On 10/21/2010 11:03 AM, Radey Shouman wrote:
Peter writes:

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.

The signs I'm thinking of are definitely about the park, but they are
fairly old.

I've only seen these signs on small, town owned beaches, state beaches
and parks don't check for residency. The big town beaches often charge
for parking if you don't have a town sticker.

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

Not entirely happily.

Not unhappily enough to plow up those forests again.

It's hard to compete against socialized corn, ask the Mexicans.


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 can't speak for the past, but I do notice regional differences in
how strangers are expected to deal with each other, and I don't believe
it's just population density.

It's hard to make generalities, but the people I knew who relocated
often claimed to find West-coasters "superficial", but that's when there
was far more regionalism. Like your Southern belles, the friendliness
was only skin deep.


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.

I thought it was so locals could groan at the actors' accents.

Yes, but the local accents are also dying out. Most of the neighborhoods
in Boston started out as ghettos, even the white ones (Irish, Italian),
they often stayed pretty homogeneous long after discrimination ended
(the white ones). Most of them, including South Boston, Dorchester,
Charlestown and the North End, became finally mixed once
condo-conversion and gentrification started right after the busing era.
You still have Irish parades and Italian parades in the same
neighborhoods, but most of the crowds come in from the 'burbs, the
locals are often yuppies.