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If only the Financial District had another name
By adamg on Fri, 06/22/2012 - 8:53am
The Herald reports some downtown real-estate types think that if the city can successfully re-brand a bunch of parking lots as the Innovation District, imagine how quickly the disposable-income crowd would flock to the now mind-numbingly boring Financial District.
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Comments
Because the previous bullshit
Because the previous bullshit renaming conventions GOVERNMENT CENTER, DOWNTOWN CROSSING, SOWA, WATERFRONT/SEAPORT/INNOVATION DISTRICT/WHATEVERTHEMAYORCHANGESHISVISIONFORTHESAMEAREAFORTHE10THTIMEDECIDESTOCALLIT, all worked so well for resolving the inherent problems in each area.
SoWa feels like a busy and bustling place
with First Fridays, a big weekend flea market, and lots of new galleries and restaurants.
Do you think
Those things wouldn't happen without the name change? I'm thinking they would.
Maybe not
Before it became the current arty SoWa district, this area really didn't have a name at all. It was just the industrial warehouse part of the South End down by Harrison Ave and Albany Street. The branding helped give it an identity.
Before it was yuppified
it was known as the Leather District.
No, this wasn't the Leather District
that's around South Street, north of the Turnpike. SoWa is south of the Turnpike
Of course!
How foolish of me! I even believe there might have been a sign stating that on Lincoln Street. I appreciate the correction.
"Yuppified?"
Wow, so there are guys in LaCoste shirts and Wayfarers driving around in 1987 BMW 3 Series listening to "Dance Hall Days?" There are women with enormous shoulderpads and sky high hair pushing their way to the corner office while doing copious amounts of blow in the ladies room?
Wow, "yuppies." Leave it to a town trapped in 1998 to keep embracing 25-year-old ad hominems.
let me understand
So terms like hippy, punk, etc. can't change over time? Obviously modern yuppies aren't what you describe.
You clearly don't understand
Let me sort this one out for you.
Hippies: Still exist. They're just way older. Head up to Vermont sometime.
Punks: Don't exist. Straight up don't exist. A long time ago, there was DIY work ethic, sense of community and an aversion to selling out. Now DIY is basically everybody's game, community is reduced to a band's social network and selling out is part of the game.
Yuppie: Also completely nonexistent, except in Boston where anyone who can afford an apartment in a building with an elevator, lacks regional diction and drinks and eats at somewhere other than the place they've gone for the last 30 years is a "yuppie." People who use this term for any other reason than to describe a character in an 80s movie are blowing dog whistles.
I clearly do understand
That your views on this matter have nothing to do with reality.
Hippies do exist as old Vermonters and elsewhere but also as younger artsy types living communally. Strangely enough many reside in JP. If you limit yourself to defining hippies as only people from a certain time I don't know what to tell you excerpt you have a very narrow sense of thinking.
If you believe what you say about punk you are both narrow minded and out of touch.
As for your definition of yuppie, I think you are projecting your own hate for locals onto a well known definition.
Pinpoints tend to be narrow
I think the guy's right.
1. If you went to Whitehaus tomorrow and asked how many residents there considered themselves hippies, you'd get uncanny silence for a house full of musicians.
2. So you think that definition of punk is WAY off in 2012? Hate to break this to you, but unless you're hopping trains to go to Leftover Crack or World Inferno shows, you're not doing anything remotely "punk." To think that kids are still lighting it up in VFW posts and sticking to the punk ethos is about as out of touch as you can get. Today's punks are either in their 40s and 50s or poseurs.
As for the yuppies, I don't see how you can project hate on locals for their projection of hate upon "outsiders." The standard definition of "yuppie" here tends to be anyone with more money than you who doesn't live in your triple-decker. It doesn't get more provincial, hateful and, yes, narrow, than that. Oh, and it's a stupid, outdated slur used by knuckle draggers.
Yuppie means
Young Urban Professional
Just because you don't like how people use the word here doesn't make it a word that isn't used all over with a definition.
As for whatever you say about punks, it seems to me you guys might have a large chip on your shoulder.
The hippy thing is totally spot on, doesn't make them any less hippy though, haha.
And you completely can project hate on locals, since you did it in your sentence as well. Not all locals hate all outsiders, or live in triple-deckers, etc. To have a blanket view on any group is knuckle-dragging.
Yuppie is a pejorative
"Young Urban Professionals" would No. 1) Be Y.U.P.s and No. 2) Would be more widely used if it had any sort of positive connotation. "Yuppie" is not used much beyond 128 anymore and, yes, I do have a problem with how it's used here because it's used as a slur. I personally have no problem with locals, but locals who use "yuppie" as a synonym for someone they perceive as "thinking they're better" or living under different circumstances than themselves really is a mouth breathing dolt.
I don't know what JP's experience with the scene is, but I used to promote shows in Philly, Jersey and NYC (and exactly one god-awful show at O'Brien's) at the tail end of the hardcore era. It just went from bad to awful. The skinheads, U.S. Thugs, Triple C, FSU and the other fraternities of neanderthals were the lid on the coffin. "Pop punk" and Hot Topic were the nails. I'm as excited for the Revelation reunion shows as anybody, but that's all "punk" is anymore: A bunch of reunion shows played by guys trying to pay mortgages, feed families or keep businesses afloat. There is no "punk," just punk branding. I'm sure Ian McKaye would groan about it, but he's too busy doing kids shows and digitizing the Dischord back catalog.
Not all locals hate on outsiders, true, but those who do are absolute fucking wastes. I'm not saying Boston's the only place where this is true (try North Philly, Elmhurst in Queens or the neighborhood around L'Amour's in Brooklyn). Here in Boston, when they use the word "Yuppie" they may as well be telling everyone that they've had a bunch of time to form their opinions of newcomers from the safety of mom's basement and are a 2-1 shot to throw an $8 beer into the visitor's bullpen during a slow Sox-Royals game.
Strap on your finest bandanna, jump on your bike
and take a ride out to Marblehead any given summer weekend. Only they drive Benz convertibles now. As far as the women go, you seem to be describing the women in the B-52's.
Yuppie women tend to be exactly like the Parker Posey character in "Best in Show:...
Branding
Well, I guess we'll have to agree to disagree here. I believe that the "rebranding" (how a section of a city has a brand is beyond me) was unnecessary. If developers wanted galleries and such to move in they could do it without the name. The South End already had an identity.
South End contains multitudes, though
Even though the South End isn't physically that large, the character, architecture, and use of the recently designated 'SoWa' is very different from Columbus Avenue or the area around the Boston Center for the Arts. It makes sense to have a separate name.
if it was so different
Why wasn't it renamed prior to recent development?
Because it was nearly empty?
Warehouses had closed, artists had not yet started moving in.
yes, but
It wasn't always empty. It had only been empty for a relatively small amount of time. As far as I can see the section of town looks the same apart from facelifts to existing buildings and infrastructure that the developers did. Also, there were other parts of town that had their own names that were empty for the same amount of time around the same time (Fort Point, Leather District, etc.) because even they were distinct. Wouldn't this area have been renamed when before artists moved in and condos were made if it were distinct as well? I'm thinking it wasn't because it wasn't distinct enough. Addition of art and restaurants doesn't even make it distinct from most of the South End.
More than a name
Change the zoning to permit other uses, then find some space that can be converted.
But, I have a hunch there will be some resistance. I suspect that the reason the Financial District is so boring is that's just exactly how the banker types like it. They view that part of the city as an extension of their boardroom, and don't want it "messy" like a real city when visitors come to town.
"Financial Districts" in NY (Lower Manhattan), SF (Market Street), Chicago (The Loop) and Pittsburgh (Dahntahn) all seem to share that trait in common too.
Wall Street, really?
Our second-to-last trip to New York, we stayed in a hotel just off Wall Street. As somebody who grew up in NYC when downtown was completely deserted on Sundays (used to do some work for my father on Sundays in his office across from City Hall; sometimes I'd be the only person getting off the train at the City Hall stop), I was amazed at how crowded the area was, and not just with tourists - lots of people live down there now (I was also amazed at how easy it was to find on-street parking, but that's another issue, as is the whole fortified-castle thing on the block right in front of the NYSE).
It has changed
But I'm holding out to see if it sticks, or makes a difference in the long run. People have been complaining about how boring it is down there for a long, long time. It isn't the first time they tried to fix it either.
I was never there
that far back (not that far), but visiting their financial district I was amazed how similar it was to ours. Not much stuff happening on the ground level, and retail / food was quite spaced out. I'd actually give the edge to our DTX/FD. Sure there's more tourism down in the area now, but thats all of Manhattan since the drop in crime and surge of rehabitation.
One thing I did notice is that A LOT of food trucks were around the area. They seem to be filling the void of a lack of ground level commercial/retail.
I image if we did that in DTX Menino and a few of the only residents would flip a lid.
FIDO
FInancial DOwntown.
Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com
Fucking realtors.
Fucking realtors.
Former Financial District, I dub thee
Land o' Crappy Fake-Irish Pubs
Gateway to the Quincy Market Mall
Boston's Ghost Town After Eight PM
The Filene's Taint (as the Hole is really in DTX)
Wouldn't it be so much better
Wouldn't it be so much better if you got rid of those boring financial jobs? Then you could focus on what really matters - restaurants! And food trucks!
Garden Path District
As in "the financial companies and Fed led us all down the Garden Path" and "The Greenway is our garden path!".
/snarkG
it will never get financed without "Kennedy" in the name
How about the "Joe for Oil Garden Path"?
Re-branding of the city
Re-branding of the city neighborhoods is needed for the same reason that longer drinking hours are needed. They both are steps to make the city more hip and therefore a more attractive place for younger people. What sounds more hip South Boston or SoBo?
The rebranding process is already underway with people now living in places they call JP, the Wharf District, SoWa and the quickly oncoming DTX. One or two generations ago people didn't use these names.
Yes and no
I'd say longer bar hours are attractive to everyone. Last time I was in Queens I saw several older men and ladies well into their seventies out asst three bar after two.
I have to agree about the made up neighborhood names. Except that JP isn't made up since it's just an abbreviation of the actual name.
right,
we renamed the Combat Zone to the Ladder District and wasn't THAT a resounding success....
As a Boston real estate broker...
I have to say that I can't stand a lot of real estate brokers. They're just utterly retarded. And some are just unnecessarily pompous salespeople, with no real reason to back up their pomposity, who are one step above car salespeople. Sorry, car salespeople. I really believe you're on the bottom rung of the totem pole.
I'm a broker too and I have to agree
FWIW, I know of brokers who lost their licenses and went into the pre-owned transportation industry, since the only oversight is from their bosses, no personal license required (except to drive).
Way, way off
Car salesmen are by far not the bottom rung. Personal assistants are worse. Ever met one? Their whole existence consists of telling their boss how fabulous they are and then telling the rest of the world how great their boss is.
The there's investment bankers. You know,the Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley types. They think their shit doesn't stink because they get to play with other people's money all day. And they when they fuck up and blow it, they just go to people like you and me to get more money to blow. And then they get bonuses at the end of the year for being complete fuckups.
And then we come to the real bottom of the barrel:publicists. You know, those people with the headsets that are always in the background at celebrity events? They're so bad, they're not even worth the time I would spend explaining why.