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This was different, and that was largely the point of moving. Dallas? It was where the job was. And it wasn\u2019t what I expected. I met many fellow twentysomethings in what was then a newsroom bursting with resources and excitement. I quickly learned the glories of Tex-Mex and Shiner Bock. Nobody seemed to care that I hated the Cowboys (who had just won what remains their most recent Super Bowl). A former public transit devotee, I now drove everywhere, like just about everyone else in Texas. Anyway, I would only be here for a year, tops.<\/p>\n
Or, perhaps, 23.<\/p>\n
Some native Texans don\u2019t really think of Dallas as part of the state. When I started venturing to East Texas for the holidays with my partner, Kate, I chuckled at the lawn signs in her hometown: \u201cJesus Welcomes You to Winnsboro.\u201d Thanks, Jesus. Mighty kind of you. Dallas, by contrast, was concrete and steel and sprawl. It also turned blue sometime around the turn of the 21st century. <\/p>\n
Culturally speaking, living in a big Texas city is a lot like living in a big city anywhere else. Dallas has many of the things I value in big cities: good food; good enough theater; film and music scenes; reasonable cost of living, even still; and most importantly, good people. I met Kate there. I left in my late 40s, only when I lost my job and Kate was diagnosed with a brain illness that would eventually kill her. (That\u2019s a long, sad story for another time.) <\/p>\n
It was easy to find my free-thinking, culture-loving tribe in Dallas, made up largely of transplants like me, and natives familiar with the city\u2019s reactionary past. That was also true in more affordable Houston, a wonderfully eclectic city in which a seemingly infinite collection of immigrant cultures forms a welcoming whole. (I haven\u2019t had better Thai or Vietnamese cuisine anywhere.) I found the coffee shops in Houston, the movie theaters, the bookstores, the museums (some of the best in the world).<\/p>\n
I\u2019m familiar with the snobbery of those who look down on all lands between the coasts. During my previous year in Cambridge, when I was just about certain I\u2019d be returning to my job in Dallas, one longtime resident here told me I was \u201cgeographically undesirable.\u201d It strikes me as sad to think so provincially that you can\u2019t fathom life outside your own area code. And yet, it\u2019s a natural instinct. After all, no state boasts a more pronounced exceptionalism than \u201cDon\u2019t mess with\u201d Texas. The Bay Area certainly likes to consider itself paradise. To be fair, on some days, when the clouds separate just enough for you to see San Francisco from the Berkeley Hills, it truly is. But even that wasn\u2019t enough to keep me there. Sometimes you need to reset\u2009\u2014\u2009and mess with new places. <\/p>\n
I\u2019m writing this on a 73-degree summer evening, at a sidewalk cafe in Harvard Square. The last week of June in downtown Boston, between the World Cuppers and the Freedom Trail tours and perfect weather, was humming. It was 98 in Dallas on July 1. (Boston would see triple digits in the days that followed. I swear I didn\u2019t bring it with me.)<\/p>\n
Yes, I\u2019ve had some culture shock since I arrived. Rents seem to have doubled since my last brief stay here: The cost of living in general is 37 percent higher in Boston<\/a> than Houston, which means I can\u2019t enjoy all that Boston has to offer as much as I\u2019d like to. I know, get in line. It must be even more frustrating for natives of this once-affordable city. I\u2019m glad I chose to go carless for the time being, partly because I haven\u2019t walked this much since my pre-Texas days\u2009\u2014\u2009good for me mentally and physically\u2009\u2014\u2009but also because I couldn\u2019t figure out Boston\u2019s layout to save my life. I\u2019m sure it made sense in the horse-and-buggy days. <\/p>\n Also, I got here just in time for what was apparently the worst winter in a while. My first electric bill was an educational gut punch, and I had to reacquaint myself with the fine art of layering. There are one-sweater-and-a-coat days and two-sweaters-and-a coat days, and different coats depending on how bone-cutting cold it gets. I won\u2019t lie: Last winter messed with my head. Oddly enough it reminded me of summer in Texas, where you dash from indoor place to indoor place and just try to ignore the elements. Eventually, people started telling me that yes, it was a rough winter even by Boston standards. Thanks for the warm welcome. As the temperatures got low and stayed there, I felt a sort of temperamental hardness descend on the area\u2009\u2014\u2009not hostility so much as common sense warmth-seeking. I had an epiphany about the insularity of East Coast communities. When the going gets cold, the cold close ranks. <\/p>\n But I rode out the snowpocalypse, and even discovered that walking in a foot of snow makes for excellent cardio. It\u2019s nice to live somewhere that knows how to handle inclement weather (and doesn\u2019t rely on a state power grid that threatens to collapse if you blow on it too hard). I don\u2019t know what\u2019s up with the guys wearing shorts in freezing temperatures, but hey, you do you. Slowly but inevitably, the sun did come out, and people started walking and running and smiling. <\/p>\n Though I would never presume to call myself a Masshole, much less a Bostonian, I already feel less like an outsider here than anywhere else I\u2019ve lived. In Boston, I feel like I\u2019m inching closer to my true self. A friend from Dallas recently asked me on Facebook: \u201cYou do know, don\u2019t you, that you have landed in the perfect place for you?\u201d He was talking about the Globe, but he might as well have been talking about the city.<\/p>\n This is significant, because on a fundamental level I\u2019ve always felt like an outsider. I think most good journalists, and certainly most good critics, do. We observe and process and report, all from a certain distance. We\u2019re trained to be objective and fair, even in dispensing opinions. Critics may choose their own viewpoints, but not their own facts. We try to approach everything with an open mind, and we don\u2019t become a part of the disciplines we cover. Being an outsider is part of our temperament, and I\u2019m certainly not an insider in Boston. But I\u2019m loving the daily practice of pressing my nose against the glass. <\/p>\n I grew up and went to school in Berkeley, a college town, and while I became wary of the more-progressive-than-thou ethos there that can harden into arrogance, I loved the stew of ideas and education. The sheer density of colleges and universities in the Boston region gives off an energy I find irresistible, and which I have sorely missed over the last 30 years. <\/p>\n That\u2019s one side of Boston that energizes me, and it lives shoulder to shoulder with another that seems like something else entirely: a sort of no-nonsense hospitality. A friend who studied in Houston but recently moved back to Boston told me this city is the kind of place where a neighbor might glower at you and then shovel the snow from your driveway. <\/p>\n I\u2019m well aware that both Brahmin and blue-collar Boston can also be racist, as anyone who\u2019s heard of the \u201970s busing crisis<\/a> can attest. I find myself marveling that such an educated city can harbor so much discrimination. Inequity coexists alongside a deeply entrenched sense of history, both national and civic. As I watched Ken Burns\u2019s series on the American Revolution<\/a> last fall I kept having the same response to what I saw onscreen: I could walk there. <\/p>\n \u201c<\/p>\n \u2018\u201cIf there\u2019s an American city more liberal than Berkeley, California, I now live in it.\u201d\u2019<\/p>\n Chris Vognar<\/p>\n To a new arrival, Boston\u2019s devotion to democracy feels unique. It also speaks to my own upbringing as someone without much money but plenty of curiosity. I feel like I\u2019m writing for a complicated and opinionated readership here. It would be boring if everyone agreed with me, but everyone seems engaged (especially when it comes to grammar minutiae). As a TV critic I like writing about the medium\u2019s history, and hearing from readers about their favorite shows of old. This city appreciates its past, as opposed to Dallas, much of which wants to Make America Great Again even as the city continues its habit of demolishing beloved old buildings. <\/p>\n On a more basic level, if there\u2019s an American city more liberal than Berkeley, I now live in it. Massachusetts is blue; Boston is blue; Cambridge is some kind of bright, blazing cerulean. When I walk by Cambridge City Hall, not far from where I live, I gawk at the big Black Lives Matter banner hanging there. Every day I pass yard signs demanding an end to the war in Gaza. All of this reminds me of my original home, but without the baggage that home brings with it. <\/p>\n Cities as big as Dallas and Houston offer plenty of open-mindedness. But these cities can also lull you into forgetting you live in a state run by a theocratic government, where reproductive rights are rapidly waning, where reactionary politics have original roots, and where anti-immigrant rhetoric is a surefire political stratagem. Texas is far more varied than outsiders realize, but it\u2019s a reliable supporter of the current president and what he stands for. As an alarmed supporter of democracy, this gives me great pause. Simply put, I sleep better in Boston.<\/p>\n This is all important enough, but it\u2019s also a little high-minded. I try to live with my feet on the ground. Which brings us back to walking.<\/p>\n Those good Houston coffee shops and movie theaters and bookstores? You have to drive there. That\u2019s because you have to drive everywhere in Texas, where public transportation is minimal. It is a land of cars and sprawl, which can be great for listening to podcasts but not much else. It\u2019s easy to feel isolated alone in traffic, as opposed to, say, walking city streets and taking an entrenched public transportation system. I know the T is much maligned, and yes, the frequency of the dreaded \u201csignal problem\u201d can be almost comical. But from my outsider\u2019s perspective, it\u2019s not that bad. Urban density helps my blood flow, especially when I\u2019m walking to a jazz club, or the Harvard Book Store, or the Brattle theater. I\u2019ve found that Boston and Cambridge combine that city buzz with a town vibe. I wake up craving the bustling intimacy. <\/p>\n And when I want to do the more far-flung things that locals enjoy, such as driving to the Cape, or spending a weekend in Maine, I can always rent a car. Assuming I still remember how to drive one. <\/p>\n Chris Vognar can be reached at chris.vognar@globe.com<\/a>. Follow him on Instagram at @chrisvognar<\/a> and on Bluesky at chrisvognar.bsky.social.<\/p>\n