Watch a Time-lapse of the Boston Seaport District

Development in the city has been taking place at a breakneck speed. And the Boston Seaport District has been leading the way.

I grew up north of Boston and went to school in the city. (Northeastern University, Class of '99, baby!) But it wasn't until I left and came back again that I started to spend a lot of time in the Seaport District. Back Bay and Fenway? That's a whole other story. Those were my stomping grounds while I was at NU and could be the subject of a whole other piece.

I moved back to the Boston area in 2003 to host middays at the now-defunct WBCN. It was a great time to be working and playing in the city. The front end of the Patriots dynasty was underway, we were a year away from the first Red Sox World Series victory in 86 years, and a lot of the live music venues I'd frequented in college were still alive and kicking.

Harborlights (now known as Leader Bank Pavilion) was and is the crown jewel of the Seaport district and has always been one of my favorite spots to see a show. The routine back in the early '00s was this: hit Eastern Pier II for a pre-show Singapore Sling and an order of salt & pepper wings, then hoof it down to Harborlights for a show. Foo Fighters in July of '03 stands out.

Gone is Easter Pier II, along with Anthony's Pier 4, the No Name, and countless other Seaport mainstays. If 2003 Adam 12 showed up in the 2023 version of the Seaport, he'd barely recognize it. Twitter user Sam Fargo shared a time-lapse just a few short years ago, using Google Maps data, that shows the neighborhood's growth from 2007-2019. It sure changed a lot in 12 years.

Now, imagine what it'll look like if Sam makes another one for 2019-2023!

Yes, you read that correctly. Recent research has concluded that the Boston accent is one of the smarter-sounding accents in America.

The language learning platform Preply recently surveyed 1,000 Americans. What they ended up with was a mouthful of data that determines which accents are viewed as the best, worst, sexiest, smartest sounding across the United States. Oh, and they also were able to single out the most annoying American accent. Kinda like this 12-Inch Poll.

The Preply piece, titled Ranked: British accents are the sexiest foreign accent, first hit the web last year, but was just updated last week. So this data is piping-hot. And while the title is a dose of the obvious (British, Aussie, and Irish accents are once again deemed sexy as hell), it's when we start to look at the research through the Boston lens that things start to get interesting.

From the article:

Among American accents, the Northeastern accent, comprising the dialects of the New England, Greater New York, and Greater Philadelphia areas, wins out as the smartest, while the British accent again tops the foreign accent list.

But there's this as well:

Surprisingly, the Southern accent tops our list of the most annoying American accents, despite also being the sexiest and the general favorite – something that may have to do with the wide diversity of dialects in the American South.

And which accent sits atop the most annoying list alongside the Southern accent? You can probably guess. Hey, you gotta take the good with the bad, right? All in all, the Boston accent ended up in the Top 10 of 5 of Preply's rankings. Let's take a look at which rankings our beloved Bostonian brogue (I know; it's not a brogue) landed on and were we landed. Wicked pissah!

"My boy's WICKED smaht!"

I feel like we're being singled out because of bad Boston accents in movies.

I mean, what's not to like about townie chatter at your neighborhood Dunks?

Bill coming across VERY trustworthy in his breakdown of the Sam Adams beer.

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