Boston = Michael Anthony Hall (Both Before and After)

"Miami= the hot girl at the party that never had to work on developing her personality or cultural/artistic tastes..." LOVE IT. It's analogous to the handsome man that never had to get a job or get good at lovemaking because there were always a swarm of women to take care of him or drop their panties in front of him. Or like the Korean mamma's boys who never had to cook their own meals or develop emotionally, or the...

Well, I've been giving some thought to the Boston equivalent of such a metaphor (or simile). I'd probably say he (for whatever reason, Boston = male) is simultaneously two parts (a la the Hulk or Jekyll/Hyde):

(1) Boston is Anthony Michael Hall in the Breakfast Club days that would have progressed had he not discovered weight lifting and protein shakes. Boston is the nerdy kid in high school who played with Bunsen Burners, and then went to college and developed a few more social skills, read Foucault and some Henry James, and discovered craft brews as well as outdoorsy/wilderness sports (I swear, everyone here runs in cold weather, goes snowboarding, hiking, sails, kayaks, goes snowshoeing). Then he created his own enclave of similar-minded dorky but well-meaning people, and they go to the same Trappist monk or science-themed bars, close down the bar at 2am (or 1am, in some cases, when I got kicked out of Audubon Circle last friday!!), and then wakes up to run 5.5 minute miles in the freezing cold along the Charles. Boston is earnest, well-meaning, a little clumsy, but endearingly so, and overall kinda preppy and smiley. Boston's not embarrassed to have people overhear his bar conversations about neuroplasticity or revisionist postcolonial history, and even though sometimes common sense eludes him (like he'll be bopping along to Stravinsky on his ipod while blindly crossing the train tracks as the T is honking like mad), he ultimately means well.

AND
(2) He's the blue-collar, raspy voice laced with a thick grating accent, who's happier to watch the Sox game and drink local beer. Instead, he's the actual Anthony Michael Hall after-shot, all hulking and a little crass and a little douchey, a little provincial in the "south Brooklyn" kind of way (though he's probably from the North Shore). He likes to wear his hat backwards, unapologetically owns 5 Celtics jerseys (let's not even get started on his red-themed wardrobe), he flies off the handle when he sees Yankees paraphernalia, and he doesn't know the world outside of the greater Boston area. He drives like a Masshole, tries to get girls up to his house off of Route 1 where he lives with his mother/family/sister, her husband, and their kid. The last "great" book he read was "The Da Vinci Code," he doesn't get what an MFA program is, and asks whether you're going to write "novels" or "fiction and stuff."

Clearly I've only spent the majority of my time with the former, so it's just a weird kind of town-gown mixing here in Boston, where the two types simultaneously coexist. In fact, I haven't had much experience with Type 2, so he's more of an amalgamation of the horror stories I've heard from Sydney and Christine, coupled with the people I saw around UMass Boston (in Dorchester, which is Southie), and also Good Will Hunting. Oh, and I went to this party a while back hosted by people who were from the greater Boston area, and there were a couple of these scruffy types there, as well.

I'm signing off prematurely, because I have to write one more page before I head off to teach. Other people: jump in with your comments on city personalities! Mir: Montreal = ...? the sultry French maid? black square glasses and black turtleneck wearing, Nietszche-reading euro trash? NY= ? Troy = trailer trash? Bring 'em on!