Oh, no, MSM is about to declare West Roxbury the next cool neighborhood

By adamg on Thu, 05/28/2009 - 3:36pm

Good Lord.

Neighborhoods:

West Roxbury

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ground floor!

By Spatch
Thu, 05/28/2009 - 3:51pm

In before "WeRox" is used without irony.

Westie Rules, dagnabbit! I know because it's painted on one of the Needham Line crossings (Temple or LaGrange) - along with some shamrocks (to go with the shamrocked 02132 bumper stickers, of course).

OK, so Centre Street has possibly eclipsed Rozzie Square in the restaurant department (and is getting the requisite Upper Crust that defines cool neighborhoods around here). But I'd love to be there the first time a pair of hipsters try to figure out the deal with the giant-sized old white guys shaking hands in the mural on the side of the West Roxbury Pub.

Oh, god, the mural. You

By anon
Thu, 05/28/2009 - 4:12pm

Oh, god, the mural. You could have been there three weeks ago when I saw it for the first time. I threw back my head and laughed for about 30 seconds.

To be to WBZ, the tweet did say "slowly becoming." Perhaps they meant geologic time?

Background on the mural

By adamg
Thu, 05/28/2009 - 4:24pm

Here.

I should have followed up my

By anon
Thu, 05/28/2009 - 5:04pm

I should have followed up my laughter with a good strong vomit.

Tell it to EaBo... or SoWa... or KaJaGooGoo...

By Spatch
Thu, 05/28/2009 - 4:14pm

I wish "dagnabbit" really was part of the name.

I've never heard anyone

By MikeXpop
Thu, 05/28/2009 - 9:11pm

I've never heard anyone actually use "EaBo" unironically. Plenty of times ironically, but Eastie is still the go-to slang.

You have nobody but yourself to blame

By Stevil
Thu, 05/28/2009 - 4:19pm

You were the one that pointed out that new restaurant on Centre Street! You should have said that the kidlet did get sick there and it would have kept the cool hounds at bay. The timing MUST be more than a coincidence.

So I probably shouldn't post this photo

By adamg
Thu, 05/28/2009 - 4:33pm

Except that I'm hungry:

Careful

By Stevil
Thu, 05/28/2009 - 4:53pm

WeRox is getting cooler by the post!

Why West Roxbury isn't cool - so stay away!

By adamg
Thu, 05/28/2009 - 5:10pm

No subways and no Zipcars.

No cute little "town" center - instead, there's one long strip.

No charming renovated condos in old lofts or brick factory buildings.

No art galleries (there used to be one, but it got burned out in the Tai Ho fire).

Only one darling little place to have Sunday brunch. Auntie Bee's and the Westbury will take your hipster asses and spit them out (in fact, the owner of the Westbury might do so personally).

The Starbucks is one of the least coffee-housish Starbucks anywhere. The Starbucks is the only coffee place in the neighborhood.

No boutique food places (although Roche Bros. does have quite the olive bar).

For that matter, no boutiques.

Nothing to do at night once you get bored with the bars at West or Vintage.

Lots of political activists who won't share your hipster political beliefs.

Oh, yeah, and one more thing

By adamg
Thu, 05/28/2009 - 5:26pm

West Roxbury is home to Boston's only trailer park.

Jerry McGuire

By Stevil
Thu, 05/28/2009 - 5:35pm

You had me at no zip cars!

always interesting to see what posts get a lot of hits - wouldn't have expected this one. Very funny!

Every one of those things

By anon
Thu, 05/28/2009 - 8:36pm

Every one of those things have been over for 5 years. Graham Terrace 4 life

Or possibly

By bph
Thu, 05/28/2009 - 4:40pm

Or possibly it's the new Macy's sign.

restaurants?

By anon
Thu, 05/28/2009 - 4:33pm

Really? I'm not sure Skara Grill and the Upper Crust tip the scales past Deflino, Birch St, Sofias, Geoffrey's, Village Fish and that Thai place in terms of quality and density in Rosi Square. WeRox has West on Centre, Himalaya, Masona and... pizza places?

Yes, Centre has roughly one pizza place for every resident

By adamg
Thu, 05/28/2009 - 4:44pm

But don't forget Phuket, Comella's, and, very soon, Upper Crust (OK, more pizza, but with beer and wine) and The King. Oh, yeah, and the Corrib. I'd also throw in that seafood takeout place, near the other Thai place, although, to be honest, when we just HAVE to have fried clam strips, we head over to Blowfish down towards Forest Hills.

What both places are lacking is a decent sit-down Chinese restaurant.

Also don't forget

By Kaz
Thu, 05/28/2009 - 5:12pm

The Real Deal Deli. That was actually a place that was so cool I wish there was one in Brighton/Allston/Cambridge near me. Great variety on the menu and tons of stuff I wanted to try on my first visit.

Nope, never happen. Not

By anon
Thu, 05/28/2009 - 4:21pm

Nope, never happen. Not that I don't think the neighborhood won't gentrify, it happens to all neighborhoods, but for it to be cool would require hipsters, and they'll NEVER go there.

I am going to issue a

By Rob
Thu, 05/28/2009 - 4:45pm

I am going to issue a dissenting vote on the presence of hipsters being necessary for coolness.

Yes, you are right

By adamg
Thu, 05/28/2009 - 5:18pm

I think it's great that the culinary options along Centre Street no longer consist of pizza and shepherd's pie - and that places like Pazzo Books and the Trading Post exist.

West Roxbury has many things going for it, especially if you have kids or want to compromise between suburbia and the city (true, no subway, but three commuter-rail stops).

The problem is that when the media declare an area "cool," they are generally talking about the sort of places that attract the hipsterati. That just isn't Westie. And while you used to be able to say that about, say, Southie or Eastie (or even the North End), I'm thinking West Roxbury is just too fundamentally non-city-ish to ever replicate what happened there.

Could it be the next Arlington, though?

By Ron Newman
Thu, 05/28/2009 - 5:23pm

Arlington isn't 'hip' and doesn't have a subway stop, but it's full of interesting ethnic restaurants (ever since they decided to grant beer and wine licenses) and it's next to places that are genuinely 'hip'. It has a town center, but can also be described as a strip, where businesses are spread out the length of Mass. Ave.

For West Roxbury to become Arlington, it still needs a movie theatre or a live stage theatre (Arlington has one of each), and a bike path.

Oh, yeah, Arlington might be the better analog

By adamg
Thu, 05/28/2009 - 5:26pm

Substitute "Centre Street" for "Mass. Ave."

But I'm doubting we'll ever see either a bike path (maybe, one day, along the Charles, but as long as Marian Walsh is state senator, Mike Rush isn't going to get his money for his riverway plan and, anyway, most people don't live anywhere near the river, except for the folks in Boston's only trailer park), or a theater.

West Rox Bike Path

By Sock_Puppet
Thu, 05/28/2009 - 5:32pm

Ever try to cross Holy Name Rotary on a bike?

You'll come up with a holy name or two.

Grr, that rotary

By adamg
Thu, 05/28/2009 - 5:39pm

Used to be the coolest rotary in existence, because it had a secret: The bushes in the middle were grown to look like an "8" from the air, to let airplanes know how far they were from Logan Airport (so I'm assuming their history goes back decades). Then the local garden club came along, tore those all up and put in new plantings that, while nice enough to look at, are just plantings.

8 what?

By Pete Nice
Thu, 05/28/2009 - 5:49pm

can't be miles right?

As the crow flies?

By adamg
Thu, 05/28/2009 - 5:51pm

Could be eight miles, no?

8 air miles is correct

By Ron Newman
Thu, 05/28/2009 - 5:53pm

Try it yourself - go to gmap-pedometer.com and draw a straight line from the rotary (Centre St and West Roxbury Parkway) to the westernmost edge of the closest Logan runway.

yea I was going to do that

By Pete Nice
Thu, 05/28/2009 - 5:55pm

Just doesnt seem that far if you had to go in a straight line from there if I just think about it.

And I dont have the time to figure out gmap-pedometer.com

By Pete Nice
Thu, 05/28/2009 - 6:06pm

at this very moment, (it looks cool) but I noticed that Hynes field is called "Rynes" field.

Please don't tell me we all grew up calling it something different?

If it's wrong, it's wrong in Google Maps too

By Ron Newman
Thu, 05/28/2009 - 6:17pm

because gmap-pedometer.com is just an application on top of Google's mapping database.

maps.live.com calls it Thomas J. Hynes Field. So right now the score is Microsoft 1, Google 0.

Newstead Montegrade

By eeka
Thu, 05/28/2009 - 7:01pm

But which one more accurately calculates routes through Newstead Montegrade?

http://1smootshort.blogspot.com

All tied up

By Kaz
Mon, 03/14/2011 - 5:19am

It only took about 9 months but I just got a response email from TeleAtlas who is responsible for Google's place names. It's now correct on Google too.

But I Digress

By Eddie Coyle
Thu, 05/28/2009 - 10:21pm

One of George V. Higgins' books described the rotary
at Centre and the Jamaica Way and the Arborway as the
most dangerous intersection in America....

Interesting, definitely not

By Rob
Thu, 05/28/2009 - 6:31pm

Interesting, definitely not a bad comparison.

Yah, no subway

By deselby
Thu, 05/28/2009 - 5:24pm

The lack of a subway and lower density will prevent W. Roxbury from being cool.

That said, it's a pleasant place to live and already home to the people who run the city day-to-day. It does not need gentrification, it's already home to a gentry of sorts, but not precious.

South Boston and Charlestown, on the other hand, are now precious.

Dorchester, Roxbury and East Boston are always on the verge, but the persistent presence of criminal elements in those places scares your bourgeois-bred hipsters away.

The wooden three-decker housing predominent in those neighborhoods is not valuable or attractive enough to cause full gentrification, as the value of brick townhouses did in the South End.

DUMB bourgeois-bred hipsters!

By eeka
Thu, 05/28/2009 - 7:06pm

Fort Hill has one of the lowest crime rates in the city. Also awesome houses, several nice green spaces and community gardens including one with an awesome view, cool people and organizations, great businesses nearby, very walkable unless you're Chuck Turner, and close proximity to the subway. But people who don't actually know the city tend to group areas together by their larger neighborhood name, so the bourgeoisie think that everything in Roxbury must be just like the parts where you have vacant lots and cookie-cutter '70s and '80s housing developments.

Fine with me though. Hipsters, please go to all the cool neighborhoods and stay away from my crime-ridden one. ;o)

http://1smootshort.blogspot.com

For those of you that knew

By anon
Fri, 05/29/2009 - 8:31am

For those of you that knew West Roxbury back in the day it has gone thru a gentrification of sorts. You would have never seen any person of color (other than white irish) back in the 70's, 80's and some of the 90's.

I am glad for the change as I always disliked "White Roxbury" growing up (especially being from JP). While WRox still has room to grow in that area to actually have gay, black and asian people is a huge leap for this part of the city. I hope it continues to grow. Though I would prefer ot keep the hispters out as they just ruin places that were always "cool". :)

So far, the housing stock

By NotWhitey
Thu, 05/28/2009 - 5:14pm

So far, the housing stock has protected Safe Roxbury from the hipster-doofus crowd. There are few apartments to rent or turn into condos, and the single-family homes are not easily divided into condo-lets. On top of that, most of WR works for the city and are under the residency rules, so if they sell out they have nowhere to go.

Oh, no, MSM is about to declare West Roxbury the next cool neighborhood

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