“Crap, we have to go to the Boston airport to pick up the kids.”
If you’re going there first, just stay on the Mass Pike right through Boston to the airport. The airport is east of the city, you don’t have to stop or leave the highway in Boston. Then go back the way you came on 90 and take 93 north instead of 495 and it gets you to Salem, NH.
In that case I would particularly avoid West Roxbury/Roxbury, Mattapan, even Dorchester. A lot of gang activity and gang-related violence and a number of neighborhoods that you don’t want to end up in after dark. As for the rest of greater Boston, I’ve never been anywhere with more angry, explosive people, looking for any reason to honk, yell, swear, flip the finger, or tell you off. I’ve been screamed at for...Stopping at a red light. I’ve also been screamed at for going through a green light...By a guy who didn’t feel like stopping at his red light. That’s Boston.
There have not been many problems in Boston outside of the downtown area where protestors go. The airport is near downtown, but in an ethnic neighborhood that is less likely to have anything to do with protestors.
Your biggest challenge in Boston is the traffic and how complicated the roads can be. Unless you have a good reason to visit the main part of the city it is easiest to go to and from the airport from the north, using US-1, Rt. 60, and Rt. 1A.