The 61 New Best Things About Boston

We Love This Town Because…
… 19. If Rachael Ray has anything to say about it, America will run on Dunkin', goddamn it. … 20. Even though the Charlie Card machines always break down when you need to refill your pass on the first of the month, that's not enough to dull the thrill you still get from the fact that you don't have to take the card out of your wallet to pay your fare. … 21. Harvard sex blogger Lena Chen of
sexandtheivy.com won't graduate for another year. … 22. It's almost warm enough for the mayor to start riding his bike again.

23. Joe Travassos, 41, window washer

Photo by Yeheshua Johnson

Joe Travassos will pitch in on just about any chore around the house, but he won't wash windows. Nobody, after all, likes to take their work home with them.

Travassos spends his days suspended 790 feet above the ground, meticulously scrubbing the 10,366 windows that make up the exterior of the John Hancock Tower. Starting next month, he and a partner, employees of a company called PureView, will devote 34 workdays to giving the Hancock its annual spring cleaning, then move on to other local buildings before returning to the skyscraper for its second polishing in the fall. Though Travassos has been tending to the tower for a decade, he still finds plenty about the job to keep him motivated: the sunrise over Eastie (24); the way he can occasionally catch a glimpse of the stands at Fenway (25); and how "on beautiful, cloudy days, the glass is like a mirror (26)." —Francis Storrs

27. Cast-off (and Cut-rate) Fashions

Illustration by Kagan McLeod

It's not that we're averse to fads around here, we're just a little…dubious when the runway reports tell us that we must, must get ourselves a new pair of 8-inch, open-toe, platform wedge booties, or dress the guys in our lives in those absurd men's leggings. So while Boston certainly ranks as a stylish city, we're not particularly trendy. And that turns out to be good news for the genuinely sartorially adventurous among us—because that combination also works out to make Boston the best city in the country for high-end fashion bargains. Drawn by the area's affluence, luxury retailers like Barneys, Nordstrom, and Neiman Marcus keep opening new stores in the region, which means endless supplies of the latest Jimmy Choo pumps, Chanel clutches, and Chloé peasant tops. But in a market skeptical of the hippest threads, these stores are also forced to constantly slash prices to create room for next season's styles. The result is overflowing upscale clearance bins and racks filled with scores (and here we speak from personal experience) like fabulous gold Prada flats that'll set you back less than your weekly Starbucks allowance. —Rachel Baker

28. We Do Know How to Drive, Thank You Very Much

Illustration by Kagan McLeod

After enduring decades of undue ridicule as the world's most dangerously honked-off motorists, Bostonians can at last flip our critics a well-justified bird. Fresh stats show our state actually has the nation's lowest rate of auto deaths. Now maybe we'll get our shot at dethroning the good people of Sioux Falls as "America's Best Drivers," a title bestowed by insurance giant Allstate. Pardon our golf clap, South Dakotans. You may not run yellows or bang ueys (nigh impossible on a tractor, anyway), but you also don't face the adversity that forges truly great drivers: rain-slicked trolley tracks, feckless double-parkers, pedestrians springing from the curb like impala. We do, every day, and we do it impressively well. If not, perhaps, impressively politely. —J. L. Johnson

29. Hollywood Is Back for More

With Shutter Island (the latest Scorsese epic), Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (Matthew McConaughey), The Surrogates (Bruce Willis), and The Proposal (Sandra Bullock) shooting here this year and more projects reportedly on the way, it seems certain Boston will top the record number of movies filmed around town in 2007. We're going to have to get used to this Tinseltown-on-the-Charles thing. —F.S.

30. John Krasinski, 28, actor

Photos by Jill Greenberg

We cogs in the machine—and here in Boston, that's more than half a million of us—know that you rarely get to pick your coworkers or, for that matter, your cubicle neighbors. There's always going to be the loud talker, the weird eater, the social butterfly who spends her days flitting from one desk to the next. Barely 8 inches separate me, for instance, from a guy who frequently chuckles to himself, and can spend hours tossing a baseball up and down. Once I thought I heard him fart. (Maybe he's heard me, too.)

Perhaps our desk-bound existences—and the fact that we're a town of cynics—explain Boston's particular affinity for NBC's hit sitcom The Office (returning this month, post-strike), in which an ensemble cast of paper-pushers deal with one another's quirks, most of them annoying. As Jim, the amiable, moderately ambitious voice of reason, John Krasinski—who can also be seen starring this month opposite Renée Zellweger in the new Clooney-
directed, football-themed romantic comedy Leatherheads—calls on dry wit and a cache of goofy looks to express the disdain he feels for his more ridiculous office-mates. Whether confined in our own offices, stranded on the Expressway, or wedged onto the Green Line, we can relate to his perpetual exasperation: It's not me, it's the other guy.

Of course, Krasinski never actually had an office job. Growing up the youngest of three boys in Newton, where his parents still live (mom Mary Clare is a nurse; dad Ron is an internist), he spent his afterschool hours playing sports and his summers counseling 12-year-olds at Camp Chickami in Wayland. He was the good boy—did well enough at competitive Newton South High School to get into Brown, didn't really date, and generally behaved himself. "I was probably a wuss," he admits. I feign surprise. "Yeah. I never wanted to get into trouble. Like on Halloween, if my friends were like, ‘Let's go egg blah-blah-blah,' I'd be like, ‘Aww man, I'm sick, I gotta go home.'"

Over breakfast, Krasinski works the just-rolled-out-of-bed look: shaggy hair damp on the ends, hooded sweatshirt, scruff. He's just heard he's nabbed the lead role in an as-yet-untitled Sam Mendes movie penned by author Dave Eggers, and we celebrate with camera-friendly egg whites and avocado (for him) and desk chair–friendly oatmeal (for me). "When someone tells me they're from Boston, there's a whole other level of connection (31)," he says, and I don't believe he's making a pass. "It's like you don't have to start with commonality. You're just like, ‘Oh, you're from Boston?' Got it." He was raised on the Celtics (32) and the Pats (33), a love that's gotten easier to pursue since he became famous: In February, he and his dad caught the Super Bowl in Phoenix ("You can't just blame one person," he says, then silently mouths, "Gisele!"), and over Thanksgiving, he attended a Lakers-Celtics game. "When I was in high school, those games were so boring," he says. "Now, every single little kid has a Celtics shirt on, everybody is screaming at the top of their lungs, Donnie Wahlberg's there freaking out (34). It made me feel really proud, which I didn't expect."

What he has come to expect is that people are paying attention. "Every once in a while, a picture will show up of me eating lunch with my buddy, or getting out of my car in my own driveway," he says, then scans the room. For a brief moment in time—a week, really—Krasinski and the arguably better-looking and definitely much better-paid Zellweger were a tabloid item, victims of a paparazzi manipulation. "Our entire cast was going out together, but they just showed me and her," he says of the Us Weekly story. "You know, I really made out like a bandit there. I got the better end of that deal for sure." —Alyssa Giacobbe