Look at where the Connecticut river goes. All manufacturing in New England was almost always setup near a river for power and transportation (look further North in MA and you'll see the manufacturing trend continues further north into Springfield)

Once an area is established for manufacturing people tend to stay and continue using the area for the same reason.

>East Longmeadow

Not really true anymore. East Longmeadow has been discovered and the housing prices are going up accordingly.

Ehhhh Wilbraham has a lot of "Well I went to high school here and am still here in my 30's" vibe. Don't get me wrong, it's a nice area but as someone starting a family around here I feel like a kind of permanent outsider in a way that I don't in the towns further north.

>West of 495 is much more politically conservative until you hit the Berkshire

Someone should tell Northhampton/Amherst etc. It's LGBT mecca. I'm a stay a home mom and meet more lesbian couples out here than I did in Boston.

My husband does close to the Belchertown to Cambridge commute a few times a week and it really isn't that bad. If it dropped to once a week we'd be sitting pretty. Honestly commuting around Boston is such a shit show you don't actually loose that much more time, he's only getting home like 30 min later then he was when we lived in Acton and our money is going siginificantly further. The biggest thing is having a workplace that is flexible on when you arrive/leave to avoid the worst of the traffic.

> Is the expectation that when/if you have to get a new job or want to get a new job, you will only look at jobs that are remote? And is that realistic?

Yep, the cat is out of the bag with the tech industry. I might need to take a small hit in pay but it's worth it long term.

My husband actually makes very close to that commute a couple of days of the week. Not fun but it's not horrific. If it was like one day a week or less I'd call that very doable.

Seconding, my brother actually teaches in Springfield and loves it. He and his wife have a way higher standard of living then they did in Revere just cause it's so much cheaper out there. There's honestly also a pretty decent amount to do, the 5 colleges area is fantastic.

/r/bostonboardgames i think is still going strong. Actually met my husband through one of their meetups.

The other Mikes really aren't as good though. You can tell the cannolis sit in the other locations and it hurts them.

Can you get a second battery and swap the two of them? That's a far better idea then drilling through the door (which is a horrible idea)

It's all pretty good, union sq is just the big one that stands out to me. It's just a fun place to poke around, give yourself maybe like an hour for it?

Boston Public Market, it's near haymarket and is great for breakfast. Highly recommend union square donuts in there and it's a quick walk to a lot of the other places on your list from there.

To give an idea what Newton is like I used to live there in a literal mansion. The reason I was in said literal mansion was because my roommates dad had bought the place cause he didn't want a builder impacting his Mom's view and decided to rent it out to keep the place occupied.

Newton is lovely and wonderful. Literally the only issue with Newton is it is expensive AF.

Fuck, I meant to stop in there last week but was sick

Exactly as suspected, zero ways to improve.

>Doesn’t do much good if you can’t even accept that improvements can be made.

Oh please good sir, tell us how us unwashed masses can improve our hospitals! I'm dying to hear how you oh random redditor who can't even figure out that Boston hospitals CLEARLY serve a population area larger then 1 million is gonna magically fix this issue.

Seriously there's a nation wide PCP shortage and we have some of the best specialists in the country. To give you an idea I just moved further West in MA and the soonest I could get a PCP booked with literally ANYONE with a particular hospital was September and there's been a lot of complaints about that PCP. Based on that standard 6 weeks is amazingly fast.

>but the whole region and even country when it comes to specialized treatment

Seriously, my FIL visits us 2-3 times a year to see a Parkinson specialist at MGH. I live out in Western MA now and will be bringing my baby into Childrens in a few weeks to see a plastics specialist and specifically made sure my PCP out here was MGH affiliated so if i need a specialist I can see one in Boston and not in Springfield. When we lived in NH Dad got his hip replaced in Boston. Everyone is making the same decisions my family does.

I'd say it's even larger then the standard Boston metro region. Essentially the entirety of Vermont, Maine, NH, MA, RI and parts of CT and NY are gonna end up in Boston for "big" stuff.

Their "evidence" against it was also showing that California also has 2 of the top 10 hospitals in the country, neither of which is in San Francisco and which are huge distances from one another. (I mean you could sorta claim it with Standford but still). Boston has 2 in that list within walking distance from one another.

Command hooks makes cable clips. They'll keep it on the wall and come off cleanly when you move out

Seriously Maynard is a hidden gem.