let them drive Lexuses

Stuff like feeds my hatred of the rich.

From The Boston Globe:
Last year, the Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay fought a court battle with the MBTA, alleging that the T was violating historical preservation laws by adding elevators to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

For some context: back bay is the area of Boston where Newbury street is. Here are examples of what it costs to live in this area.

When I was a youngster, my friends and I would go more to Harvard square, central square, or walked around the common and gardens eating, smoking, and feeding squirrels (faneuil hall was on the list too since they were less likely to throw us out of the stores than other downtown establishments, plus there were usually some cute local guys working there).

Now and then, we'd venture over to Newbury Street or the Copley area. Since we couldn't even afford to browse, mostly our Newbury Street activities included walking around eating ice cream, laughing and yelling at "eurotrash", or being entertained by our friend Jenn's peculiar brand of "street theater". Jenn made a habit of literally chasing after spandex clad men who jogged or biked past on the sidewalk. She would stand at the windows of restaurants and stare hungrily at the diners. I remember one time she flashed an entire section of a restaurant, a TGIF I think. Whichever restaurant it was, a part of it was below street level. This subterranean area had a sort of solarium/sky light thing right about at bench height just off the sidewalk. My sister can help me out here about which restaurant it was since I think she was with us the day Jenn whipped up her skirt and sat on the skylight.

Back bay's always been for and of the rich fucks. Tourism in the area is in fact half rich person/home/things sight seeing. Does what we were doing count as tourism? I'm not sure. I think if you live within a certain number of miles of a place, it's hard to be counted a proper tourist. But I got the sense that the cultural climate of the Back bay was closer to L.A. than where I grew up.

So I'm wondering about the historic preservation vs T improvement: Are piss smells and rat sightings something we should expect the NABb to fight for should the T ever try to clean up a bit? Would they go to bat to keep the Orange line shootings and Red line stabbings?