Welcome to Boston Bits ~ Insiders’ Tips -- our intermittently updated journal of things Bostonian, aimed to give Boston Your Way visitors a sense of our city.

Boston Bits

Marky Mark, The Fighter. Mark Wahlberg, star and producer of The Fighter, comes from a working-class Irish Catholic corner of Dorchester. The youngest of nine children, including younger brother Donnie (New Kids on the Block), he was often in trouble and briefly served time. Attention from caring ground-ups and getting involved with the neighborhood Boys and Girls Club helped him turn his life around. Today he actively supports organizations for troubled youth.

P I L O T. What’s a city to do when it depends on property taxes for its revenue yet over half its real estate belongs to tax-exempt “charities”, many of which are large wealthy educational, medical and religious institutions, e.g., BU, Northeastern, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston Medical Center, and the Archdiocese of Boston. Many, but not all, do make voluntary Payments In Lieu Of Taxes (PILOT), equal over all to barely 9% of what their total tax would be. A Mayoral Task Force has recently recommended that non-profits contribute 25% of their tax liability, comparable to the municipal budget for police, snow removal and other essential services.

Floating Hospital. One of Boston’s noted pediatric hospitals is The Floating Hospital. Located downtown, it originated as a ship, which sailed the harbor daily, with local mothers and their sick children, who received medical treatment and the therapeutic benefits of fresh sea air. Today, by offering itself as a high-quality, lower-cost alternative to its competitors, such as Boston Children’s Hospital, The Floating (as it is known) has recovered from near financial collapse.

The Hub of...the Universe? Not so fast, Boston. Surely you have heard of the Boston nickname, “The Hub of the Universe.” The term is correctly “Hub of the Solar System,” and it refers not to the city but to the Massachusetts State House. When coined by Oliver Wendell Holmes in 1858, in Autocrat at the Breakfast Table, Massachusetts was the country’s center of progressive social and political activity. Maybe it doesn’t matter, because we just call it -- The Hub.

Food Truck Phenom. A popular quick-and-cheap dining option on local campuses has spread to Boston’s streets and parks, with the enthusiastic support of our foodie mayor, Tom Menino. Falafel wraps, kimchee, vegan chili, cupcakes, burritos, porkpies -- there’s a food truck cuisine somewhere around town to appeal to your taste. Some restaurants have joined the scene with their own wagons. At the first (annual?) Food Truck Festival last August at the SoWa Open Air Market, the long lines for hotdogs and hummus suggest street food is part of our urban landscape.

So good! So good! So good! The folks at Fenway keep fan energy high with smart musical offerings. The local Celtic punk-rock group, The Dropkick Murphys, gets us charged with the edgy “Tessie” and “Shipping up to Boston.” In the 8th inning fans help Neil Diamond belt out our own version of “Sweet Caroline”, and after a Sox win the Standells accompany us out of the park with “Dirty Water.” Boston, you’re my home!

Air conditioners and other snowstorm traditions. Following big snow storms, we figure we “own” the parking spaces we dig out and bring stuff from the house to guard them. Unfortunately, the Mayor is not impressed with our collection of lawn chairs, bbq grills and birdbaths that litter the curbs. He believes the streets belong to everyone and makes us clear up our creative space-savers within 48 hours.

Where triangles are squares. If visitors look closely at Boston’s city squares -- Liberty Square, North Square, Post Square -- they will notice that they are really triangles. Who knows why?

Trimountaine. The name “Tremont” is familiar in Boston. In fact, one of the main thoroughfares through the city is named Tremont Street. The origin of the name is less familiar. It derives from “Trimountaine,” the name the Puritans gave their new settlement in 1630. It refers to a commanding three-peaked ridge that existed where Beacon Hill now stands. The settlers soon discarded that name for “Boston,” in honor of their home in England. And after the Revolution, their descendants chopped down 2 of the trimountaine peaks and shortened the central, beacon, hill to make room for a new State House and a neighborhood that has become synonymous with blue-blood exclusivity.

Louis heads across the Channel. One of Boston’s marquee luxury clothing stores has abandoned venerable Newbury Street for the cutting-edge Seaport District. It is a risky move that is counting on the promise of the district becoming The hot destination. Keep fingers crossed.

The Puritans, not the Pilgrims, founded Boston. Both did come from the same Protestant sect in England. However, the Pilgrims, who landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620, were Separatists -- that is, they literally separated from the Anglican Church and England. The Puritans, who founded Boston in 1630, sought to stay within the Church to reform, or purify, it. As we all know, it did not work out that way.

Having trouble pronouncing Faneuil Hall? Think it sounds like Fanooel or Fahneel? Think of Daniel or Dan’l, but say it with an F, and you will nail it.

Before there was Julia there was Fannie. Today she is known for chocolates and a cookbook. In her day, Bostonian Fannie Farmer was as much an icon as Julia Child. Director of The Boston Cooking School, and author of the book eventually named for her, Farmer advocated good nutrition and diet. But most important, she introduced precise standard measurements, which we use today. Level teaspoons, tablespoons, and cups replaced “a pinch here,” “a teacupful there” and the many homey measurements generations of mothers passed down to their daughters.

Acorn Street on Beacon Hill is the most photographed lane in Boston. Its modest rowhouses, seemingly out of place among the Federalist mansions, were home to the workmen who served the bluebloods nearby. Today these homes belong to residents so wealthy and influential they forced a utility company to replace the cobblestones to their exact positions when they had finished digging up the street.

Boston’s accidental mayor. Thomas Menino, as President of the Boston City Council, was appointed in 1993 to complete the term of Mayor Ray Flynn. He has won 5 successive campaigns, making him the city’s longest serving mayor.

Necco Wafers, those pastel discs of candy perfection, are made in Boston. The name stands for New England Confectionary Company. The oldest “multi-line” candy company in the country, it also manufactures Mary Janes and Clark Bars.

The first class at Harvard College, the oldest college in the country, had nine students and one headmaster, who was fired because he was too abusive for even the puritanical Puritans. Today Harvard has 6,500 undergraduate students and 12,000 graduate students, and it is headed by Drew Faust, its first female president.

The author of Little Women and other children’s classics had her early manuscripts rejected by Boston’s top publisher, Tichnor and Fields, who advised Louisa May Alcott to give up writing and become a teacher.

Every city has its hip and happening neighborhood, rising from obsolete industrial corners. Boston has SoWa, or South of Washington Street, in the South End, where lofts, restaurants and galleries are rapidly replacing vacant lots and abandoned factories.

Old Ironsides became the nickname for the U.S.S. Constitution, the oldest commissioned naval vessel in the world, because cannon balls were seen to bounce off its strong wooden, iron-like, hull.

Victorian Bostonians had a street-wise indicator of wealth for their new Back Bay enclave. If you lived on...
Beacon Street, you were old family and old money;
Marlborough Street...old family but no money;
Commonwealth Avenue...new family and new money;
Newbury Street...no family and no money.

The Paul Revere house, oldest residential building in the city, was already almost 100 years old when Revere moved into it in 1770 with his wife and 5 of his 15 children. The house was built for a rich Bostonian, Robert Howard. The ground floor of the house is furnished to reflect Howard’s era and upper-class status, whereas the second floor reflects Revere’s era and middle-class status. Some say the museum should dedicate one room to the house’s tenement years in the 1800s.

Beacon Street, the most exclusive street in today’s Boston, was Poor House Lane during Colonial days. It ran between the far side of Boston Common and the bottom of the steep Trimountain, in the least habitable corner of town. At the foot of the lane was the town’s almshouse.

Actors in the popular T.V. show, “The Office,” have Boston-area roots. Steve Carell is originally from Concord and remains so attached to the region he bought a general store in the town of Marshfield. B. J. Novak and Jon Krasinski were ’97 classmates at Newton South High School. Mindy Kaling grew up in Cambridge.

No, scrod is not a fish. It is a traditional fish dish, introduced at the Parker House Hotel and popular only in New England. It is made with small white fish, usually cod or haddock, that is filleted, baked and topped with buttered bread crumbs. People debate the meaning of the word. Some say it stands for Small Cod Remaining On Deck. Others, Small Cod or Haddock of the Day.

The Italian North End should be called the Immigrant North End. Because it is on the side of the city nearest the harbor, it has been the first home of each successive wave of New Bostonians, who arrived before the era of air travel. The neighborhood has belonged to the Puritans, the earliest African Americans, the Irish (who swarmed the small district by the thousands in the 1830s and 40s), the Jews and now Italians.

“Beacon Hill again vetoed legislation...” Because the Massachusetts State House sits at the crest of the city’s exclusive neighborhood, the term “Beacon Hill” refers not only to the enclave but to state government people and activities. Today on Beacon Hill, The Governor....

The Zakim Bridge, the iconic landmark for the new Thomas P. Tip O’Neil (Big Dig) Tunnel, is named for Leonard Zakim, the late director of the Anti-Defamation League of New England, who used his gift for building bridges to calm the strife among Boston’s warring ethnic and racial communities. He died at the age of 45 in 1999.

Every autumn Boston’s population swells by 350,000, with the arrival of the students who attend the area’s some 65 colleges and universities. They lend a special vitality to our 381-year-old Puritan town.

Why are they called the Brahmins? Boston’s upper class was nicknamed “Brahmins” by Oliver Wendell Holmes, because, like the Brahmins of India, they are “a harmless, inoffensive, untitled aristocracy.” To be a true Brahmin, one’s family must be descended from Bostonians who made their fortunes both in the colonial maritime trade and the 19th-century textile industry. (the marriage of wharf and waterfall).