Boston Is Like No Other Place in the World, Only More So.

I’ve just returned home from a long weekend in Boston. I grew up just outside of Boston, and I always miss it. New York is an amazing city, but I hold a special place in my heart for my hometown.

This weekend I hit up many of my old haunts, including the Pill, my favorite dance party in Allston, and Soul-le-lu-jah, my favorite dance party in Cambridge. I also tried out some new haunts, like the South End Buttery.

Good lord I love things made with butter.

I did NOT get to go to my favorite Boston-area ice cream shop, Cabot’s, which was the inspiration for the ice cream shop in PAST PERFECT. I was terribly sad not to go to Cabot’s, especially since I looked at their menu and saw that they have all sorts of SEASONAL FLAVORS, like eggnog and pumpkin-spiced ice cream. Is there anything that I could want more than SEASONAL FLAVORS?! I ask you.

Below is a poem by E. B. White (author of CHARLOTTE’S WEB, one of my favorite books, not to mention THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE, which is also a pretty good book in its own right). It’s called “Boston Is Like No Other Place in the World, Only More So.”

When I am out of funds and sorts
And life is all in snarls,
I quit New York and travel east
To Boston on the Charles.

In Boston, life is smoother far,
It’s easier and freer,
Where every boy’s a Harvard man
And every man’s a skier.

There’s something in the Boston scene
So innocent, so tranquil,
It takes and holds my interest
The same as any bank will.

For Boston’s not a capital,
And Boston’s not a place;
Rather I think that Boston is
A sort of state of grace.

The people’s lives in Boston
Are flowers blown in glass;
On Commonwealth, on Beacon,
They bow and speak and pass.

No man grows old in Boston,
No lady ever dies;
No youth is ever wicked,
No infant ever cries.

No orthodox Bostonian
Is lonely or dejected,
For everyone in Boston
With everyone’s connected.

So intricate the pattern,
The barroom of the Ritz
Becomes a jigsaw puzzle
Each life a piece that fits.

Each Boston girl is swept along
Down the predestined channel
To where she meets a Boston boy
Alert in Brooksian flannel,

Magnificent in fallen socks,
His hair like stubble weeds,
His elbow patch an earnest of
The fellowship of tweeds.

When Muzak plays in Boston,
It wakes celestial stings,
And I can sit in Boston
And think of many things.

For Boston’s not a capital,
And Boston’s not a place;
Rather I feel that Boston is
The perfect state of grace.

After a week of Boston
I rise and take the train
And I am always very glad
To see New York again.

New York seems doubly beautiful,
Its air as clear as Heaven’s;
New York – where life is always
At sixes and at sevens,

Where no one ever marries right,
And girls go off their trolley,
And young men go to NYU,
To Fordham, and to Poly,

Where hackmen have peculiar names
And relatives afar,
And one can watch the Chrysler spire
Bisect the morning star.