Best escape from the Freedom Trail

What will Pete and Penny, vacationing from Peoria, remember from their trip to historic Boston? Most likely some combination of the Freedom Trail and Quincy Market, or perhaps a day in Concord. But for anyone who actually lives here, these destinations evoke unpleasant memories of forced marches with Mom and Dad, or else inspire cynical commentary about the tourist industry that's turned swaths of downtown into a theme park of bauble-mongers, Olde Chowderhouses, and mock-authentic brewpubs.

But Boston also has a lesser-known and uncommodified past. The Bizarro Boston Web site offers an excellent introduction to this counter-history. Disaster buffs can find out where the Great Molasses Flood and the Cocoanut Grove fire took place. True-crime devotees can learn all about the Brink's Heist, the Boston Strangler, and Charles Stuart. Even long-time Boston residents are probably unaware that their city contains a book bound in human skin (now in possession of the Boston Athenaeum), or that both Malcolm X and Ho Chi Minh once worked at the Parker House hotel.

Other listings on the site range from the kooky (Boston's skinniest house, reportedly built to block a neighbor's view) to the downright ooky (a Cambridge railing dented by the head of a suicide jumper). There is no chance that any of this stuff will make the Duck Tour script, which is exactly why the site is well worth a visit.

To check out the Bizarro Boston Web site, go to http://www.boston-online.com/bizarro.html.