Saying Goodbye to Beantown

Yes, I have the accent. I know what JP ad EB are, I know when to say "Boston" and when to say "in town", I know the difference between Townies and Parkies and what radio stations they listen to, and I know where to go to meet somebody under the arches. I have hit the number. I can drive here. I can get you from Fields Corner to Chestnut Hill in 20 minutes flat, taking one-ways the whole route.

I have spent the past four years acting as a renegade Crimson Key guide my hometown, dragging friends and strangers from one neighborhood to the next, spouting historical facts and personal anecdotes the whole way. If half of Harvard hasn't heared at least one story about one of my crazy high school priests, or one monstrous tale from Castle Island, then I've failed.

Yet for all the boasting I do about Boston and Cambridge, I'm always surprised when I hear that someone is actually going to move here after graduation-- that someone has actually chosen to dig up their roots and settle down in my backyard. Going into town with friends is like taking them home to meet your parents--you know why you like them, but you can't imagine why anyone else would want to move it.

It's impossible for me to see my city through the eyes of someone who hasn't lived here since birth. I've never be west to Buffalo; I can't imagine that the world extends beyond the Connecticut River and that someone from that alien land would actually choose to live here.

Most cities are stories, continuing narratives that have to be learned and experienced to be appreciated. Here, you can't get away from it; every other building was once inhabited by a literary giant, a Puritan elder and an Irish pol. Today, their descendants live there--John Updike, Bill Weld and Billy Bulger--sharing the city with newer Bostonians to different ethnicities.

The city's history plays like a Shakespearean tragedy, with rich suburban bankers blockbusting white families into the outskirts of town and running Black neighborhoods into the ground. Boston is a incredibly diverse and divided town, one that boasts a history of liberal ideals but also carries the shame of the South Boston busing crisis.

Is it really the history that attracts people to Massachusetts? Or could it be the proximity to the beaches and mountains? Seattle and San Francisco have beaches and mountains, too, and people there aren't nearly as neurotic. true, Boston has a flourishing intellectual and artistic life, but if you're craving arts and intellect, then why not New York City? (I know why not New York City, but I thought only born-and-bred Bostonians like me realized that when you pare away the grime, violence, stress, affection and ennui, New York is just a wannabe Hub).

Boston isn't the biggest city in America--last time I checked, it comes in seventh. It's big enough to make life interesting, yet small enough that you bump into friends at restaurants and in the park; it's hard to be anonymous here. The city is malleable enough to change under almost anyone's influence. When artists asked for cheap living space, the city gave them a neighborhood--cheap lofts in the Leather District rezoned for their convenience. When it became clear that Boston was segregated into isolated, misunderstood communities, the city planned a new T line, linking the neighborhoods around its outer edges.

Often the changes aren't exactly germane--the new Armani Cafe on Newbury Street, with its black-clad, chablis-sipping malcontents struggling to get tables on the sidewalk, just doesn't make sense in a city where high society remains unseen. The Other Side Cafe moved into the Back Bay fully intent on bringing Seattle grunge to Boston; once its owners realized that Bostonians didn't need (and, in their famously parochial way, didn't want) imported culture, they toned the grunge down.

Change, though, is what makes any city great, and though traditions die hard around here, in Boston changes happen all the time, to great effect. If a hundred 20-year-olds like a band, that band gets noticed; if a writer wants to make a splash, there are dozens of well-read magazines and newspapers that can accommodate him or her.

The thing is, I've learned all this already. Every spot between the Freedom Trail and the Arboretum offers both a public legend and a personal memory. The Old North Church, where the revolutionaries hung lanterns of Paul Revere to see, is where my best friend's grandmother celebrated Mass every day for decades.

If you've ever shopped at Wordsworth in the Square or Barney's downtown (Barnes & Noble, that is), you've probably seen small packs of high schoolers weaving their bookbags through the aisles, reading bookjackets and mispronouncing "Neitzsche." That was me, seven or eight years ago, trying to become au courant.Those girls walking around the North End with bangs towering over their spiroperms? I went to their proms. I literally can't turn around without bumping into one memory or another. And while I'm still imploring friends to move into town, I think I might be ready to move out.

I've spent most of my life at The Crimson writing about Cambridge and Boston, first as a city reporter and then as an editorial writer. This way, I've been able to work with the worlds of both Boston and Harvard; I've spent me days talking with people who speak like my parents, and then writing, I hope, on their behalf against the evil forces of Harvard. Many of those pieces were like this one: rhapsodic, far too reflective and deliberately ignorant to the world beyond Route 128. I even wrote my thesis about Cambridge in the 1630s. It's time to move on.

Most seniors will be packing up and starting over somewhere else, leaving behind both their hometowns and the city they've lived in the past for years. Many of them will be staying on in town, and I'm glad.

But I've got to let them have their own city, writing their own stories on the centuries-old history I'm leaving behind.

After I clean up my accent and get used to a city where people don't say "wicked" anymore, where they laugh when I say "laugh", I'll finally make that break, putting my hometown in perspective and ready to choose it again, maybe, a couple years down the road.

Michael K. Mayo '94 was associate chair of The Crimson. JP is Jamaica Plain. EB is East Boston. And "Townies" and "Parkies" come from Charlestown and Hyde Park, respectively.