If you live in the Boston area and you’re not from around here, you receive frequent reminders of your non-belonging. You can only grow into this place so far, and then you hit the limit. I’m fine with that. Being an interesting place to live as an outsider of long residence is part of what makes Boston not like other places. I’m already from somewhere else — Chicago, a bigger and rougher city, but much more welcoming to people from elsewhere — and it feels to me as if the brisk stiff-arm of Boston localism sets me up at just the right distance. You’re close enough to appreciate the city’s idiosyncracies, yet far enough to sustain a little healthy observational detachment.
But if you live anywhere long enough, the way of life there, the lay of the land itself, will sink into you. In matters of place-and-selfhood, as in so many other things, who you are creeps up on you. For a long time, you vaguely assume that there’s a you who you’re going to be when you grow up, and then you realize that you have been grown up for a while and this is it; this is you, pretty much for keeps.
Comments
Yes ! Here's to serpentine layouts. Very nice piece.
Nice bit of writing.
Wonderful writing! So how long do you have to live here before the locals stop viewing you as an outsider?
How wonderful that this genius of place, the senior Olmsted, was satisfied to create a miniature landscape in a lovely corner in Brookline. No Brady, Jeter, or Spelling mega-mansion for him. From its hollow and garden path, to the house & studio, Fairsted charms its visitors with simplicity and surprise.
This comment has been removed.
After living in your beloved "grid" for over 20 years and then moving to Hawaii for 7 years, I can relate to your essay in every way! Being a Media Sales Rep in Chicago, I knew the city like the back of my hand and can't remember getting lost.
Moving to Hawaii, you never ever become a "local" unless you live there and getting around the directions were Mauka and Makai (Mountain or Ocean direction, respectively). Not even the "locals" could tell you highway numbers, just the names of the roads.
I've been here in Boston for 3 months and need a Garmin for most excursions and roundabouts and squares have been a big challenge.
Thank you for putting into words a great synopsis of my time here as a wicked new "malahini"
This comment has been removed.
This comment has been removed.
Now, if only they would move the trees back from the edge of the road about 4 feet in some of these towns.
Since I have been here, I know of at least 4 deaths because large trees are allowed to grow within about 18 inches of the edge of the road. It isn't exactly like we have a shortage of trees around here.
And then, there is the little problem of those same trees growing right next to power lines. After a storm, everyone wants to complain that it is the power companies fault that power does not get restored sooner. Maybe it would, if they did not have to go around fixing all the breaks caused by those trees.
Don't get me wrong, when we built our house a few years ago, we kept all the trees we could, unlike the developer who basically levelled the lots in much of the area. We like trees, just not in places where they cause problems.
About the grid? It is useful, but Chicago also has angle streets. A pure grid layout would be horrible. Around here I enjoy the smaller roads that are available to get from point A to B, not always the case on a grid.
What a lovely piece, Carlo! Thank you. It reflects my feelings as a long-ago transplanted Clevelander. I hadn't even recognized it, but yes I too am now unsatisfied with long straight roads.
Thank you! Thank you! You get it! When I moved to NYC I felt zero charm - much of it caused by the grid pattern of the streets and all of the house lots just as rectilinear. No unexpected little hideaways, few curving or twisting streets - it's just awful! Everything in NYC seems cut up and sliced up into little boxes. The streets, the building lots, etc. Exactly what visitors from NY complain about with regard to Boston's irregular and, to them, confusing curved streets is what I so love about Boston.
One of the better ways they have of keeping the riff-raff out is the steadfast refulsal to put up street signs telling you the name of the street you're on. I just leave a trail of bread crumbs, and memorize landmarks. As a transplanted Californian, after over 30 years around here, I still get lost.
If you live here but you're not from here you are either our governor or our senator.
I get to be governor? Cool. So, Massholes such as yourself prefer outsiders like me?