BOSTON NEIGHBORHOODS INFORMATION CAMBRIDGE Overview Cambridge is a city unto itself, located opposite Boston on the Charles River. Known to many as the home of Harvard and MIT, Cambridge is a fun area with lots to do in places like Central and Harvard Squares, and is accessible via the Red Line and buses. Grocery Stores Star Market 49 White Street, 20 Sydney Street, and 699 Mount Auburn Street Whole Foods 200 Alewife Brook Parkway Restaurants Blue Fin 1815 Massachusetts Avenue, Suite 1 (Inexpensive, fresh sushi) Border Café 32 Church Street (Inexpensive Mexican) Cambridge Common 1667 Massachusetts Avenue (Inexpensive traditional American/Californian) Charlie s Kitchen 10 Eliot Street (The double cheeseburger king! Inexpensive diner fare) Emmas Pizza 40 Hampshire Street, near the Kendall Theater (flat bread pizza the taste and selection are DELCIOUS!) Mr. Bartley s 1246 Massachusetts Avenue (A Harvard Square landmark; A GINORMOUS selection of burgers, including veggie; worth the trip!) Pho Pasteur 36 JFK Street (Inexpensive Vietnamese chain, large portions!) Red Bones 55 Chester Street, Somerville, which borders Cambridge (Barbecue joint with Texas-inspired atmosphere to match...yum!) Coffee Shops Peet s Coffee & Tea 100 Mount Auburn Street Starbucks 31 Church Street Toscanini s Ice Cream 1310 Massachusetts Avenue (Ice cream too!) Entertainment Brattle Theatre 40 Brattle Street (In Harvard Square, showing classics, independents, and world films) Kendall Square Cinemas 1 Kendall Square (Great independent and alternative movies; lots of good restaurants and pubs in close by!) Lizard Lounge 1667 Massachusetts Avenue (Live music 7 nights a week, great atmosphere) Lowes Harvard Square 10 Church Street (Mainstream movie theatre)
Middle East Restaurant and Night Club 472/80 Massachusetts Avenue (live music/entertainment EVERY night of the week! Food too ) Miracle of Science Bar and Grill 321 Massachusetts Avenue (the menu is written on the wall in the form of the Periodic Table of Elements need we say more?) Ryles 212 Hampshire Street (Jazz on the first floor; salsa, meringue, swing on the second depending on the night if you ve got itchy feet, head to Ryles!) Temple Bar 1688 Massachusetts Avenue (Upscale Irish bar) Shopping CambridgeSide Galleria 100 CambridgeSide Place (Typical, large mall with variety of wellknown retail shops and restaurants) Harvard Square The area around JFK Street and Massachusetts Avenue; (Great place to hang out, enjoy the ambiance, do some shopping; Crate & Barrel, Urban Outfitters, bookstores galore, etc.) Porter Square 1 Porter Square (shops and restaurants) Neighborhood Spotlight: Harvard Square While Cleveland Circle has its own distinct brand of street theater every Saturday night, albeit unintentional and fueled by adolescence and questionably procured watered-down beer, for some genuinely entertaining street performers, Harvard Square definitely has the edge. It also has numerous other attractions which are well worth the trip across the Charles to Cambridge. You don t have to wear crimson to enjoy Harvard Square by day or night. Harvard Square is, of course, home to Harvard University, which needs no introduction. While BC opted for the Gothic style of architecture, Harvard s signature style is Georgian red brick. The campus and the area around the square are home to many buildings, both original and reproduced, built in this and other styles from the 18th Century. With the narrow and often winding streets, it almost feels like a European city. Harvard Yard, the main quad you can reach from Johnston Gate where the 86 Bus drops you off, is good for a nice stroll. Unless you d like to sign up for a campus tour, 15 minutes is enough to take in the heady Ivy League air and head towards the real fun. The real fun is everywhere in Harvard Square. As mentioned, Harvard Square is home to a number of street performers and others taking up sidewalk space. And sometimes you run into fun surprises. Grad students just like you often have a table set up to get volunteers for the latest questionnaire for some Harvard University study. Likewise, while you can always count on someone with an acoustic guitar strumming away for loose change, you also might bump into the Punk Bagpiper and his partner on the drums. You never know. If you want to people-watch, take a seat at Au Bon Pain (1360 Mass. Ave) right across from Harvard Yard you can also play chess there with a master for a dollar a game and learn a new opening gambit.
If people-watching is not your thing, you can find many small specialty shops with just about anything you might want. For bibliophiles, there are four bookstores that are worth perusing. First, there is the Harvard Bookstore (1256 Mass. Ave) which is not the school text book store (That s the Harvard Coop, 1400 Mass. Ave). It has a wide and varied selection and a used book store in the basement. Second, and right next door on Plympton St., Grolier Poetry Book Shop (6 Plympton St.) is a truly unique little store, which sells only books of poetry. You won t find most of these titles anywhere else, and the tiny, nearly hidden store will make you feel like you re one of the literary cognoscenti. Third, there is the Harvard University Press (HUP), located in the same building as Au Bon Pain (go through the glass doors and down the long atrium past the theater. It s on the left). Here you can find all the books published by the HUP, including a complete selection of the Loeb Classical Library. For those studying Philosophy, Theology, Classics, Political Science, or History, these little bilingual editions of Greek and Latin Classics in their green and red dust jackets are treasures, often hard to come by. Fourth, Schoenhof s Foreign Books (76A Mount Auburn St. if you continue past the HUP through to the other side of the building it is right across the street) offers books in over 700 languages and dialects, Ancient and Modern, Eastern and Western. If you d like to learn a new language or practice one you ve acquired, Schoenhof s has everything you need. Since the list of specialty shops goes on, I ll make two recommendations: one primarily for guys (and gals buying gifts for guys); one primarily for gals (and guys buying gifts for gals). First, Leavitt and Pierce (1316 Mass. Ave), an old-school tobacconist, is the last of a dying breed, dying, that is, from changing health norms and too much of their own product. You can find a wide variety of reasonably priced fine cigars, as well as healthier male accessories like pocket knives, cuff-links, brushes, razors and more. Second, I recommend Colonial Drug (49 Brattle St.), which is not primarily a drug store. Inside Colonial Drug you ll find the largest selection of imported perfumes and colognes anywhere in the area. These are high quality scents you cannot buy at the mall, like the French brand E. Coudray (Google it), which you can only buy through 10 distributors in the US. While this shop will primarily interest the ladies, a gentleman could probably find a scent to distinguish himself from all those doused in Polo Sport. While the shopping may be a day-time activity, it s worth it to stay for the night life. There are diverse eateries, restaurants and bars. John Harvard s Brewhouse (33 Dunster St.) is a great independent brewery and pub, with the standard fare. In the same vein, though more established, Grendel s Den (89 Winthrop St.) offers a collegiate bar atmosphere and outdoor dining on a quaint little park. The Grafton Street Pub and Grille (1230 Mass. Ave) is a more upscale establishment with a great menu and nice selection of scotch. The Red Line (59 JFK St.) is a great place to drink, see and be seen, and dance it s on the trendy side. If you d like to load up on cheap and hearty food as well as alcohol, you can head to Charlie s Kitchen (10 Eliot St.), famous for its double cheeseburgers, and Hong Kong (1238 Mass. Ave), famous for its large portions of everyone s favorite Chinese dishes and its scorpion bowls. Getting to Harvard Square is easy: Take the 86 Bus, which stops at Johnston Gate at Harvard Yard, right on Harvard Square. The 86 Bus makes several stops on the BC Shuttle Bus route. You can get on at the Reservoir T-stop, the Bank of America on
Chestnut Hill Ave, or the corner of Chestnut Hill Ave and Commonwealth Ave. If you are coming from another part of the area, take the Green Line to Park St and switch to the Red Line going to Alewife. Central Square When most people think of Cambridge, Harvard and MIT immediately come to mind, but there is more to Cambridge than these two institutions or the neighborhoods surrounding them. About halfway in between Harvard and MIT is Central Square, an area filled with fun international restaurants and bars as well as nifty, small shops. Central Square offers a great place for grad students to take a break from the usual. The main drag in Central Square is Massachusetts Avenue, Mass Ave for short. Mass Ave links Central Square to Harvard Square in the North and Kendall Square in the south. Central Square is central in more than one way: aside from being between Harvard and MIT, Central Square is home to Cambridge City Hall. The square s location makes it a great place to walk to or from on a sunny spring day. Memorial Drive along the Charles, Harvard, and MIT are only short walks away. The restaurants in Central Square are noteworthy for their variety as well as their rare provenance. You can find Middle Eastern, African, Caribbean, Tibetan, Thai, and Mexican cuisine as well as typical pub food and American classics, a greater variety than almost anywhere else in the city. Central Square is also a great place to listen to live music. The square rewards many return trips, so below are a few suggestions to try. In terms of exotic foods not often found in the vicinity of BC, you can go to Asmara Restaurant (735 Mass Ave) and try some Ethiopian cuisine. Here you can find a wide selection of grilled, spicy meats, and they even offer vegetarian entrees. For a flavor from the Far East, try Rangzen Tibetan Restaurant (24 Pearl St.). Tibetan is not used as a code word for Chinese in the case of Rangzen. Here you can really try traditional Tibetan cuisine, sampling Phaley (Tibetan Breads) to myriad kinds of savory dumplings, and grilled meats. There are also vegetarian options available. Finally, if you want to get an old reliable, try Pepper Sky s Thai Sensation (20 Pearl St.) for some reliably good Thai food. If Middle Eastern is your thing, you can try Moody s Falafel Palace (25 Central Sq.) who doesn t falafel? Likewise you might try ZuZu s (474 Mass. Ave) to compare and expand your falafel and hummus options. You can never have enough shwarma. If you want some Middle Eastern fusion, you can try Rendezvous in Central Square (502 Mass Ave), where you can get the best of French-Moroccan cuisine. Rendezvous is more of a sit-down dinner restaurant, with an excellent selection and ambiance. Finally, for some Algerian- Tunisian fusion, I recommend Baraka Café (80 ½ Pearl St.).. Baraka s is more casual than Rendezvous, it s a great place for the budget conscious grad student the food prices are very reasonable. For some good but not so ol fashioned burgers, you can stop by Four Burgers (704 Mass Ave.), where there are exactly four types of burger available, beef, vegetarian, salmon and turkey. You can, of course, order your particular paddy topped and cooked to your own
taste. For some good, fried pub food try Tavern in the Square (730 Mass. Ave) and The Field (20 Prospect St). Nothing unusual here, and that might be what you re looking for one cold winter night. Finally, if you like live music, try the Cantab Lounge (738 Mass. Ave) and the Enormous Room (569 Mass Ave). Both places get crowded during the weekend and for top acts, so try going mid week. The Enormous Room no longer serves food, and the Cantab Lounge probably shouldn t serve food, so try to fill up on food prior to going. The beer selection at both is limited, so make one of them your last stop. Oh, one last thing. Too often these columns have shopping tips for the well-heeled ladies of the Boston College graduate and professional student community and not much for the guys. Well, here s a great nugget for the men out there. Keezer s (140 River St., 2 blocks south west of Central Square) offers an immense selection of new and pre-owned fine men s clothing they also buy clothing. So, if you need a tweed jacket to TA in, a suit so you can retire the one blazer you ve had since senior year, or nice tie and pocket square for that drab, off-the-rack grey suit you wear while job hunting, Keezer s is the place to go. There are two ways to get to Central Square: 1) Take the Green Line to Park Street, transfer to the Red Line and get off at Central Square; 2) Take the 86 Bus from Reservoir to Harvard Square, transfer to the Red Line and get off at Central Square.