Tonight, I mentioned to a guy at a pub that I was from Boston. I talked about Southie, and he said that he heard that the Irish ran that neighborhood. As he put it, if you were Irish, you could just walk off a plane, head into Southie, and once someone heard you talk with your accent, you'd be treated like a king. Now, this isn't exactly true, but I did say that people in Southie are intensely proud of their heritage and would treat anyone from "home" with a lot of excitement and fanfare.
We then went on to talk about Whitey Bulger. I didn't realize that he was well known here, but this guy seemed to know more about him than I did. He seemed to talk about him like he was an idol, a thing to be revered and slightly feared.
I was startled that this man knew so much about him and that he was impressed by him. I mean sure, he did pull off some pretty gruesome murders and yeah, he did manage to escape police for an impressive amount of time, but he's still a cold-blooded gangster at the core. Maybe it's my proximity to the issue that makes me a little surprised at the reaction.
No comments:
Post a Comment