to know. That’s an important consideration for me.

13

Glad to hear the collection is not entirely lost.

Waterstones? Gone? Shee-it! Although I noticed on my school tour last fall that the Barnes & Noble at BU has stepped up to the plate. Some great stuff in there.

Yes, it is. I was at a bachelor party at Flat-top Johnny’s last August.

The CSAIL building is new since I left. We have so much Frank Gehry architecture out here we don’t even notice it any more. Howzit play in Cambridge?

I’m very sorry to hear Dean Wallace lost his struggle to keep Editorial Humor afloat. He was a great supporter of my old improv troupe, Renegade Duck, and used to publish a column by a friend of mine.

There are way too many visual jokes combining the concept of “Harvard” and “Erotica” right now to comment further on this…

14

Gay marriage has nothing to do with it. You think people would actually pack up in move in large numbers when they can just stay and bitch about it?

It is housing prices, the general cost off living, and a general trend of people moving out of the Northeast for other climes. Masscahusetts is an extremely poor value for most people. The large rich population does fine but the 20 and 30 somethings that want to settle down and start a family get nailed. The wages simply aren’t that much higher than many cheaper (and warmer) places and entry level housing is moving in on the 400K mark fast and there are no single famiy houses in livable condition available near Boston unless something is very wrong with them.

15

:smiley:

We’ve had the same trend out here. The house we though we were getting screwed on five years ago has tripled in market value, and half a mil these days puts you in Compton, although the prices are starting to level off and even decrease in the last couple of months.

16

Another thought on this. I get an email from a Newton Realtor about housing prices. I told them the sort of thing I was looking for, and they send me every MLS listing that falls within my criteria: less than $550,000, 3+ beds, 1.5+ baths, at least 1500 Sq ft on at least a 10,000 sq. ft. lot. I can get as close as Natick if I don’t mind living in a “contractor’s dream” about three feet away from the Pike, Route 9 AND the Commuter Rail!

17

Yeah. I met Dean shortly before the demise at one of the Arisia SF conventions.(He always brought stacks of old issues to the conventions to give away), and we discussed the problems he was having, and other random things. I miss it.

18

The oldest existing improv troupe in town is (was?) ImprovBoston. They had a rule that, due to diminished audience dynamics, they would not perform for an audience of less than ten. I subbed as keyboard player for them one night, in a blizzard, and they turned away the two audience members that had trudged through the snow to see them. This struck me as monumentally stupid PR.

So a number of months later, I’ve hooked up with Renegade Duck, and we’re doing a show at The Performance Place which is (was?) a teeny place somewhere in Somerville. We end up with an audience of three. The discussion in the green room turns to cancellation. I tell them I’m going to do a show, and anyone who wants to can join me.

So we go out and perform for the three people, and there’s this one dude shouting out the weirdest answers to our requests, such as when we ask for a music style and he yells “Pilgrim Shape-Note Music!” WTF?

It’s Dean of course. We were all fans of the Boston Comic News/Editorial Humor Paper, but we’d never met him. He became our biggest fan and advocate that night, and gave us all sorts of free promotion in his paper.

19

Scotandrsn, in reply to a couple of your questions above:

The Leather District is made up of old industrial buildings being converted to lofts, right behind the Children’s Museum, on the other side of the channel. It actually ajoins the new Seaport district, which features, among other things, the incredibly vast, but visually interesting, new convention center. Much of this area was semi-industrial wateland before.

The MFA was panned, in some quarters, for putting on display Ralph Lauren’s car collection, which personally, I kind of liked. Oh, and for putting billionaire Bill Koch’s yacht on their front lawn.

20

Filene’s is no more. It’s empty, and kind of eerie. The Basement is still there, though, and will remain there, no matter what ends up in the Filene’s building (I heard Target, maybe?)

North Station is much different as well.