Do you think Bostonians put out the welcome mat? Do you find other cities to be more or less polite? Different cities have different feels for visitors. Some are friendly and open; some are formal and distant. Boston tends to seem hurried and sometimes a little rude. That's what some tourists have said. One study found that people here are less willing to volunteer to help strangers than those residents of other U.S. cities. Take a close look next time you're in Boston, and here are some of the things you'll probably see: people smoking in the subway stations despite the frequent reminders not to do so; pedestrians walking when the crosswalk lights say not to do so, ignoring the cars; car drivers speeding, making a loud noise with the horn and occasionally cursing at each other. Drivers who can't be bothered to find a place to park, but instead simply turn on their blinker and stop in the middle of the street.
Sometimes Bostonians seem like they're just too busy to be polite. Why is their city like that? Former U.S. representative Chester Atkins says it's because the Puritan founding fathers were themselves impatient and bad-tempered, and had little time for courtesy. That culture has carried down to the present day, he believes. Boston College professor Thomas O'Connor thinks a contributing factor is Boston's history as a city where each new group of immigrants was treated with suspicion and exclusion. That's given Boston a sense of clannishness and reserve, he thinks. The idea of a stranger greeting another stranger is simply not part of the local culture, he says. People will begin a conversation with someone they know, but not with a stranger. Ralph Whitehead, a professor of journalism at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, thinks it's because Boston's upper class used manners to make class distinctions. By being snobbish about manners, Proper Bostonians made other people scornful of courtesy, he says.
Some say that's just the way Boston is and that the city will never change. Still, other cities with reputations for worse rudeness are trying hard to change their images. Paris is one example where people are trying to be friendly. New York City is another. There, the city is trying to persuade subway riders to be more considerate. If those cities can make the effort, maybe Boston should as well.