Could be moving to Boston

My wife is transferring from the Air Force to the Coast Guard so we will be moving from our current home in San Antonio to Boston. The move isn't definite yet, but pretty sure it will happen. She will make the move first ( December time frame ) and I will stay in TX with our youngest until next school year is complete. So... Tell me about Boston. She will be working in the Coast Guard station right down off Commercial St. We are going to want to rent as this is only a 2 year assignment, although we might extend there if all works out well. Housing is RIDICULOUSLY expensive compared to what we are used to. Wow. But I've only glanced at rental houses near her work place. No idea where we want to live so that she has an easy commute, good access to nice schools (maybe parochial as the 8yo daughter is in one now), and hopefully a decent job for me (to many different 'careers' for me to mention). Local BMW CCA looks active, that's nice. Haven't searched for local SCCA yet, auto-x access would be nice. Tell me what you know, what you think, what you think you know, etc

Cheers, Russel

Wicked pissah.

it's not a bad area for motorsports fun, at least 6 or 7 months a year. bmwcca, miata club, pca, are all very autox active and run at deven's airforce base on the runways, in ayer MA. there's a bunch of tracks within an 8 or so hr drive, mont-tremblant, nhis, the glen, calabogie (little farther), njmsp, lime rock....

Haha, the local BMWCCA is a little too active. You have to get up at midnight to pre-register for the autocross events as soon as they open up like it's berkeleying Bon Jovi tickets or something. But the events are superb .

Devens is a great autox site and there is one club or another running an event there nearly every weekend day from April to November.

Cost of auto insurance is a mofo.

Moving from TX to Boston in December...

Show her this and pose the question "Gee, I wonder how often that gets gridlocked?" :

Pretty intuitive layout... mainly a labyrinth of dead end one way streets.

Inviting... no?

Have her look this over and see if she is comfortable with the numbers that have a little dash like " - " in front. Wind Chill Table

The city itself is kind of a PITA to get around in, especially if you don't know where you're going. Hell, even if you do, it can be a PITA! I'm from the South Shore (aka south of Boston and along the coast, but above Cape Cod) and there are lots of nice towns with good school systems throughout, but some towns can be much more expensive than others. MA drivers are mostly terrible, so you'll find yourself using a lot of hand signals while commuting.

Car culture around here and in the 'burbs mostly consists of the car show/cruise night crowd, as there aren't many tracks in MA itself. There are the BMWCCA events at Devens, and in Southern New Hampshire, there's all sorts of stuff going on. If you dig drag racing, there's New England Dragway, which has street nights on Wednesdays and Fridays from April-October, as well as test and tune Saturdays and Sundays. There are a lot of cool car people around, and there are a few of us GRM'ers scattered about up here too.

SilverFleet wrote: The city itself is kind of a PITA to get around in, especially if you don't know where you're going. Hell, even if you do, it can be a PITA! I'm from the South Shore (aka south of Boston and along the coast, but above Cape Cod) and there are lots of nice towns with good school systems throughout, but some towns can be much more expensive than others. MA drivers are mostly terrible, so you'll find yourself using a lot of hand signals while commuting.

This. Driving in Boston, even after living there for 5 years, was always an adventure. You're either in gridlock or fighting to maintain track position. It's not restful. I really, really suggest living somewhere where you can use transit, commuter rail or ride a bike. Commuting in the city by car is hell.

Biking there is about as exciting as driving on a race track, too. So that's fun.

Great place to live once you get used to it, though. It takes a while to reset your expectations for how people treat each other and whatnot, but it's really livable compared to other similarly dense cities. Maybe 'cause the whole metro area is pretty compact. Unlike NYC or Chicago, I never felt like I was trapped in the city. There's some beautiful scenery within 2-3 hours and some truly great roads in the western part of the state. And while it's expensive, you will never want for food/culture/entertainment/etc.

Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote:

I get your point, but that's clearly not Boston. Looks like somewhere in Spain maybe.

Boston's still not easy to get around in, but it's dramatically better since the Big Dig's been finished, and really doesn't deserve to retain the reputation of being a gridlocked nightmare. The center of the city is mostly manageable on foot anyway, and public transit is excellent, cheap, and extends far into the suburbs.

my favorite

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3B1MG2HKdA

then the follow up

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJGM7iKOJxM&feature=related

For you:

Murphy's

Like any large city, Boston isn't car friendly. Public transit is pretty good though, so the few times you have to go into the city you'll be fine.

If you'd prefer living outside of the city (better costs, schools, traffic), look at communities off of the commuter rail (purple line) that connects to the blue line (transfers at Revere/Wonderland and goes right to the Commercial St. / waterfront area).
http://www.mbta.com/schedules_and_maps/rail/

Anything closer than Lynn is going to be blue collar, and could be a little rough. You may also have to contend with air traffic noise from Logan.

Anything from Salem (witch trials!!) and north is going to be nicer. The towns on the coast may be more expensive, but most towns have both higher and lower cost neighborhoods. (and stigmas to go along with them.)

COM Car club does track days at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. The New England Region SCCA was also building a road course in Palmer, MA, but I haven't heard a peep on the project status for years. There's also the New England Forest Rally that takes place in Maine (about a 3-hour drive) and hillclimb events in Vermont. There's quite a bit of racing subculture in northern New England, you just gotta know where to look.

Interesting, I'm looking to go out to the west end of the Boston metro area(Northborough) in January for my job. My best friend will be moving out there in sept., he can give me the low down.

I even attended a work seminar for the move and one thing they pointed out is that Mass. actually has laws in place to keep auto insurance costs low. That being said, I will be close to an hour outside of the city...

Good luck.

Josh wrote: Haha, the local BMWCCA is a little too active. You have to get up at midnight to pre-register for the autocross events as soon as they open up like it's berkeleying Bon Jovi tickets or something. But the events are superb .

...that's why I let my BMWCCA membership lapse. Killer courses, indeed.

I lost a good amount of my auto-x mojo, too, though.

My two sons and I got kicked out of the Boston Tea Party the last time I was in Boston. Imagine a shrine to rebelliousness like that not tolerating a little dissent.

My parents are from Danvers and Peabody, so I used to go there all the time for family visits when I was a kid. I've only been once in the last 30 years or so though.

gamby wrote:

Josh wrote: Haha, the local BMWCCA is a little too active. You have to get up at midnight to pre-register for the autocross events as soon as they open up like it's berkeleying Bon Jovi tickets or something. But the events are superb .

...that's why I let my BMWCCA membership lapse. Killer courses, indeed. I lost a good amount of my auto-x mojo, too, though.

the signup is indeed pretty crazy. i set my phone alarms at the beginning of the season for all the registration dates at midnight so i dont miss them. i'm typically finished registering around 12:10 am and i'm often already 20th or so in line! but usually if youre asleep at midnight but get online to register before 10am-noon or so it wont be full yet. plus they typically accept about 110 cars or so, and we get 8 runs a piece.

RexSeven wrote: COM Car club does track days at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.

NHIS road course is surprisingly good for an oval track but it is brutally unforgiving. Reasonable distance to good road courses is one area where Boston lacks for a major city. Lime Rock is the next closest at about 3-4hrs and Montecello, Watkins and Mosport are the next closest at around 6-8hr drives that I can think of.

Lots of good info so far folks, thanks.

Didn't get the ESPN videos...don't watch/can't stand 'organized sports'.

Russel

russde wrote: Didn't get the ESPN videos...don't watch/can't stand 'organized sports'.

Uhhh... so maybe Boston isn't for you .

(GO BRUINS!)

Nah, I'll ignore them just like I've ignored the Spurs here. Except when they ask for a bunch of taxpayer money to build a new stadium so they can get paid millions of dollars to play a game; then I pay attention and go to the voting booth

Boston's not great for road racing.You have NHIS two hours out, Lime Rock three hours out, and that's about it. We have a LeMons race at Stafford Springs. For circle track, you have Seekonk, Stafford Springs, and Thompson within a couple hours.

Autocrosses are plentiful and the Devens pavement can be set up for a national-level course. Several clubs run.

New England is loaded with kart tracks. Talk to Roger Hargens (ProSpeedKartSports) at 508 399 5377 about getting your kart. F1 Outdoors in East Bridgewater MA is a real high-end "country club" course. OVRP in Cuddebackville NY is simply the greatest kart track there is. NHIS has plenty of kart racing, including the 100+ mph roadracing stuff.

Our back roads are brilliant; I'll email out a list - send me an email at vactrac@gmail.com

russde wrote: Except when they ask for a bunch of taxpayer money to build a new stadium so they can get paid millions of dollars to play a game; then I pay attention and go to the voting booth

No worries there, all our teams are in privately financed buildings that are basically sold out in perpetuity.

Josh wrote:

russde wrote: Except when they ask for a bunch of taxpayer money to build a new stadium so they can get paid millions of dollars to play a game; then I pay attention and go to the voting booth

No worries there, all our teams are in privately financed buildings that are basically sold out in perpetuity.

You also have to keep in mind that the proper way to be a Boston fan is to actually almost hate the team, except that you love them compared to all the other teams. Oh, and you have to know who Bill Buckner is, still, because people are still telling those jokes.

It's pretty easy if you keep the one key fact about each team in mind.

The Sox (because only the Red Sox are legit, the White Socks are retahded copycats): are great, but Bill Buckner.

The Celtics are great, but not as great as when Bird and McHale played.

The Patriots: aka the Pansies, are great, but Foxboro sucks.

The Bruins are great, but who cares now that they break up the fights.

I work in the North Shore and commute from Lowell but I race in NH with the Sports Car Club of NH (www.sccnh.org) (actually I'm the publicity director for the club and an instructor so it's more than a chance relationship). We run autox all summer long at NHMS and we run some winter autox there too.

We're also a member of the New England Hillclimb Association (www.hillclimb.org) and run the Ascutney Hillclimb in Vt twice a year. We're also the sanctioning body for the Mt. Washington Climb to the Clouds race later this month.

Super laid-back group of people, big on fun and small on people bitching about car classing. We average around 60 cars per AutoX and usually get 6 runs on a 50-60 second course. Cost is $40 for members (membership is $20) and $50 for non-members. Hillclimbs are $150 for the two-day event.