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Suburban girls best give him a wide berth

Rob Bellinger lets loose with a good ranty barrage against suburbanites, from the annoying way they stock up on touristy trinkets downtown to their general ignorance:

... Last weekend I was in a bar in Quincy when a secretary from the suburb of Abington, wherever that may be, tried to hit on me (or otherwise talked to me for some reason). She asked me where I lived. "Oh," she said. "There's some nice parts in Somerville, I guess." Like you would fucking know. For all these people, the city is the place they drive through or take the T under on their way to their own personal disneyland. ...

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Comments

One of the signs of these bastard suburbanites is their Sox and Celtics garb? Well, hell, I live under 3 miles from Fenway and I wear Sox, Celtics, AND Patriots garb. Seriously, this guy needs to reevaluate his stereotype criteria.

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and I live in Somerville, probably not far from the original blogger. Does that make me an uncultured suburbanite too?

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Maybe it's just because I spend most of my life in the Back Bay area, but I find it easy to separate residents from suburbanites. It's how they carry themselves, ride the train as awkwardly as is humanly possible, stand stock-still on escalators, block the sidewalk while gasping over prices on the menu boards, and so on.

This is what I've identified as the, "I've paid a lot of money to spend a day in Boston, I'm going to enjoy myself, and no one can tell me otherwise so I'll just do whatever the hell I want to" mentality.

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"There are a lot of decaffeinated brands on the market that are just as tasty as the real thing."

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In my dating days, some girls would give me a hard time for living in Jamaica Plain of all places. "Is it safe?" they would ask. Or, "Why don't you live in Brookline?" Not for me.

I spent a good deal of my youth in a suburb of NYC, amongst people who didn't travel there much except for maybe a Broadway show (and that made them think they were cultured). I at least had the advantage of an insatiable appetite for exploration and anything other than Wayne Township, land of malls and strip malls. The more different, the better. Not all suburbanites are living in a cocoon, in other words. It's just that too many of them are, and the fact that they're happy there only seems to make them more annoying to people like us. I'm not entirely sure I like the fact that boring and complacent suburbanites annoy me. There are far worse things one can be, such as an elitist snob who unfairly judges others. Oops.

I'm now happily living in Downtown Lynn and teaching in another satellite city of Boston with an impoverished and dangerous reputation. Right or wrong, I take a certain amount of pleasure in the gasps of ignoramuses when I tell them where I live and work. That's because I know the secret truth about the good in these places, and because mediocrity is not about to encroach on my surroundings.

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I too lived in Downtown Lynn, (for 20 years). Unless you can imbue a sense of community that has eluded them for the 50+ years I've been around, you too will some day get sick of muggings, burglaries and gratuitous violence. (A while back, I saw in the "Lynn Item Online" about a murder on the front steps of my late parent's apartment building). Here's hoping that your youthful energy makes the difference that my contemporaries and I failed at.

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There is more of a sense of community in Downtown Lynn than any other place I have lived. We have the Downtown Lynn Neighborhood Association (I'm one of the founding members), and lots of us party and hang out together. While two places recently closed, they are already scheduled to re-open as a new restaurant and a new cafe - even in this economy!
Most of this neighborhood and even a good amount of the other neighborhood groups are comprised of energetic newcomers. For some reason, people who have been here a while are about as cynical as you are. On the other hand, there just may be enough of us, now, to get something done.
Also, if I relied on the media to determine whether I should feel safe in any given area, I'd avoid Harvard Square. I'm also sure there are just as many muggings in Brookline. In Beacon Hill, you're more likely to have your car broken into. I'm not naive to the crime in Lynn. There are parts I avoid at night. DTL is not one of them.

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Mr. Bellinger discovers that every woman talking to him isn't lusting after his no-doubt-chiseled features, he will be the first one to buy a 3 bedroom cape with a picket fence.

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Your comments have me cracking up. Aging Cynic, I have really grown to like those extruded, white vinyl fences. You know, the kind that every other suburban house has.

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So what it comes down to is "I hate people who hate other people. They really suck!"

No different than the Rush Limbaugh crowd. Someone needs to tell him he's about fifty years too late to get credit for criticizing suburban American life. Now, he's just a poser searching for a clue.

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"Last weekend at a bar in Quincy..."

LOL. And this guy has the nerve to criticize others.

I bet he still complains about the rich Tufts kids "invading" his unknown, underground, Davis Sq. hole-in-the-wall dive bar called the Sligo.

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