Attention condo buyers! Eastie is not the South End.

I keep reading comments on other blogs and news articles about East Boston, which keep harping on this idea of East Boston becoming the next South End or North End. Listen people, East Boston is nothing like the South End and frankly, I don't think it ever will be, despite the real estate hype. Personally, I think that is a good thing. I like my neighborhood neighborly. I like living with other real people and not having tourists trapsing all over my town, but what do I know. The bottom line is that from the day the East Boston Company layed out the plots that would become East Boston way back in 1833, there have been visions of Eastie becoming the playground of the rich. A place where the well to-do would build their summer homes. And right from the beginning, the working class moved in instead. My question is, why on earth does anyone want Eastie to be the South End, or the North End, or Somerville for that matter? Why does everything have to be the cookie-cutter image of everything else. The truth is that the "dive bars" and "ghetto stores," and taco places that line the streets of Eastie make up a scene. It just doesn't happen to be your scene. Instead of trying to force that scene out to create some bourgeois, idea of hip, why not come to Eastie with the idea of creating something new. Why can't Eastie be a place where you can get a latte and a pupusa?