I, Causticus
Now more than ever, Bostonians need to assert their inalienable right to be rude.
“Boston has some serious issues in the way that it is positioning itself to be a place that people want to stay in and move to … if people perceive our culture as being cold and unwelcoming, well, I can smile and say hello to a stranger. We’ll see if that works.”
—Hello Boston campaign founder Deborah Elizabeth Finn, in the Boston Globe
There’s nothing quite like the decline of a great city to get the bad ideas flowing.
Yes, we can all agree that this is not a particularly happy time for Boston. The weather keeps getting weirder, the economy’s in tatters, our public transit system is powered by slapstick, the Central Artery tunnel has turned out to be water soluble, our governor's got the worst hair in the nation, and it’s become increasingly difficult to walk a city block without getting clobbered or shot at. Meanwhile, the middle class is rounding up their kids and striking out for the exurbs. We’re losing jobs, companies, people. And as the local chattering classes huddle to figure out what’s behind this exodus, one thing seems to come up again and again:
We’re a bunch of bastards.
It’s true. We are a bunch of bastards. It’s well documented. A recent Boston Foundation study called Massachusetts “old, cold, expensive [and] unwelcoming.” Putting a scientific sheen on the debate, a poll recently conducted by the Globe had 69 percent of ex-Mass. residents claiming that their former neighbors are “much less courteous” or “somewhat less courteous” than the people in their new states. Writing in this very magazine, a transplant from L.A. claimed that he “gave up on the notion of civility” when he came to Boston. Like that’s a bad thing.
Hoping to friendly up the joint, and so stem the tide of fleeing Volvos, concerned citizen Deborah Finn and local painter Bren Bataclan have launched the Hello Boston and Smile Boston projects, respectively, encouraging locals to grin, unprovoked, at people they don’t know. Wonderful. While we’re at it, why don’t we level Beacon Hill and erect a Space Needle? Because, say what you will about pipe-wielding crackheads, the threat they pose to our way of life is nothing compared to the one posed by those intent on suppressing our native character.
Being rude is as essential a part of Boston’s cultural heritage as the bean or the cod. From John Adams (who, it's been said, “could say even a gracious thing in an ungracious way”) to Ted Williams (who insulted me at Logan when I was eight), to Southie’s Jimmy Kelly (who ranted on national TV about his constituency’s sacrosanct right to defend their parking spots with household appliances), we’ve always had a dominant bastard gene in our DNA. It’s who we are. Killing it would be a cultural abomination, akin to the Taliban dynamiting those Buddha statues in Afghanistan. If anything, we should make a concerted effort to be more rude. Not less.
Today, after a decade of McRenewal—the relentless, insipid gentrification that has left this city in danger of losing itself completely—our rudeness is more important than ever. It is one of the few things left that give Boston its individual flavor, that distinguish it from lesser cities like Hartford—besides, of course, the fact that we have competitive sports teams. Rudeness, like the frequent blizzards and Byzantine political culture, is a key part of Boston’s larger inaccessibility, its challenge. There has long been a sense among locals—and rightly so—that this shouldn’t be the kind of place where you can just show up and become a part of it. The Pilgrims didn’t have an easy time when they came here, so why should some moonfaced Midwestern transplant? Our tangled streets, impenetrable accents, and terrifying City Hall all stand as testaments to the idea that this is a city to be earned.
SO HOW DO YOU EARN BOSTON? First off, wipe that smile off your face. After that, start boning up on hateful epithets to hurl at the Red Sox bullpen, try to ride the T without making fun of the driver's accent, and learn the roads, so when you watch another driver have a nervous breakdown you can scoff appropriately. If, after a probationary period lasting anywhere from a month to forever, you show yourself willing to make the effort, Bostonians will warm to you. And once they do, you’ll warm to them, for much the same reason you didn’t like them in the first place: Because they’re genuine. Because they’ll never tell you to have a super day when what they really want is for you to fall off a subway platform.
"Who hasn't been on the receiving end of a certain one-fingered salute while driving the battle zone of the Central Artery?" asked a Globe reporter recently. What the reporter failed to note, though, is that many of these drivers deserved it. Contrary to what the booster types will tell you, our rudeness has less to do with making people feel uncomfortable than it does with enforcing basic quality control. It’s like an ad hoc architectural commission, only for people. It’s Dahwinism: a way of determining who stays and who goes.
Fact is, people so dainty that they get unsettled by strangers not stopping them in the street to administer dog kisses won’t contribute a hell of a lot to this town. Instead, they’re going to spend two years holed up in their apartments, watching Cash in the Attic and complaining about the Massholes. Then they’re going to go away. It’ll save everybody a lot of time, trouble, energy, money, and oxygen if these people just go away now. After all, for all the recent flapping and fussing about the city's dwindling professional classes, it's really no skin off Boston's collective nose if a few thousand smile-starved yuppies hotfoot it to friendlier climes—that just means more pan-seared tuna for the rest of us.
Imagine for a nightmarish moment what Boston would be like if Finn and Bataclan’s perky little campaigns were allowed to take root: Sox fans golf-clapping Derek Jeter. Drivers sitting at four-way stop signs trying to wave each other through, grinning so hard that tears streak down their faces. Bartenders waiting patiently as you stand there for 10 goddamn minutes trying to make up your mind. The entire city would grind to a standstill. Five hundred years of cultivated candor, of steadfastly refusing to smile for no reason—out the window. We’d go to bed in Boston one night, and we’d wake up in Minneapolis. And surely nobody wants that.
So all I’m asking is this: While we forge ahead and strive to solve all the problems the early 21st century has dumped on us, let’s at least try to maintain some perspective. Changing the way we police, or build, or tax, or vote—that’s one thing. But let’s not get hysterical. It’s unbefitting of us as Bostonians.
—Hello Boston campaign founder Deborah Elizabeth Finn, in the Boston Globe
There’s nothing quite like the decline of a great city to get the bad ideas flowing.
Yes, we can all agree that this is not a particularly happy time for Boston. The weather keeps getting weirder, the economy’s in tatters, our public transit system is powered by slapstick, the Central Artery tunnel has turned out to be water soluble, our governor's got the worst hair in the nation, and it’s become increasingly difficult to walk a city block without getting clobbered or shot at. Meanwhile, the middle class is rounding up their kids and striking out for the exurbs. We’re losing jobs, companies, people. And as the local chattering classes huddle to figure out what’s behind this exodus, one thing seems to come up again and again:
We’re a bunch of bastards.
It’s true. We are a bunch of bastards. It’s well documented. A recent Boston Foundation study called Massachusetts “old, cold, expensive [and] unwelcoming.” Putting a scientific sheen on the debate, a poll recently conducted by the Globe had 69 percent of ex-Mass. residents claiming that their former neighbors are “much less courteous” or “somewhat less courteous” than the people in their new states. Writing in this very magazine, a transplant from L.A. claimed that he “gave up on the notion of civility” when he came to Boston. Like that’s a bad thing.
Hoping to friendly up the joint, and so stem the tide of fleeing Volvos, concerned citizen Deborah Finn and local painter Bren Bataclan have launched the Hello Boston and Smile Boston projects, respectively, encouraging locals to grin, unprovoked, at people they don’t know. Wonderful. While we’re at it, why don’t we level Beacon Hill and erect a Space Needle? Because, say what you will about pipe-wielding crackheads, the threat they pose to our way of life is nothing compared to the one posed by those intent on suppressing our native character.
Being rude is as essential a part of Boston’s cultural heritage as the bean or the cod. From John Adams (who, it's been said, “could say even a gracious thing in an ungracious way”) to Ted Williams (who insulted me at Logan when I was eight), to Southie’s Jimmy Kelly (who ranted on national TV about his constituency’s sacrosanct right to defend their parking spots with household appliances), we’ve always had a dominant bastard gene in our DNA. It’s who we are. Killing it would be a cultural abomination, akin to the Taliban dynamiting those Buddha statues in Afghanistan. If anything, we should make a concerted effort to be more rude. Not less.
Today, after a decade of McRenewal—the relentless, insipid gentrification that has left this city in danger of losing itself completely—our rudeness is more important than ever. It is one of the few things left that give Boston its individual flavor, that distinguish it from lesser cities like Hartford—besides, of course, the fact that we have competitive sports teams. Rudeness, like the frequent blizzards and Byzantine political culture, is a key part of Boston’s larger inaccessibility, its challenge. There has long been a sense among locals—and rightly so—that this shouldn’t be the kind of place where you can just show up and become a part of it. The Pilgrims didn’t have an easy time when they came here, so why should some moonfaced Midwestern transplant? Our tangled streets, impenetrable accents, and terrifying City Hall all stand as testaments to the idea that this is a city to be earned.
SO HOW DO YOU EARN BOSTON? First off, wipe that smile off your face. After that, start boning up on hateful epithets to hurl at the Red Sox bullpen, try to ride the T without making fun of the driver's accent, and learn the roads, so when you watch another driver have a nervous breakdown you can scoff appropriately. If, after a probationary period lasting anywhere from a month to forever, you show yourself willing to make the effort, Bostonians will warm to you. And once they do, you’ll warm to them, for much the same reason you didn’t like them in the first place: Because they’re genuine. Because they’ll never tell you to have a super day when what they really want is for you to fall off a subway platform.
"Who hasn't been on the receiving end of a certain one-fingered salute while driving the battle zone of the Central Artery?" asked a Globe reporter recently. What the reporter failed to note, though, is that many of these drivers deserved it. Contrary to what the booster types will tell you, our rudeness has less to do with making people feel uncomfortable than it does with enforcing basic quality control. It’s like an ad hoc architectural commission, only for people. It’s Dahwinism: a way of determining who stays and who goes.
Fact is, people so dainty that they get unsettled by strangers not stopping them in the street to administer dog kisses won’t contribute a hell of a lot to this town. Instead, they’re going to spend two years holed up in their apartments, watching Cash in the Attic and complaining about the Massholes. Then they’re going to go away. It’ll save everybody a lot of time, trouble, energy, money, and oxygen if these people just go away now. After all, for all the recent flapping and fussing about the city's dwindling professional classes, it's really no skin off Boston's collective nose if a few thousand smile-starved yuppies hotfoot it to friendlier climes—that just means more pan-seared tuna for the rest of us.
Imagine for a nightmarish moment what Boston would be like if Finn and Bataclan’s perky little campaigns were allowed to take root: Sox fans golf-clapping Derek Jeter. Drivers sitting at four-way stop signs trying to wave each other through, grinning so hard that tears streak down their faces. Bartenders waiting patiently as you stand there for 10 goddamn minutes trying to make up your mind. The entire city would grind to a standstill. Five hundred years of cultivated candor, of steadfastly refusing to smile for no reason—out the window. We’d go to bed in Boston one night, and we’d wake up in Minneapolis. And surely nobody wants that.
So all I’m asking is this: While we forge ahead and strive to solve all the problems the early 21st century has dumped on us, let’s at least try to maintain some perspective. Changing the way we police, or build, or tax, or vote—that’s one thing. But let’s not get hysterical. It’s unbefitting of us as Bostonians.
Originally published in Boston magazine, July 2006
