She later disappeared, and eventually turned up near Fenway. Scott Fayner, alt mag journalist (formerly a freelancer of The Phoenix), was going to walk her out of the bar, but one look away and she was gone. In 1996, Swedish au pair Karina Holmer was partying in a now-closed theater district club before she teetered out. The Liberty Hotel, 215 Charles St., Boston, 85, Zanzibar Nightclub (now closed), Boylston Place: Mysterious murder still unsolved The bar is working on updating the mug shots for a younger crowd - Justin Bieber will soon join the ranks. “There’s fine line between doing it right and being kind of corny,” says general manager Chris McCabe of the jailhouse theme. Several of the featured celebrities have visited their mug shots at the Alibi, including Mel Gibson and Paris Hilton. Celebrities’ mugshots hang in frames on the walls, with jokey “alibis” (Paris Hilton’s alibi: “Whatever,” her blasé catchphrase) written underneath. The bar opened in the jail’s former “drunk tank,” and serves drinks with cheeky names like Jail Bait and Cool Hand Cuke. The prison was built in 1851, but by the 1970s, the prison’s horrific conditions induced riots and eventually forced a federal judge to close the facility.
This jail-themed bar inside the Liberty Hotel alludes to the building’s former life: as the Charles Street Jail, a historic granite prison that once held James Michael Curley and Malcolm X.
Now, you’ll at least know it when you do.Īlibi Bar & Lounge: A drunk tank that attracts celebrities Of course, a couple of these places are no longer in operation so you'll have to settle for scouting out the locale sober, or saddling up at a nearby spot to digest your findings.įor drinkers in Boston, imbibing on some piece of history happens. We've compiled a short list - complete with an interactive map - of some of Boston’s most historic joints, so you can seek out a drink and feel important doing it. We’ve sat on barstools discussing Tinder matches where intellectuals waxed poetic about revolution. We stumble out of spots where drunken patrons went missing or met their demise. We pick our poison where politicians were poisoned, where writers and artists nursed drinking habits that were the death of them. The same is true of Boston bars: That beer you chugged may have been poured from the same tap as Bulger’s last drink, as Reagan’s famous Boston pint, as a Kennedy’s first beer. You can’t walk into a Chipotle or grab a steak without stuffing your face in some place where history was made.
When you start to fall in love with Boston, you begin to stumble upon landmarks in corners of the city you think are forgotten.