The New York Times Reported on How Lame Boston Is

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The MBTA is pulling the plug on late-night service this weekend after its board voted 4-0 last month to scrap the two-year pilot program, citing high operating costs and low ridership. The move deals a devastating blow to Boston’s repositioning as a destination for young professionals, who, coincidentally, like to have fun every so often.

The New York Times is taking notice, with a story Friday titled “Revived Focus on Lagging Night Life as Boston Ends Late Transit Service.”

“Ending the late trains has reignited this city’s tortured, if affectionate, debate over how big or small, cool or quaint, or global or provincial it really is,” writes the Times‘ Jess Bidgood, who asks a historian, young people, and city officials whether Boston’s always been this lame—and if so, why?

“We’ve never been a fun city, for good reason,” said Suffolk University history professor Robert Allison, blaming it on our stiff Puritan roots.

The Times does cut Boston some slack, noting its ascendant dining scene, burgeoning tech industry, and superior sports teams, as well as the lack of a 24-hour transit system in most other major cities. Mayor Marty Walsh’s administration gets some credit for its persistent attempts to improve Boston’s nightlife, but is ultimately compared to “chaperones at a school dance, hoping to get kids out on the floor.”

“Boston always has a reputation as a small-little-town-type city, and I felt like having late-night T was, like, ‘Whoa, we might be getting on that world-class stage that we always like to talk about,’” Dan Haro, a 27-year-old Somerville resident, told the Times.

You can read Bidgood’s full story here.