E-Mail This Article to a Friend Won’t you be my neighbor? (continued)
	Where to find them • Arnold Arboretum, Jamaica Plain, (617) 524-1718. • Avalon, 15 Lansdowne Street, Boston, (617) 262-2424. • Axis, 13 Lansdowne Street, Boston, (617) 262-2437. • Bob the Chef’s, 604 Columbus Avenue, Boston, (617) 536-6204. • Boston Athenaeum, 10 1/2 Beacon Street, Boston, (617) 227-0270. • Boston Public Library, 700 Boylston Street, Boston, (617) 536-5400. • Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle Street, Cambridge, (617) 876-6837. • Brook Farm, 670 Baker Street, West Roxbury. • Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard Street, Brookline, (617) 566-6660. • Café Apollonia, 146 Belgrade Avenue, Roslindale, (617) 327-6910. • Café Pompeii, 280 Hanover Street, Boston, (617) 523-9438. • Castle Island, off Day Boulevard, South Boston, (617) 268-5744. • Coolidge Corner Theatre, 290 Harvard Street, Brookline, (617) 734-2500. • Doyle’s Café, 3484 Washington Street, Jamaica Plain, (617) 524-2345. • Enormous Room, 567 Mass Ave, Cambridge, (617) 491-5599. • Green Street Grill, 280 Green Street, Cambridge, (617) 876-1655. • Gusto, 4174 Washington Street, Roslindale, (617) 363-9225. • Hancock Tower, 200 Clarendon Street, Boston, (617) 247-1977. • Jacob Wirth Restaurant, 31-37 Stuart Street, Boston, (617) 338-8586. • L.J. Peretti Co., 2 1/2 Park Square, Boston, (800) 797-9LJP. • Middle East, 472 Mass Ave, Cambridge, (617) 864-EAST. • Mississippi’s, 103 Terrace Street, Roxbury, (617) 541-4411. • Model Café, 7 North Beacon Street, Allston, (617) 254-9365. • Mr. Bartley’s Burger Cottage, 1246 Mass Ave, Cambridge, (617) 354-6559. • O’Brien’s, 3 Harvard Avenue, Allston, (617) 782-6245. • Rami’s, 324 Harvard Street, Brookline, (617) 738-3577. • Redbones, 55 Chester Street, Somerville, (617) 628-2200. • Rubin’s Kosher Restaurant Delicatessen, 500 Harvard Street, Brookline, (617) 731-8787. • Ryles Jazz Club, 212 Hampshire Street, Cambridge, (617) 876-9330. • Sabur, 212 Holland Street, Somerville, (617) 776-7890. • Santarpio’s, 113 Chelsea Street, East Boston, (617) 567-9871. • Sligo, 237 Elm Street, Somerville, (617) 623-9651. • Stata Center, MIT, Vassar Street, Cambridge. • Sunset Grill & Tap, 130 Brighton Avenue, Allston, (617) 254-1331. • Trinity Church, 236 Clarendon Street, Boston, (617) 536-0944. • Wally’s, 427 Mass Ave, Boston, (617) 424-1408. • Zeitgeist Gallery, 1353 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, (617) 876-6060. — NM

Back Bay

Boston’s imposing architectural triumvirate — the Boston Public Library, Trinity Church, and the John Hancock Tower — is positioned within a few blocks of Copley Square. The oldest public library in the country, the BPL was designed by Charles McKim, and inspired as much by the Italian Renaissance as by Chicago’s Marshall Field’s department store. And its interior is as exalted as its exterior, with murals by John Singer Sargent and Pierre Puvis de Chavannes.

When J.Lo and Ben Affleck were shopping around for local churches to hold their wedding, Trinity was on their list. Elites back in the day worshiped here as well. Designed by Henry Hobson Richardson, the solid arcs, stone walls, and neo-Romanesque style still command attention.

While McKim and Richardson looked mostly to the past for inspiration, the architects at I.M. Pei & Partners, responsible for the MIT Media Lab and the sweeping Christian Science Center, looked forward. The John Hancock Tower has a Corbusian soar to it, looming over the Back Bay’s traditional brick. You may have heard that, due to an engineering error, years ago its windows were popping out and shattering in the street. Don’t worry, though: every one of the building’s 10,344 panes was ultimately replaced.

Beacon Hill

The only thing older than the cobblestone streets in Beacon Hill is the money of the neighborhood’s pearl-necked and loafer-shod residents. Acorn Street, a tiny sloping cobblestone byway, epitomizes the area. Founded in 1807, the nearby Boston Athenaeum was the heart of intellectual life in Boston for nearly 50 years, and is one of the oldest independent libraries in the country. The Monthly Anthology and Boston Review were published there, and today the building houses an art gallery, reading rooms, and half a million books, and sponsors a number of lectures and events. It also holds weekly teas, in case you’re rusty on (or curious about) Brahmin traditions.

Downtown

Get off the T at Park Street and you’re near the heart of downtown. The State House looms and the pedestrian shopping zone, Downtown Crossing, is a block away. All the predictable retailers abound, but a few surviving indie gems remain. L.J. Peretti Co., for example, has been hand-blending pipe tobacco in Boston for nearly 130 years. Robert Peretti has managed the place since the ’40s; he still does all pipe repairs, and occasionally hands out a straight-grain freehand to lucky customers.

Financial District

Steel and glass tower above you; suits and briefcases hurtle past. It’s Boston business-as-usual. To escape, head to Post Office Square Park, a small sanctuary amid the hustle where businesspeople eat lunch and bike messengers convene on breaks or en route.

Theater District

Nestled alongside Chinatown, the Theater District has a bunch of sleek clubs and restaurants (not to mention a bunch of playhouses, from the stately Wang to the funky Charles). The cavernous Jacob Wirth Restaurant has been serving up sausage plates and wiener schnitzel since 1868, making it Boston’s second-oldest restaurant. It’s got 18 beers on tap, and a recipe for warm potato salad that dates back to the 19th century.

North End

Boston’s Italian neighborhood teems with amaretto, pesto, and gelato. It’s also home to the rare Boston establishment that stays open after 1 a.m. Open until 4 a.m., Café Pompeii serves calzones, pastries, and espresso. When the rest of the city is hushed, garrulous Italian locals, glamorous club kids, and the tragically hip post-rock-show crowd snake along the sidewalk for a table, fending off hangovers and celebrating the night Italian-style.

Kenmore Square/the Fens

Boston’s clubland hub sits in the shadow of Fenway Park. All manner of party people — from beery BU frat boys to lanky, sullen hipsters to leather-trousered Euros — bump, thump, and throb up and down Lansdowne Street at clubs like Avalon and Axis.

Kendall Square

It’s a biotech jungle out there. The swooping and soaring, jutting and jarring Stata Center at MIT is part Alice in Wonderland, part M.C. Escher, and all Frank Gehry, the architect behind the famed Guggenheim Museum, in Bilbao, Spain, and the Experience Music Project, in Seattle. For all the innovation that takes place at the country’s premier science school, its campus has long been uniformly uninspiring. Not anymore. With angles tumbling off each other in gravity- (and logic-) defying ways, the Stata Center speaks to MIT’s commitment to challenging the laws of nature (and, some would argue, good taste).

Central Square

Central Square is Cambridge’s version of clubland, with more ethnic restaurants and fewer frat boys than Boston’s. The best place to catch cutting-edge rock north of the river (or south, east, or west, for that matter) is at the Middle East. Its schedule reads like a hipster’s wet dream. Some of Boston’s most innovative DJs spin at the Enormous Room, a languid Moroccan-themed lounge. You’ll know you’re there when you see the elephant on the door. And the Green Street Grill, a former dive, limits its Caribbean-spiced food-serving hours to make time for jazz (mostly Cuban).

Inman Square

Inman’s got spunk. Many malign the mall-ification of Cambridge, and although Inman Square hasn’t been impervious to it, it does retain a certain counterculture vibe. That’s nowhere more apparent than at the Zeitgeist Gallery, a small but mighty bastion of all that’s experimental in art and performance. Around the corner, Ryles Jazz Club hosts national names like Arturo Sandoval and Nestor Torres downstairs, and a fiery dance hall upstairs with salsa, merengue, and swing.

Harvard Square

Purple-haired punks still lurk in the Pit, the area behind the Harvard Square T stop, and Mr. Bartley’s Burger Cottage still serves the best burgers around. You’ll share ketchup with your neighbor and use all the muscles in your throat to suck down a frappe. The historic Brattle Theatre has been a cinematic mainstay for over 50 years, screening independent and foreign films. Not everything in the square has changed.

Davis Square

Artists and students fleeing rising rents in Cambridge migrated to blue-collar Somerville and turned Davis Square into one of the hippest ’hoods around. Now places like Redbones, serving up beer and barbecue, Sligo, a local dive, and Sabur, a Bosnian restaurant a little outside the square, draw crowds from both sides of the river.

Nina MacLaughlin can be reached at nmaclaughlin[a]phx.com