Dante Ramos, a Boston Globe columnist:
Massachusetts has a message for the rest of America: We gave you universal health care and marriage equality.
You’re welcome…
Massachusetts is the cradle of American independence; before the Civil War it was a hotbed of abolitionism. But it’s also the state that brought you witch trials and “banned in Boston.” Public dancing requires a license. You can’t buy a six-pack of beer on Memorial Day. Seemingly modest changes in policy sometimes occur at a glacial pace. What’s ironic about the Massachusetts political system is that, even as it resists small changes in social values, it can accommodate and accelerate sweeping ones.
In this process, the most frustrating aspects of state government in Massachusetts sometimes prove to be assets. Long-serving lawmakers sometimes get caught up in a perverse political culture, but they may also develop the expertise to redesign the health care system. The opportunities for delay built into the legislative process may thwart good legislation, but can also slow down the momentum for a constitutional amendment denying marriage rights to gays. The vast informal powers of the House speaker and Senate president are easily abused, but on tough issues it helps when legislative leaders have the muscle to turn votes…
…. And that, my loyal readers, is why the word “Masshole” is now in the Oxford English Dictionary.
Omnes Omnibus
You also gave us “Banned in Boston” and the Salem Witch Trials. Wisconsin which is coming in for such opprobrium recently gave the US unemployment insurance and workers compensation.
Anne Laurie
@Omnes Omnibus: So, is “Cheesehead” in the OED? Or is there a worse insult that you natives are keeping to yourself?
Omnes Omnibus
@Anne Laurie: Cheesehead will make it there. We are a newer state. Also, our asshole driving move involves driving for miles with the blinker on, not the expression of pure evil.
Steeplejack
And this is a Masshole post. As I said downstairs, we don’t have universal health care, we have semi-universal health insurance, with the actual health care subject to a lot of rationing, red tape, cost variances and bureaucratic sawdust-sawing. So Dante Ramos, who has been with the Globe since 2006 and no doubt has enjoyed excellent company health insurance, can take his “You’re welcome” and fuck right off with his Massachusetts boosterism.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steeplejack: Harrumph.
Steeplejack
@Omnes Omnibus:
What hits my button is the idea that now we have universal health care. Is this really a nascent meme?
Omnes Omnibus
@Steeplejack: We have a universal requirement for health insurance with some exceptions.
Omnes Omnibus
OT: are you on FaceBook?
fuckwit
Meh, it also gave the world the racist Southie busing riots.
And Marky Mark. Let’s not forget that.
But, overall, yeah, it’s got a lot going for it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steeplejack: Missed the reply button before: OT: are you on FaceBook?
fuckwit
@Omnes Omnibus: Ugh, and Joe McCarthy. I guess no state is without some odious turd in its history.
jl
I didn’t know Masshole comes from bad MA drivers.
I guess I should know, since I have stayed in Boston a twice for bidness, and once actually rented a car and drove in the damn place (edit: if you can call creeping along surface streets at barely detectable speed and waiting forever at jammed intersections ‘driving’). It was a long time ago, my memory is hazy. I had to get from a convention hotel to convention, and some place off site for meetings with no convenient mass transit.
IIRC correctly the traffic did not seem to actually move much, so I guess that is the reason that I don’t remember bad driving, since as a rule, detectable motion is necessary for bad driving to occur.
I think the car stayed in the hotel parking lot and was quicker to take mass transit.
Xenos
A lot of the hatred against Mass. drivers is due to the ‘banging-a-left’ issue, which terrifies visitors.
It is amusing that the comments to the federal code of civil procedure illustrating the correct drafting of a complaint (rule 10, iirc) use a claim based on a traffic accident at the corner where Boylston Street meets Tremont Street. As my civpro prof at BC put it, you need an appointment to have a car accident there.
jl
@Xenos:
banging-a-left? That led to ‘Massachusetts left’ in the Urban Dictionary.
Turn left asap after the light changes to beat oncoming traffic?
Well, whenever traffic moved fast enough to detect motion, I noticed a number of disturbing things, both from drivers and pedestrians. Especially when I was there in winter, with snow and the ground (and I did not try to drive in the city that visit). Seemed to be no rules at all for anyone, in their car or on foot.
FlyingToaster
We in the People’s Republic also have the oldest constitution on the continent, and 4 of our last 5 Speakers of the House have been indicted for corruption. We did, however, fail to gift Martha Coakely to y’all, for which you should be properly grateful.
I drive here (well, I drive mostly in Watertown, but did spend an hour each way in transit to the Children’s Museum, JeebusFuckingChrist why can’t people move on Atlantic Avenue?), and I’ve driven in Miami, and Miami is worse. Our lanes may be narrow, but they’re filled with angry sane people, not addled dementia patients.
Gravenstone
Apparently this is a thing. Trump Pinatas.
jl
IIRC Boston cops seemed to consider snarled traffic, random turns, double parking with some dude dashing to get a sammich or a coffee, and pedestrians taking random as-the-crow-flies excursions across the surface streets as the natural order of things.
I think I mentioned this before, but when I was there in winter, there was a place where several streets converged on a little lot with a sandwich shop on it. And traffic was always snarled there. I would walk by this place to the subway, and there was always honking and yelling and people would just double park, or drive up onto the sidewalk to park and run in to get a sandwich.
So I see these two cops pull up in a cop car. They get out, and I think, OK, I been walking by here a couple of days in a row, and this place is always a mess. I guess they’ll write some tickets. But no, the cops double park and walk in to get a sandwich.
Anyone know where that place is, or was?
FlyingToaster
@jl: Do you remember which neighborhood you were in?
Not Back Bay (Grid pattern), not North End (roads too narrow), but the rest of city, and Cambridge and Somerville, all fit this bill.
bago
Sure, but did Massachusets give us #dildoflags? I thought not. I rest my case.
NotMax
@Gravenstone
Ahem.
Daily News nearly a week behind. ;)
fuckwit
Speaking of banging lefts and other inelegant automotive expressions, where the fuck did the expression “flip a bitch” for making a u-turn come from? What part of the country? When? And what exactly could they have been thinking?
NotMax
@fuckwit
Never, ever heard or saw that.
And sincerely hope that never shall ever again.
Xenos
@jl:
The traffic can be so bad that if someone does not race across the intersection to take a left turn they might never get a chance to cross. As a result, when this situation arises the drivers coming the opposite way through the intersection have a moral obligation to recognize this and pause a few seconds so that the stranded opposing left-turners, who could be backing up traffic for blocks, can get through safely.
If you do not take the time to recognize this dynamic, and just promptly recklessly accelerate directly into to the intersection because you have the “right of way”, YOU are being the asshole (although not a Masshole). I think this is what shocks interlopers – not just that someone peels out and crosses in front of them, but that they get flipped the bird and cursed in the process. They think “these Massholes are trying to kill me!” and do not realize they have done something quite antisocial according to the local customs.
FWIW, I used to be an anthropologist before I went to law school.
Xenos
@jl: Mass Ave in Cambridge, it sounds like.
As for jay-walking, I have no idea if there is a law against it. People had the streets for 300 years before cars became commonly used, and may never have changed the laws to give cars primary ownership of city streets.
jl
@FlyingToaster:
” Do you remember which neighborhood you were in? ”
Was some academic meeting near Harvard. But I stayed near Boston Common. I remember walking past Boston Common to geto the transit. Was years ago.
Anyway, I seen things trafficwise in Boston. When I could detect it moving.
Steeplejack
@Omnes Omnibus:
Asked and answered.
jl
@Xenos: I admire the way Eastern big city folk create very detailed ornately Baroque rationales their own brand of automotive mayhem. Out here in CA, we just say traffic shit is effed up and bullshit.
FlyingToaster
@Xenos: Or Mount Auburn.
@jl: I’m with Xenos, it sounds like you were on Mass Ave in Cambridge. Or Tommy’s Lunch or Elsie’s on Mount Auburn (where MassAve is one way outbound and Mount Auburn is one way inbound). I’ve seen cops double-park in front of both of those, back when they were still in business.
Heh. Our traffic still moves faster than LA’s.
jl
@FlyingToaster:
” Heh. Our traffic still moves faster than LA’s. ”
I been to LA more recently than Boston.I hope it does move quicker there. Though I swear on surface streets In Boston I mostly saw cars seeming to sit in the same place endlessly. But I have seen nice quiet neighborhoods in LA destroyed by sprouting strip malls and traffic backed up for blocks.
Sawtelle district in West LA… it used to be nice…
NotMax
Two driving behaviors (from a longer list) that fry my grits:
People who do not use turn signals.
People who do use the turn signal, then turn in the direction opposite the signal.
BillinGlendaleCA
@NotMax: Observing drivers(both as a driver and pedestrian) here in the Jewel City, I’ve noticed that late model Mercedes and BMW’s don’t seem to have either turn signals or bluetooth. I would think that these expensive automobiles would have as standard features, these features that I’ve outfitted my 30 year old VW with.
jl
@NotMax:
” People who do not use turn signals. ”
That old habit of using turn signals seems to be very gauche and out of date in San Francisco.
Stopping any old place for indeterminate amounts of time is also quite the fashion, even if it blocks street so much you have to go into opposing traffic to get around. Hey, just put on the emergency flashers and it’s all good!
NotMax
@jl
Well, right-hand turn signals ought to be used in San Francisco, as the default assumption is that Friscans will go to the left.
:)
jl
@NotMax: Ohhhh.. OK. Thanks. Well, that has to change. Too many hi tech libertarian brogrammers moving in
Tommy
Normally I might take a little issue with you. Tell me this or that MA. I got my shit going over here :). But I went to Faneuil Hall few years ago. My first trip to Boston, which is strange because I lived for almost two decades on the East Coast.
This National Park Ranger comes up to me, asks me if I know where I am. I am like dude where did you come from, no I don’t know where the heck I am. What is going on?
He told me I was in a place where the debate over this or that predated our nation. Faneuil Hall. Fucking Faneuil Hall. It was built in 1740 will dollars from the slave trade, but later it was a hotbed against slavery.
Every American I knew a name of spoke there, in public open to being asked questions.
I like to give back a little when I visit a National Park, I shoved every penny I had into their “tip jar.”
Faneuil Hall!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Tommy
I freaking love YouTube. I’ve not listened to Pearl Jam in like 10+ years. But in grad school in the early 80s they were the sound track of my life. It is all on YouTube. Just cool.
different-church-lady
@jl: The secret to driving in Boston is to never take the most direct route.
different-church-lady
@Xenos:
I tried it in L.A. once. Nearly got killed by drivers who looked as terrified by my presence in the middle of the block as I did by theirs on a block that looked empty a couple of seconds before.
different-church-lady
The title here is quite idiotic: a Masshole would never say “You’re Welcome.” They’d grunt, or say “no biggie”.
Matt McIrvin
@Xenos: I have gotten trained into the Massachusetts left to the extent that I worry about my ability to shed the custom when I am elsewhere.
Matt McIrvin
Also, road work is perpetual during the season when the roads are not ice-covered, and detour signs have two unique qualities here:
1. They direct you off the main road and then just peter out, with no indication of how to get back to the route you were using. When combined with the Massachusetts custom of having no street signs at intersections indicating major roads (just the side streets), this is particularly entertaining.
2. They never take them down when the road work is done, so ghost detour and lane closure signs are everywhere confusing people.
Joel
@Xenos: Pittsburgh has the “Pittsburgh left” which is the same principle. At the very least, folks need to PULL OUT INTO THE INTERSECTION so that traffic can go around them, or at least do that they can turn in a cycle. One of the infuriating aspects of northwest driving was the complete obliviousness to the fact. And shortcutting roundabouts, which is also dangerous.
Shakezula
And now we know how the GOP will rebrand Obamacare: Massacare!
big ole hound
Having learned to drive in Boston back when there was a Neponset Circle it seems that doubling the U.S. population in my lifetime has had an effect on traffic. Ya think?
Bristollersw
@jl: That would have been the late great Buzzy’s, which I will confess to visiting in various states of sobriety:
Buzzy’s Roast Beef, Boston, MA — Located on Cambridge St. under the Charles Street Train Station and next to the Charles Street jail, Buzzy’s seemed to be open at all hours. This outdoor, order-at-the window food stand was best known for its heaping roast beef sandwiches, french fries, onion rings and curt, brusque “What do you want pal?” service. Buzzy’s attracted drunks, sober late night owls (in the minority), Massachusetts General Hospital staff, refined Beacon Hill types showing their alter egos, and other purveyors of the best in greasy food. Local comedians abused Buzzy’s many times in their stand-up routines. I remember one comedian (the name escapes me) saying that Buzzy’s used to throw its food over the wall to feed Charles Street jail prisoners — and the prisoners threw it right back! Buzzy’s could have very well contributed to higher traffic at the Mass General Hospital cardiac unit, but I remember it as a beloved place from youth. Granted, I never went there much (even as a nearby Suffolk University student), but just the sight of this bustling, old-fashioned outdoor food stand made me feel good — from the comfort food aromas to the undeniable presence of a local business succeeding. – See more at: http://visitingnewengland.com/remember2.html#.dpuf
the Conster
It’s called banging a U-ie, and the perpetually fucked up intersection with the sandwich shop was at the Charles Street/MGH/Cambridge St. rotary off Storrow Drive. The sandwich place was a roast beef place – maybe Kelly’s, but I’m thinking it was the other chain. Long gone now, and so is the Charles Street jail replaced by a fancy hotel.
Joel
@the Conster: Buzzy’s?
different-church-lady
[flies Commonwealth flag from back of Chevy Nova…]
the Conster
@Joel:
BINGO. It stayed open really late, for Boston IIRC.
Kent
I thought it was because of the Red Sox and Patriot fans
But apparently the pathology runs much deeper.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@different-church-lady:
My experience was different – that SoCal drivers took the pedestrian right of way seriously. I was living in Huntington Beach when my brother from NYC visited. We stepped out onto PCH and six lanes of traffic stopped for us. He said we’d have been toast trying that in New York.
Of course it was Orange County and the beach a few decades ago, and things may have changed.
anotherMIldred
@Xenos: Funny, I always heard it as ‘banging a louie’. Must be a micro-dialect thing. I’m a Westie (western suburbs, not to be confusted with (shudder) MetroWest.)
grumpy realist
Has “Masshole” replaced “Boston driver”?
I lived in Boston/Cambridge for five years (never drove) and part of the problem with the whole traffic stuff (aside from the fact that yes indeed you now have more cars than road) is that the streets were quite literally laid out on cowpaths.
You think Boston is bad, try driving in London. A lot of stuff we curse Boston drivers for is just normal London driving.
Feathers
I see others jumped in, but yeah, Buzzy’s Roast Beef.
What you probably didn’t realize is that the giant stone wall behind it was the notorious Charles Street Jail which opened in 1851 and kept going, without major renovations, until 1990. Massholes indeed! Here’s a photo of the corner of Storrow Drive, Charles Street, and the Longfellow (Salt and Pepper) Bridge Buzzy’s in lower left. It says something about the new Boston that the old jail is now a luxury hotel.
I always say about Boston/Mass road signage – it reflects the “if you don’t know where you are, you don’t belong here” attitude.
the Conster
@Feathers:
Buzzy’s last days. People used to throw sandwiches over the wall to the prisoners. No mention whether they were thrown back.
Yeah, I take lunch hours to walk through the city my father grew up in, trying to find some of the old places he used to take us as kids. Some are still there, but the city is layers upon layers of land use changes. Not all good, but some of the changes are remarkable. The Greenway is spectacular.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@anotherMIldred:
Hanging a Louie in PA when I was growing up.
AkaDad
We’re not perfect, no state is, but we do have one of the highest median incomes and some of the best schools in the country.
Also too, Sen. Warren and legal marijuana coming in 2016.
the Conster
@AkaDad:
It’s almost like liberalism works.
Mack
Wow, haven’t heard “flip a bitch” for a VERY long time. No clue as to it’s origins, and as I have lived in 30 different states, I can’t recall where I first heard it. Not very helpful am I?
Renie
@different-church-lady: In the NYC metro ‘no biggie’ would be the same as our ‘no problem’ which, I’ve been told, is now ‘no worries.’
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Perhaps the instruction books are not in the right language, if you know what I mean (and I think you do).
And for those not in our region, I’m not talking about Spanish or even Korean.
different-church-lady
@grumpy realist: It’s not really the cowpath thing. Boston was built on hills. When you build a city on a hill, the streets wind up being circular. Add to it that the landscape we see today is vastly different than it was in the 18th and early 19th century, due to landfill of the surrounding waters, and the street layout seems to make zero sense to modern navigators.
Here’s a good map overlay that shows the old shoreline and the new. See that narrow stretch of land south of downtown? That was the only natural land connection between Boston Proper and the surrounding towns. It’s today’s Washington Street. Today’s Back Bay was built on a grid because it was flat. Today we think it’s no big deal to impose symmetry on the landscape when we build, but in the 18th century you had to work with the landscape you had because changing it was a literally monumental undertaking with nothing but manual human labor and animal power at your disposal. The streets went where the landscape said they could go, not where the cows said.
AkaDad
@the Conster:
Almost.
Some guy from Texas was trashing Mass and praising his State, so I posted a comparison of every economic metric I could find and Mass. easily beat Texas in everything but unemployment, which was slightly lower.
For some reason he never responded back.
different-church-lady
@Feathers: Much embiggened version of same photo, big enough that you can read Buzzy’s signage.
@the Conster: Great link. Weirdly, the land that Buzzy’s occupied never did get built onto by MGH. It’s merely a little parklet buffer between the street and the parking lot for the Liberty hotel now.
Cervantes
@different-church-lady:
Yes, but, even so, the hills — there were five peaks in what we now think of as downtown Boston — were cut down, some down to nothing, before today’s streets appeared.
Beacon Hill, for example, was once called Trimount. Look at the streets there today.
different-church-lady
@Cervantes: Heck, that’s practically a perfect grid by early 19th century standards! In the days before the automobile it was probably perfectly serviceable.
And it’s still a pretty significant hill there. Sure as heck weren’t no cows walking in those lines.
Cervantes
@different-church-lady:
And neither are those streets “circular.”
Cervantes
@fuckwit:
West-Coast biker jargon. What they meant (not sure about “thinking”) should be clear.
Cervantes
@Xenos:
I have a feeling you still are — if you catch my drift.
different-church-lady
@Cervantes: Not there, but that was the result of later landscaping. Go east a bit, and check out things like Court Street, upper Washington Street, Milk Street, Congress Street, etc.
different-church-lady
@different-church-lady: I figured that out when I went to Spoleto, Italy. See if this spaghetti doesn’t look familiar.
In Spoleto, there were five directions: in addition to left, right and straight, there was down and up. People would say, “you go left, and then you go down.”
Tenar Darell
@Feathers:
LOL, QFT
Cervantes
@different-church-lady:
The taller two of Trimount’s three peaks were cut down in 1811. The lowest, what we now call Beacon Hill, never presented an obstacle to road-builders (as we see above).
There are curved streets in Boston, of course, but the “original” topography of the Shawmut peninsula does not account for those curves very well.
Of the five original peaks, three (Trimount) were what is now (one remaining) Beacon Hill. The fourth, Copp’s Hill, is in today’s North End. It was cut down before 1830. And the fifth peak, cut down in the 1870s, was Fort Hill, formerly at the intersection of Oliver Street and High Street — no curved streets there today, either, except as required by the Atlantic Ocean.
Bobby Thomson
@jl:
I believe that’s the “Jersey Jump.”
NobodySpecial
@Steeplejack: Well, it’s been said that’s the best we can do, so just change the label.
Another Holocene Human
@Omnes Omnibus: People who complain about Massachusetts drivers have clearly never negotiated Jersey roads during daylight hours, done a DC commute, done 85 in Atlanta during rush hour (or driven any road within 2 hours of Atlanta, really, at any time), or attempted to operate a motor vehicle or, hell, cross at a crosswalk in Miami.
Just because we cut through gas stations to make a right turn and run red lights that won’t change does not make us the rudest and most ignorant drivers on the planet.
Also, at least when I was in high school, it was a lot harder to get a driver’s license in MA than in most states with the exception of NY. In Florida I believe the test for a Class D is “Can you fog a mirror?” But even if it turns out you can’t you can go to a judge for a hardship exemption. Yee-haw!
Another Holocene Human
@fuckwit: Sure, the world saw Southie. Which lost that battle. The world never saw Montgomery County, Maryland. They didn’t want to desegregate either. They came up with a “magnet” system designed to ensure children of color were never allowed into the special language, arts, or academic achievement programs. And oddly, the white flight ‘burbs were never required to take “urban” kids into their schools of excellence (actual term, it’s bullshit but principals wank to it).
In Boston on the other hand the inner suburbs participated in a VOLUNTARY busing program that opened up slots in suburban schools for African American children from the inner city. I don’t know of anywhere else in the USA where this was done. They had NO legal obligation to do this because school districts in MA are on a city by city basis.
You know what guys? When I left the bubble that is inner ring Boston suburbia and encountered the rest of America I found out that white people are WAYYYYYYYYYYYYYY more racist than I ever knew and racism isn’t just a tribalistic thing for some butthead violent underemployed Irish rowdies in South Boston and some parts of Dorchester.
Another thing you don’t know about Boston is that during the 1990s there were some incidents with chemicals and rocks and stuff being throw at buses by other kids. (Believe me, I saw it happen. I mean kids are dumb, let’s be clear.) There started to be a daily greeting party for the bus coming into South Boston High School with the Black kids on it. This young white guy from the neighborhood ran into the crowd and told them to break it up and that what they were doing was wrong and stupid.
I’m not saying Boston doesn’t have deeply racist institutions. It was deeply segregated for generations and has only recently started to change that. But I’ve lived a lot of places and people who’ve never been a part of the culture there don’t really understand how different Boston is. People in Boston should be proud. It’s a culture of activism that brought us to this point.
For Omnes: I, for one, am not a WI basher. I thought Madison was amazing and the art and aspirations in the state capitol are incredible. I feel sad that WI has gotten to that point. I wish I didn’t know how many right wing republicans live there, honestly. I prefer to bash Indiana, anyway. WTF, Indiana.
Another Holocene Human
@jl: At UMass Amherst we were told that the first left is the “jumper” and the last left is the “squeaker” and when they time intersections in Massachusetts they always assume there will be two left turning movements accomplished even with no protected green.
Mass drivers are just doing what MassDOT wants them to do!
I never associated “banging a left” (pretty sure we stole that term from farther south) with squeaking or jumping because when you “bang a u-ey” it’s usually mid-block.
Another Holocene Human
@Matt McIrvin: Yes! I remember this well!
It’s the Mass version of “you can’t get there from here”.
One of my favorites is a “this way to transit station” sign that was blocked by a pedestrian overpass … put in to access the transit station.
Another Holocene Human
@the Conster: There was a 24 hour roast beef place there, kind of famous, and my solution to that intersection was not to drive it at all. Red line stations have parking. Rather leave a car at nasty Alewife than deal with that bullshit. (Plenty of parking at Forest HIlls, too.)
Cervantes
@Another Holocene Human:
For what it’s worth, I second that.
All of it.
pluky
@jl: My bet is the old Viga location where Columbus Ave meets Stuart St and Arlington Street across from the “Castle” armory building. Was there a line out the door?
the Conster
@Another Holocene Human:
METCO. Marilyn Mosby, the Baltimore DA, was a METCO student at Dover-Sherborn, the #1 public school system in Mass. My daughter was 2 years behind her. Great program, but all the sacrifice was made by the METCO kids.