The curmudgeon in love with his city

Dude complains about Boston being a "prettily arranged mall of cell-phone stores and million-dollar condos," and then moves to NYC, a city that lost it's original soul years, if not decades ago. Whatever. He probably wrote this sitting at some LES Starbucks.

Keohane was the best thing about the Weekly Dig. When he and Paul McMorrow left for Boston Magazine, the Dig became just another shopper.

But, in the end Boston is just another city, nice to live in, but one among many great cities. Sorry, I'm a native Bostonian, but Boston is not New York, London, Barcelona, Rio, Tokyo, or Paris. It compares well with LA, SF, Frankfurt, Cairo, and Amsterdam.

I loved the reference to Curious Liquids - that was the best coffee shop ever! That it didn't survive is a mark on Boston.

I did not want to like this piece initially, but I found myself agreeing with the author. The Boston I grew up with is long gone. I found it strangely ironic that this piece appeared in Boston Magazine, a periodical that continues to help perpetuate racism in this city more than any Southie yahoo could hope to.

wow

This story kind of puts the citys ethos into a nutshell.

Not that it matters, I guess, but was he fired by Boston magazine?

I read the piece and felt a deep sense of....disconnection.

The experience of Boston can be very different for those of us who do not originate or go to school in Boston. After arriving here in 1994, I've grown from loathing Boston, to being very ambivalent about it, to calling it home and -- on balance -- liking it. But I know that whether I stay or go, I'll never love the place.

After moving from the Midwest to New York in my early 20s, I stayed until getting a teaching gig in Boston. New York has been, and always will be, my Wonder City, even if -- like Boston -- it's not what it used to be. I understand Keohane's yearning for a city that is no more, but for me that yearning is for a New York I knew many years ago and a weird nostalgia for a New York I never knew.

My more personal reactions aside, I thought Keohane captured Boston's complicated nature, its maddening contradictions, and some of its lingering baggage. I don't know if it rises to the level of some of the classic commentaries on Boston, but it's a piece from the heart.

Funny, that's how I feel. I didn't grow up in Boston but I still think 20 years is a good chunk of time to live in one place and develop an attachment. Now that I've been away from Boston for about a year and change, I find myself waxing nostalgic for so much of what was there, rather than what is there. And I too, in the weeks leading up to my departure, walked around the city trying to drink in all the things I'd grown fond of, but now don't really miss a whole lot.

I'm returning for a visit this spring and while I'm excited, I wonder if there won't be a little bit of a let-down.

I'm thinking more about this, and I wonder, isn't a city similar to a church, in that it's not the place but the people inside it who are important?

His memories should be of people and events, not the places where things happened.

I read his column while sitting at a Starbucks on Mass Ave, across the street from Berklee. Everyone around me seemed so happy and full of life. They were making new memories, and it didn't seem to bother them at all that they were inside a store that is part of a corporate monster.

Keohane should look back with fondness and with a bittersweet sting, not with regrets.

I wish I was sitting in a Starbucks in the LES. And I loathe Starbucks.

I reread this piece, and I must say it's a thoughtful little essay to share with anyone who is trying to understand a certain gritty side of the Boston. It's a side I'll probably never fully get or ever warm up to, but it's a necessary perspective for we newcomers (c.1994) to appreciate.