Hey, there! Log in / Register
Another out of towner comes to Boston and really, really likes us
By adamg on Mon, 07/11/2022 - 9:31am
Last month, it was a columnist from San Francisco who couldn't stop raving about Boston. This month, it's some New Yorker marveling at our fair Hub, even the T:
Passengers chatted or scrolled their phones, rather than glancing at their fellow passengers to assess the stabbing risk.
She's writing for the New York Post, so of course she ultimately credits this to our "progressive" officials being secret moderates who fully support the police. And since she was on the tourist track (she walks around the Public Garden and goes to the MFA), didn't get to see, oh, Mass. and Cass.
Reaction from hardcore Bostonians:
No...people do that on the T...you learn not to be as obvious about it as New Yorkers are. The ride on the T no matter what branch or bus lines esp if you are a female is a neverending series of assessing threats at all hours of the day and night everytime you ride.
— @LADYDAY93 in TJ (@LADYDAY93_TJFGG) July 11, 2022
Impressive she actually managed to get on the T, though, considering the number of diversions and shuttle bus replacements. And her green line didn't crash or derail? Sounds like she didn't get the full Boston experince
— Yael (ya-elle) (@yaeldana) July 11, 2022
Bostonians should not become complacent.
— J Edward - GOV'T TWERKS ITS CORRUPTION (@J_Edward65) July 11, 2022
“No needles.” Lol, she never left her apartment in New York.
— Jay Fallon (@jayfallon) July 11, 2022
Our strategy of being 1/8 the size is paying off!
— Alex Stern (@AlexGStern) July 11, 2022
Neighborhoods:
Free tagging:
Ad:
Support Universal Hub
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Comments
Boston didn't defund the police
Unlike all the cities which did, which, I don't have a list handy, but it must be a hell of a lot of them for Boston to be singled out for not doing it and for all the whining conservatives do about a thing that must certainly have definitely happened
Well, they tried
The problem is that the city council took the money out of the overtime account, which the police are allowed to exceed and then the city has to pay for it anyway, so the net effect was: No defunding.
Zero
I know you're being sarcastic, but the list of cities that significantly "defunded" is zero. Even Minneapolis.
And that's the rub
Almost no city has cut back on police spending but the public perception is that a decrease in police spending is part of what's leading to an increase in crime nationwide.
False
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/mar/07/us-cities-defund-police-...
“Portland, Oregon, cut $15m from its budget and disbanded a gun violence reduction unit and transit team that had both long been accused of over-policing Black communities. San Francisco officials pledged to divest $120m from police over two years with plans to invest in health programs and workforce training. Minneapolis is using police cuts to launch a mental health team to respond to certain 911 calls.”
https://www.opb.org/article/2022/07/08/portland-murder-homicide-police-c...
https://komonews.com/amp/news/nation-world/portland-oregon-crime-stats-s...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/12/16/defund-police-runs-in...
“ In July 2020, Breed announced her plan to defund the police — cutting $120 million from law enforcement to fund social programs. Result? Crime skyrocketed. Today, San Francisco is more dangerous than 98 percent of U.S. cities.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2020/12/10/minneapolis-cuts-mi...
https://www.npr.org/2021/07/22/1019413198/minneapolis-policing-is-caught...
https://www.newsweek.com/americas-biggest-cities-invest-450m-more-police...
“New York City, which has the country's largest police force and was a major site for last year's Black Lives Matter protests in the wake of George Floyd's death, had a police budget of around $6 billion last year. The city went into 2021 with a significantly reduced police budget of $5.2 billion, only to vote for a $200 million increase in June after a 22 percent rise in crime in May compared to the same month a year earlier.”
"Must certainly"
Nah. These days, the amount of noise the right wing makes about a thing is absolutely no indication of the thing's existence. See: voting fraud, peaceful Jan. 6 demonstrations, critical race theory, the Trans menace, and on and on. They live in a bad dystopian novel, and will fight any efforts to introduce them to reality.
Say, rather...
Say, rather, there is an inverse correlation.
Who is the mayor of NYC?
Who is the mayor of NYC again? And what is he doing with the police budget (while slashing education and other city services)?
I read the Post every day and
I read the Post every day and saw the article first thing this morning and posted a couple of comments. I basically said we have it pretty good as Greater Boston is a relatively safe, well-to-do eds and meds region. Yankees fans(a number of whom I saw over the weekend) may hate the Red Sox but they like visiting Fenway, walking to the North End, etc. They feel safer here.
We are relatively well-educated
but there are gaps. Even here there are people that read the Post every day.
Never trust a tourist's view
On my first trip to New York with my son, I was amazed at how helpful New Yorkers were. Now, I'm not going to say that New Yorkers are horrible people, but subsequent trips have shown him a bit of a downside.
My other story- one of my West Coast in-laws tells the story of riding the subway in New York and chatting up a woman. As he tells it, she was on the way to meet her boyfriend's family. As I heard it, she was trying to get this weirdo to avoid talking to her and tried to be nice about it. No, I won't tell him the truth. It would devastate him.
She has a valid point about the T
At least when you are standing on the platform you are not afraid of being pushed in front of a train or being stabbed.
No one who can do the math
is afraid of that in NYC, either - we're talking about a system with 5 million plus riders a day that's only gotten safer over the years.
The last time I was in NYC
I was amazed at how clean the trains are, compared to here.
I usually feel the need to shower after
reading a NY Post story, it's such a shitty, dumb, hateful right-wing rag. This one wasn't too bad. The volume of Internet chum at the bottom of every page remains impressive, though.
Senpai notice me
It's embarrassing enough for a train to take four hours from NYC to Boston in 2022 but I'm not sure how a writer for a disgusting rag like the Post making a trip up the Hub and doing the Faneuil-Newbury-Fenway tour is noteworthy. Tens of millions of people per year did the exact same thing pre-pandemic.
@milesperhoward has posted a great four-stage walking tour of the city that would merit some attention. Not a lot of chain-store historically-themed commercial area stops along the way but a great way to see Boston from Mattapan to Charlestown without disregarding one's safety or even spending money.
https://www.bostontrails.org/
https://www.bostontrails.org/
Blue Line is the best, most modern line
If you ride mostly that, the T looks great.
As for needles, I have seen people knit while riding the T.
To be fair
To be fair any other city is great compared to your own when you are visiting.
So its easy to talk it up some about where you are visiting because its exciting and new to you.
Once you live here, or are here for more than a few days at a time, you start to realize the 'strange underbelly' of a city. Its brokeness, or where it lacks.
Boston is beautiful to a tourist who stays downtown. Who cares if the headway on the red line is 10 minutes, you're on vacation, so no rush.
Things are different when its April, you got wet walking to the T after work cuz it started to downpour, only to get into a crowded station because the trains are late cuz of the weather. Then you spend 2hrs trying to get home on a subway car thats packed in like sardines in can.
Like they say, the grass is
Like they say, the grass is always greener on the other side . . .
I wish I'd known she was
I wish I'd known she was looking for needles at T stops, I could have recommended some likely places to look.
Chinatown?
n/t
Another reason to prefer Boston over New York
Our city government isn't releasing PSAs that start "So there's been a nuclear attack ..." aimed at people living in large, sparsely furnished lofts:
Really?!?!
“The dusk-time Green Line T was a paradise of people on their way home from work, or on their way out to clubs.”
Okay, this is NOT real. Me thinks the writer had some Happy Juice somewhere. Are. You. KIDDING. Me?!?!
Aaaaahahahahaha
Thinking of all the hours I spent in that "paradise" sandwiched up against my fellow commuters (who were pretty good about it, we're all in this together and everybody uses deodorant) and Red Sox fans in town for their annual spree taking up way too much space and being way too loud and complaining nonstop about how crowded it is.
The T is better than Bostonians think it is
Local hysteria aside, and despite some fairly bad, recent fumbles, the T is actually a pretty solid system that moves a tremendous amount of people around the city. Could it be better? Yes, absolutely. But most who think it's probably the worst system haven't spent much time riding on other systems.
Museum Mile in Manhattan is
Museum Mile in Manhattan is pretty nice. I was just there this weekend. Very clean, lots of trees near Central Park. If you stay in the nicest, well manicured part of any city, it's ideal.
But she's right, Boston is way better. I wish we had phone charging outlets on the busses though, like they do in NYC.
fwiw
This is how you get phone spyware or get "juice jacked". I wouldn't trust a rando USB 'charging port'. too easy to install something malicious. Similar to a card scanner that is used that covers the USB port enough so you wont notice that its changed. You'll think its charging (and it will) but its pushing crap on to your phone.
Think it doesn't happen? The FCC has a warning about this:
https://www.fcc.gov/juice-jacking-dangers-public-usb-charging-stations
Yes, but you can obviate this threat with
a USB condom.
Surprisingly..
..to many locals, Boston is actually a really great city. Not perfect, but no city is. Massachusetts as a whole is an amazing state. But it’s much more fun to rag on it apparently. Definitely some warts to sort out but all in all it’s a wonderful city especially in comparison to many other major cities.