I moved to Boston in the summer of 2007 and I was looking forward to living in a city twenty-four times the size of the one I just left. I settled into an apartment a block from the Red Line's JFK/UMASS station, thinking being so close to public transportation would satisfy my needs. I was soon horrified to learn that the trains stop running after 12:30 AM. What kind of city is this? World-class, as is Boston's reputation?
Boston does have a reputation as being a world-class city. It is certainly known all over the globe. It is, however, a city that likes its beauty sleep. I know the excuse for not having twenty-four train service is so that regular maintenance can be conducted during the wee, small hours of the morning, but that doesn't help the urban melting pot that Boston is supposed to be. Random, cross-pollination and socialization between active, creative, able people gets done during circumscribed, working hours. Boston defines working hours as between the 6:00 AM commuter rush and a half hour after midnight. If you can't get it done by then, you're travelling by shoe leather if you can't pay for a cab. The bonds that tie the many parts of the city are severed long before last call until they are revived for the commuter rush the next morning.
I am reading "The Warhol Economy" by Elizabith Currid, in which she details the importance of linking people in different disciplines together in an environment that promotes random interaction and the collision of ideas and schemes. I don't want to trot out the old Boston-New York comparison yet again, but the difference between how Boston handles its nightlife (making it inaccessible) and New York handles its (with plenty of opportunities for insomniacs to hobnob), is striking. New York is a cultural capitol where young people move to make their mark. Boston is where students come to leave after they get their degrees.
Adam Pieniazek makes an excellent case for extending public transit hours and offers a reasonable proposal to make it feasible. Boston's culture breeds a mindset that limits night travel after the witching hour. For myself, I am often awake when the T is shut down for track inspection and repair. I would like to travel outside my neighborhood where the only places open are two gas stations, but in winter it isn't worth the effort by bicycle or motorcycle, and in warmer months really, there's nowhere to socialize but the South Street Diner seven days a week. There is a Dunkin' Donuts in Andrew Square that's open 24 hours, but do I really want to walk a half mile to get that dunky monkey off my back? I do it, but only because it's the easiest option available. I trudge there and back between dark windows and storefronts. Only bars make money when the clock hand passes twelve and even the bars could be more crowded and boisterous if people could travel to and fro without risking a traffic violation or, worse, vehicular homocide.
A place that is supposed to be a hotbed of ideas needs to be burbling without the heat turned off every night. Ideas are hatched in a hothouse and the more activity, the better. Sometimes it's best to sleep on a scheme but a whole city is interconnected. Boston's transportation limits travel during what I usually find are the most productive hours of the day. Boston encourages sleeping as its main nighttime activity when invention should be its goal every hour the earth revolves around the sun if it wants to tap its full potential. Are we capitalists or are we prim bluebloods? The citizens of Boston aren't offered the opportunity to do anything but rest up for tomorrow, which will, hopefully, be a better a day with no preparation the night beforehand.
If you can't be hit by inspiration between midnight and sunup, you may as well be an actuary with only the walls of your cubicle as your horizon. Boston is better than that. I holds a multitude of vistas and good ideas that I think are smothered by it's lack of late night access to all it contains within it's bounds. I stay in Dorchester most of the time. It's more convenient and cheaper than a circuitous cab ride. I'm sure the people in Eastie and Charlestown and Hyde Park feel the same. If it isn't easy to get from Point A to Point B bundled with all the other lively interactions in between, we stick close to home base, seeing the same people again and again, hearing the same stories, whether they are interesting or not.
You can land anywhere in Boston and it seems parochial, hyperlocal, disconnected from the larger play on the world stage. Gossip comes from no further than a few streets from where you are sitting. Transit promotes this mindset. We work for a third of a day and we sleep for another. During the times when are doing neither, we are engaged in our immediate surroundings rather than the fractured life of our city. Why? Because you can't get there from here when you want to get home. So you stay close to home.
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