We interrupt our panic for a little humor break

There were everal

We're definitely a city & a region with many differing ideas & conflicts and differing histories that define what we want for ourselves.

You're dead on, but that's the most infuriating part of the article for me. The tensions that the writer framed as an "identity crisis" are actually a fundamental part of Boston's identity, dating back at least 150 years. It's what makes the city so great and so unique.

And it's certainly not because of a few championships. I'm as big a Boston sports fan as anyone, but I've never understood the need of outside commentators to frame Boston's identity as if it rests on professional sports. It's one of the perks of living in Boston, but certainly not a defining feature.

We're definitely a city & a region with many differing ideas & conflicts and differing histories that define what we want for ourselves.

I have been all around this country, and that statement applies everywhere else as well. People like to think their part of the map is somehow special. It's not.

Honestly, "identity crisis"? Please. Weak pop psychology applied to an entire city. You could precisely calibrate a person's amount of idle time and absence of anything worthwhile to do by their level of engagement with this foolishness.

I think the "world class" city crap has its start somewhere back in the 70s as Mayor White and city boosters tried to justify the horrid urban renewal projects of the previous 15-20 years. You had to go along with it or else we wouldn't be perceived as "world class" (whatever the fuck that meant). By the end of World War II we weren't much different than other mid-size eastern cities. We had a lot of history, a fading manufacturing sector, growing suburbs and decaying urban areas - join the club.

This whole "world class" thing didn't seem to start until after the Faneuil Hall make-over and then going into the 80s the Copley mall development and other downtown projects. It has more to do with marketing Boston to corporate development and marketing corporate development to people who live in the city and didn't necessarily have a problem with the city appealing to its residents and not to the convention-goers from Peoria or insurance firm headquarters search committees.

Between the universities and the hospitals, and the history and cultural venues, Boston could hold its own in the "world class" discussions for quite some time. The linking of sports teams to this idea recently only underscores how much of a huge corporate marketing issue this all is. A non-discussion really. If you want to pick apart the psyche of Bostonians, dump the "oh we're not worthy!" analysis and go straight to the "we think we're morally superior to the numb-nuts down south when we're actually just as racist" angle. That has a longer, deeper history that runs from the Civil War to busing to today's displacements in local neighborhoods. And is far more relevant to our lives than something as vague and bullshit as "world class" city rankings.

There is a "Boston" that believes unimaginative pseudo-journalists and self-proclaimed culture critics when they say that Boston should care about being "world class". This "Boston" largely tends to occupy positions in certain formerly-great (or at least good) newspapers and make-work agencies in city and state government. I believe in statistics these people are called "outliers". Only a complete idiot treats an outlier as representative. If you're a member of the leisure class and have nothing worthwhile to do with your life, perhaps your time is well spent analyzing the mental processes of outliers. But please, don't try to tell the rest of us that they are significant. The only significance they have is created by the attention that you, and no one else, give to them.