Photo by Chris Dempsey |
There’s so much to love about Boston, it’s hard sometimes to know where to start. Traffic? Obnoxious Sox fans? Irritating students? Norway rats? Inflated rents? An inferiority complex unlike any on the Eastern seaboard? Boston, by which we mean Greater Boston, is so many things that it’s difficult to choose just one.
But if you had to, it’s all-encompassing best trait might be “freedom.” Oh sure, we’re the birthplace of American freedom, what with the Sons of Liberty and all. But, unlike more conformist metropolises, Boston’s also managed to sustain a steady strain of political contrariness and cultural eccentricity in the face of centuries of powerful pressure to toe someone else’s line.
Our readers are fine with this. You can tell from their picks for the best aspects of life in our city. The chosen Best Place To Live isn’t some swank high-rise condo complex — it’s reality-checkered Jamaica Plain. The preferred Local Cause isn’t the maintenance of the Public Gardens but Bikes Not Bombs. Our favorite public art is high-end graffiti. And the moderator of our preferred podcast is a ska head.
Go figure. Our readers must know something the rest of the country missed.
Related:
Boston's Best Food and Drink 2009, Boston's Best Arts and Entertainment 2009, Review: To Rome With Love, More 
- Boston's Best Food and Drink 2009
The danger of doing an annual Best issue is that readers could well screw up the whole thing, especially when it comes to eating out. It would suck if they voted for the too-familiar national-chain eateries. Best Hamburger: McDonalds?!
- Boston's Best Arts and Entertainment 2009
We are a culture-rich city — a veritable cauldron of talent and fun, and have been so since Anne Bradstreet inscribed the gates of Harvard. In Boston, the arts never stand still.
- Review: To Rome With Love
Woody Allen's European vacation winds down with four tales that indulge his usual preoccupations: hookers, sell-outs, fame, mortality, and hot bi chicks.
- Review: Beasts of the Southern Wild
One of the most assured debuts in years, Benh Zeitlin's folk tale is a portrait of the wonder and heartbreak that comes with being too young to understand what you experience.
- Review: Neil Young Journeys
Young is old now, and in Demme's film, looking like a stubbly coot in a battered Panama hat, he's having the time of his life.
- Review: Sleepless Night
"We're in deep shit," says one of the perpetrators of a bungled drug heist in Frédéric Jardin's expert thriller. It's about to get deeper.
- Review: Drunkboat
Despite a title taken from Rimbaud's poem, Bob Meyer's debut has less in common with the wunderkind symbolist than with David Mamet and the Coen Brothers.
- Review: Ballplayer: Pelotero
Ballplayer initially declares that it is about dreams, ambition, and family struggles, but by focusing almost entirely on money and market values, it strikes out.
- Review: Ice Age: Continental Drift
Perhaps you've seen "Scrat's Continental Crack-Up," the animated short that debuted theatrically a year and a half ago featuring the sabre-toothed squirrel causing a prehistoric tectonic cataclysm as a result of his pursuit of an elusive acorn.
- Review: Trishna
If nothing else, Michael Winterbottom's updating of Tess of the D'Urbervilles to present-day India proves that Thomas Hardy will depress you no matter what the setting.
- Review: The Day He Arrives
"Stop copying me!" says Seong-jun (Yu Jun-sang), the has-been filmmaker at the center of the 12th cinematic Mobius strip from Hong Sang-soo.
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