On 10/20/2010 2:41 PM, Radey Shouman wrote:

Right. Spaces intended to benefit the local voting public. Until I
moved to Massachusetts I had never seen a sign saying:

"Park|Beach|whatever for the use of residents of xxx town only"

Now I have seen several. I doubt these are still legally enforceable,
but they are there.

These are common. It's not the beach that's usually being rationed, it's
the parking.

On the other hand, Mass can't live on clams alone, and happily eats food
grown in Iowa.

Not entirely happily.

I agree with a lot of your description, but it's arguing against
something I didn't write.

Point taken.

Boston has a remarkably low standard for politeness -- once a person
gets used to that the people can be as friendly as those anywhere.

These days, they're more than ever, friendly as those anywhere, because
they're from anywhere. We're not as regional as we used to be, neither
is the rest of the country.

I'm not sure you can hold Boston up as a beacon of tolerance, though,
it seems quite thoroughly segregated. Also, I have to wonder if you've
equated a lack of anti-Yankee sentiment with tolerance; it's easy
to mistake tolerance of one's own with tolerance in general.

The was a recent article in the paper about this. It asked the question
why people remained in high crime neighborhoods in Boston, when the
(safer) alternatives weren't any more expensive. Indirectly addressing
the question of continuing segregation. They felt the reasons were
complex. It might have been feel-good, CYA, I don't know. Boston is
still highly segregated, true, but it's simplistic to call it racism.

Boston got a really bad national rep over the school busing turmoil.
Neighborhoods in Boston were more clannish than many other cities.
That's one of the reasons for the spate of recent movies, it makes
colorful drama, most of that ethnic clustering is long gone, despite
what Ben Affleck shoots.