South Boston, Massachusetts

South Boston, southeast of the Financial District across Fort Point Channel, includes two distinct areas (map).

The Seaport District, once filled with warehouses, shipping piers and railroad tracks, is now the epicenter of Boston's convention and exhibition activity.

The Boston Convention and Exhibition Center (BCEC) and the Seaport World Trade Center draw thousands of attendees to meetings and exhibitions of all kinds.

South and east of the Seaport District is the traditional center of "Southie," traditionally Boston's Irish bastion, where St Patrick's Day is an official holiday.

Of course, it would not do for the City of Boston to officially celebrate an Irish religious holiday, so the subterfuge is that the celebration is for Evacuation Day, when the British troops occupying colonial Boston were forced to evacuate the city when American forces installed cannons on Dorchester Heights in what is now Thomas Park.

If the northern, western portion of South Boston is all conventions and exhibitions, the southern, eastern portion is one of residential streets close-packed with modest homes. This is the "real" Southie.

The bonus is the long stretch of parks and sea beaches stretching for miles from Castle Island Park east and south all the way to the Bayside Exposition Center, John F Kennedy Museum and Presidential Library, and University of Massachusetts-Boston campus.

Note that South Boston is not Boston's South End, an entirely different residential district just south of Back Bay, separated from South Boston by the Fitzgerald Expressway (Ma Route 3).

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