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Roslindale is just JP's 'chain-store sin eater'

In an editorial, the Jamaica Plain Gazette rhapsodizes about how Roslindale completes JP, in part because Roslindale hosts all the trailer-trash kind of chain stores that would otherwise try to muscle their non-local way into the pristine Elysian fields of Jamaica Plain:

It has been easier for local-business-minded JP to fend off the likes of Family Dollar when we all know we can go to the one already in Roslindale Village. And while a big-box store coming to JP would face protests, many of us have popped into the Rozzie Staples, which is not much farther from central JP than Jackson Square is.

Roslindale ed. note: Maybe it's time for a field trip to the JP Whole Foods to see what a real local, non-big-box store is like, one that managed to get built without any protests, let alone arrests. Well, no more than three, anyway. And it's not much farther from Rozzie Square than Grew Hill is.

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Comments

Yeah, I love that indie shoe store Payless, Best part of JP.

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Yeah, I liked the part where she talked about how, from the center of JP, you could get to Jackson Square OR to Roslindale Center in the same amount of time. Both exotic foreign locales, with all the sinful chain stores JP would never tolerate! Except for the part where Jackson Square, and all the chain stores in the Stop & Shop plaza, are in Jamaica Plain.

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I miss Fayva's! I miss the old JP too when the person who wrote this article would have never lived there.

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For a year

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Also, let's not forget the great rent-a-center

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Because what would keep onanistic hipster trustafarians and holier-than-thou organic hairsplitters away from Rozzie without JP?

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um yeah, cuz those breeds certainly don't exist in Roslindale....

but i'm with you, stereotyping sure is fun. And besides it's alot easier to look at someone and pretend I understand them based on their clothes, glasses and hair, than to actually speak to them and let people have individual characteristics

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I'm happy to help you feel more sophisticated than somebody today. That's what we're here for in Roslindale.

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not what i came for but i'll guess i'll take it.... if i really wanted so reassure myself of my sophistication i'd click on "comments" underneath the story about Tsarnaev getting buried

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being a little less pretentious. Scratch that...a whole lot less being pretentious.

And why are these JP/Somerville/Cambridge types so obsessed with looking down their nose at 'trailer Park' [READ; lower class disenfranchised white rural people]? These are the same people who wouldn't dare say anything mean-spirited about disenfranchised urban [READ: minorities] people.

That editorial was painful to read. It reeks.

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I bet you a Galway House fried chicken plate that the author of this is not a hipster or anything approaching whatever a "JP-type" is in your head. Just a well meaning but aloof person with free time on their hands

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... as a standard unit of bet-measurement on UHub. Can we make this happen?

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...why does every Craigslist apartment or room-for-rent ad contain the phrase "very close to JP"? and the location isn't "roslindale" but "near Jamaica Plain", intentionally trying to get the people doing searches for "JP" and "jamaica plain"? Some of them even keyword-spam at the bottom.

I love how Rozzie snobs, who decided they're too good / not-hipster for JP, keyword-spam the shit out of room and apartments listings for the area.

When your apartment or room is nowhere near any public transit and it'd be a ten minute bike ride into JP, you are not "near" JP!

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Because more people from JP are moving to Roslindale that people from Roslindale moving to JP. People develop habit and creat friendships and like to be in proximity to both. The real question is why do people from JP travel to Roslindale more than people from Roslindale travel to JP? We have everything JP has to offer and more ... Ethnic markets like Tonys, the fish market and the middle eastern gerocery store. Our kick ass farmers market, Italian restaurants and most important the lack if stuck up aholes and the fact people actually lay roots in Roslindale!

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I mean does any expect better from the Gazzette?

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Hey now, we DO have stop n shop and a Subway. And if the McDonald's in egleston sq isn't in jp it's within 20'

Also we probably have the highest gas station to car owner ratio in the city. This ain't louisburg square over here

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And local gas is fresh!

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Organic man!

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I always thought those two dunkin donuts within a quarter mile from each other in central JP belong somewhere like rozi. Or literally anywhere in Boston besides central JP.

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We've got the things they actually want.

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and move from JP to Roxbury (highland park). tad less pretentious round these here parts.

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having pissing matches about whose neighborhoods are less pretentious is just another form of pretention..... you just feeling better about yourself than others.

its like when i head back to the midwest and have to deal with certain of my relatives' anti-snobbery about east-coast, boston people, with our masters degrees and liberal viewpoints.... we're all the same, and for some reason to them it's a contest

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I find Highland Park much more pretentious than many areas in JP, including where I live in Egleston Square. Highland Park also just as expensive, but the place is nice - I'll grant you that.

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It practically reads like an Onion article ferchrissakes. Tips for gentrifying your neighborhood: 1. make sure you have a down at the heels hood nearby to export your starving artists and "characters" as your home begins to accrue in value and displace those around you.

Jumpin Jesus if that editorial is not satire the author should be denied a proper burial in this state.

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He/she should be all over this.

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posting about Benghazi on the Herald site?

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But it's nice to see that your blind party affiliation allows you to neglect the lives if humans!

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which dictionary lists 'neglect' as the antonym of 'exploit for political leverage'?

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Fuck JP and it miss matched, uncoordinated old cloths wearing no bike seat biking horrible music lessening odd balls. Keep talking shit and ill smack you with an organic carrot and hurl tofu at you girl. Roszy son!

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not having a bike seat is a thing? wtf are you on about here?

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Stat!

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but I don't think that's the entire gist of what she was saying. I don't go to Roslindale Square for the big box stores--I go there for a bunch of things I can't get in JP--Middle Eastern groceries, Fornax (yeah, I know City Feed carries it, but not much), and a lot of good small-scale shopping. Joanne Rossman has the most beautiful shop in Boston (pricey, but I've never regretted a single purchase I've made there). I miss the bookstore but I still think the range of places to go in Roslindale Square complement JP pretty well--never thought of it as going downmarket!

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So it all boils down to shopping.
IMAGE(http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lj6w10xn311qe0prco1_500.png)

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What really gets me about this article is the idea that it somehow makes sense to keep national chains out of JP, so that JP residents can go to Roslindale and patronize them anyway. How does that protect the mom and pops? It shows a very unsophisticated understanding of what is meant by shop local. The truth of the matter is that national chains and local merchants can and do exist side by side, so long as each focuses on a certain niche without too much overlap.

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Roslindale:JP as Natick:Dover

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At least when I covered the towns (granted, we're going a ways back now), it was always amazing how much more superior to Framingham many Natickites felt - sure, they both had Rte. 9 malls, but Natick didn't have those godawful giant neon signs! And it had Doug Flutie! And Casey's! IN YOUR FACE, Framingham!

Maybe South Natick:Dover or South Natick:Wellesley, though.

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i have no idea what this means.

I've lived in Boston for 10 years and have biked through much of Eastern Mass. in that time, but in my mind Natick is a mall and Dover is the capital of Delaware

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Which is just over the line from South Natick (the fancy-shmancy part of Natick) makes Wellesley look like the poor side of the tracks.

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got it -- explains why i've never been invited to any barbecues there

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I've lived in Boston for 10 years and have biked through much of Eastern Mass. in that time, but in my mind Natick is a mall and Dover is the capital of Delaware

And the good people of Dover want to keep it that way. They don't advertise.

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That's like saying Boston is one big slum based on an observation of one of the *ahem* less desirable areas. Simply not true.

Take a bike ride thru Natick, then let us know what you think. Hint: stick to roads south of rte 9.

Just sayin'

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Don't forget the time (a few years ago) when the owners of the Natick Mall tried to trademark the word "Natick" so that, legally speaking, Natick(R) would have been a mall.

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But stay north of Rte. 9 there.

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Near the Country Club and Macomber estates.

I guess you could say all the not so nice sections of Framingham are south of Rt. 9 though.

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Our farmers market is 1000000x better than JP's! I mean has anyone tried Walters BBQ sauces, his pineapple peach hot sauce will change your life.

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Good lord. Where to begin. I suppose first with the assertion that JP has "fended off" chain stores. I will leave off all of the chain stores in the parts of JP that this person would clearly like to pretend aren't part of JP and focus on: the (A) Wholefoods on Centre Street, the (B) CVS on Centre Street, and the (C) Dunkin Donuts on Centre Street. I prefer to live in Roslindale and shop at my LOCAL super market (the Villiage Market), my LOCAL bakery/coffee shop (Fornax) and my LOCAL pharmacy (Sullivan's). I also enjoy our LOCAL farmers market, but I can't figure out what to compare that to in JP because THERE ISN't ONE (stupid). By the way, I also don't mind the Staples and the Subway and our Dunkin Donuts because they compliment all of the local business and, also, I'm not a stuck up asshole like the author. Next, the notion that Roslindale is somehow a second tier choice to JP for artists. Roslindale had plenty of artists before JP got too rediculously expensive (and apparently pretentious) for its artists to live in. Furthermore, the young professionals of JP that I know who are moving to Roslindale are doing so because you would have to be an idiot to cram you and your children into a $600K 2 bedroom condo in JP rather than a spacious 4 bedroom house within steps of the Arboretum in Roslindale for the same price. The non-idiot child bearing class of JP is on the move. Thankfully the author of this editorial appears not to be. Semper Roslindalia!

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Right, preach brother preach!

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JP morons want to tear down casey overpass dont let them!

Cartman where are thou to relieve us from this hippie yuppie epidemic.

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It's kind of a strange phrase to use in a headline about a neighborhood, given that a sin eater only shows up when a person is dying. Makes it sound like JP had chain stores, but Roslindale took them all away ...

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n/t

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