3 ms·

Boston's a poor example. It's possibly the most socially-conservative place on earth I've ever lived in other than a Muslim country.

api 13y ago
Tangent: I lived in Boston for a while. I'm glad to read stuff like this as it reminds me that it wasn't me. PSA: Boston is not liberal, except a little bit in the abstract NPR "latte sipping" academic sense. Culturally it is unbelievably, stiflingly conservative, far more so than "red states" for example.
- lectrick 13y ago
  I dated a cute girl from Andover, MA for a while. Andover is a little upscale town just north of Boston, kind of a well-off suburb. She hated that I wore a tiny bit of gold jewelry (gold cross from my grandmother) because "that's what non-white people wear", so away that went. She hated that I wore T-shirts because... probably similar reasons. I took her to a beach on the Cape, and she wore... black. Covering her whole body. Formal black clothing. I mean basically, if you transplanted a Puritan circa 1750 into the modern age, you'd get this woman. She had never lived anywhere else. And then after breaking up with her, I looked around and it was all I could see... races not even interacting at all, both white and black people having REALLY limited "socially acceptable" clothing choices, etc. I don't want to bash Boston too hard. I lived there for like 8 years. It has the best sports bars around, but this unfortunately only adds to its "provincial" reputation. Boston Harbor is really nice. The fact that Boston barely has any beaches (at least compared to, say, Long Island) was just weird for me (growing up on LI, I took the miles of beaches for granted, I guess). I have a lot to say about Boston, both positive and negative. But yeah, socially? Can you even get more socially conservative while still being politically liberal?
  - api 13y ago
    That's astounding, but not surprising. The wealthy 'burbs of Boston are even more stifled than the city or Cambridge. Boston should have been Silicon Valley. It had all the pieces, everything aligned, best of the best. But it's not. I think there's a really good argument to be made that this conservatism is why. All the really smart people ran away first chance they got.
    - lectrick 13y ago
      Sadly, a startup (thredup.com) that I worked for did too and I decided not to join them, mostly because I had reached a point in my life where uprooting to the opposite coast was unfortunately no longer an option (and I had already spent 4 years in a previous life in Cali)...

api 13y ago

Tangent: I lived in Boston for a while. I'm glad to read stuff like this as it reminds me that it wasn't me. PSA: Boston is not liberal, except a little bit in the abstract NPR "latte sipping" academic sense. Culturally it is unbelievably, stiflingly conservative, far more so than "red states" for example.

lectrick 13y ago
I dated a cute girl from Andover, MA for a while. Andover is a little upscale town just north of Boston, kind of a well-off suburb. She hated that I wore a tiny bit of gold jewelry (gold cross from my grandmother) because "that's what non-white people wear", so away that went. She hated that I wore T-shirts because... probably similar reasons. I took her to a beach on the Cape, and she wore... black. Covering her whole body. Formal black clothing. I mean basically, if you transplanted a Puritan circa 1750 into the modern age, you'd get this woman. She had never lived anywhere else. And then after breaking up with her, I looked around and it was all I could see... races not even interacting at all, both white and black people having REALLY limited "socially acceptable" clothing choices, etc. I don't want to bash Boston too hard. I lived there for like 8 years. It has the best sports bars around, but this unfortunately only adds to its "provincial" reputation. Boston Harbor is really nice. The fact that Boston barely has any beaches (at least compared to, say, Long Island) was just weird for me (growing up on LI, I took the miles of beaches for granted, I guess). I have a lot to say about Boston, both positive and negative. But yeah, socially? Can you even get more socially conservative while still being politically liberal?
- api 13y ago
  That's astounding, but not surprising. The wealthy 'burbs of Boston are even more stifled than the city or Cambridge. Boston should have been Silicon Valley. It had all the pieces, everything aligned, best of the best. But it's not. I think there's a really good argument to be made that this conservatism is why. All the really smart people ran away first chance they got.
  - lectrick 13y ago
    Sadly, a startup (thredup.com) that I worked for did too and I decided not to join them, mostly because I had reached a point in my life where uprooting to the opposite coast was unfortunately no longer an option (and I had already spent 4 years in a previous life in Cali)...