Best brewpub
Brewpubs and ballparks: they go together like, uh, saloons and stadiums, like alehouses and arenas, like ... well, you get the point. But just to really hit it home, local giant Boston Beer Works keeps one foot in Fenway and the other in the FleetCenter area - and it's the fans who keep 'em both hopping. Sporting a look that's half factory warehouse, half construction zone, this pair of pubs makes even the whitest-collared among us wish we had hard hats and lunch pails to prop up our next brewskies - even if they are golden ales garnished with blueberries, or any of the nearly 20 other microbrews on tap at any given time (Great American Beer Festival medal-winners among them), rather than cans of Schlitz. As for the surprisingly serviceable grub, nothing says happy hour - or for that matter, halftime - like a good old bucket of gravy fries.

Cambridge Brewing Company is located nowhere near a sports facility. It is, however, in Kendall Square, whose creepy biotech-industrial pall could drive anyone to drink. Luckily, CBC compensates with a comfy green-and-blond-wood interior - you might call it pub lite - charmingly dotted with stained-glass portraits of the beloved brews that also, of course, grace the taps, be they house specialties such as the Charles River Porter or seasonal varieties such as the "herbal-tea-like" Weekapaug Gruit Ale. A pint of your fave with a basket of house-made potato chips should grant you the strength to sally forth into the sci-fi world.

Boston Beer Works, 61 Brookline Avenue, Boston, (617) 536-BEER, 112 Canal Street, Boston, (617) 896-BEER, www.beerworks.net; Cambridge Brewing Company, 1 Kendall Square, Cambridge, (617) 494-1994, www.cambrew.com.