Boston resident here, so I thought I’d add some more points and further emphasize some things.
The bike infrastructure is really good, and rapidly improving. In fact, there’s so much bike infrastructure that I want to make the converse warning: if you are a nervous driver, driving around here can be terrifying because of the bikers.
The winters can be quite brutal (though they seem to be getting milder). And since Boston is way too far east for its timezone, this means that the winter sun sets very early (think ~4:30pm).
New England in general, and Boston in particular, is very lovely. If you like the European town aesthetic, this is probably the closest you can get in the U.S.
The food scene is pretty bad—food which is both good and cheap basically doesn’t exist.
People here are very young, especially when all the students are in town. Whenever I leave Boston, I’m shocked at how old the people are.
Marijuana is legal here. However, the dispensaries can be inconvenient to get to: none have opened yet in Boston or Cambridge.
I really love living here, and almost everyone I know also likes living here. The exceptions tend to be Californians, though. Did I mention how brutal the winter is?
Whatever those Intangible Qualities of a Happy Place are, Boston has them. I’m not sure what gives Boston this feel; I think it’s some mixture of excellent green space, good walkability, a sense of history, small-town aesthetic blended with big-city resources, and generally well-educated and competent populace. Think of the anxious feeling you get when you feel like the world is falling apart and there are a million little things coming apart at the seams—the felt sense of Boston (at least for me) is the polar opposite of that.
Boston resident here, so I thought I’d add some more points and further emphasize some things.
The bike infrastructure is really good, and rapidly improving. In fact, there’s so much bike infrastructure that I want to make the converse warning: if you are a nervous driver, driving around here can be terrifying because of the bikers.
The winters can be quite brutal (though they seem to be getting milder). And since Boston is way too far east for its timezone, this means that the winter sun sets very early (think ~4:30pm).
New England in general, and Boston in particular, is very lovely. If you like the European town aesthetic, this is probably the closest you can get in the U.S.
The food scene is pretty bad—food which is both good and cheap basically doesn’t exist.
People here are very young, especially when all the students are in town. Whenever I leave Boston, I’m shocked at how old the people are.
Marijuana is legal here. However, the dispensaries can be inconvenient to get to: none have opened yet in Boston or Cambridge.
I really love living here, and almost everyone I know also likes living here. The exceptions tend to be Californians, though. Did I mention how brutal the winter is?
Whatever those Intangible Qualities of a Happy Place are, Boston has them. I’m not sure what gives Boston this feel; I think it’s some mixture of excellent green space, good walkability, a sense of history, small-town aesthetic blended with big-city resources, and generally well-educated and competent populace. Think of the anxious feeling you get when you feel like the world is falling apart and there are a million little things coming apart at the seams—the felt sense of Boston (at least for me) is the polar opposite of that.