Friday’s Wall Street Journal featured this piece about the current state of South Boston:

‘Southie’: New Blood, Old Problems

While Gentrification Spreads, Neighborhood Where ‘Whitey’ Bulger Reigned Remains Rife With Addiction

BOSTON—The Owl Station Bar & Bistro offers sushi and tempura to young city dwellers living in the pricey condos and apartments mushrooming around South Boston.

Decades ago, the spot played a different role: Feared gangster James “Whitey” Bulger held court in the same location, then a dive bar known as Triple O’s . . .

The memories of Mr. Bulger’s violent reign—and the myth that he acted as a kind of Robin Hood amid social and racial unrest—are slowly eroding. Still, the neighborhood he ruled, known as “Southie,” is a study in contrasts, a place where trendy restaurants pop up next to housing projects, drug use remains a serious problem, and the abduction and murder of a young woman recently shook the community.

The Journal piece assesses the yin and yang of South Boston from there, including this:

Two doors down from the site of Mr. Bulger’s old bar, young women filed into a yoga studio Thursday morning, mats slung over their shoulders. On the same block, a new apartment building lists a sixth-floor, two-bedroom unit for as much as $4,553 a month. On the ground floor, Social Wines sells “curated craft beer & spirits . . . ”

South Boston averaged 48.4 substance-abuse deaths per 100,000 residents between 2005 and 2010, outpacing the citywide rate, according to the most recent data from the Boston Public Health Commission.