Boston Bar Buzz-Kill

<i>but what he ought to be thinking about is bars.</i><p>No. What he really ought to be thinking about is housing. In Boston—like Silicon Valley—virtually no one can afford housing: <a href="http://www.wbur.org/2009/10/26/housing-report" rel="nofollow">http://www.wbur.org/2009/10/26/housing-report</a> (for Boston) and <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2012/05/facebook_george_lucas_and_nimbyism_the_idiotic_rules_preventing_silicon_valley_from_building_the_houses_and_offices_we_need_to_power_american_innovation_.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2012/05/face...</a> (for Silicon Valley). Part of the way Boston needs to compete is through housing policy, and especially allowing much denser development that will help alleviate the extreme housing shortage. Bars are nice, and I'm not opposed to them, but the biggest weakness of many areas that are appealing to tech people, and people in their 20s and 30s more generally, is the cost of housing, which has largely become a consumer good.

Boston has a great bar scene. Our bars and restaurants are regularly recognized as some of the best in the country. We also have many, many bars for such a small geographic area. IMO the bar scene in Boston is superior to SF.<p>These are the real pain points for living in Boston as a 20-something:<p>The T is miserable, always. The weather is miserable, 9 months per year. The attitude is cynical, usually. Massholes are real. Prices are high. We spend too much time comparing ourselves with NYC.<p>Otherwise, Boston is excellent. The city is clean. People are educated. Some are even attractive. The bike sharing is great.<p>Bar closing time is not a real issue. It's just a symptom of an old-fashioned, stuck in its ways, puritanical city.

I guess nightclubs are important - if you are the club-going sort. I've never made a deal in a club, solved a problem in a club, or even actually held a decent conversation - its too dang loud for that.<p>As for a break from codeing or whatever, I get on my bike and ride. Builds me up instead of tearing me down, physically and emotionally.<p>I'm just not sure the bar-hopping sort is whom I want to meet/hire/work with. Probably makes me puritanical and staid; but I get things done. The best developers I know get things done; none of them frequent/even care about the nightclub scene.<p>In fact the nerdy, knowledgable deep-think architect/designer crowd I hang with would look absolutely ridiculous in a nightclub.<p>So I'm thinking, no, its not a lack of clubs that keeps a city from being a tech hub. Its more likely an accident of history, not yet reaching critical mass, some missing tax incentive or something like that.

Extending bar and club hours doesn't even make my list of things Boston could do to improve the entrepreneurial environment.

Here is my problem with Boston:<p>If you look even remotely like your 25 or younger and not dressed 'like a business person', your presumed to be some random college 'kid' who doesn't know anything. If you live anywhere nice this is often immediately followed by awesome questions like "your parents pay for you to live here?".<p>To me the Boston business ethos is anti-youth and of an 'old guard' mentality. Your either young, stupid and in college or your in 'business clothes' going to do 'real work' (aka climbing a corporate ladder).<p>There are definitely some very good groups and things going on for the younger builder crowd but its a long ways from overriding the general stigma that exists in the city. Creating a place where creative young people want to live and have fun would require a number of changes in general city culture to really have an impact.<p>All that said, I hate how early Boston shuts down, not just the bars but this city as a whole seems to be built around a early to rise, early to sleep mentality.

As soon as more small, smart companies begin taking a holistic approach to recruiting, this is going to become more and more of an issue.<p>People who work hard and play hard and can live anywhere will choose the places that maximize fun/convenience to cost. It's not a one-dimensional continuum, either - places like Berlin have cheap cost of living _and_ a fantastic nightlife, but government bureaucracy makes it more inconvenient for small businesses here.<p>It's funny how these pockets of win always seem to work out by chance and circumstance.<p>In another decade, governments will be playing this game with tax laws for information workers, too. Naturally, the ratio of gross/net income is just as important to the final value of this "happiness equation" as the cost of living, or gross salary.

Nightlife/bars in Boston are absolutely not the issue here. Compared to Boston, everything in San Francisco closes much earlier and public transport is inferior to boot. Yet people still flock there.

Many cities, including Los Angeles and San Francisco, require bars to obtain a specific license for dancing.