Class Act

Fifteen smart secrets of the brainy set

ou wouldn’t be on this site if you didn’t like to learn a little something new once in a while. For that matter, you probably wouldn’t live in Boston. You’d live in someplace like, say, Tampa, or Houston. We’re not knocking those places. We’re just saying that, if cities have personalities, ours is that it’s very, very smart. How smart? One third of us have bachelor’s degrees or higher, versus 24 percent of all Americans. Thirteen percent of us have PhDs, versus 1 percent of the rest of the people in the country. Nearly 70 percent of high school grads around here go on to college, versus the national average of 57 percent. Should we go on? All of which means we have a reputation to uphold. We have to work to keep that gray matter sharp, people. Start with these local secrets of the intellectual set:

A science book club for the really, really smart

Where to see classic American and foreign films, cheap

A bar for nerds where even ordering is intellectual

A tiny surviving gem of a bookshop

How to see the night sky up close and year ’round

Learn a little something at the movies

The real birthplace of an author you thought was from someplace else

Go to Harvard and see the stars

A gaming store for the geek in everyone

The home of a famous poet, and the ironic fate of his spreading chestnut tree

Where to find Ernest Hemingway’s stuff

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