I only saw it on the "blogs" page. And yeah, the discussion is certainly interesting.

http://1smootshort.blogspot.com

Exactly people seem very interested in this topic and have a lot to say. It obviously does not just affect somerville or myslef. Almost 100 comments? Cool not bad for my first blog post ever lol!

Cuts my hair at Rialto.

I find that people will let you know what their wishes are. If they post it in the local paper, online, and in the Globe then yeah they want the packed church. The kids will post on their myspace/facebook/aim with RIP whoever it is and everyone will be talking about it. On the other hand if they do not want the effect they will be very quiet about it. I had a relative die a while back and some of the causes and aftermath were a little hard to handle. My family essentially put a lid of the wake/funeral without much work. None of my co workers or friends showed up which I was relieved about. They all showed compassion and sent cards after but knew I could not handle them being there and being forced to stand in a mile long receiving line. I am rather used to hundred+ person funeral.

It is a very Catholic thing, it stems from being working class/industrial laborers and recent immigrants. People depended on each other. Old time Catholics are also the self flogging type and what better place to do that then a funeral?

Ok lets not forget like any large city in America like Boston, people come from all over to work and play. They want to be in the city for the excitement, to meet new people, for opportunities you don't get if you lived in some podunk small town. People that live in small towns are usually from there because who would to move to some small town? The people that have been living in that small town are called "Townies" thats where the word originated from. Like swirly girl stated- how could you even have a "townie" in a city. It just doesn't make sense. Most cities are a combination of people from different places to create the dynamic effect of a city. They can't afford to ive right in the city so they live really close to the city with good access to the city (eg: cambridge, somerville) So does that mean that all these people are yuppies just because they are not originally from there? I think you are confusing yuppy with transplant. A transplant does not necessarily make a person a yuppy. that would be an ignorant statement.

I have a college education, but I don't have a ton of money and I don;t work at a fast food place. I am a middle class american which I believe is by far the largest group in America. So that neither makes me a yuppy or a townie. It's just not that cut and dry as you might think.

I always found it odd that people became angry and hostile at the newcomers when the people with money were only a small part of the changes in the neighborhood.

For renters, the rise in rents everywhere in the region pushed professionals into places like Davis square. Sure, they displaced families, but they themselves might have gone elsewhere if MA wasn't so very obtuse about land use planning and required cities and towns to get with the program and permit the development of adequate number of apartments and the kind of public transportation the region needed to get people from those apartments to their jobs.

The biggest part was the demise of the multigenerational household, which was a national trend.

The second major and ultimately biggest issue was the large families that resulted in houses being sold to settle estates. This happened to our neighbors in Arlington - her mother owned the house, but she had six siblings who wanted a piece of the sale after her mother died. The house was sold, and the earnings were split to settle the estate. The other six didn't think it was fair that our neighbor would just get the house when she had lived there rent-free for thirty years, even if she did care for their mother for much of it.

I had friends who rented and got put out by new owners when multifamily properties were sold to condo developers as a result of settling estates. You didn't have to be related to the owner for this process of splitting assets amongst multiple heirs to get you.

Then there was the end of rent control in Cambridge, where people had been living for twenty years in extremely cheap places despite making six figures for ten or fifteen years. That really pushed up prices but huge in places like Davis Square and Arlington.

Nobody wants to hate their family, or get mad at their parents who sold a house they inherited rather than pass it along, so hating on Barneys was the order of the day. Never mind that there were the larger social trends of people moving out of the cities and the rise of condos and complicated estates and the utter lack of planning or regional sense of needs and everything else. That's too much to think about.

In many college "towns" (including cities), the interaction between the local residents and the students is known as "town/gown relations". Thus, a townie is someone who's -from- the town, as opposed to Those Kids Who Zip Through Here.

The "town" doesn't have to be a "small town"; any local person with local roots is a townie.

I spent the first half of my childhood in communities of less than 8,000 people, not suburbs of NY or NJ.

You have to realize Boston is a city made up of distinct neighborhoods. (I'm the one who posted with the book recommendations).

Thanks, anon! I don't know why my humble suggestion made being considered "good people" sound so awful, though. (sigh).

Around my part of Somerville I think you'll more likely find people drinking Guinness or Harpoon or sometimes Sam.

Wander into Redbones on Chester Street, or Downtown Wine & Spirits on Elm, and you'll be confronted by a dizzying array of obscure beers you've never heard of.

The official beer of Somerville !!

Thanks for the good read suggestion. I'll check it out. However I must correct you. I disagree with your definition of "Townie" though. So what you are saying is a townie is someone who is just originally from that given city or town. That means that someone who is originally form NYC is therefore a 'townie" ? I'm sorry I have never heard anyone call themselves or be called a "townie" in NYC or any other city for that matter. I think they would actually be offended by that and laugh at you.

Townie is a term commonly used in university towns to refer to residents not affiliated with the university. Tufts is a University or Townie is also a term for someone who has not left the town in which they were born and raised.

And it's not yuppies. It's hipster doofuses that are invading the city(my city for my whole life) and ruining it. They aren't even Barneys. They are a lower lifeform. At least the barneys are genuinely clueless. The HDs are doing it on purpose because they feel there is something ironic about adults playing kickball. They need to shave the beards, toss out the Che tshirts and stop using vintage lunchboxes as breifcases and grow up.

I was going to suggest the exact same thing to him.

And to add to the confusion, everybody keep in mind that in Somerville "townie" may specifically refer to someone from Charlestown. That is the even more local meaning than the town/gown-yuppie definition kicked around above.

I think you can have townies anywhere and they aren't always "bad" like some people want to think. My take is that there are 2 types of townies.

One type is the guy who never left his parents house after getting out of high school, maybe went to North Adams St. for a year, and then finds himself living with his parents again until he is age 30-40. Living with your parents isn't necessarily bad, but the townie doesn't really have any long term carrer goals. He is satisfied with working at the local sub shop, and having a few bud bottles at the local bar for lunch and then going back to work. The townie isn't a bad person, but he has a routine, and likes to stick to that routine. He takes care of his parents landscaping, shovels the snow, is nice to his mom, and like to attend every wake and funeral of other townie relatives. Granted, the Brighton Townie that has his lunchtime beer at Joey's is going to be a little rougher than the Newton Townie that has his lunchtime beer at Dunn's. But they are one in the same. Good people for the most part, but they dont want outsiders buying their bars, sub shops or department stores and changing them either.

The other type of townie is simply the guy who went away for college and first job, and then came back to live near his family in the town he loves. He has money can afford a nice single family house at a young age, knows everyone in town, still likes to have the bud bottle at the local bar, sends his kids to the same public schools he went to, and has a general pride for the town he grew up in.

Now of course both types of townies have special bonds with each other. They both went to the same public schools, and most times remain friends as they get older.

Im going to say there are 2 major factors in being a townie. One is living in the town you grew up in and went to school in, and the other is being able to go to 10 places in that town and run into an x number of people you know at those locations including parents, relatives and friends of those people you know.

Its not a science, but townieology is an interesting subject to be sure.