What is it about Lowell?

You don't have to go downtown to notice it, and it has little to do with all the new condos, the national park areas, and the park trolley that runs around laden with class-trippers. It's the hum of the short buses that ferry the workers around, the sirens on the vintage 70s and 80s fire engines, the unintelligible signs in the Cambodian ghettos, the peeling paint on outskirt-straddling 3-deckers with too many people packed inside. It's the feeling of discovery that hits you after you wind through the surrounding hick-laden suburbs and end up in this city of 100,000, a world unto itself just 40 minutes from Boston. Here all the things that annoy me elsewhere--police babysitting construction workers, people talking on cellphones in restaurants, parking meters--cease to bother. Every time I show up in Lowell, I blend into the municipality, into the city...for the short time I am there.

I have to wonder: how did Lowell keep its own distinct identity in a culture of homogenization? Is it really true that federal money helps keep the place running so well? And why does no one know where Lowell is?

Depressed as some say it is, Lowell is an utterly bustiling place--not just in terms of traffic jams, but all the interesting things a city needs to be a city (like a university, a distinct creative culture, actual nightlife, food, hotels, and fires). If you ever have the opportunity to stop in for afternoon, all of this will make sense to you.