

Boston Bar Buzz-Kill - ryanwjackson
http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2012/05/26/boston-bar-buzz-kill/KbPYBLYiTjLsykcpPi0mRJ/story.html

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jseliger
_but what he ought to be thinking about is bars._

No. What he really ought to be thinking about is housing. In Boston—like
Silicon Valley—virtually no one can afford housing:
<http://www.wbur.org/2009/10/26/housing-report> (for Boston) and
[http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2012/05/face...](http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2012/05/facebook_george_lucas_and_nimbyism_the_idiotic_rules_preventing_silicon_valley_from_building_the_houses_and_offices_we_need_to_power_american_innovation_.html)
(for Silicon Valley). Part of the way Boston needs to compete is through
housing policy, and especially allowing much denser development that will help
alleviate the extreme housing shortage. Bars are nice, and I'm not opposed to
them, but the biggest weakness of many areas that are appealing to tech
people, and people in their 20s and 30s more generally, is the cost of
housing, which has largely become a consumer good.

~~~
rglullis
If we take that Silicon Valley is the undisputed Mecca of technology, then
your argument falls through. Like you said, Silicon Valley is also expensive,
and yet they still manage to attract more and more people every year. New
York, another city who is one of the most expensive in the US, is managing to
pass Boston as the tech center of the East Cost.

We need to take a look at things where Boston is _substantially_ different
from the Valley. We can't change the weather and make Boston sunny year round,
but we can provide an atmosphere that is more friendly to recent-grads.

~~~
jseliger
_yet they still manage to attract more and more people every year_

See the second link:

 _Meanwhile, San Francisco—one of the most expensive cities in the United
States—added just 418 new housing units in 2011, the fewest since 1993. What’s
more, 149 existing units were removed, leading to a nearly nonexistent
increase in housing supply.

Farther south in Menlo Park, Facebook raised billions of dollars in an IPO,
instantly putting millions of dollars in the hands of early employees and
investors. But as Trulia’s economist Jed Kolko notes, the surge of cash will
create losers, by bidding up the cost of local housing. “If Facebook were in
Texas or North Carolina,” he observes, “developers would have been building
new homes in anticipation of this day,” but in Silicon Valley—as in San
Francisco and Marin County farther north—it’s essentially impossible for new
construction to meet rising demand for living space. So some of the people
living in the area who didn’t just reap a financial windfall are poised to be
priced out of their homes as high rents get even higher._

Silicon Valley has largely become zero-sum, population-wise (see also Edward
Glaeser's _The Triumph of the City_ on this subject).

~~~
rglullis
And yet, it still is the Mecca of technology, isn't it?

If we are talking about population growth, I'd agree with you. But the point
was in changing the demographics, not just growing it.

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localhost3000
Boston has a great bar scene. Our bars and restaurants are regularly
recognized as some of the best in the country. We also have many, many bars
for such a small geographic area. IMO the bar scene in Boston is superior to
SF.

These are the real pain points for living in Boston as a 20-something:

The T is miserable, always. The weather is miserable, 9 months per year. The
attitude is cynical, usually. Massholes are real. Prices are high. We spend
too much time comparing ourselves with NYC.

Otherwise, Boston is excellent. The city is clean. People are educated. Some
are even attractive. The bike sharing is great.

Bar closing time is not a real issue. It's just a symptom of an old-fashioned,
stuck in its ways, puritanical city.

~~~
rradu
Agree with your first two points, especially in the comparison to NYC. They're
just not comparable from the outset--NY is way bigger (469 sq miles and 8+
million residents, while Boston is 90 sq miles and 600,000 residents).

But I'd say bar closing time is a real issue. I hate having to end my nights
at 2, especially if I have to cab it back anyway because the T isn't running.

Actually, that's what I'd say the biggest issue with Boston is--the T service.
Not only does it suck when it is running, it doesn't even run when I need it
the most. The MBTA is very poorly-managed and many hundreds of millions of
dollars in debt (very few actual improvements to the system are done because
of this; it will take the MBTA until ~2050 to pay back all its debts under the
current structure assuming it incurs no other expenditures)

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JoeAltmaier
I guess nightclubs are important - if you are the club-going sort. I've never
made a deal in a club, solved a problem in a club, or even actually held a
decent conversation - its too dang loud for that.

As for a break from codeing or whatever, I get on my bike and ride. Builds me
up instead of tearing me down, physically and emotionally.

I'm just not sure the bar-hopping sort is whom I want to meet/hire/work with.
Probably makes me puritanical and staid; but I get things done. The best
developers I know get things done; none of them frequent/even care about the
nightclub scene.

In fact the nerdy, knowledgable deep-think architect/designer crowd I hang
with would look absolutely ridiculous in a nightclub.

So I'm thinking, no, its not a lack of clubs that keeps a city from being a
tech hub. Its more likely an accident of history, not yet reaching critical
mass, some missing tax incentive or something like that.

~~~
lmm
The best developers I've met were all serious clubbers (well, one of them was
an ex-serious-clubber when I met him, mid-30s). Your anecdote is not data; no
doubt you hang with people with similar interests to yourself (and do you
actually know none of them go clubbing? You'd be surprised how geeky certain
club scenes are)

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aberkowitz
Extending bar and club hours doesn't even make my list of things Boston could
do to improve the entrepreneurial environment.

~~~
maybird
I'd really like to know what your top 3 would be.

~~~
aberkowitz
1\. Keep The T open until three or four, so busy entrepreneurs can get home
for a few hours of sleep.

2\. Get nonlocal VCs and Angels to come to Boston to make deals, and show the
locals how it's done.

3\. Encourage school to offer indefinite stop out programs. Too many students
stash their ideas and suspend their leave of absence lest they lose financial
aide or have to reapply to college.

~~~
Anechoic
> _Keep The T open until three or four, so busy entrepreneurs can get home for
> a few hours of sleep._

Not gonna happen for the rail transit modes, the down time is necessary so
maintenance and track inspection can happen (the T isn't like NYC transit
where local service can be shunted to express tracks during shutdowns). I
suppose the T could substitute buses during those hours, but that will require
a lot of money the T doesn't have to move very few people.

~~~
keypusher
I hear this argument a lot, but I live on the Green Line and I very, very
rarely see them doing any maintenance after hours on the tracks. Personally, I
think it would make a huge difference if they ran 24/7 through Friday and
Saturday evenings.

~~~
bostonpete
> it would make a huge difference if they ran 24/7 through Friday and Saturday
> evenings.

What does that mean? Wouldn't 24/7 mean all night every evening? Or are you
just saying they should at least run all night on the weekends...?

~~~
keypusher
Yes, sorry. I meant all night on the weekends.

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mbell
Here is my problem with Boston:

If you look even remotely like your 25 or younger and not dressed 'like a
business person', your presumed to be some random college 'kid' who doesn't
know anything. If you live anywhere nice this is often immediately followed by
awesome questions like "your parents pay for you to live here?".

To me the Boston business ethos is anti-youth and of an 'old guard' mentality.
Your either young, stupid and in college or your in 'business clothes' going
to do 'real work' (aka climbing a corporate ladder).

There are definitely some very good groups and things going on for the younger
builder crowd but its a long ways from overriding the general stigma that
exists in the city. Creating a place where creative young people want to live
and have fun would require a number of changes in general city culture to
really have an impact.

All that said, I hate how early Boston shuts down, not just the bars but this
city as a whole seems to be built around a early to rise, early to sleep
mentality.

~~~
54mf
(I used to live in Allston, currently living in the "greater Boston area".)

"If you look even remotely like your 25 or younger and not dressed 'like a
business person', your presumed to be some random college 'kid' who doesn't
know anything. If you live anywhere nice this is often immediately followed by
awesome questions like "your parents pay for you to live here?"."

This is purely personal experience, but _every single one_ of my friends when
I was living in Allston was, at least, getting money from their parents
monthly, and none had any kind of full-time work to speak of. FWIW.

~~~
mbell
> This is purely personal experience, but every single one of my friends when
> I was living in Allston was, at least, getting money from their parents
> monthly, and none had any kind of full-time work to speak of. FWIW.

I'm not saying its a bad assumption to make, and that is the difficult part of
the problem to solve. Given the college population of Boston its a completely
reasonable assumption to make that a casually dressed 20-25 year old is in
college. On the same note in SV its statistically reasonable to assume a
casually dressed 20-25 year old is doing something interesting. None the less,
that assumption creates an additional barrier to communication in Boston.
First you've got to get past the initial visual presumption to get the
conversation started, and then often spend some time vetting that your not a
member of the presumed 'college kid' crowd. As a result there is a much larger
barrier to getting down to the interesting parts of a conversation in Boston
that I don't feel exists nearly as much in SV.

Part of it is just that SV has an advantage in that the young people that go
there have already demonstrated some level of drive by simply being there.

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sneak
As soon as more small, smart companies begin taking a holistic approach to
recruiting, this is going to become more and more of an issue.

People who work hard and play hard and can live anywhere will choose the
places that maximize fun/convenience to cost. It's not a one-dimensional
continuum, either - places like Berlin have cheap cost of living _and_ a
fantastic nightlife, but government bureaucracy makes it more inconvenient for
small businesses here.

It's funny how these pockets of win always seem to work out by chance and
circumstance.

In another decade, governments will be playing this game with tax laws for
information workers, too. Naturally, the ratio of gross/net income is just as
important to the final value of this "happiness equation" as the cost of
living, or gross salary.

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gms
Nightlife/bars in Boston are absolutely not the issue here. Compared to
Boston, everything in San Francisco closes much earlier and public transport
is inferior to boot. Yet people still flock there.

~~~
ctide
Public transportation is a million times better in San Francisco. Not once
have I ever felt like a car was necessary in the ~5 years I've lived here. In
the 7 years I spent in Boston, at no point did I have a commute that was less
than 3x as long with public transportation compared to just driving. The only
time public transportation works in Boston is if you don't have to diverge off
the red line.

~~~
djacobs
(Anecdotally,) I disagree: I didn't discover many of the best parts of SF
until I started driving around here. It feels like SF geography is really
designed to keep you out of certain neighborhoods unless you're driving there
to see friends.

In Boston, though, even when I had a car, I didn't feel like I was hanging out
in better places than when I was riding the T everywhere I went.

Again, just an anecdote, but one shared by several friends.

~~~
mbell
I think your point is a bit separate from the parent post. I definitely can
get anywhere I need to on the T in Boston, it "goes everywhere".

The problem is that the way its laid out does not support movements in a
reasonable amount of time unless you happen to be along one of the primary
spokes. If your trip involves the outer parts of the green line your
completely screwed, it stops every 2 blocks so it takes forever to get
anywhere. I used to live in Coolidge Corner and work near Alewife, that is a
15-20 minute drive that took around an hour and half on the T, in T cars
packed so tight you were reaching through and around people to hold on to a
bar. I despised that trip, if it weren't for the fact that a parking space
costs $300+ a month I would never have done it.

~~~
carlob
Or 30 minutes by bike, Boston is very bike friendly, if you are not too scared
of the weather, that is. But that's something that 300$ of good equipment can
fix.

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p_monk
Many cities, including Los Angeles and San Francisco, require bars to obtain a
specific license for dancing.

~~~
sneak
States in America require businesses to get a license to sell a beer to an
adult.

