Boston people are pushy. They know what they want, and you'd better damn well give it to them. This was especially apparent when I was working retail, and middle-aged Bostonites would come in expecting a personal shopper (and getting one, through pure pushiness). If you do something that's aggravating in traffic, like merging late (even though you've been signalling for five minutes), or stopping for a pedestrian (even though you're supposed to), you can expect to be yelled at and shown interesting variations of the middle part of the hand. Living in a really urban apartment has made me strikingly aware of how much Boston drivers honk their horns. Especially at four in the morning. I hated the pushiness initially. I like to think (or maybe pretend) that it's given me a little bit of an edge that I didn't have before, though. At least now I think I have the option of going all Boston on somebody if they need it. :-)
Boston people are really proud to be Boston people. On the upper crust, there's the serious and studious Harvard/MIT/BU/Tufts crowd that's mostly non-local but which seems at first to be the pulse of a city that basically shuts down at 9:00 PM and mostly doesn't party. But after living here for a while, you start to become aware that the Harvard crowd is just the skin of the city. All the blood and guts are made of the real natives, the ones that might drop "r"s and tell hilarious-but-slightly-racist jokes and really are Boston. No Yankees fans allowed. I've seen three people in two days with large, noticeable Red Sox tattoos.
Boston is a really, really green city. Every subsection of the population throws their cans into a recycling bin that gets picked up curbside once a week. People take the T to work to avoid driving their cars (not just because traffic in Boston moves at an average of 8 MPH, but also because it's better for the environment to use mass transit. And there's such a good system here). You can't walk two blocks without running into a yoga studio. The young, working, mostly-tattooed yuppie population can be seen after hours drinking herbal tea and carrying yoga mats. Nobody looks at you sideways if you mention that you're on an Ayurvedic diet or ask where you can get kombucha. This is a part of living here that I love.
There's also The Cambridge Mom. The Cambridge Mom has lofty ideals about how to raise her children... and actually follows through with them. The moms I have been fortunate enough to work with all are extremely well-educated (don't know one without at least one masters degree), most of them practice yoga, work and raise kids, and care deeply about their families and their community. One mom has quotes all over her kitchen from various philosophers, holy books, and writers that remind you, every time you take a glass out of the cabinet, to breathe deeply and enjoy every moment you've been given. One mom's kids run to the fridge to grab the jar of wheat germ to put on their yogurt for dessert. The kids are kids- but they often surprise me with grains of wisdom that seem very mature for their years. All of The Cambridge Moms seem to want to give their children this indomitable sense of hope- that life is good, and people are good, and you can make the world a better place right now! You don't even have to wait until you grow up. I love that about living here too.
Plus, after I moved here my sister followed, and I think Boston has been exactly the right place for her. She fits in well, she found work immediately, and now she's going back to school to be an NP. She also found her dude here. And that's a total positive.
So I might be back, after this year. And I wouldn't mind at all, because I feel like I know the ropes now. I can navigate the subway like a pro, I know which windy, poorly-maintained streets are one-way, and I'm fairly adept at avoiding the $50 street-sweeping parking tickets (god, these people love their parking tickets). I think I'd be much better at Boston a second time around. But for now, I'm a little relieved to have a year off to spend with my best friends, working and living in an environment that's a little more laid-back.
