All Aboard the Audissey


1199826701In case you haven’t noticed, it’s nearly 70 degrees out and, according to our typically (in)accurate weatherpeople, the rest of the week calls for more mild temps. This, readers, is the perfect time to practice your 2008 resolutions. You know, the ones about exercising and getting to know your city better.

Take a tip from Bostonista and start by downloading a Boston Audissey tour. Not to be confused with that other Homeric voyager, the local company makes audio walking guides for iPods and MP3 players. Now, we know what you’re thinking (audio tour = snoozefest, right?), but you’re wrong.

Created and narrated by Southie writer Rob Pyles, who, apparently really loves his watering holes, the 1-mile, 1 hour guide is packed with insider tips from local personalities like Mighty Mighty Bosstones frontman Dicky Barrett and mafia chronicler Dick Lehr. It’s upbeat, clever, and fun, and clearly targeted to an aging—and ADD-riddled—MTV generation.

We took to the streets with Pyles’s voice (dubbed over a slightly distracting folksy-techno groove) and learned much about our fair city, including:

-What do Charles Dickens, JFK, Malcolm X, and Ho Chi Minh all have in common? They spent lots of time at the Omni Parker House. (JFK proposed to Jackie at table 40.)

-Former Boston mayor James Michael Curley and then newspaper magnate Frederick Enright engaged in a legendary smackdown outside the Old State House. Curley, accoding to Pyles, “was a tough son of a bitch… he knocked [Enright’s] ass out.” Anyone for a Menino-Baron reenactment?

-FBI agent Bob Fitzpatrick was one serious badass: Disguised as North End drunks, his team infiltrated the Angiulo family headquarters at 98 Prince Street to eventually bring down the Hub’s biggest mafia circle… all within spitting distance of Dino’s, which, per Pyles, has “truly amazing subs.”

Bostonista is really, really out of shape.

So get downloading and get going. Our freak winter weather won’t last forever.

Boston Audissey, $10, audisseyguides.com.