Boston is a beer and coffee kind of town. They’re the liquids flowing in everyone’s veins in the middle of the snowy, frigid winters when the city is dark by 4pm. They’re the reason to get out of bed in the morning, and the goal when you leave work hours after sunset.
When you move here, you learn to love your giant cups of coffee, your iced snicks in Southie, and your lattes in the indie coffee shops. I already loved coffee when I arrived. I went to Italy for a semester in college, and learned what coffee culture really is there…and how to pronounce “macchiato” (I used to have it written out on a slip of paper in my wallet, since Starbucks hadn’t made the word commonly known yet).
I managed to get to Boston by transferring from a cafe in a Borders Bookstore in Lancaster, PA, to one just outside Philly, to the one downtown here. It was a guaranteed paycheck, if tiny, for a studio art major who wanted to be a book conservator. And getting free coffee is a huge savings for an addict. Not to mention the book discounts for someone who loves to read.
Beer, on the other hand, wasn’t my drink of choice when I arrived. I tolerated a wheat beer when I had to, and choked down a beer so slowly that it was inevitably warm and definitely gross by the time I finished it. Which didn’t help me like it any better, surprisingly.
Then a coworker took me to Sunset in Allston and their amazing selection of beers, and introduced me to Allagash White. Which lead to my love of Belgian-style beers, Hoegaarden, Hefeweizens, lambics, Chimay. And once you can say you prefer Belgian beers, you get some street cred for your beer preferences, and find out about even better and more obscure choices.
And when you’re a girl and Guinness becomes your favorite default, you finally get RESPECT.
