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Modern-day Boston in a nutshell by the New York Times

All the news that's fit to print about Boston: Now that the Big Dig is done, Paul Revere wouldn't recognize the place. You can get some great Italian food in Little Italy - which is also the place to rub shoulders with "Sam Adams-swilling frat boys." Boston hipsters drink 'Gansetts instead of PBR. Boston still sucks when compared to New York, but we have some cute little restaurants, some with music (and remember: "you can't visit Boston, smell a salt breeze and not want to eat seafood"). A note to Harvard legacies: "Relive your Head of the Charles days" by renting a sailboat at Community Boating.

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This is likely to spark outrage among the readership Adam. I have to say, this was actually a pretty standard format and tone for these NYT "36 hours in ___" and was genrally free of offensive invectives and derision. This is, of course, with the exception of every New Yorker's inability to make reference to any marginally Italian neighborhood as anything other than "Little Italy" and its mention of the gastronomic "inferiority complex" that apparently exists in The HUB. I was able to brush off those slights by imagining what nose-look-donwery might be found in one of these pieces on (gasp) Chicago, or other western frontier villiages. Heavens, what would cause you to leave Manhattan for one of THOSE areas?!

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Between this and the thread on building a Target-based development in Fenway and the ongoing hipster discussions, I'm wishing for a more run-down, skank-ass Boston again. Can't we have a nice town and retain local character (meaning the positive things don't sound like marketing effluence from a realtor or urban(e) carpet-baggers)?

I do like nice restaurants, museums and not having to dodge vomit puddles on every sidewalk, but does gentrification have to be ...so... New Yorky?

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You'll unleash a chorus of soulless 23- to 27-year-olds who will shout you down, call you old, and proclaim that Boston is better-- yes, better-- now that it more closely resembles the generic corporate highway-exit community that they came from.

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Little Italy? I have seen travel writing like this before.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/european-men-are-...

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It's the NORTH END. Never Little Italy. Little Italy is in NYC.

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The usual condescending New York tone. I have to say, though, the comments on the North End were right on, despite the mis-labeling. I recently spent an afternoon there with some teenage girls, and I'm thinking 'Chow time!", but we spent the whole afternoon going from one boutique to another. Where did they all come from?

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In the pop-up map accompanying the article (http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2010/08/05/trave...), Charlestown is misspelled. No "w". Guess they didn't take the trip across the bridge from "Little Italy" to see.

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These facts will remain true:
new yorkers will be arrogant, they will think they're better than everyone in the world because of media bias,
and they will never admit to anything in Boston is better...even though it is...
For a little history lesson, check out Boston during the roaring '20s, it was well on it's way to being bigger than it is today, i.e. if Filenes (creator of the department store as we know it) would have not been bought out by Macy's (which started here in Mass. by the way) imagine where we would be in fashion today.
Boston is finally beginning to catch up to where it's supposed to be, after being held back by conservative political leaders and closed minded developers. Let's continue this forward progress!!

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..a 36 hour agenda of things to do and see in Boston. Wasn't that the point of the article? Nothing really hipster-sheek in there at all. Oh, right the PBR reference? I suppose it would be better if the world saw Boston as an old curmudgeon of a town and just went elsewhere with all their vacation and business and education dollars. Give me the Combat Zone and the old raised tracks and old man barrooms or give me death.

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I'm sure my Dad will clip that and send it to me -- as he does with anything Boston-related in the NYT.

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Wonder if the "modern sheen" includes filling in the Back Bay and building Comm. Ave.? 'Cause I'm pretty sure Paul Revere wouldn't recognize that, either.

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Read some more discussion of this article here.

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To tell from UH posts and comments, modern-day Boston is about mentally-ill elderly exposing themselves on the subway, blacks and latinos shooting and stabbing people, and locals having nostalgia for the past or plain refusing to acknowledge the present.

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....came to Boston as a child (Somerville,Jamaica Plain) and gotta laugh at the NYT usual condescension, especially regarding Boston (it's quaint, cute.....and my favorite line from this cheesy article '....as it [Boston] gets more diverse....' ALWAYS gotta throw in a comment about diversity....apparently any city that's just 50/50 minority/white like Boston isn't diverse enough. Those white ethnics just aren't cool enough for the hipsters. I don't know what town the Times reporter is talking about because I've traveled a great deal in the military, for business and pleasure and this city is actually remarkably diverse, and has been since at least since I was a kid in the 80's. As for the rest of the article, it sucked. ALL travel articles suck. But I think the worse one for Boston that I've read was out of the Lonely Planet. The female Australian author went on and on about how precious and cute Beacon Hill was, and how it looked like a fake Hollywood set. She of course adored Manhattan though.

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Of course Bostonians never speak condescendingly about the rest of the country. We never smirk at, belittle, or feel superior to other regions that we know nothing about. No snobs or chauvinists in Boston. But we do fret about New York Times articles.

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...I've never smirked at, or looked down on, anyone because of where they're from. Wouldn't even occur to me. I think the average Bostonian is similar to me. But we do have a large transient population of college students and yuppies, many from places other than here, who I've noticed can sometimes be snotty. Sorry to say especially those from the NYC area, Westchester,NJ, Long Island. Unfortunately, I think these folks give Boston a bad rap. I often tell visitors they just as likely to meet and interact in the touristy areas with people not from here than natives. In fact, in places like the Back Bay, often the only Boston accent you'll hear are from the cops,firemen,delivery people, dudes digging ditches for the city, etc., And I think you'll find they are often the coolest people around.

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I've never smirked at, or looked down on, anyone because of where they're from.

...

Sorry to say especially those from the NYC area, Westchester,NJ, Long Island.

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He was making a simple point: That people from these areas seem to bring certain attitudes with them. He was neither smirking nor looking down on anyone for being where they were from. Doesn't take much for you to feel holier than thou, and find a "teachable moment," does it?

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a rerun of that Native/Local/Newcomer definition list that appeared in the comments a few weeks back. That did a really nice job of separating those worthless transients and lightly tenured bandwagon jumpers from us real Boston folk.

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