In the second leg of our journey through Boston’s neighborhoods (see Charlestown here), Devin and I went to East Boston on Monday to explore, observe and experience the neighborhood. Please view this amazing map that The Devin and I made outlining our journey.
And for my impressions:
Eastie O Eastie what to say about you? First impressions? As a yuppie, at first look I asked The Devin “where are the cute shops?” The Devin pointed towards a Bodega.
I saw lots of trash, some worn down houses, and not a single polo shirt or pair of Uggs. A little different from the North End, Downtown and South End, my normal stomping grounds. No bankers rushing to work, or coffee shops catering to “starving artists” that somehow can afford a $5.00 cup of coffee.
Maybe it is the harbor that divides Eastie from the rest of Boston but Eastie seems to have avoided the gentrification that has occurred in much of the rest of the city. Eastie would be the kid in high school that wears hand me downs and brings his own lunch to school. Unlike the kid who wears vintage to pretend he is above it all, Eastie has an “I have better things to do” sort of persona. Or rather, I just came to America and I’m trying to make it, so I don’t have time to build a bread and cheese shop so the yuppies that just moved in can buy their over–priced mozzarella and pretend to be ‘among the people’.”
So, it makes sense that I wouldn’t find a store selling dog sweaters. The stores in East Boston seemed to be there due to necessity. In Central Square, which feels like downtown Eastie, there’s a blockbuster, payless shoes, and a no frills grocery shop. I felt like I was in Oakland, my original hometown.
Maybe my favorite part about Eastie is that there’s actual ethnic diversity. Like, people of various races living next to each other and interacting. As much as people in Boston love pretending that “Italian” or “Irish” are races, they just aren’t. In Eastie, there are Italians and Latinos and more and they all serve up their amazing food.
In fact, the next time I hear a former Californian complain that they can’t find a good burrito, I will send them to Taqueria Cancun and tell them to shut up. Enough people have written odes to Santarpio’s that I don’t need to bore you with my review. Let’s just say it’s the bomb and it’s way cheaper than the North End.
Also, in East Boston I heard people speaking a variety of languages, which is refreshing and makes me feel less idiotic for taking Spanish for 8 years and then moving away from California.
A co-worker, upon hearing that The Devin and I were going to East Boston, said “Eastie has a lot of potential.” Walking through Jeffries Point to Piers Park I saw gentrification slowly creeping in. Views of Boston’s downtown skyline beckon and newly painted row houses line the streets. The park is beautifully maintained and offers great areas for residents to take their kids to play, read, eat, and collaborate with neighbors.
Although every neighborhood should strive for improved schools, public areas, and community, there are some things that I feel should stay in East Boston. If low rents mean keeping a diverse community I say why would we hope for gentrification? Why do we always think yuppies and coffee shops make an area “better”?
I don’t live in East Boston, so I can’t speak for the residents but I feel like improved trash collection would be awesome, but besides that I would say, “Eastie, stay strong and be who you are and under no circumstances tolerate stores whose main focus is dressing animals that think its okay to eat their own poop.”
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David H
You hit on some of the things that make Eastie great – diversity, no frills, reality and delicious food…But you missed half of the community – Get up to Orient Heights when it’s nice out and come to Constitution Beach while eating pupusas from Mama Blanca or gelatto from a real Italian deli. Get the best lobster roll at Belle Isle seafood or the best Salmon you’ll ever have at El Paisa. Past food ,look at Piers Park Sailing Center, ZUmix, and 303 Cafe all hosting great community events! Hearing that Eastie “has potential” makes me laugh as the community already lives up to and exceeds it every day.
Leah…you’re absolutely right. Kendall and I kind of thought it was funny to hear that it has potential too.
Also, thanks for posting all the Orient Heights info and more. We knew we couldn’t cover all of Eastie in one day and so we must rely on our great East Boston ONEin3ers to capture everything the neighborhood has to offer.
Last thing, if you missed Fun Fact Friday East Boston Style, make sure to take a look. There is some more complete neighborhood info in there.
One cool Hidden Spot in Eastie is the Hyatt Hotel. Not Far from Piers Park is Porzio Park, and the beginning of a spectacular path that leads around a cove in the harbor and out to the hotel. The views of the Boston skyline are spectacular. Once you get there there’s a good restaurant where you can sit outside in the summer with Live Jazz on certain days.
I stumbled upon this post looking for burrito advice in Boston. I ‘ll check into your suggestions. Thanks.
There is a lot more to Eastie than this shabby review of worn down houses. We have wonderful restaurants, the most beautiful view of the city, a great community, 2 large parks, a sailing center, and luxurious new condos.
We need a Starbucks, and the city to FINISH what it started with the East Pier project and the Harborwalk all the way from LoPresti Park up around the Shaws to Condor Street. There is o reason Eastie cant be as cute as Charlestown. Where’s my T boat shuttle to Aquarium? where’s my bars on the harbor like Charlestown’s Tavern on the Water? Let’s go Boston! Make something of this neighborhood already! Thanks!
I totally agree with you Marie!
Oh, Marie Sheehan … where do I start with your comment? Your impression of what “makes” a neighborhood — a Starbucks, high-rise luxury condos, water taxis — is shallow at best. Eastie residents I talk to don’t think we need to be “made.” We’re one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city, and one of the few that has actually maintained a good portion of its ethnic charm. We’ve always been an immigrant community — first Irish, then Jews, then Italians, and now our Spanish-speaking neighbors. Each of those groups has left its distinct mark on our neighborhood, and I’m thankful for it. We’re all better for it.
And if it’s good coffee you want, what’s wrong with the many local coffee/tea spots that dot the Eastie landscape? There is a Starbucks in Eastie, btw — up on Rt. 1A near Orient Heights.
To the Onein3 author who reviewed the neighborhood:
What’s wrong with bringing one’s lunch to school? Or hand-me-downs, for that matter? You can’t insult the neighborhood (though, in fairness, an insult ought to be understood in the first place to really have the desired effect) and then conclude your article by saying, “Don’t change, Eastie.” I’m afraid you, too, suffer from a bit of shallowness and short-sightedness in your assessment of our fine neighborhood. Trash? That’s a city problem, right? Onein3 is “the city”, right? Mmmkay.
I’m getting a bit tired of hearing the “Eastie has a lot of potential” argument as well. Potential for what? Starbucks and high-rise condos? Sorry, don’t want that. (that last part was directed primarily to the last commenter) Neighborhoods can always improve, yes. But too often, yuppies judge a neighborhood on a superficial want list for which there is absolutely no correlation to an increased quality of life.
We may not have doggie boutiques, but here’s why I love East Boston:
- babysitting co-op
- we know our post office people, waiters/waitresses, bartenders, mail carriers, light bulb salesmen, etc., by name
- you see people you know everywhere
- you actually talk to people on the street
- tons of life-long Eastie residents
- great ethnic restaurants
- yard sales
- we take care of each other — meals for new parents, help moving, trash cleanups, drug education, youth mentoring, and the list goes on.
I’m assuming you didn’t have an Eastie resident show you around, because otherwise they would have pointed out many of these intangibles.
And it’s the intangible things that make a neighborhood — the very best “hand-me-downs.” That’s a crispy chicken nugget of truth you can pack in your lunch and take to school.
Steve, thank you for your comments. A couple things right from the top.
1. For anyone who was offended by this blog post, we sincerely apologize. Our purpose with this piece was to describe what it’s like for an outsider to go to East Boston for the first time. We plan to post Eastie blogs by residents, some of them lifelong, to fill in the gaps in this account and provide a more complete picture. We hope that young people all over Boston will be able to relate to Kendall’s experience AND learn a lot through the comments and blogs that Eastie residents post here.
2. Keep commenting! We were hoping to start a conversation about East Boston through this blog and your insight is exactly the kind of knowledge that will illuminate the neighborhood for people who haven’t been or don’t know it well. Please please keep commenting postively, negatively and anywhere in between. The ONEin3 blog is where we can have an honest, public discussion about our city.
Ok, now on to some of Steve’s points:
There’s nothing at all wrong with wearing hand-me-downs or bringing one’s lunch to school. The compliment that Kendall was trying to express may have been lost in the metaphor. As we walked through East Boston, we had the distinct feeling that this was a strong, good neighborhood that is a NEIGHBORHOOD first and foremost. East Boston does not put on airs because it doesn’t have to. It’s confident and strong in itself.
In contrast to the kid in the designer clothes that are meant to look authentically worn, Eastie is the kid with the inner strength that makes those trappings superfluous.
ONEin3 is, indeed, a City program. An important part of our mandate is to assess Boston and its neighborhoods honestly in relation to young people. If there’s trash on the ground somewhere, we won’t omit that from our blog just because the City is responsible. It’s not our job to protect the City from criticism. In many occasions, it’s actually our job to criticize. So yes, we saw trash and we mentioned it. We can all do better, including the City, and that’s one thing we could improve.
Another instance where Kendall’s meaning was obscured in a possibly unclear metaphor. Kendall does not believe in doggie boutiques as a sign of a good neighborhood; quite the opposite (no offense to anyone who loves doggie boutiques!). Kendall’s point was to say that gentrification, as exemplified by the boutique that sells dog sweaters, is not the end goal. The presence of cutesy boutiques does not make a neighborhood. Instead, it’s places like Rino’s and Santarpio’s and Taqueria Cancun and 303 Cafe and Italian Express, Piers Park, Piers Park Sailing Center and about 100 others that we couldn’t make it to in an afternoon and which you mention here:
Thank you for this list. These are the building blocks of happy, successful, healthy and supportive neighborhoods. East Boston has them in spades and that’s what makes it a desirable place to be.
We didn’t go with a resident. The idea for this series was to see a place as a newcomer and then fill in that story with comments and blogs from locals. This may be a flawed strategy and we’ll get it straightened out before our next exploration, or at least we’ll be clearer about that expectation from the beginning.
Crispy chicken nuggets of truth! I wish I had thought of that!
Devin,
Thanks for expounding on some of Kendall’s foggier metaphors. You can tell I love my neighborhood … few things rile me up more than misconceptions or negativity (real or perceived) about East Boston! That’s one of the beautiful things about our city, though — so many of us become protective PR agents for our places of residence. Boston is great, isn’t it?!
I too hope others will chime in about Eastie — both impressions from the outside and inside. Thanks, Devin and Kendall, for your work in promoting the wonderful diversity of Boston’s neighborhoods.
I enjoyed this post. It reminded me of a Disney movie where the yuppy girl from Beverly Hills somehow gets lost and ends up in the “wrong” part of town, and, despite her initial misgivings about these dirty streets and these ethnic people, she discovers that they have wonderful music and tasty food and – the big surprise – they are real people, too.
Out of curiosity, I went back and read the Charlestown post. First, I noticed that the writer went with a local (a very hot local named Devin), who lived there, who could guide her around and show her the “cute coffee shops”. This wasn’t the case in Eastie – there was no local to show her around (which is the point of this series – but then you should probably do it in Charlestown too).
Second, the writer’s first impressions of each neighborhood:
* Charlestown: “Really cold but I could see that Charlestown had charm through my frozen corneas.”
* East Boston: “I saw lots of trash, some worn down houses…”
If this blog is intended to “start an honest conversation” about Boston’s neighborhoods, that’s like me going up to your kid and telling him he’s ugly – but he has a certain ethnic charm. Did that make you mad, as his parent? Oh sorry, I was just trying to get an honest conversation started about your kid.
There is a sort of “island mentality” in Eastie that comes from a) being separated by water from downtown, and from b) Eastie’s immigrant history. It’s a hardworking place and people take a lot of pride in being from here. When I was looking for my first home, I couldn’t believe that I could afford a multifamily house just one T stop from downtown Boston, in an extremely safe and diverse neighborhood – that was literally right on Boston Harbor. If it wasn’t for East Boston, I definitely would not have ended up living in the city of Boston. The people here are the best; they always put a smile on my face.
Eastie’s like a family member: sometimes they drive you crazy but ultimately, you can’t help but love them. And you always rush to their defense if someone, anyone (even a nice intern who means well), is giving them a hard time.
I am a rather new Eastie resident & I must say, I love it. I moved from a very small town called Searcy, Arkansas where everyone, almost quite literally, knew everyone else. Sometimes good sometimes bad, but always family. Everyone greeted everyone else on the streets & in the stores. Everyone had everyone else into their homes from time to time. Everyone pitched in to help everyone else when someone hit a rough spot.
So, when my wife said she had gotten accepted to an amazing graduate program in Boston, MA my feeling were very mixed. I was wary of moving to “the big city.” So when we did make the move & settled into Boston’s North End for a year some of my fears proved true. We paid out of our bottoms for 400 square feet. People were generally cold to us aside from a few select neighbors who were also transplanted from other places into Boston. Sure, all the restaurants & shops in the North End are probably awesome, but we wouldn’t know because after paying the enormous rent every month we had no money left for such frivolity. The one good thing about the North End is the friends we made there.
So for our next year we decided that maybe we should move somewhere cheaper so that we could afford to go out from time to time. Enter Eastie. We knew one couple in the neighborhood fairly well & another couple ok. 6 months later & we have been accepted with open arms by them & all of their friends & their friend’s friends & so on. As a man that comes from very community oriented small town America, I frequently forget that I am in the midst of a pretty darn big city. Even people that I do not know on the street are very friendly. Eastie is an awesome community & even though the rent is still much higher than the $400 a month I was paying in AR, the community I get to be a part of makes it a downright bargain. Go Eastie!!! Woohoo! (Pumps fist in air & high fives a random dude on the Eastie streets. Fade to black.)
Thanks for coming out to Eastie. As a hand me down wearing, bring my own lunch kind of guy living here, I appreciate the metaphor. I’m also excited about the potential of East Boston, not to be gentrified and have my house value increase, but to build on the strength of our diversity and develop a colorful unity of people from all walks of life.
Oh, and you should come back in the summer for one of our Sunday afternoon concerts in Pier’s Park. Peace.
When my wife & I were transferred to Boston our rental agent drove us to Cambridge, Sommerville, Charlestown, Southie, and took a final swing with the Porter Lofts in Eastie. Of the 20 places we looked at the Lofts were the best place. 2 stops to downtown, airplane noise no different than Medford or Southie, brand new stadium, YMCA…etc. Our friends told us we were moving to the forgotten trash heap of Boston. As you can see from the backlash they were wrong – just as these comments support.
I’ve lived in 3 major cities and never knew the names of more than 2 people on my block. In Eastie we are very close with over 50 people. Seriously 50. And we’ve lived here for 3 years as complete outsiders.
Our neighbors are Phillipo, George, Sal, Vito, and Carlos. Each is a first generation immigrant from around the globe- and each would bend over backwards to help us out. I can’t tell you how nice it is to spend 3 hours shoveling snow because we’re busy catching up.
Let me pose this question to the Fenway/Comm Ave crowd: Have you ever had to leave your house 10 minutes early for the T because you plan on running into someone you know and will end up talking and setting up dinner plans for later that week. I bet it’s happened to you once maybe twice. It’s happened to us 3 times this week.
We love Eastie for the people – fortunately the rough appearances continue to “filter” out superficial undesirables who want Lattes, 200 page condo docs, and night clubs with valet parking. Looks like the filter is working.
However, if you are a neighborly sort, with a little sense of adventure and arent’ afraid of involvement with people who are not like you – we will embrace you fully!
I should add – that we no longer live in the lofts. We bought last year – and only looked in Eastie.
Hi TJ (nice meeting Nathan today), Rob, Sam & Steve (I know all of you from different circles). I’m not sure if Matthew is Matt from Piers Park so I may or may not know him. I just wanted to say I enjoyed reading everyones comments. I’m originally from Winthrop. I moved to East Boston about 10 years ago and really love it. I have one small complaint. I happen to live one block away from a staging area for the MWRA sewer project. I’m happy they are improving the infrastructure (we also have relatively new sewer, gas and water lines on my street) however I’m convinced the trucks only have reverse at 6:30 in the morning – beep…beep…beep. In addition, large diesel dump trucks are often idling out there at 4, 5 and 6 AM. After months of beeping, I’ve contacted the MWRA (the person who answered the phone stated they aren’t working in East Boston – has anyone seen large pipes on the streets), the mayors office and the police without success. On the positive side, if I’m late for work it’s not due to sleeping late – ha! I’m sure that some day even the beeping in my head will stop. I’m pretty sure it started after the sewer project but I digress. Although this may not be the forum to vent about this one small issue, I think that my East Boston neighbors probably understand that I’m laughing as I write this. I’m wondering if you need to be from East Boston to “get” this type of humor. I should also mention that I can see the airport tower from my house but almost never hear an airplane.
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