NU pride

I just got wind of the Weekly Dig's DigThisAwards 2005 and I just had to share a few of their "Best of Everything Else" awards:

college rowdies
NORTHEASTERN
If anyone had thought to give out an award for barbarism before, there’s no doubt that the Northeastern kids would be working on a dynasty by now. Their behavior is legendary, as evidenced by their dominating performance in this year’s poll. The Huntington Huns roll kegs, flip cars, set fires, crowd porches and basements, manhandle pedestrians, and urinate publicly with the reckless abandon of a population unencumbered by trivial notions of decorum. They’ve vexed elected officials, been denounced as “knuckleheads” by the mayor, been the target of draconian legislation and utterly destroyed their Mission Hill neighbors’ will to live. Here’s to whatever they have planned for next year.
--Paul McMorrow
Runners-up: BU; BC

Ah, Northeastern. I honestly don't know where I would have been without you. It was a spectacle of what's wrong with American higher education. Apparently being a date rapist dude guy with money to blow counts for more than actual intelligence and creativity. On one of my last days attending there, I overheard an RA telling a story about how she went down on some guy the previous evening in the middle of a fraternity social gathering while heavily intoxicated. Apparently so hard that she threw up. And its these same people who blab away during your sociology class with sorority girls who qualify their statements with "I'm not a feminist, but..." (because their definition of a feminist is a bull dyke who hates men) because they're trying to get an easy A in their core classes.

I actually did like Northeastern in some respects, I met some top-notch professors and instructors and people. I met Carolyn because of it. Plus, I would be in some dire straits had I not been a part of the Progressive Student Alliance. Considering where I am now, those would've been some dire-ass straits. Plus I may be going to grad skool there. so who knows.

BU won a prize for "best place to ogle talent". Because apparently: "Northeastern girls are as likely to set you on fire as they are to look at you"

This was equally disgusting, but in a different way:

loathsome new developer name for a boston ‘hood
EABO
It’s official: “EaBo” is the worst thing to happen to a Boston neighborhood since the Great Molasses Flood. “SoWa” and “SoCo” are unbelievably irritating, sure, but their respective domains aren’t so much neighborhoods as figments of real estate agents’ febrile imaginations. “SoBo” is evil incarnate, but it lacks staying power; it sticks to clannish South Boston about as well as a dead squid Scotchtaped to the side of the L Street Bathhouse. As obnoxious SoHo-inspired nicknames go, nothing beats “EaBo” for ghastly yuppie schlockiness combined with tenacity. Bust it out on a third-generation Eastie native, and watch how quickly the homicidal-fury reaction occurs.
--Lissa Harris
Runners-up: SoWa; NoBo; SoBo

I could not contain the bile in my throat when I first heard about this, and I have no connection to East Boston whatsoever. Boston is transforming in a weird way. I just don't know what will happen when the yuppies move away and Downtown Crossing is a large Wal Mart. Oh wait, the city will crumble. And Mumbles Menino will still be mayor.

and in other neighborhood news:

’hood for comparatively cheap rent
JAMAICA PLAIN
Since neither the Red nor Green Lines bother to cut through Jamaica Plain, it’s considered pretty much out-of-bounds to most of Boston’s thousands of college brats co-signing leases with their parents—which is a good thing. JP residents enjoy quiet tree-lined streets, the enormous Arnold Arboretum (which makes the Common look like a landfill) and several top-notch restaurants. Bars host plenty of quirky homegrown entertainment, equally informed by MassArt students living above Latino coffee shops and the town’s longstanding gay/lesbian-friendly vibe. Frat-house-style keggers observed in the last three years =
zero.
--Matt Parish
Runners-up: Dorchester; Allston; East Cambridge

-sniff- oh JP. You were so inconvenient and slightly (Washington Street Corridor represent!) dangerous to live in. Someone was mugged behind me while I walked Murray the Dog. But so beautiful. I miss your trees, parks, views and greens. I don't miss the hills, beautiful as they are. That was frikkin awful. I have a comparable distance between the T stop and my current place in Central Square, but over here, I'm not dying by the time I get home. About 10 minutes faster. But still, it was the place to take it easy and take it all in.

My current area, Central Square, won an award:

place to get doored on a bike CENTRAL SQUARE
Anyone who’s ever ridden a bike through Cambridge knows fully how perilous the Central Square stretch of Mass. Ave. is. Heavy traffic, narrow lanes, frequent live parkers, buses galore and the most bastardly cab drivers in the state combine to make that quarter-mile stretch of street roughly as hospitable to American cyclists as the road to Baghdad Airport. Go too far left, and a bus driver will start playing fun little chicken games with you; go too far right, and you run the risk of a pedestrian jaywalking out in front of you looking the other way, or, of course, a cabbie throwing his door wide open just because, shit, why not? That’s what doors are for.
--Joe Keohane
Runners-up: Mass. Ave., in the Back Bay; Chinatown; Centre Street in Jamaica Plain

and i'm spent.