With New York City as a natural rival, Boston residents cannot help but compare themselves in many aspects with their northeast counterpart. So when it comes to nightlife, if New York is the city that never sleeps, Boston is the city that adheres to a reasonable bedtime with “lights out” at 2 a.m. at the latest for most of the Hub’s restaurants, bars and clubs.
Entertainment options do exist, however, for those seeking late-night adventure – or, in the very least, a place to eat.
After bars close and the T stops running, only a handful of local establishments stay open all night to serve Boston’s late-night workers and roaming college students.
One of those places, the South Street Diner, stays open from 5 p.m. to 5 a.m. weeknights and 24 hours on weekends.
Owner Sol Sidell said he bought the restaurant 10 years ago in hopes of establishing a place where everyone would feel comfortable dining, “rich or poor, young or old.”
Although the clientele has changed over the years, Sidell said the diner is always crowded at night.
“When I first started in ’97, it was all European students,” he said. “Then it was all cyber students, then Emerson students and the punk rock crowd, and today it’s a destination location from BU to MIT, from all over the city.”
On the opposite side of the city, the manager of Bova’s Bakery, a family-owned pastry shop in the North End, made the change to an all-night store after a stint selling goods to other retailers.
“Because we do have a wholesale business that is open all night, we figured we’d leave the doors open to the public, too,” manager Anthony Bova said.
Bova said people who work late shifts for utility companies or the airport – in addition to a consistent crowd of college students and people leaving clubs or the theater – often pop in and grab something from the bakery.
“A lot of college students know of our place because when they go out on the weekends to the club, at the end, they’re hungry and they want a sweet or something to eat,” he said.
Bova said he is careful not to cause noise violations, choosing to stop selling pizzas and calzones after 1 a.m. because those foods attract a bigger crowd.
“We are a neighborhood bakery, and we have to respect the quality of the neighborhood,” he said.
But Boston residents complain that access to late-night locations is limited because the last MBTA trains and buses leave downtown at 12:50 a.m. MBTA spokesman Joe Pesaturo said the MBTA does not provide 24-hour service because there is not a high enough demand for it.
“We can’t afford to operate a service people don’t use,” he said, citing the now-defunct Night Owl bus service, which the MBTA began running alongside train routes in Sept. 2001 until terminating the program in 2005.
Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences sophomore Margaret Conte blamed sparse offerings and spotty transportation for the slow late-night entertainment in the city.
“I don’t think there’s a good nightlife here compared to New York, because all the clubs here close really early, and because you can’t get around at night because the T doesn’t run,” she said.
With city law mandating a 2 a.m. last call, Boston bars must close earlier than bars in bigger cities, a point of contention for area college students. Though this law may hurt business for bar owners, Sean Hickey, a cook at T’s Pub on Commonwealth Avenue, said he approves of the rule.
“The people who work at bars, they’re pretty much psyched that they can go home,” he said. “There’s other places that close even earlier than the average 2 a.m. ones, and [the bar staff] like it because then they can go out [after work].”
Hickey said although the curfew time has its “pros and cons,” he does not think residents would favor extending bar hours as late as New York City’s, where bars can stay open until 4 a.m.
“I think it would take awhile, at least for people in this state, to even think about being open that late,” he said.
While area residents are accustomed to the 2 a.m. last call, Hickey said visitors and students from other cities do not always approve.
“Students who come from other cities, I think they’re the ones who get more frustrated,” he said.
Still, there remains the feeling that no matter which select Boston spots remain active into the early hours of the morning, nightlife will fall short of students’ expectations.
“People start going out in New York when people are on their way home in Boston,” said College of Arts and Sciences sophomore Samantha DiPalma. “In New York, you don’t have to go straight home after you go out, but you don’t have any options here. You can make a pilgrimage to the one diner in all of Boston, but that’s it.”