Artist Profile: TikTokker Jed Paul on How to See the City from (Below) the Ground Up

One of Boston’s time-honored pastimes is hating on its own transit system, despite being ranked among the top U.S. cities for public transport — at least according to the city’s most popular TikTok transit influencer, Jed Paul.

“I never lived in a place that had a lot of transit until I moved to Boston,” Paul said in a recent interview with The Harvard Crimson. “So it just seemed like a lot of unbridled possibility, I guess, of being able to go explore an entire city on foot or by train without needing to hop in the car. And that’s what really got me into exploring Boston by train.”

But Paul soon realized that Boston’s shared scorn for the shortcomings of the MBTA is also a crucial component of its community — one that he has seamlessly mobilized in his video content.

Since moving to Boston several years ago, Paul has amassed over 56,000 followers and counting with his locomotive excursions on his TikTok account @jeddeo1. Now a Boston transit icon, the creator says he is recognized on the street about twice per week by his “small but loyal following.”

With his signature deadpan sarcastic affect, Paul narrates his experiences for his eager audience in his most popular series entitled “Adventures with Jed” — or, as he explains, what he does to entertain himself while his wife is away.

His itineraries have included taking the commuter rail to the Sonic Drive-In, riding the Blue Line to its final stop at Wonderland, and even comparing public transportation experiences in international cities he visits to those on the T. The videos celebrate the prosaic Boston experiences and highlight areas more familiar to the resident Bostonian than the hordes of tourists in its hotspots, tapping into the unspoken culture of the Boston community.

With humorously sardonic remarks about his underground journeys underscored by the familiar sensory experience of the MBTA’s signature screech, Paul’s videos vocalize frustrations and observations tacitly shared by his local viewers. Once he reaches his destination — often one of Boston’s most seemingly mundane corners, he films only a brief moment of exploration before once again returning to his subterranean commute. After all, it’s his video journeys through niche Boston culture that matter more than the physical destinations.

But if you identify as a tourist or are new to the city, never fear —Paul’s content can expertly guide you through Boston’s more highly trafficked areas, too.

Just take his adventure on the Freedom Trail as an example: “Just think of it as Boston’s very own yellow brick road, if the yellow brick road were falling into disrepair and actually led you away from the city rather than towards it.”

The video goes on to sarcastically warn viewers about Boston’s tourist trap pricing, like at the Quincy Market.

“For being on the Freedom Trail, that’s not very free,” he said of the $7 ice cream for sale.

Paul, once a Boston outsider himself, shared additional insider tips for Boston newcomers with The Crimson: Having a Charlie Card and using the MBTA website’s train tracker are particularly useful hacks when visiting stations without frequent service — or in his words, “most of them.”

But Paul’s embrace of MBTA-esque delays and breakdowns and broader affinity for trains began far before his move to the area.

“I remember riding the train from Maryland to Connecticut, and I think my earliest memory is actually being stuck on the train and just being right before a tunnel, watching freight trains go past. Most people hate to be stuck on things like that. But I just really enjoyed the journey of it and being on tracks and watching the other trains go by.”

Now, he enjoys sharing the journey and his love of trains with a supportive community enabled by today’s unique online connection.

“I think that the way social media has evolved on Instagram and TikTok is that you can find a niche community for almost anything you're interested in. And I've been very lucky to find a community of people who like trains and like exploring Boston,” Paul said.

From viewers native to the area seeing the city anew to non-Bostonian fans just enjoying the videos’ dry humor, Paul’s content offers a fresh new celebration of Boston through its underground sites and culture. There’s a lot of Boston that even Paul has yet to explore, but he noted that his own experience of Boston has been meaningfully expanded through his transit side quests.

“I think there’s a lot of cultural pockets that are a little bit isolated from one another, but the T tends to connect it all,” he said, observing that he wouldn’t have discovered most of Boston without his MBTA adventures and dedicated fans who follow along and suggest ideas for his journeys.

“It's just been very heartwarming to see the response that I get from people around Boston. It's an indication to me that maybe I'm touching on the right subjects.”

—Staff writer Marin E. Gray can be reached at marin.gray@thecrimson.com.