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Boston
From the patriotic past to the trendy present From the March 26, 2001 Issue of New York 
Boston, cradle of my cluelessness:
I lived there for six feckless years during my salad days (listen,
it's a college town-lots of people lived there for six feckless years
during their salad days). On my rare return trips, I've struggled
to update and refine an experience that, in misty hindsight, seems
to have revolved primarily around grinders, gin, and late sets by
Talking Heads at the Paradise Club. But it's amazing what a couple
of days in a spacious, elegant room overlooking the Boston Athenaeum
can do to make you feel like a grown-up. That room was, and is, at
Fifteen Beacon, a small, chic new hotel just off the Common. The place
is unstuffy but first-rate. Fifteen Beacon's French-American restaurant,
the Federalist (which has a superb wine list), served us a delicious
tasting menu late one night that could have gone on agreeably for
many more hours than it actually did. And the meticulously designed
rooms want for nothing. We tore ourselves away from our push-button
fireplace long enough to stroll Newbury Street; take in the Gardner
Museum; dine messily with friends at the Summer Shack, an enormous
new lobster hall in Cambridge; and revisit old haunts like the bookstores
Brattle and Victor Hugo. Of course, the history Boston is steeped
in transcends the personal, and a snowy walk through nearby Beacon
Hill worked its customary eighteenth-century magic ("Seriously, why
can't I open a smithy?"). In fact, only the obligations represented
by a return ticket on Amtrak prevented me from spending the rest of
the weekend trying on breeches and pricing muskets.-- GEORGE KALOGERAKIS |
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