Living in Boston is like a mini-New York. While New York is the city where you can get whatever you want, whenever you want it, Boston is the city that’s mostly closed on Sundays.
Boston’s subways are also a mini-version of Manhattan’s. There are fewer lines, covering a smaller area, not running all night, but on the plus side, it’s almost impossible to get on a train going the wrong direction. Fine, Boston, I guess you can use a consistent naming system. It’s not how we do it New York, but I guess it’s ok.
Also, people in Boston know how to let passengers off the train before getting on the train. Are they more polite? Is this an expression of human kindness, out of the shared human misery of commuting the the sunless cold six months a year? Or does Boston just have fewer visitors on the T in January (see previous re: cold), gumming up the works for regular commuters? My theory on the letting-people-off issue is that it’s exclusively tourists who don’t understand how to let others off before getting on. It’s visitors who are new to New York, or subways, or the whole public transit thing, who don’t realize exiting passengers need to go first.
Oh, another difference from New York is that when you see someone in Manhattan with the Statue of Liberty on their t-shirt or an I ♥ NY bag, they’re probably a visitor or an ironic Brooklynite. In Boston, the guy wearing head-to-toe Red Sox gear is a native. And he’s probably just going to work on a regular day…
A lot of my college friends have settled around Boston, so I can meet up with friends at their regular pub. (That would be the pub where the staff knows Eric by name and order.) It’s been so awesome to see old friends for regular coffee or lunch dates, instead of cramming everything we could possibly say to each other into a visit every couple of years.
Monday was Patriot’s Day, which is a special Massachusetts-only holiday, like Bunker Hill Day, where the bay state takes a day off to remind everyone else of our glorious revolutionary history. Monday was also the Boston marathon, and it was one of the first warm spring days, when everyone gets naked and lies on the town common remembering what sunshine feels like. All the bars and coffeeshops had their fronts open, with tables on the sidewalk, and everyone was sitting in the sunshine. The whole neighborhood was one massive party, celebrating a chance to wear a t-shirt out of the house.
Well, for me it was the chance to wear just one sweater, because Carrboro and Yangzhou, my last two homes, were pretty hot. It may take a little adjustment to New England.
