I grew up around here. I’ve lived in the city proper for 12
years. I’ve voted in every election, been in the clubs, seen a lot of the
bands, and watched all the teams. There have been few moments where I haven’t
been proud to be from here, and I have a knee-jerk civic pride that borders on
supporting forming our own New English nation-state and declaring Boston the
capital.
With that in mind, it’s hard to say we’ve been having a very
good year.
There’s the obvious thing – the bombing. The bombing was
terrible, but produced a really interesting and positive reaction within the
community. Boston Strong, before it was co-opted to be a synonym for “Yankees
Suck” or “Fuck the Canucks,” was a really positive rallying point that
definitely made me feel closer to my neighbors. But then Boston Strong became
some weird money-making scheme. T-shirts with no connection to One Fund Boston
have popped up everywhere, and the benefit concert went unaired due to rumored
promoter opposition in
hopes that they could sell a DVD, despite airing the concert live being a
much more beneficial way to raise money and serving as one big advertisement
for the DVD besides. So now I guess they’ll release it on a medium most people
don’t use anymore long after the majority of people even care about the cause
(not trying to be nasty on that last part – people have short memories and
other bad things happen). The lineup also left something to be desired. While the Sandy benefit had predictably big names because of its NYC connection,
Oklahoma’s Tornado fundraiser had the (granted terrible) national names like
Tobey Keith and Garth Brooks. Sure, we had Aerosmith, but really, the Boston
concert wasn’t exactly dripping with relevance. Names like Dropkick Murphys and
NKOTB certainly have national appeal too, but they’re really local names at
heart. At least Dane Cook was there. He
just doesn’t ever want anyone else to see it.
