Best Urban Shopping Area

[ablarc]

BEST URBAN SHOPPING AREA

Shopping in the suburbs involves driving to a mall or strip center. Once there, you plunks down your money and you drive home with the goods. There?s no civic component to the experience, because you?re never in a public place.

You can import the concept of a mall into a walkable city, and it works surprisingly well if connected at both ends, as in the case of Copley Place/Prudential Mall. In this case, it functions as a street, providing a way to get from one place to another; it?s a shortcut from Back Bay to the South End.

Cambridgeside Galleria, by contrast, is an isolated destination. Like its cousins in the suburbs, it?s not urban.

Here?s a list of ten places to shop in urban Boston. By any criteria you choose, pick the three you think are best. (And tell us why.)

Newbury Street
Harvard Square
Charles Street
Quincy Market
Downtown Crossing
Hanover Street
Copley Place/Prudential Mall
Coolidge Corner
Boylston Street, Back Bay
Harvard Street, Allston

[Ron Newman]

Hanover Street is a great street but it is not a shopping street. Almost everything on it is a restaurant.

I'd put Newbury and Boylston together as a single shopping area.

[ablarc]

^ Shopping for a meal and a cannoli.

Boylston and Newbury feel completely different from each other. They may be physically proximate, but they have different souls.

[ablarc]

But you're right, Ron; Salem Street might have been a better choice.

[czsz]

I wouldn't consider anything in the North End "destination shopping" in the way these other areas are. Ditto Charles Street. And Ron is right about Newbury/Boylston...one could even make the case that they are totally complementary to the Prudential Center as well.

[Ron Newman]

Charles Street used to be known as a destination for antique shopping, but I'm not sure it still is.

[czsz]

But niche shopping isn't the same as destination shopping, either. If I want to buy Indian groceries, Union Square in Somerville is currently my best bet - but I'd hardly go there for general shopping.

[JohnCostello]

What about Fields Corner or the center of Chelsea? Sometimes a great shopping area has to have some "grit" as some of the users of this site to be good. Does a good shopping area have to be defined as someplace that has to have a $75 hemp shirt along with a metal faux gargoyle? What about a place that has a store to get shampoo and the ability to get walk next door to get a good Guinness?

By the way can people start to disuse "grit" on their posts. I have seen some pretty bad "grit" i.e. rats, roaches, homeless people, empty storefronts up and down Newbury and Boylston Street for the past 25 years. Is "grit" a code word for how the "other people" live? Is it like a a trip to the zoo where you see the "grit" and go back to your world? Broadway in Chelsea has a far fewer empty storefronts right now than Newbury Street. Some people would say Chelsea has a lot of "grit" but I see a thriving community shopping mostly local merchants.

On the other hand Wellesley Square, Centre Street in West Roxbury, Centre Street in JP, Newton Center, Arlington, Arlington Heights, the center of Medford aren't that bad either.

[ablarc]

Originally Posted by Ron Newman

Charles Street used to be known as a destination for antique shopping, but I'm not sure it still is.

It is. Last time, I was gratified most of them are still there. Still Boston's premier antiques destination. Marika's is still there, but doubtless without Marika.

I rented a condo on Cedar Lane Way. It came with a kitchen, so I shopped for food at DeLuca's and Savenor's and had breakfast daily at the out-of-this-world French bakery, Cafe Vanille. A very nice neighborhood shopping street with magnetism for antiques and curio shoppers. The Thai Restaurant (King and I) near the Charles Circle end was superb at commendably low prices.

[kennedy]

Originally Posted by JohnCostello

By the way can people start to disuse "grit" on their posts. I have seen some pretty bad "grit" i.e. rats, roaches, homeless people, empty storefronts up and down Newbury and Boylston Street for the past 25 years. Is "grit" a code word for how the "other people" live? Is it like a a trip to the zoo where you see the "grit" and go back to your world? Broadway in Chelsea has a far fewer empty storefronts right now than Newbury Street. Some people would say Chelsea has a lot of "grit" but I see a thriving community shopping mostly local merchants.

IMO, "grit" has nothing to do with socioeconomic class. It has to do with liveliness, variety, and cohesion. Grit is vibrant. As opposed to a mall, which does not have grit, regardless of whether it houses a Dollar Tree or a Saks.

I haven't finished it yet, but I associate everything Jane Jacobs talks about in The Death and Life of Great American Cities as "grit." If you haven't read it, it's wicked interesting and I highly suggest it.

[ablarc]

^ You may have sanded off the grit's rough edges with your not-really-standard definition. I believe most folks would choose Harvard Street in Allston as the above list's best place to encounter grit.

[czsz]

Yeah, "grit" really shouldn't migrate into territory better-described by other terms ("vibrancy," "brio", etc.)

I do agree that it's difficult to get a lot of utilitarian shopping done on many of the streets in this list. Even in Harvard Square, which no one would dispute is a shopping destination, there isn't really a decent grocery store. It's amazing how many urban residents in Boston drive out to strip malls in South Bay or Alewife to get heavy-duty shopping done.

[kennedy]

So then what is grit? What John Costello said? Less money?

An edgier place? Because somewhere can be "edgy" and have wealth.

What makes Harvard Street or Harvard Square more "gritty" than DTX, Newbury St., or the North End?

[czsz]

Frankly, I associate it with dirt and a sort of blue collar workaday, industrial aesthetic. I think of dingy dive bars in the dark shadows of grease-sweating elevated subways, for example.

[ablarc]

^ I think you could say DTX is somewhat gritty, but not Harvard Square.

[czsz]

I agree.

[blade_bltz]

What about Chinatown for gritty?

[kennedy]

Chinatown could be, I guess. I don't know what grit is, but we seem to have a few various definitions here.

[czsz]

I would say Chinatown definitely qualifies.

Look, it's a subjective term. When I think of "grit," I think of the dirty snow that accumulates on city streets two weeks after a storm - fused with scenes from "The French Connection".

[ablarc]

You get bonus points for rats.