This semester I’ve had the privilege of living with native New Yorker, Chloe Shapiro: triplet, chef extraordinaire, and playlist master. However, rather than living in New York, she has had the opportunity to live in the greatest city in the world: Boston, Massachusetts. It’s been two months since Chloe moved to Boston, so I sat down with her to hear her perspective. The following is my exclusive interview.
What have you liked about living in Boston?
I like how walkable Boston is. I like that in one day I could and did walk all the way from the North End through the main part of Boston through Cambridge and back to Brighton. I got a really good sense of the city in a really short [period of] time.
What do you miss most about New York?
Good-ass pizza. I miss good pizza and the sheer number of street lamps there are at night so it never gets dark. Like here it gets dark and it gets quiet whereas in New York there’s always plenty of light and ambient noise. So my first couple of nights here I had to adjust to the lack of noise and the idea of going to bed in silence.
What’s something about Boston that’s surprised you?
The crossing the street and jaywalking situation in that people aggressively jaywalk and cars will actually stop for you. What I don’t get is once someone almost hit me and I gave them the finger — since you know, I’m a New Yorker — and the driver stopped and apologized. That really stuck because that’s not New York.
That doesn’t really happen here either. I’m surprised they didn’t yell back.
Yeah, it happened my very first week here.
How does the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) compare to the Metro?
It doesn’t… I like that the buses have a bike rack on the front. That’s a very clever design. The bus system is better, but when it comes to the subway it’s no contest — the 24-hour service and general frequency, and the fact that the subway is on a grid and the maps correlate to where you are in the city rather than being on a weird scale, makes the [New York] subway more rideable. I honestly have more beef with the map of the T because it’s hard to tell where you are and the areas, rather than the actual T itself.
Anything else you’d like to add?
New York is still the best and I miss it. Go Mets!