Boston is a unique place. It’s a liberal bastion but super racist. It’s home of some of the first gay marriages in the country, but we love to elect Republican governors. People will literally slash your tires over a parking space (despite the fact that they are not allowed to use space savers as long as they are) – and that’s getting off light. And man, people can just be really mean. The other day two people looked me right in the face and refused to move out of my way so I could disembark the train so I had to literally shove them with all my might. Awesome.
And politics is a strange beast around here. I mean, Mayor Menino had his job for 21 years. Also, Massachusetts was the first state with state-funded healthcare, which Romney signed into law as governor, as much as he tried to escape that fact recently.
This story is a little slice of life in East Boston, where I live. I was walking home the other day from Maverick Square and I heard a big commotion up the street, a bunch of cars honking their horns. It reminds me of when a sporting team sports really well and wins a sporting thing and people like to celebrate it. Oh we’re good at that too by the way.
I’m not sure if you know this about me but I tend to get unreasonably mad about things. So I was immediately annoyed. “What is this now?” I think I said too loudly, and with more swearing. As the cars got closer I saw that it was a row of about 5-6 cars with campaign posters taped all over them just blowing their horns as they drove slowly down the street. (FYI, the posters were for Camilo Hernandez by the way.) I then immediately declared, “Well that’s a good way to get nobody to vote for you. Why are they doing that? It’s so obnoxious.”
Now please imagine the following exchange in heavy Boston accents. A guy about 20 feet in front of me walked over to one of the cars who had the driver’s window down and said, “Hey, why don’t you give me a few bucks, I’ll vote for you!” The driver said, “We don’t do that. We don’t pay people for votes.” (First of all, if you’re in politics you paid somebody for votes, let’s just be real.)
The rest of the exchange went something like this:
Pedestrian: “Well f*$% you then! What are you honking your horns for?”
Driver: “F*$% you! Get a job!”
Pedestrian: “You get a job!”
Driver: “Crackhead!” (of note, the guy definitely was not a crackhead)
Pedestrian: “Your mother is a crackhead!”
The other few people nearby me on the sidewalk and I all found this immensely entertaining. I believe I said out loud something to the effect of, “Oh Boston. You’re so mean. I love you.”
So to review, in my city you can get your tires slashed for parking in a public spot on a street, get called a crackhead by a political campaigner a few days before an election, have the same mayor for 21 years, ride trains (when they are running) with people who stubbornly refuse to believe in physics, and you can’t buy liquor at the grocery store. But, you can also get married to someone of the same sex, own a pit bull without having to worry about special “dangerous dog” laws, save a ton of money on real estate taxes, you had healthcare before Obamacare, and if you care about sporting I think some of the sporting teams have done some impressive things somewhat recently.
Source for header photo.
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It sounds exactly like the kind of place I’d get killed a lot in.