My neighborhood is Forest Hills.  Roughly, it's bordered by Morton Street, Hyde Park Avenue, Walk Hill Street and the Forest Hills Cemetery.  To get there, take the Orange Line to Forest Hills Station, cross Hyde Park and turn left on any of those streets. Once you start climbing the hill, Hyde Park Avenue falls away and you find yourself in a friendly residential neighborhood of two- and three-family houses. 

These streets are home to a truly diverse collection of everyday people.  Sixty years ago, this neighborhood was mostly Irish Catholic.  Some of those people are still here, living in the same houses where they were born.  Now we have all kinds of ethnicities, all kinds of accents, and all kinds of families.  A Chinese woman practices tai chi on her front porch.  One neighbor's bumper sticker proclaims that he's proud to be Micmac.  We have people who are settling here and folks who are probably here for only a short time.  People who have enough money to do just about anything they want, and those who have just enough to get by. 

Pros

Forest Hills Cemetery is an exquisite, historical, expansive garden.  You can pay your respects to the modest grave of e.e. cummings if you know where to look.  Contemporary sculpture is installed throughout the cemetery.  Serious bird watchers have seen prothonotary warblers.  Even a casual evening observer has a decent chance of seeing a red-tailed hawk or great blue heron.  People love to run, bike, and walk their dogs in the cemetery.  The place is full of life. 

And there's more green space.  The Parkman playground has a basketball court and baseball diamonds where two little league games will go on at once.  The Leland Street Community Garden is a gathering place with flowers, herbs, vegetables, and honeybee boxes.  The Arnold Arboretum is just across the street from the T station. 

The T is steps away. In addition to the Orange Line, sixteen bus routes begin here, and the Needham Line commuter train stops here.  Three Zipcars wait in the parking lot.  You can get anywhere from here.

Cons

Parking is competitive, especially when it snows.  All the parking is resident permit parking only during weekdays.  Some multi-family houses share a driveway, but plenty of people have to park on the street.

Shopping opportunities are bleak.  Except for Java Jo's and The Dogwood, the businesses on Hyde Park Ave don't have much appeal. The closest grocery store is Harvest, about a 20-minute walk away.

It's edgy.  The unfortunates who sit on the sidewalk along Hyde Park Avenue are obviously, as my mother would say, "on something."  You might pass a young man in a hoodie banging on a door and shouting "Tell [name withheld] he's effing dead!" Cars get broken into.  Houses, too, sometimes.  Sometimes the teenagers set fire to the woods.  They don't know how lucky they are to have those woods.

The Bottom Line

When my husband and I were looking for a place to live, we had a short list of must-haves and a long list of nice-to-haves.  We needed to be able to afford it.  He's from the south, and the segregated neighborhoods of Boston bother him.  We needed not to be a part of that problem.  And I was moving here from the country with a border collie, so I needed to find a good place for a dog in this city.  We were lucky enough to also get convenience to public transportation, a little bit of a yard, and an old house with many charming details.  We didn't get a fireplace, and we didn't get parking.  And that's OK. We love it here.

[Editor's note: Jane Helms is, among many other things, the wife of Jamaica Plain Patch editor Chris Helms.]