Pop culture cannot decide whether Boston is a place where everybody knows your name or a place where nobody does.
The case for the first comes from Cheers, the NBC sitcom that ran from 1982 to 1993. Its theme song, “Where Everybody Knows Your Name,” written by Gary Portnoy and Judy Hart Angelo, promised a bar where you would always be welcome. The show’s exterior shots were of the Bull & Finch Pub on Beacon Street, across from the Public Garden. It became such a tourist stop that it was later renamed Cheers Beacon Hill.
The case for the second comes from Augustana, a band formed by college friends in California. Their song “Boston,” from the 2005 album All the Stars and Boulevards, became their breakout hit. Its narrator wants to leave and start over in Boston, where no one knows his name.
Maybe both are right
The songs are not really arguing about the same thing. Cheers sells belonging. Augustana sells escape. A city of nearly 700,000 people, with a huge rotating population of students, can offer both: a regular stool for the people who stay, and anonymity for the people who arrive.
Time has also changed the city. Sam Malone, the bar’s owner on the show, was a former Red Sox relief pitcher, and part of the joke was that the team never won anything. In 1982 the Red Sox had not won a World Series since 1918. Then came 2004, when they came back from three games down against the Yankees in the American League Championship Series, the only time a Major League Baseball team has done that, and went on to win the title. They won again in 2007, 2013 and 2018. Tell a fictional Sam that, and he would have thrown you out of his own bar.
The real answer
Every big city does this trick. It promises a fresh start and a place to belong, and most people who move there find both, usually in that order. You go to Boston where no one knows your name. A few years later, the bartender does.
Sources: Cheers, Wikipedia; Boston (Augustana song), Wikipedia; 2004 American League Championship Series, Wikipedia.
