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Sneaky Sneakers

A secret room for pimped-out pumps

Bodega2Photo: Susan Ogan

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ere’s something so underground that even most Boston natives don’t know about it: Walk two blocks east on Mass. Ave. past the artsy kids on MacBooks outside the Berklee College of Music, hang a left onto Clearway Street, and look for the inconspicuous bodega among the brownstones stocked with gum and Vitamin Water. Go directly to the vending machine against the back wall like you know what you’re doing. And don’t try to buy a soda. It’s actually a door that slides open to reveal sneaker paradise, complete with a DJ spinning and shelves filled with hard-to-find men’s and women’s Nikes and Creative Recreations, just to name a few, plus art and graff books and mix tapes. Holding a purple shopping bag without a label, as you’re sure to be doing when you leave Bodega, has never felt so cool. Even Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz have shopped here. Well, assuming you think Tom Cruise is cool.

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The vulcanizing process that made it possible to make rubber soles for sneakers was invented by Charles Goodyear in a tenement in Woburn in 1839.