Oh Boston. The longer I am away, the more this place feels like home. It’s weird.
Today we’re going to start with a clerical note that was once confusing to me. The instant you start talking about Boston neighborhoods, you will hear the terms “South Boston,” “South End,” and “Southie” come up fairly often. When I first moved to Boston back in the day, this was confusing to me. I knew there was more than one neighborhood in the mix, but all of these terms sounded the same. Well let me break this down for you: South Boston and South End are different neighborhoods. And “Southie” is the common nickname for South Boston. Historically, these were very different places, and today we’re going to check out both of them…
An Introduction to South Boston
a.k.a “Southie”
Think of the stereotypical Boston townie. If you’re like me, this will trigger a sequence of scenes from Good Will Hunting, The Departed, The Town, and a host of other Boston movies to flash through your head, all of which carry with them hilarious one-liners delivered in THICK Boston accents. If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, this highlight reel on YouTube should help.
The Boston metro area is pretty huge, but if there is one place in it that captures the stereotypical Bahston archetype, it’s definitely Southie. Back in the day, Southie was a working-class Irish Catholic neighborhood and was widely regarded as being a pretty dangerous area. This was back when people still discriminated against the Irish/Catholics—believe it or not, JFK was a diversity candidate!
To give you a sense of just how real this prejudice against the Irish was in Boston, here’s a funny little anecdote. My Dad and his brothers were raised in Boston, and his brother (my uncle) randomly has red hair. We’re not Irish, but people naturally used to assume that he was, and this apparently was pretty upsetting to my grandmother, bless her soul. This feels potentially problematic in today’s climate, but she was actually very woke for her time! Although, the dichotomy between woke and whatever the opposite of woke is has never felt fully applicable to Boston for some reason. Everything here should be taken with a grain of salt.
I doubt it will come as any surprise that our good friend, Mr. Gentrification, has been hard at work in Southie. One harbor-front area in particular—the area known as Seaport—has been completely reimagined, now playing host to tall, modern, shiny buildings with high-end seafood restaurants on their bottom floors. I believe Seaport is still technically part of Southie… but they are very different places now. As far as most Bostonians are concerned, the only thing that these two areas now share is proximity.
Although it’s a far cry from the glitz and glamor of Seaport, Southie-proper is also gentrifying. But even as it starts to trade its blue-collar residents in for yuppies, it is still managing to maintain a STRONG neighborhood identity and aesthetic. And one quirk I will also mention is its reputation as a conservative neighborhood. In a state as deeply progressive as Massachusetts, this is a bit of an oddity. But I honestly can’t think of an evolutionary path that is more true to Southie’s identity than this one.
Here’s a map of Southie in the context of the greater Boston area for context. Feel free to jump in there and play with it.
This visit happened during an overcast day during 2021’s rainy 4th of July weekend. We were at a bit of a lull in our national COVID saga, so people were out and about, and commerce was flowing more or less as normal. The gray skies actually helped paint a picture that is closer to the quintessential Boston, if you ask me. Here are some pictures from our random wanderings this day. This picture of the White Claw (below) was not staged by the way. Just a great little vignette of life in Southie. Lol.
So that was Southie. Otherwise known as South Boston. But what if you get mixed up, and you ask your taxi driver to take you to the South End instead? Where would that land you?
Meanwhile, The South End…
On the other side of the tracks from Southie (no—really—there are literal tracks) the South End has a decidedly different identity, both from an aesthetic and cultural standpoint. The streetscape is defined by the brick Victorian row houses and many leafy, urban parks. In fact, the South End neighborhood has the largest intact Victorian row house district in the country, made up of 300+ acres. This helped secure the entire neighborhood a spot in the National Register of Historic Places. And this brick-dominated aesthetic is a key part of what Boston is known for, although it comes in different forms depending on where in the city you happen to be.
The South End of today is a centrally-located, upscale(ish) neighborhood. There is some VERY nice real estate here, but it’s also got apartments that are affordable to under-30 professionals if they have a roommate. Aside from Southie, the South End borders Chinatown, Back Bay, Brookline, and Roxbury. Here’s a map to show you where it is exactly:
I’ve always loved this neighborhood. Every time I pass through it, I feel like I am there too briefly. This is one of the prettiest little corners of Boston, and it has been on my list as a place to come take pictures of for quite a while now. However, the residential portions of it (for which it is known) occupy kind of a small area, so I decided to couple it with Southie because I always got these two areas confused when I first moved to Boston and didn’t really have a reason to be in either of these places. Here’s some pretty pictures of South End…
That’s it for this time around! I hope you—whoever you are—enjoy looking at these camera rolls of Boston as much as I enjoy creating them. I love this city. I feel lucky to have gotten the opportunity to know this place and to now feel such a strong connection to it. It’s one of the great American cities, and its aura is larger-than-life in a way that few other cities in the world manage to be.
Up next we’re jumping out to Colorado for a few articles! So to sign off, here’s the OFFICIAL Boston theme song. Everybody in Boston has agreed to this.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Peter was born & raised in Columbus, Ohio, and started this blog when he moved from Boston to Hanoi (Vietnam) in 2014. After years based in Nashville working on his band, The Great Palumbo, he now resides in London, UK.
“Tessie” is also a great Boston song by these dudes… next time I am in Boston I am going to need to find an excuse to make that the Track of the Day… maybe I’ll do Fenway.
