Hey, there! Log in / Register

Now that Downtown Crossing is perfect, what's left?

Thomas Farragher writes today about how exciting and new Downtown Crossing is now that all the rich people are moving in.

Earlier:
Back Bay to Downtown Crossing: You're not all that.

Neighborhoods: 
Topics: 
Free tagging: 


Ad:


Like the job UHub is doing? Consider a contribution. Thanks!

Comments

ughhhh i hate when rich people move in and make places better and get rid of crime and drugs in places.........

up
Voting closed 0

Oh, you think DTX is rid of drugs and crime now that rich people have moved in? Bwahaha!

up
Voting closed 0

Trust funders in high rise condos never do drugs!

Or this guy living in The W who was dealing and stabbing people:
http://www.universalhub.com/crime/20170219/police-man-stabbed-luxury-the...

up
Voting closed 0

... exacerbates income inequality thus leading to homelessness and street crime.

up
Voting closed 0

Any stats to back that up?

up
Voting closed 0

This piece reminds me of that story that the Globe had to pull about some city (Baltimore?) that sounded like something the Chamber of Commerce would have written. Aren't there still a bunch of vacant stores around where Strawberries used to be?

up
Voting closed 0

I still remember that story---god, that was bad. I thought of the same thing reading this DTX piece. Even when I walk down Washington Street at 8:30 in the morning, there are always junkies yelling and fighting. I don't feel unsafe, since there are so many people around, but it's definitely not the upscale vibe this article is trying to portray.

up
Voting closed 0

When I follow a Google link to that story, I get this:

"A recent travel story about Cleveland, Ohio, has been removed because the reporting practices did not meet Globe standards."

(I don't generally expect hard-hitting investigative reporting in the Travel section, so something really egregious must have happened here.)

up
Voting closed 0

Adam posted it here maybe 2-3 years ago. The story had already been taken down, but a UHub reader posted a cached version at that time.

Basically, it was an article about Cleveland in the travel section, in which the writer didn't appear to have actually visited the city. All the info could have been taken from Trip Advisor, Yelp, etc. "Cleveland also has a botanical garden which is open Monday-Friday"--along those lines. It wasn't just a puffy, glossy piece like a lot of travel writing; it literally read like something cobbled together in a couple hours and posted on Yahoo.

up
Voting closed 0

You'll find it here.

up
Voting closed 0

That storefront that formerly was a Barnes & Nobles bookstore has been empty for what seems like 20 years. It's hard to believe that a successful business could nit operate there. Isn't some rent better than zero? I thought the new DTX tower across the street would change things but apparently not. What's the deal?

up
Voting closed 0

Tax write off. Taxes are written for and by large property owners. That is how people like Trump get away with paying little or nothing in taxes.

up
Voting closed 0

Tens of millions of dollars is "little or nothing".

up
Voting closed 0

Please don't tell me they're gunning to get rid of 'low class' 7-elevens.

up
Voting closed 0

How many coffee places there are now on Washington Street, even aside from the Dunkin' Donuts.

up
Voting closed 0

The elephant in the room is that the coffee isn't any good in any of those upscale coffee places. It's always that dark, bitter roast that is trending these days. No matter how many options they offer,and what chi chi name they give it, it's always a variation of that bitter style. And some of those steamed latte type concoctions are so sweet it begs the old joke "have some coffee with your sugar".

up
Voting closed 0

Thinking Cup is good, I think. And George Howell also, but incredibly slow service and annoying entitled clientele. I don't get the appeal of Caffe Nero.

up
Voting closed 0

It's a nice, inviting space where one can get a coffee. Pretty simple.

up
Voting closed 0

It's a nice, inviting space where one can get a coffee.

Really? It always struck me as crowded and pushy. And the coffee ain't all that. Whatever works for you, I guess.

up
Voting closed 0

... espresso. The Cafe Nero chain seems to be all about comfy seating but lousy burnt coffee.

up
Voting closed 0

Thinking cup espresso is excellent. Can't speake for their coffee. Also, they sell egg and cheese english muffin breakfast sandwiches which are delicious and a decent price. Surprised people would bitch and moan about this place -- it's fantastic compared to Dunkin and Starbucks. Can't please everyone I guess.

up
Voting closed 0

calls it, "the way coffee is supposed to taste, not that steaming swamp water that some Americans like." They say the same thing about our most popular beers, too.

up
Voting closed 0

Sorry to sound so provincial, but one of the problems is Boston always trying to be a second rate New York City or a second rate "European style" city instead of a first rate Boston. Developers and transplants try to remake Boston into their own vision of where they come from or an improvement on what they ran away from.

up
Voting closed 0

out that yours is a minority opinion in the broader scheme of things.

You don't have to want to be French or Italian or Chinese or Japanese to admire the incredible influence of those cultures on global cuisine. Some things get popular because they really are better, and sometimes mass taste actually evolves.

Fifty years ago, it was hard to find beer on your retailer's shelf that wasn't in the bland, watery American macro adjunct lager style. Now, fully a quarter of the market is for darker, more complexly flavorful beers. Nothing wrong with you sticking to your Bud Lite, but it's not the whole world.

As for Boston "always trying to be a second rate New York City or a second rate 'European style' city", I call BS on that. It may be a popular hacky-media trope, or an occasional pretension of realtors trying to reposition neighborhoods with stupid new names, but most of us don't waste any time thinking about our status regarding the rest of the world, especially after a decade of being Title Town (which strangled and buried our sports inferiority complex vs. New York).

up
Voting closed 0

You couldn't sound any more foolish if you really tried. People who move to boston are "running away from" something/somewhere? People move. For jobs, for family, for spouses, for the sake of trying something new. So you're saying they should either conform to what "you" (I'm guessing a "native" Bostonian), or leave? You really have an issue with Boston changing, expanding, or accepting new things that may come from other cities?

up
Voting closed 0

.... coffee in France and Italy tastes. I hope you get a good cup of coffee someday, MC Slim.

up
Voting closed 0

Dunks-style light-roast filter coffee. If that's your baseline, even a well-made espresso will indeed taste comparatively bitter.

I make my morning espresso on an Italian electric pump-drive machine, and when I drink coffee out, it's at places like The Thinking Cup. And I've had a coffee or two in Italy and France. You're preaching to the converted.

up
Voting closed 0

Ogawa is my favorite. Their house blend is the perfect mixture of richness and smoothness without being too bitter or acidic.

I find George Howell's coffee to be too acidic and very unpleasant.

up
Voting closed 0

For instance, there's one at Mass. Ave. and Day Street in North Cambridge. Even better, they have stores in Marblehead, Newton Highlands, and West Concord.

up
Voting closed 0

I wouldn't be surprised if this guy was on the payroll.

What does it cost to get a puff piece these days?

up
Voting closed 0

Hey, downtown crossing was also exciting in the 1980s as one dodged a stray bullet here and there.

I guess I am not seeing (feeling?) all the excitement he is of having to look at another upscale coffee shop. The tacky but-in-a good way carts, which I liked, are gone now along with the fun of pushing people to get that bargain in Filene's Basement. Macy's is a sh*twhole. The other stores are "meh" (Roche's sells only the "freshest cuts of meat?!" Riiight.) and so, now wow, we have more upscale restaurants that sell $50 steaks from cows that eat only grass and marrow bones or fish in tins and expensive cheeses on boards with the wine du jour and we can sit on stairs that go to nowhere (the metaphor fits) as we ponder how we got so f*cked up.

up
Voting closed 0

The Macy's edifice is a disgrace.
I can make it pretty if Macy's and Boston BID cares.
http://nateswain.com/

up
Voting closed 0

Another Globe writer sending a dispatch from the bubble (also a specialty of Shirley Leung). This article seems celebrate wealth, extravagance and conspicuous consumption . "Celebrated chef Michael Mina is sellings a grass-fed filet mignon for $48 a pop". "There are upscale coffee shops on every other corner." I know the past can't come back, but I'll take Bailey's or even Brigham's over an "upscale coffee shop" any day.

up
Voting closed 0

Primark, TJ Maxx, Marshalls, GAP Outlet, Payless Shoes, and now Old Navy in the base of Millennium Tower! What a destination for the luxury shopper!

up
Voting closed 0

One of those has already announced plans to close a bunch of stores with the others not too far off. Hardly powerhouses.

up
Voting closed 0

all of the Massachusetts stores they are closing are substantially west of the Boston area. The only danger to this one is the proposed development that would knock down its building.

up
Voting closed 0

According to Bill Linehan that area is the "Midtown Cultural District."

up
Voting closed 0

I wasted one of my free articles on that crap!

up
Voting closed 0

solution: go into your internet settings and delete all cookies related to boston.com - it resets your read article count back to zero!

up
Voting closed 0

Open an "incognito window" (in Chrome) and Google(TM) the article title there....

up
Voting closed 0

It's still dirty and smells like piss and poor decisions

up
Voting closed 0

perfect.

up
Voting closed 0

As someone who personally remembers what Downtown Crossing was like circa 1995, and knows many people who recall how it was in the 1960s, 1950s and 1940s; I would say that 2017 DTX barely breaks even compared to its glory days. What good is the "revival" if you can only enjoy it if your income is $50,000+ per annum? How can we talk about moving past the grime, filth and sketchiness when between dusk and dawn Winter Street is one of the few places in city limits where I mentally and physically prepare myself to beat a potential assailant into submission as a matter of course? How "world class" is a place where a single segment of Washington Street has seen its population of the homeless and destitute people living in doorways, alleys and discarded Old Navy shipping crates not diminish but skyrocket? What good are coffee shops at which two people must throw down $18 before they can enjoy a coffee and scone? (Fuck the artisanal bullshit with a broom handle! Nary one of the staff at George Howell's has been apprenticing under a master baker since they were 12!) How is the ideological handjob of an interview with a developer (who looks back fondly upon his days working with Ed Logue) a fair and legit take on what urbanism is?

Tragic that I can now count the number of good and great writers at The Globe on both hands...

up
Voting closed 0

Tragic that I can now count the number of good and great writers at The Globe on both hands...

I would disagree with that, but otherwise your comment is completely on the the mark.

up
Voting closed 0

Only one hand is needed.

up
Voting closed 0

Shaughnessy

up
Voting closed 0

A lot of negativity in these comments, so I'll post some positive thoughts.

The DTX ambassadors do a good job of keeping trash off the sidewalks. The Gordons wine store is really nice. Ruka is a beautiful restaurant. The Millennium Tower looks good and livens up the sky line. On a nice day tons of people are outside on the tables and the big stairway on Washington street, showing that Boston needs way more pedestrian zones. The coffee at Ogawa is expensive but damn does it taste good and give me a jolt.

up
Voting closed 0

But again, how many upscale (beautiful) restaurants do you need? Personally, I think the Millennium Tower looks garish. And your comment about the "expensive" coffee proves my point. Perhaps take read:

http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2017/04/13/does-massachusetts-live-hy...

up
Voting closed 0

... Common and most of our parks would go a long way to making it a cleaner, safer, and more pleasant area to visit.

up
Voting closed 0

All I smell is weed on the Boston Common... it may be smoke-free in theory, but in reality it reeks of skunk spray smell. It's so nasty walking by potheads who are surrounded by an invisible cloud of stench. Some of us actually walk in the park to get some much needed fresh air. If you think you don't smell, trust me we smell you.

up
Voting closed 0

It smelled that way in 1967 too. :-)

up
Voting closed 0

I've done so more than once and the offenders were dealt with immediately.

up
Voting closed 0

You must be joking...either that or you haven't gotten a contact high from all the folks smoking weed on the Common on a daily basis.

up
Voting closed 0

Sorry - double post

up
Voting closed 0