Bad Boston

Re: Your suggestion that we live somewhere else to expand our world view. I would suggest that this is completely unnecessary. I have traveled, but nowhere compares to Boston. I am quite happy here and have no need to be miserable somewhere else to reinforce how perfect Boston is. Re: Fire Hydrants. Very interesting. Perhaps the City should spend some of the parking ticket revenue on that mapping/removal project.

Thanks! Reading this article makes me feel a bit better! Having lived here 14 months I have made many of the same observations. Boston only makes sense to those that are from here. The rest of us are looking at you going, "what is their problem?". Never experienced that anywhere else in the world I have lived. The people are not very accommodating to those of us not from here. And the lack of street signs is maddening!!

Fantastic point about the T. We've heard the MBTA cry poverty and logistics many times in the past w/out offering alternative solutions. The "drunk bus" as we called it when it was running was horribly publicized to its most likely users and frankly an inferior substitute to the routine choices of transport (i.e., the trains) that customers were used to running. Maybe the city makes more money off of DUI fines than from train/bus fares...

I'm thrilled to see that I'm not the only one! I've lived in a number of cities and, while Boston tends to be visually more appealing, its people make it one of the ugliest places I've ever found myself living. I've finally landed an opportunity to re-locate again, and it can't come too soon. To me, it just boils down to the basic rules of a civil society that my parents taught me. These rules/values seem to be unheard of here. I'm convinced that native Bostonians were raised by cold, robotic aliens. Good parents don't raise their kids to be Bostonians! This would be an awesome city if they took the natives out and replaced them with New Yorkers or even Parisians! It would be an enormous improvement! I'm so happy to be leaving....

Great article! Lousy comments though. I’m a Bostonian- thou not a townie- and I’d be the first person to admit that we have our own way of doing things; maybe it all still goes back to the Puritan rule. And one of those things we do is complain: about the weather, politics, sports, outsiders, politics, students, traffic, politics, etc. But we love all those things, too. They make us what we are. So if you’ve just moved here, feel free to complain, but don’t expect things to change. Not quickly, at least.

What a perfectly grumpy and conceited article. Relax max!

Loved this article. In the vein of sending up unrealistic wishes...my biggest dream is for there to be some way that my arriving on the platform at Sullivan square only to see the train pull out would guarantee me a spot on the next train. Not so. I stand there for 10 minutes before all the jokers around me assemble beside me ready to jockey for my rightful place. Missing the train and standing there waiting forever should mean that I get to get on the next train first. Instead I am stressed out for ten minutes, trying to elbow people out. I have even had to miss the next train too, because I had the misfortune of waiting at the wrong spot and ended up being the last to try to cram through the doors. San Francisco's train platforms have little marks where the doors of the train will open. People line up there. It's amazingly stress-free. I swear it would add years onto a Boston commuter's life!

I am afunloving and looking for a friend........