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God, hipsters at it again
By adamg on Thu, 09/08/2011 - 4:30pm
The Herald reports the artsy-fartsy crowd thinks SoCa would be a better name for the area south of North Station, or as they're re-imagining it, SOuth of CAnal, which barely makes any sense because Canal's more or less a north/south road, and just, gah, look, if you're so in love with frickin' Manhattan, move there already. Or if it's too unironic for you, try some other neighborhood just dying for some frou-frou boutiques. Like Kings Highway or, I dunno, Passaic. Just leave us crabby Bostonians alone with our West Ends and Bullfinch Triangles.
"The idea is to connect this place more to Faneuil Hall."
Just great: A new place to take all the relatives from The City when they come up to see what interesting little projects you're doing up here in the hinterlands.
And why the hell does everything have to be SOuth of SOmething?
Thanks, I think, to Jay Fitzgerald for pointing out the story, which I'd somehow managed to miss.
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Comments
why not South of Causeway?
it could still be SoCa but it would be more accurate.
There's been a NoCa Arts organization in North Cambridge for years.
Is it permissable to say SoCa
in order to make fun of the folks who say things like SoCa?
Alternative
Perhaps we should call them "WeEn"ers.
P.S. SF has "NoPa"
Call it Mill Pond
Why not just call it Mill Pond or Mill Dam? That would be a classic Boston throwback (Back "Bay", etc.) and would cause enough confusion to start conversations and create the cache the real estate people are always looking for.
Disagree? As I belive George Costanza famously said, "oh, it's got cache, baby. It's got cache up the ying yang!"
How about the West End?
Only because that's what it was originally called. Then when I was a kid, everyone called that area North Station. We never worried about some hipster assholes trying to bring business into their shitty little hotel through rebranding a neighborhood they knew nothing about before they moved here from Iowa or God knows where.
And yes, it does get "energetic" down there when there are Garden events. Like after a Bruins game when people are puking in front of the Fours until 2 in the morning.
Assholes! This isn't New York! You love New York so much, move there and pay three times the rent for three times the crime, then you can be REALLY hip!
I'm only glad Joe and Nemo aren't around to see this...
Actually, NYC has a much
Actually, NYC has a much lower crime rate that Boston (113th vs 269th). NYC is actually below the national average.
http://os.cqpress.com/citycrime/2010/City_crime_ra...
And the average rent is also very comparable ($1000 vs $1012).
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/cities-rent-sky-hig...
But yes, I agree that efforts to abbreviate and rename any section of a city like this is idiotic.
I admit..
my rant was more emotion based than fact checked. It just eats my cheese!
I can't decide
Do I live in fashionable "TriBePoInUn" (Triangle between Porter, Inman and Union)? Or am I in hipster-rific SoSo (South of Somerville Ave).
DUCK VILLAGE!
DUCK VILLAGE!
?
Duck Village
Duck Village was the nickname for a neighborhood adjacent to Union Square back in the day. Story goes that the neighborhood was a hiding place during Prohibition, where folks could "duck" the police while looking for speakeasy patrons. The streets around there go every which way, and four lefts generally do not put you pack to where you started.
A modest proposal
Rename all of Boston to SoCa. It's south of Cambridge, isn't it?
Then everyone will be pissed off. Win-win-win.
How about the entire country?
How about the entire country? South of Canada
It is the hipsters at fault
It is the hipsters at fault for this... or the realtors?
Yeah. Why the hipsters?
I mean, it's the realtors that are responsible for the clumsy sounding (and also geographically inaccurate) sowa (uncapitalized on purpose). I still give puzzled looks to people who mention it and pretend I don't know what they're talking about, despite living between Harrison Ave and Albany St myself.
Whats a...
Sa-Waah'?
I prefer CaCa.
I prefer CaCa.
What about North of Faneuil?
What about North of Faneuil? Or maybe I'm just not a big fan of the whole thing...
“It sounds funkier, it sounds
“It sounds funkier, it sounds funnier, like you’re dancing when you say the word,” Guzman said.
The fact that people get away with saying these things without immediate and terrible result just proves that there is no God.
thats the best comment ever
thats the best comment ever on this site
hilarious
i laughed out loud when i read this comment. thank you.
"Soca" is a genre of
"Soca" is a genre of Caribbean dance music... wonder if thats what he meant? (clearly not..)
I wonder if they research these things... smh
I like it
Of course, I'm a SoCa junkie.
Loserville
Why not call it Loserville and let them all move there?
If I become a real estate developer...
I call dibs on SoNoPo... South of the North Pole. No matter where I end up developing, it'll be true.
sosocreci all day
i represent the south of south crescent circuit, brighton!
The name is freakin stupid,
The name is freakin stupid, but seriously what's wrong with trying to do something different here, to promote and bring some life to the neighborhood (besides Garden related events)? The attitude in the post sounds like lame old boston "nothing can ever change here. ever." type of crap. You want people to move to nyc if they want this stuff, maybe frozen oldie types should move to a museum.
Nothing wrong with bringing life to the area
Or trying out a new name.
What drives me nuts is the New Yorkish theme all these efforts take, with their stupid derivative we-so-special CamelCase names that completely ignore any historical references in this most historic of cities. SoCa? Really? You can't play off Bulfinch or the West End or even just call it the Canal District or Causeway or something?
We're not New York and there's nothing wrong with that - and besides, "SoHo" is itself derivative (I'm old enough to remember when it was just several blocks of decaying warehouses, not a place where New Yorkers, just like we're now doing, tried to steal some glamor from another city and renamed it).
Feh, you ReNamers, get offa my lawn!
Ha! Good points, but why does
Ha! Good points, but why does everything need to be framed with a Boston vs NYC mindset? I'm sure they're not sitting in NoLita or SoHo or wherever and saying "Look at Boston, they're copying us." They couldn't give a crap. It's a one-sided war. These nicknames are ubiquitous and dumb (SoWa - more like so what), but not limited to Boston in stealing the idea. They're happening all over the country as developers become more marketing savvy. I agree though that more local-flavored names, less asinine acronyms would be a good thing!
SoWa
I'm not fond of the name, but it does give an identity to a place that really didn't have a name before (it being just an industrial fragment of the much larger South End). The SoWa First Fridays, Open Studios, and Open Market all seem quite popular, and might not be so if there was no overall 'brand name' for the district.
The Canal-Causeway area already has a perfectly good name, Bulfinch Triangle. (Not BulTri, please.)
Agreed.
Lets all remember where things like SoHo came from. They came from the fact that you can't fit "South of Houston Street" in a tiny print real estate ad, so the whole general area became "SoHo." Similarly, there's DUMBO - Down Under the Mannahatan Bridge Overpass. I don't believe there is anything inherently New Yorkish in these kind of abreviations, and I have no problem with an area being organically turned into a moniker like "SoWa" or "DUMBO" when it makes sense as an abreviation to provide you an idea of where the area is. South of Washington Street works. SoCa, in addition to making you sound like a cockney football fan when you say it, tells you nothing - or worse, suggests that the area is actually South of Canal Street, which it isn't. I think that is what is really anoying about it. Its like when real estate agents tell you Providence Place is on Beacon Hill. It has nothing to do with geography, just zip-code pricing.
PS. That area is already known as the Bullfinch Triangle. How about BFT.
Providence Place
That's quite a feat, given that they are over 40 miles apart.
That's right!
And we all know that Louisburg Square is on Federal Hill!
Which Federal Hill?
Providence or Baltimore? Of course Providence.
But if two cities can have the same spelled out name just imagine both the confusion and lack of unique identity that can arise from having silly acronyms as names. But then I learned here at Universal Hub that live in I think SoSo. So who knows maybe eventually we all will be renamed with So or No-whatever.
I will stick to names that have a historical connection to an area instead of a name that is supposed to conjure images of sophistication and hipness. My hip is just find as it is (now that's its brand spanking (ouch) new).
Ha!
Oops! I meant Province Place, which I see from the series of interconnected tubes known as the internet is now called "45 Province." I'm pretty sure they were marketing it as Province Place at some point and I know they claimed it was on Beacon Hill instead of DTX. Either way, I agree that Province Place and Beacon Hill are over 40 miles apart, although not geographically.
"Midtown"
I just had to add this, as I found it when I was trying to figure out where Province Place "is."
According to the Warrent Development Group, Province Place is in "Midtown," the description of which is PRICELESS!:
"Since the construction of the ultra-luxurious Ritz Carlton Towers, the development of Midtown has been constant. One of the most vibrant downtown neighborhoods, Midtown is home to Downtown Crossing – an outdoor pedestrian mall with all sorts of vendors, street performers, and shops. Midtown dwellers also enjoy easy access to the Boston Commons, and just about anywhere else in Boston via Midtown's MBTA stations and many bus routes."
Where to begin?
My favorite realtor fuckup: that we have more than one Common
One dingbat realtor who showed me a few apartments in Boston repeatedly referred to how far we were from The Boston Commons. I hadn't even moved here yet and even I knew it there was no 's' on the end.
LoCa CaCa = Crazy Shit
Lower Canal = loca (Spanish for 'crazy')
Canal Causeway = caca (Spanish for "doodie")
life-bringing is good
I don't think anyone has a problem with bringing life to those "blocks in front of the Garden." But like you said the name is stupid and it sounds a lot like the efforts of real estate people to "brand" a neighborhood as opposed to an area finding its own identity over time. For this area it will be tough to overcome the pre-post sporting event atmosphere of testosterone, beer and vomit that permeates those streets on game nights (not to mention the traffic and parking issues).
But no reason why it can't be a cool little neighborhood -- and we don't have to fret over displacing long time residents as that was already done years ago. Trying to connect it to Faneuil Hall seems like a stretch given Haymarket's looming garage-presence in the middle and the busy arterials hemming the n'hood in. Hopefully something happens on that stretch of the Greenway in there as it felt very surface of the moon-like (last time I was there).
That's because it isn't part of the Greenway
Anything north of Haymarket that looks like a green lawn isn't part of the Rose Kennedy Greenway. Those parcels are all slated to have private development on them.
Back Bay Sox Fans
If you lived on the Beacon side of Marlborough in Back Bay, you could sell your house to female Sox fans who are still in love with NoMa.
And as his most famous quote says...
"thanks, beautiful!"
Wail til'
some moron tries to rename Southie "SoBo". Then the fit will hit the shan!
BFT
Yep, it's already called Bullfinch Triangle. I like the earlier suggestion of BFT if people can't spit out "Bullfinch Triangle," which, admittedly, doesn't feel like much of a triangle at the street level--though if they really do tear down part or all of the Gov't Center garage, it might be a chance to re-establish that piece of the triangle.
Before the SoWa moniker, the
Before the SoWa moniker, the area was called the New York streets...because all the streets are named after places in new york.
So while I am NOT a fan of all the SoWa, GaGa CaCa monikers (because they are fake, not organic, but forced names), it's funny that the area was already named after, what else, New York.
New York Streets?
Thought that was further north, where the Boston Herald is now (but soon won't be). Between Dover (East Berkeley) Street and the Turnpike.
There's a Shawmut and Harrison Aves in NYC?
because I can't find them.
Ron has it right-- the name
Ron has it right-- the name doesn't make sense now since all the streets have vanished or have changed names, but there was once a collection of streets that shared names with towns in New York state: Oneida, Oswego, Rochester, Troy, etc. I guess you could say one still exists in Albany Street, but it has a completely different place than the small side streets that made up the area.
It's the realtors fault
They call the Broadway Station area of Southie the Seaport. It was always called "the Lower End". It is still home to drunks,druggies,dirtballs and now Yuppies. City point is now known as Castle Island. Castle Island is where I use to walk around a fort eating hotdogs and french fries.
"Castle Island" is all over
"Castle Island" is all over maps from the 19th and early 20th centuries.... can't blame that one on the realtors.
Real Estate
There are no houses/property on Castle Island. Don't know which maps you are looking at.
Plenty!
Oh I see I misunderstood your comment-- I thought you were saying you used to refer to Castle Island as City Point. I see now you mean they call the City Point neighborhood by Castle Island. I agree that is messed up.
Though I will say I've never seen the Broadway station area listed as Seaport, I can't imagine even the dimmest realtor calling that the Seaport-- that's a real head scratcher if that is indeed happening. At least city point is near the island. Calling Broadway Station seaport is like saying the Baseball Tavern is in Back Bay because its on Boylston Street