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.
Too bad Whitey’s not there any more to keep the drugs out, yeah?
