Boston, General: Costs outweigh the benefits
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7/8/2007
Boston is like the old verse about the little girl whose hair curled down in the middle of her forehead: “When she was good she was very, very good, and when she was bad she was horrid.” As in the case of that little girl, many of Boston’s good points are really nice, while the negatives are pretty bad. A picturesque setting where a river makes a wide sweep into a bay; a location two hours’ drive or less from beaches, mountains, and lakes; a world-class art museum, an aquarium, a top science museum, and a symphony orchestra that plays in a concert hall considered one of the world’s best for acoustics; passionate sports fans, who follow teams with long, storied histories; several major rock concert venues in the metro area; elegant shops, sidewalk cafes, restaurants for every taste, and a bunch of funky night spots; quaint neighborhoods with history at every turn. Sounds great, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, there’s a price to pay for all of this: crowds; traffic congestion and rude, aggressive drivers that make the daily task of simply getting around truly stressful—-in the suburbs as well as the city; an absurdly high cost of living (AVERAGE house cost in the area pushing half a million dollars); weather that is unpleasant more often than not, and sometimes downright miserable; people who are generally hard-nosed, pushy, snobbish, parochial (lots of old-boy networking—-insiders, whether in the upper-crust networks or the old-neighborhood blue-collar patronage system, don’t have the time of day for you if you’re not one of them), and narrow (forget what you’ve heard about how “liberal” Massachusetts is, or what an “enlightened” city Boston is supposed to be—-the people here are NARROW). I grew up in a suburb of Boston, and, between times living in a couple of other places, have moved back here twice as an adult, for several years each time, and I’ve reached the conclusion that Boston's negatives outweigh the positives. Lots of people would agree, while plenty of others would find the benefits worth the cost. Be aware, though, that Boston’s advantages do come at a very steep price.
BT | Weston, MA