Entire neighborhoods that look like this like the Seaport District in Boston are a monstrosity and hostile to human use. Having some variety in architectural style in the Downtown on the other hand is not a bad thing at all.

The library and the bank building are hardly modern by the standards of anywhere outside of Vermont and the biggest issue with the Coop is the parking lot not the style of the building itself.

Dude right now it's an ugly 1950s one story building that's the most out of place building in downtown and has a negative impact on the overall feeling of enclosure and sense of place. One modern building in the entire town is not a bad thing.

There's more people just in Hillsborough and Rockingham County than the entire state of Vermont. 750k vs 640k.

Grew up in the area. Despite what some people are saying Tewksbury is totally fine. Normal, unremarkable suburban.

I would however say if you're looking in that area at that price range I'd probably pick Chelmsford or Billerica over Tewksbury. More going on for restaurants, more conservation land, marginally better schools, just better layout of the town in general.

Late to this thread but Nicolosi's tailor in Chelmsford center is really good. My family has used them for years.

Late but there's beavers in the smaller pond at the Catmount State Forest in Colrain. I hike a lot in Western Mass and Southern Vermont and that's the only place I've ever seen them. I'm sure there are some places I don't know about though.

Park at the bottom of S. Catamount Road and hike up the hill. You'll come to a small pond on the left hand side of the trail before the path to the larger pond splits off. There were beavers there the last two times I was there.

Just adding the list for NH: https://nhaa.net/meetings/

Yeah this is the dumbest continual argument on the Massachusetts/Boston subreddits. Worcester, Manchester NH and Providence are all part of the Boston combined statistical area. Their development trends, rents, population growth are all closely tied to development in Boston.

Look up the same statistics for Holyoke and North Adams if you want to see what cities in Massachusetts that are truly outside of the orbit of Boston look like.

The one in Concord center has had the interior updated but the exterior is still original. Also the one in Hardwick as of the last time I was there a couple years ago.

At their closest points Natick is 6 miles from Boston.

South Lawrence is the right answer.

Vermont was generally late to industrialization and never industrialized to the same extent of really any other Northeastern state, even Maine or New Hampshire. Its further from major ports (the Connecticut River isn't easily navigable past Greenfield, Mass and goods going to the St. Lawrence would have to pass an international boundary) and the logistics of freight rail in the mountains for the most part didn't make financial sense until the quarries in Rutland and Barre became highly valued export commodities.

One thing people are leaving out beyond immigration is that similar to Massachusetts 50 years earlier, there was a big migration of people from rural towns in Vermont into larger industrial centers during this period looking for better paying jobs as well as education and other services you couldn't get in farming towns. If you look at the census data, the populations in the small towns in Vermont fell basically across the board in the late 19th century while the bigger towns like Rutland or Barre grew dramatically.

I think you're overestimating the difference in violent crime levels between Massachusetts and its neighbors. The rates fluctuate year to year and Mass is consistently well below the national average.

There's also a difference between Eastern and Western Mass. The rate is much higher in the western part of the state, and it's not just Springfield. Pittsfield, North Adams, Greenfield, Turners Falls, Ware all consistently have some of the highest violent crime rates in the State.

I moved to Vermont and trust me there's a lot more crime up here than you think there is. I won't be surprised at all if there was more crime per capita in Vermont in 2022 than in Mass.

Total deaths related to firearms is a much better measure of the effectiveness of gun laws than some vague notions of criminality. "Crimes committed with a firearm per capita" isn't a statisitic that has been kept since 1993.

Besides, the violent crime rate in Mass is significantly below the national average and other states with strict gun laws like Connecticut, New Jersey, Rhode Island have some of the lowest violent crime rates in the country.

The highest rates of violent crime are overwhelmingly in states with less restrictions on guns. Alaska, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana etc.

Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire are the exceptions not the rule.

Massachusetts has significantly fewer deaths from firearms than the Northern New England states.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/firearm_mortality/firearm.htm

It's the 2nd lowest rate in the country after Hawaii.

It's not statutory rape and no police department and especially no District Attorney in Massachusetts is going to waste their time no matter what your parents try to do.

Call the DAs office and ask them yourself if you're still worried about it. They're probably going to laugh.

Sorry to hear about your situation though. Sounds hard.

Alright yeah you have absolutely nothing to worry about. You're overthinking this.

My girlfriend in High School turned 18 a few months before I did. It's not illegal and nobody is going to care.

So either you're a 17 year old girl who wants to have sex with some 26 yo guy or you're a 17 yo guy who wants to hook up with a 15 year old girl.

You're extremely unlikely to get in any trouble either way but I would advise against it regardless.

Just Google rinks in your area and look at their public skating schedule. There's a ton of ice rinks and basically all of them have public skating time.

It seems like everyone in Vermont wants to drive either 20mph over or 20mph under the speed limit at all times and are adamant that driving that way proves they're a real Vermonter.

That's more murders in a year than Holyoke, Mass with almost exactly the same population as Burlington, has recorded since 2005.

Yeah the hatred for dogs off leash on the Vermont subreddit is not at all what I experience out in the real world of Vermont. Every time I hike I encounter off leash dogs and it doesn't bother me at all.

I'm not trying to be a dick I just genuinely think it's important. That everyone in the state views their town as this little fiefdom disconnected from the larger region completely handicaps our ability to address all these huge issues we have. If you care about how much you pay for housing, public transportation, public education you should care about what I'm trying to say.

I dont understand how it's pompous to share factual information related to the question of if Western Mass begins west of Worcester or at the county line.

The parochialism of people in New England is exhausting. Every town within 50 miles of Boston is fundamentally defined by its relationship with the Boston area.

20 of the 25 poorest towns in the state are west of Worcester. The overwhelming majority of remaining vacant former industrial space in Massachusetts is west of Worcester. The towns with the largest and continuing population loss are west of Worcester, while places like Worcester, Lawrence, Lowell etc are all set to surpass or have already surpassed their historic population highs. Rockingham and Hillsborough counties NH are far and away the wealthiest counties in the state.

Every piece of data we have points to the Boston area extending about 50 miles from the Downtown core, which is completely in line with major cities around the country. Once you get outside of that orbit circumstances change dramatically.