How much of a Bostonian are you? Are you a new campus tourist who’s only been to a handful of MBTA stops? Or are you a T power user on par with a Wahlberg?
As you click on the MBTA stops you’ve visited on the map, the site spits out your level of Boston-ness with different titles. “Yankees fan” is for those who haven’t visited any stops, while “Interlopah” for those who’ve been to a few dozen. Anyone who’s visited all 146 stops gets the title of “Charlie.”
The map was coded and posted online by Mike Solomon, a Boston University graduate who now works in digital publishing for Condé Nast in New York. He recently found himself staring at the New York MTA subway map thinking of all the places he’s visited.
“The more you look at a map, the more you remember all the different places you were when you got off at different stops and things that happened,” he said. “So I thought, let me build a fun little interactive, clicky map for New York.”
About 76,000 people took the resulting map-based quiz, and it had 12,000 Facebook shares. Buoyed by that success, he turned his attention to Boston, another city he associated with fond public transit memories.
Given his recent absence from Boston, Solomon himself scored just a 32, or “Interlopah.” I personally scored a 53, or “Jr. Resident.” (Victory!)
To get caught up on Boston lingo, Solomon asked Reddit’s Boston forum to get some ideas for joking awards.
“Some of the more local, inside joke names came from Reddit, like ‘Interlopah.’” he said.
One of the more creative titles is “I can’t even,” awarded to those who have been to just one MBTA location.
“It gets to the cliche BU undergrad who tries out the subway, and decides just to take an Uber for the rest [of college],” Solomon said.