This is a hipster’s guide to Allston.

I know, I know. Many of you indignantly declare – “I’m not a hipster. Don’t assign me with any labels because that then pigeonholes me and what people think about me, though I don’t care what people think about me, which is why you don’t label me in the first place.” Crap.

If you wear skinny jeans, this is for you. If you have an ironic mustache, this is for you.

This is meant to be helpful, so don’t do the hip thing and take a dump all over it. Don’t hate it because it tries to make popular that secret corner of the city that you like to keep all for yourself. Or that it lessens for others the painstaking search you had to go through to find a place to hang out.

This is for people new to Boston who don’t drink Jager bombs, who don’t wash their hair, and who don’t go to frat parties.

The Southern tip of Allston is only a block from where I live, so I shall start there.

Allston, truly begins at the Harvard Ave. T Stop on the B line. Great Scott, a cute little club stands, nestled on the corner of the street, like a welcome sign.

You are home.

  • Great Scott is one of the neatest venues in Allston, hosting big national acts such as O’death, The Pipettes and Neva Dinova, as well as smaller local acts. There is music almost every night of the week, and dancey Friday night with DJs and live acts, called “The Pill.” This bar is sort of an anomaly in the area, for it has good sound, cheap drinks and 18+ shows.
  • On the other side of Harvard Avenue (one of Allston’s two main drags) sits Inbound Pizza. They put bacon on their Hawaiian pizza. Bacon.

Up a block on Commonwealth Avenue stands a metaphor for Allston itself, two bars located directly across the street from each other:

  • The Joshua Tree (eastbound) and Our House (westbound). J-Tree, as the blow-outs call it, is a mammoth, two floor bar that boasts the bro-iest dude-bros that have ever walked the earth. An example of what I mean.
  • Across the street from J-Tree is “Our House.” While bars in general are havens for smarmy, drunk mass-holes, Our House is a bit quieter, has nice bartenders who are usually more than happy to talk to you about their tattoos and board games like Battleship and Connect Four.
  • Back on Harvard Ave., continuing north there is just about the shadiest McDonald’s outside of Central Square (across the river in Cambridge), and Marty’s Liquors, the cheaper of the two main Allston liquor stores. Both of them card, so freshman, don’t email me asking which store doesn’t.
  • The burned down shell of a building next the McDonald’s is the remains of the Grecian Diner. Before burning down last June, the Grecian was the best place to go to get traditional, greasy diner food in the area.
  • Half way down the block there is Mr. Music, which, on its steel grate signs, claims Boston’s widest selection of guitars. This is not true. The entire staff of Mr. Music consists of weird middle aged dudes with long hair and bald spots. The type that you might see roaming the back corners of Guitar Center. Yuck. That being said, Mr. Music has a lot of more interesting and rare guitars, like Jaguars and an extensive wall of Gretschs.
  • Across the street is Dragon Wok, one of the cheapest Chinese places in America. You shouldn’t eat there unless you’re looking to catch a tapeworm.
  • At the end of the block is Blanchards Liquors, across the street from Redneck’s Barbecue. If you’re thinking of eating at Redneck’s, circle back to Dragon Wok.

The epicenter of Allston lies at the intersection of Brighton and Harvard Avenues. There one can find many great ethnic restaurants. Korean, Thai, Vietnamese and Indian.

  • Standing proudly on one corner is Herrell’s Allston Café. If you like vegan breakfast or crazy homeless people, Herrell’s is for you. They have homemade ice cream and really fabulous coffee, but those are just about the only things you won’t have to wait for.

Harvard Ave. ends just one block farther north and sports a costume shop, Korean bakery, and a place called Pizzawings.

  • One block east of Harvard on Linden Street, the three big Allston party streets — Ashford, Gardner and Pratt — begin. On weekend nights, young people spill out into a confetti of drinking, kissing and hailing cabs. Every September there is the new crop of freshman in herds of 20 looking for parties.
  • The corner of Harvard and Cambridge streets is just as fertile as Harvard Ave. and Comm. Ave. Obrien’s pub, a small dive bar with cheap drinks and three dollar Monday concerts called “Premature Mondays” rubs elbows with Stingray Body Art, which not only offers standard tattoos and piercing, but also, really weird permanent makeup.
  • That last top on our mini-tour is only a block up Cambridge Street. It is the Allston Sound Museum, a practice space for local bands. There is no mandate on the quality of bands at the practice space, so if you’re a brand new band starting out, or the greatest band to ever walk the earth, the sound museum will have you. Just beware, many of the bands are pretentious, loud and awful, and the practice rooms reach more than 110 degrees in the summer. It smells, decidedly like rock ‘n’ roll.

We’ve merely scratched the rich surface of Allston in this installment. Tune in next Wednesday for part two of “A Hipster’s guide to Allston.”