Boston also has a serious problem in that it's a
small, provincial town that thinks it's a city. I got news for it: it's not. It's a
village with a couple of decent
skyscrapers and a
Federal Reserve bank.
The college scene that others have alluded to is, indeed, quite lively and vibrant - and isolated. If you try to venture outside this particular spread of locales and bars, you find a city of tight, old, and in many cases quite bigoted neighborhoods that look with automatic scorn upon twenty-somethings trying to make their own lives there, since they're probably some of those darn students.
Also mentioned earlier, Boston rolls up the sidewalks at around 10:00 pm. Most bars close by midnight or one a.m. This is the legacy of some of the most restrictive set of blue laws that existed in the U.S. Mostly now repealed, their vanishing doesn't really affect much - because the T (our so-called mass transit) doesn't run after 12:30am or so, and cabs cost more than in New York City (!), there's no point in staying out after that, unless you really like driving drunk to get home.
The racism problem in Boston is another story, and probably deserves its own node.