Bostonia, est. 1630

It has now been nearly five years since I moved to Boston. It is the longest stretch of time that I’ve ever lived in one place continuously. Despite having many friends and connections over the past few years move away to New York for the big city vibe or out to the west coast for a more lax lifestyle, there’s a strange allure to the city that’s kept me hooked to it enough that I don’t really want to move out. And I love that about it.

Growing up, my family was always moving around. Even in India, we moved around in the cities of northern India for most of the nineties, and then floated around in southern India for a bit before officially making the move to the United States in the mid-2000s. Even here, we moved states often. I went from New Jersey to Wisconsin to Pennsylvania before finally ending up in Massachusetts. All of this moving around was either tied to my family or my school or my job, and once I finally had enough financial independence to move out into the real world and make moves by myself, I found myself shipping up to Boston on January 1st, 2015.

I was living on the outskirts of Philadelphia in late 2014, and I had just accepted a job offer at an agency called Intrepid Pursuits in Cambridge. This job was a big deal for me, because it was my first job as an official “designer”. For years, I had been dreaming about one day getting paid to do design work, and this felt like the big break. I started to feel like a career in design was possible. And I couldn’t wait to move out to a proper “city”. You can only stomach so much of rural Pennsylvania as a 21-year old before the desire to live and work in a proper metropolis starts gnawing at you like a frenzied thought at the back of your mind every other day.

So I sold all my stuff, packed up all my things, and moved out to Boston on New Year’s Day 2015. I still remember taking the T for the first time and being extremely confused by the “Inbound / Outbound” signage (to this day, I have to explain this to tourists and no-one quite gets it). I remember ascending into Harvard Square for the first time to a flock of pigeons taking flight from the top of the stairway leading out into the square. There was some sort of festival happening with music, flowers, bubbles, and lots of incredible celebrations. I remember smiling and thinking “Yep, this is where I belong.” That feeling of youthful community and connectedness is still there after nearly five years, surprisingly.

I lived in the Somerville/Cambridge area for the first three or so years that I was here, and it’s definitely got a different charm about it. There’s a big tech community, the people are much younger, more intellectual, there’s lots of college students, many academic-types, and a ton of entrepreneurs who are really into fitness. My job mostly had me interacting with folks in the tech community, so I naturally built a network around that industry in Cambridge. I really enjoyed my time in Cambridge. I love the riverwalk, Inman Square, Harvard Square, the MIT campus, and Central Square.

And the coffeeshops. Oh man, Cambridge is home to some of the best coffeeshops I’ve ever been to. I’ve spent many weekends simply working on stuff at Curio Coffee, Loyal Nine, 1369 Coffeehouse, Voltage Coffee (now Barismo), and many other locally owned coffeeshops. Time really flies at coffeeshops like these, and it’s really great to just kick back and focus on something after a week of intense meetings and chaotic work schedules.

When I lived in Cambridge, most of my time there was spent almost entirely in Cambridge. My home and work were 15 mins away, so I had little reason to go into the city of Boston, unless there were things happening there or I was meeting up with people. It wasn’t until I started working at a different company in downtown Boston that I truly started exploring the city’s charms. I’d walk to Boston from Cambridge when the weather was nice, and boy what a walk that is. You get to cross the Charles River on a bridge and look at all the sailboats in the summer. It’s excellent.

After work, I’d try to take the most offbeat path back home or explore some parts of the city that I had never been to before. It was a ton of fun, even though I got lost plenty of times. Going through Chinatown, memorizing the fastest path to the Rose F. Kennedy Greenway, stumbling into the North End, weaving through the Financial District for the first time, walking the entire length of Commonwealth Avenue in Back Bay, and figuring out where T stop entrances are were all highly memorable first time experiences.

I love how walkable the city is. You absolutely do not need a car. I sold my car the day I moved here, and have never been happier. Owning a vehicle here is a massive inconvenience, with having to worry about parking, traffic, maintenance, insurance…yeesh. I’d rather just walk or bike or take the T everywhere. And the city is highly walkable. Whenever someone visits me, they’re shocked to hear that we can cover most of the city in one day on foot. And they’re always impressed every time. This is the benefit of living in a city that wasn’t built for automobiles and organically evolved from horse wagons to motor vehicles. The streets are a nightmare to drive on. The intersections don’t make any sense, the signage is all very confusing, and drivers can be really nasty. It’s no wonder Boston ranks as one of the highest on those worst traffic in the country lists.

My current commute involves taking a long , relaxing twenty minute walk through downtown Boston, then through the Boston Commons, then through the Boston Public Garden, and into Back Bay. I’m honestly stunned every time that I’m fortunate enough to have such a beautiful commute to work. Most people dread their commute, not wanting to get into their car and drive endlessly for what feels like eternity stuck in traffic on dreary gray freeways. I get to walk on the Freedom trail, through open park spaces, through a diverse botanical garden, and into an upscale shopping district. I have to pinch myself to remember how fortunate and privileged I am to live this kind of life sometimes.

And the city has history. Tons of it. You’ll find maps and markers by the harbor about what the view from a specific vantage point looked like a hundred years ago, two hundred years ago, and three hundred years ago. It’s crazy to think that the city has been around and growing for so long. It has seen so many generations, battles, industries, and skylines. Metallic bootscrapers still line the exteriors of houses in Beacon Hill, a relic from a time when you dismounted your horse and scraped the mud off your boots before entering the house. Colonial era government buildings and Gothic stone churches are sprawled all over the city and its surrounding sprawls. It’s especially fascinating seeing them inherit the same space as modern high-rise buildings with glass façades, almost as if we were stepping back into time through the history of architectural influences on the city.

And I love the energy. There’s a lot of young people that live here. It’s not uncommon to see people get on the T and whip out a book to read on their morning commute. You see runners and athletes pushing themselves to the limit every day on the Esplanade. The city has annual events that I consistently attend like PAX East and the Boston Marathon. There’s a vibrant indie gamedev community that I’m involved with here. There’s lots of young early-stage startups focused on solving crucial issues in healthcare and financial services, mostly founded by MIT or Harvard graduates. There’s tons of colleges with lots of events hosted on a daily basis. And of course, there’s a budding design community that loves to host meetups and events on a regular cadence.

When I moved here, I certainly felt like Boston was just another checklist city on my long itinerary to keep moving around. For the first couple of years, it felt like I was bound to move out at any second, so I had a hard time putting down roots. But the longer I’ve stayed here, the longer the city has grown on me. I’ve gotten to appreciate many things about it, and I realize how rare they are in other cities. I’ve considered moving many times, but the question always came back to “Where would I go?”. At least in the US, I can’t think of a better city to live in. New York is a bit too crowded for my taste, the west coast cities have too big of a reliance on cars, Silicon Valley is too expensive, the midwest is a bit too laid back, and the southern states don’t exactly appeal to me that much. Maybe Austin, TX would be the closest option, but I enjoy being on the ocean, and Austin doesn’t exactly have that.

If I would move, it would be international. London, Berlin, Melbourne, or Montréal are very appealing to me, so I can easily see myself living there. But for now, Boston is maybe the first place I feel like I can call “home”. I had always found it difficult to answer the “Where are you from?” question, because I had either been moving around so often that I never associated with a hometown or I hadn’t lived in the city that I’m moving from in long enough to really call it a home. But when I travel these days and people ask where I’m coming from, I can very confidently and proudly say “Boston”, and it’s stating to seem like it’s going to stay like that for a while 🙂