The 6 Must-know Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me Before I Moved to Boston

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If you’re moving to Boston, Massachusetts, there’s one thing you absolutely need to know: the New York Yankees are about to become your sworn enemy no matter how you previously felt about sports. But if you have the bandwidth to absorb more details than that, please continue reading.

When I moved to Boston, there were a few more important things I wish someone had told me in advance.

No matter how much time you’ve spent on the east coast, or even in New England itself, Boston is undeniably its own beast. Whether you’re moving for school, work, family, or just curiosity, you’re about to experience Boston’s classic architecture, bitter winters, and city-specific personality quirks you have to experience to believe. Except, in this case, you don’t, because I experienced it for you and came up with this handy list of the five must-know things I wish someone had told me before I moved to Boston.

Storrow Drive is not high enough to accommodate your moving truck

Let me paint a picture for you: You’re an out-of-state college student looking forward to your freshman year. You gaze wistfully upon a map, deciding on the quickest driving route to campus. Along the banks of the Charles River, an east-to-west thoroughfare beckons: Storrow Drive. “Ah,” you’ll say to yourself, “What a perfect road to drive my U-Haul upon.”

storrow dr

But no. Stop. You must resist that siren song, and here’s why: the height limit of Storrow Drive is just ten feet, which is markedly shorter than the average moving truck. Attempt to drive your outsized vehicle along it anyway, and you’ll find yourself #Storrowed — wedged under an overpass in a destroyed truck, stopping traffic and blushing up to your eyebrows.

Thankfully, I didn’t have to screw this one up myself, but it happens so frequently that the City of Boston’s Twitter account has to put out a yearly reminder about it. So good company or not, do yourself a favor and don’t start out your school year with a mistake that’s as costly as it is humiliating.

You may need to pay to heat your apartment in advance

heating oil tank

Boston was founded all the way back in 1838, and the architecture knows it. Some of the older buildings are still standing and absolutely habitable, but they also happen to be oil heated… which is a whole thing. Basically, if you do live in one of these older buildings, you need to pre-pay for your winter heating. This means someone literally comes at the beginning of the season and fills up a big tank in your building’s basement with enough oil to keep you warm all winter.

And since Boston winters are historically no freaking joke, this is something you’ll definitely want to be on top of. When you move into a new location, make sure to confirm with the landlord whether it’s gas or oil-heated, and if it’s oil, don’t waste time getting stocked up. Traditionally, it’s best to buy home heating oil during the off-season, which is April to September, but really the best time to get it is before you need it, so try not to be too precious about waiting for the right price.

When the home heating oil company arrives, they’re required by law to give you a written delivery ticket, which should include a bunch of information including:

  • The amount of oil delivered
  • Price per gallon
  • Identity of the driver.

All of those details are designed to keep customers from getting scammed, so ask for the delivery ticket if it isn’t immediately provided, and call the city at (617) 635-5300 if any of the required information is missing.

Local movers in Boston book up quickly 

Here is your yearly reminder that if you’re moving locally in the Boston area and still need a moving truck or someone to help you lift stuff, they book up fast — especially in the summer! You can use sites like HireAHelper to see all your options in one go, which is convenient. But the closer you are to your moving date, the harder it’ll be to nail down the schedule you’re hoping to stick to.

As a shortcut, you can use this quick search tool to avoid making a million phone calls:

Get Help Unloading Your Rental Truck

See prices for movers by the hour—instantly.

Read real customer reviews.

Easily book your help online.

 

chair boston

There’s a secret parking language you need to learn

Parking is weird in Boston, but thankfully, it’s not too hard to learn. In my early days in the city, the plethora of lawn chairs I kept seeing out on the streets made me wonder whether there was a parade planned for the next day. But soon, someone enlightened me that these chairs actually serve as placeholders for returning cars.

It turns out, any ol’ object can be used to hold a reservation, including traffic cones, lawn chairs, buckets, and beyond. Are they welded permanently to the ground and impossible to move? No, they aren’t. But you really don’t want to find out what happens if you move someone’s item and park in “their” spot. Fair to you or not, these are the rules of the road, and as a recent arrival to Boston, you must obey them.

Oh and come wintertime, if someone goes to all the trouble to dig out the snow around a spot, we as Bostonians universally acknowledge their right to return and park there as many times as they can before snow blankets it again. If you want access to a shoveled-out parking spot of your own — you know what to do, buddy; roll up those shirt sleeves and get to work.

The city may take away access to your parking spot in the event of a big winter storm

Hope you aren’t tired of talking about winter stuff yet; during extreme winter weather in Boston, new city parking rules and regulations go into effect, transforming spots that were perfectly legal for most of the year — and even most of the winter — into ticket and tow zones.

During declared snow emergencies, it becomes illegal to park on major roads and arteries, so it’s important to have a backup location to stash your car if there are reports of an incoming nor’easter. (The only problem? A lot of other people might have the same idea.) 

If you want to know if you live and park on an affected road, you can consult this Boston emergency parking map website. This government site also shows the locations of emergency lots that offer discount pricing to those uprooted by the parking restrictions, which begins two hours before the emergency order goes into effect. Just note that you might need to live in specific neighborhoods to qualify for certain garages, and if you don’t remove your car within two hours of the emergency ban being lifted, you’ll be stuck paying the regular rate. 

Don’t plan on getting around on Marathon Day

marathon day boston

On Marathon Day, not only will you have limited success driving around (let alone moving) due to all the road closures, but you’ll be missing out on one of the biggest Boston holidays of the year. So just don’t do it. Instead of sneaking your way through runners and wheedling through police barricades on your way to brunch, surrender to the glory of it all and celebrate the pure joy that is Marathon Day in Boston.

There’s nothing quite like watching lunatics — and I’m allowed to call them that, having run a marathon myself — plodding their way to 26.2 miles while you cheer them on, buoyed in the October chill with a mug of coffee. (I’m not recommending you bring a thermos of hot toddy, because that would be drinking in public, but I’m also not not recommending it.) Find yourself a nice spot along the route and just have fun. And then do it again on other inconvenient-but-glorious celebrations like St. Patrick’s Day and any time a Boston team wins… anything at all. 

Everyone in Town Moving at Once?! Welcome to Allston Christmas

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It was chaos in Boston once again this past Sept 1st. No, not because of the Patriots, or the Red Sox, or any sort of civil demonstration. Instead, this was just the latest edition of an annual event.

“Bedlam descends upon the Boston area every Sept. 1,” the Boston Globe explains. “Moving vehicles clog the streets, parking is a nightmare, and sidewalks are buried in trash and household items. The cause of this annual headache is known as Allston Christmas, a moving day made popular by identical contracts where an estimated two-thirds of the city’s 165,000-plus apartment leases turn over.”

What? Over 100,000 moves happening on one day? In one town?? Why would any city put their people through such a crazed ordeal?

The reason, ironically, is a matter of practicality. The city’s huge college student population is a major component of the citizenry, and it is only natural that they’d all be moving back to school at the same time.

What’s the logic?

BDCWire.com

The logic goes that with everyone’s leases ending and beginning on the same day, there are no renters stuck having to wait a few weeks between apartments and no pressure for others to break leases early in order to get into their next place. It’s a highly-visible (and, arguably, insane) solution to the unavoidable college student situation.

Sept. 1st is also when families with school children need to get moved in, claims the Globe (apparently unaware the majority of families moving to and from the rest of the country seem to prefer June). But the tradition, dating back decades, “was almost certainly dictated by the market demand of the area’s many college students,” we are told.

“It makes it difficult to manage,” adds realtor Edward Zuker. “But that’s what the market is.”

Damn college students.

New York City once had a moving day like Boston

Moving Day, 1907. Chicago Historical Society

But unlike their counterparts in New England, New Yorkers had common sense and the guts to stand up to a bunch of college kids and were able to do away with the idea.

Actually, moving day in New York seems to have originated with a custom in the Netherlands where, the Encyclopedia of Chicago tells us, servants would change employers at one of two annual hiring fairs. These took place in early May and November, and, for reasons not given, Dutch immigrants settled on May 1st as the day to continue tradition – which may or may not have had any practical value in the New World, but no one seems to have put up a stink about it.

That is, until 1922, when new rent laws went into effect, protecting renters from being kicked out of their places every year. We also see in this New York Times article from May 2 of that year that there was some competition among landlords who were lowering rents along the fashionable Concourse in the Bronx down from $23 to $22 or even $20 a room. Meanwhile, side street rooms were going for $13 to $15.

Ah, the good old days.

In Chicago too we see that May 1st was, as early as the 1840s, the day to move. Giving credence to the idea that some traditions simply should be done away with, the Encyclopedia of Chicago describes moving day as “a very unpopular event, with families facing greedy landlords, exorbitant rates charged by movers (known as expressmen), and the risk of breakage and loss of furniture and belongings.”

We’re not sure much has changed.

Montreal moving day. Toronto Sun

North of the border in Quebec, Canada, we see the moving day tradition is alive and well. The history here goes back even further, to the middle of the 18th Century when the French colonial government of this “New France” forbade the semi-feudal landlords of the time to evict their tenants before the winter snows had melted. By 1866 this had evolved into a requisite

of the Civil Code that urban leases begin on May 1st and end on April 30th.

This was fine with everyone for about a hundred years until it was decided that May 1st as a moving day was much too inconvenient for families with children in school. (Damn students again.) Thus in 1973, the Quebec government moved Moving day to July 1st – which, incidentally, is also Canada Day.

Now it may sound silly to make all those people move when they would rather be out celebrating Canada’s birthday. But this Toronto Sun article suggests that those French-speaking Quebecers, particularly those in Montreal, aren’t much interested in Canada Day.

We won’t get into that conversation.

We will say that, for all craziness of the summer season, we sure are glad that the millions who move do it over the course of a few months instead of all on one day.

Now if we could just convince a bunch of colleges and universities to start their school year in the middle of the slow season…


Header image by Boston Magazine
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