From what you're describing the graphics and such are taking some time to load. This could be hardware related, it could be network related (getting bad latency and/or dropped packets), or Boston could just be exceptionally busy and your system is trying to load more than the server can push quickly. (It could be that everyone in Boston IS naked....

I kid, I kid! )
Unless things are crashing or just flat not loading, I can't say that there is a bug here unless you can post screen shots as staxjax suggests. The first time logging in to or entering "busy" areas (areas with a large variety of objects) take longer to load.
You did mention not being able to see what people are saying. Are the text balloons empty or are the characters strange or garbled? If the former, it probably falls under the same issue as I describe above. If garbled, are you using any extended language settings? Try setting your OS to an English language setting in this case and see if it fixes it.
Salem doesn't save screenshots directly. You'll need to do a "copy desktop" (PrntScrn in Windows) action and then paste that into a drawing program to save it.