The Boston Globe carries a Farah Stockman column about the ridiculous amount of bureaucratic red tape someone who wants to open a restaurant in Boston must endure:
More burdensome than the money is the time. Many new restaurant owners hire lawyers to navigate paperwork, driving up costs even more.
In Chicago, Wu and her family just put a sign in the window and opened. But in Boston, they would have had to get approval from a neighborhood board. In Chicago, they held open mic poetry nights to attract customers. In Boston, they would have had to apply for an "entertainment license." In Chicago, they used second-hand furniture. But in Boston, they would have had to buy it new or have the Boston Fire Department chemist test every chair to prove that it wasn't flammable.
