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Deck out your digs
You'll need more than that giant Bob Marley poster when you move in this fall. Here are 21 places to find furnishings for your room - one neighborhood at a time.
BY NINA MACLAUGHLIN

You're here. You came back. The city's not the same without you.

Don't let the locals convince you of the student scourge - that you're part of an infestation, like, say, carpenter ants. As much as they want to believe otherwise, from August to May, you're what makes this city hum. It's up to you to set the tune. So make yourself at home.

To combat the notion that you guys arrive in August and recklessly saturate the city, try not to think of yourself as visiting for nine-month stints. Go to class, go to parties, sprawl around on your respective campus greens, but get to know your neighborhood. And you might as well start while running those just-moved-in errands. Be it a cinder-block dorm room, a shared apartment, or a frat-house basement, it's easy to tack up a Bob Marley poster and call it a year. You may be in a rush to get settled, but wandering around the neighborhood will do wonders for your street cred. Below you'll find a rundown of the top student neighborhoods, along with the stores that'll help make your room a home and the city your own.

Allston
Rock city. Student ghetto. One of the most densely populated areas around, Allston is filled with Brazilians, Russians, Chinese, hipster chicks with slanting bangs, and quarterbacks with visors and bulging biceps. It's rowdy. It's loud. It's Boston's quintessential student realm for its cheap(ish) rents, cheap eats, plentiful bars, and music. Whether you live in Allston or not, it's a primo place to find budget goods to fill up your pad.

At the bottom of Harvard Avenue, which stretches through the heart of Allston and on into Brookline, you'll find Ace Model Hardware (22 Harvard Avenue, Allston, 617.782.5131, www.acehardware.com). It's not just for wheelbarrows and weed whackers (although it has those, too). Grab a blender, a frying pan, a clothes-drying rack (save your quarters for beer). For bigger items made of wood - a bunk bed, some bookshelves, a kitchen table and chairs, a made-to-order entertainment center - cross the street for Wood Craft Furniture (57 Harvard Avenue, Allston, 617.789.3933, www.woodcraftfurniture.net), where you'll find more budget furniture, desks, couches, and papasan chairs. For comics, CDs, and books, check out Cheap Chic (116 Harvard Avenue, Allston, 617.783.1227), whose name just about captures the Allston aesthetic. Turn the corner and head down Brighton Avenue for Urban Renewals (122 Brighton Avenue, Allston, 617.783.8387), "a family thrift center for the city dweller" (according to the sign); it's a warehouse full of cheap clothes, mismatched chairs, curtains, records, and books. The Yard Sale (105 Brighton Avenue, Allston, 617.254.6626) is aptly named (except that it's indoors) and crammed with all sorts of bric-a-brac bargains - from jazz posters to glass owls and kitschy kitchenware to a leopard-print teapot. Walk up Harvard into Brookline and find Aborn True Value (438 Harvard Avenue, Brookline, 617.739.9000, www.aborntruevalue.com), which mixes the expected hardware goods with a collection of restored jukeboxes, antique radios, and phonographs.

Kenmore
At the intersection of Comm Ave and Beacon Street, this Boston University hub and infamous nightlife mecca has been undergoing a major face-lift over the past couple of years. The Kenmore T stop has been redesigned (the glass elevator should be working soon), and a few fancy-pants restaurants line the sidewalk, allowing people with neat hair and high heels to eat chocolate croissants. But the square can still help you decorate your digs.

Even if you don't go to BU, you should check out the multi-floor BU Bookstore (600 Beacon Street, Boston, 617.267.8484, www.bu.bkstore.com), which has all sorts of supplies, including posters, laundry bags, and those little plastic buckets to tote your shampoo and shaving cream to and from the showers. Across Comm Ave, feed (or discover) your vinyl habit at Nuggets (486 Comm Ave, Boston, 617.536.0679, www.nuggetsrecords.com), which has survived Kenmore's gentrification. If you don't have turntables, hang the record sleeves on your wall. For that M.C. Escher print, head up Comm Ave to Mostly Posters (1022 Comm Ave, Boston, 617.232.7335).

Stroll back up Beacon and check out Boston Bicycle (842 Beacon Street, Boston, 617.236.0752), because riding a bike is one of the best ways to familiarize yourself with the city's neighborhoods (as well as the character of our drivers). Head back up through the square to Newbury Street. The grittier end of the street intersects Mass Ave not too far from Kenmore, and there you'll find Urban Outfitters (361 Newbury Street, 617.236.0088), which carries more hipster stuff than you can shake a candlestick at. Newbury Comics (332 Newbury Street, 617.236.4930) can also set you up with cool décor and ambient music before you head down toward the Common for pricey boutiques.

Davis Square
From blue-collar to bohemian to the blast of gentrification that raised the rents and ousted the artists, Davis Square has changed - but part of its Slummerville roots remains. The dark and divey Sligo hunkers across the street from the Joshua Tree; the Someday Café is a few blocks away from Starbucks; and upscale Indian at Diva is around the corner from ribs at Redbones. It's not exactly an exercise in extremes, but there are a bunch of different flavors in Davis Square. Pluto (215 Elm Street, Somerville, 617.666.2005), for example, with its yuppified mix of quirky cups and glasses, hanging lamps, mirrors, wall clocks, and wine racks, is about a two-minute walk from a quirk of a different color at the Goodwill Store (230 Elm Street, Somerville, 617.628.3618, www.goodwillmass.org), where you can dig through the giant carts outside or wander the racks indoors. Serendipity rewards the patient searcher. The Caning Shoppe (200 Elm Street, Somerville, 617.776.0100) might be more your grandparents' speed, with classic Shaker and wicker furniture, but if you need a rocking chair or a high stool, check here. Local indie record-store chain CD Spins (235 Elm Street, Somerville, 617.666.8080, www.cdspins.com) covers every possible music taste, and indie bookstore McIntyre and Moore (255 Elm Street, Somerville, 617.629.4840, www.mcintyreandmoore.com) specializes in hard-to-find, used, and out-of-print scholarly books.

Harvard Square
Home to the Mohawked, the tweedy, the blue-blood, the break dancer, Harvard reigns as the most famous square in all of Greater Boston. Some of the landmarks remain: Out of Town News, Bartley's, Grendel's, the Brattle Theatre, the ancients at chessboards. But much of the counterculture that defined this Cambridge zone has been washed away in the rising tide of corporate homogenization.

The consignment shop Second Time Around, tucked next to Charlie's Kitchen on Eliot Street, deals mostly in vintage duds. Second Time Around Living (1 Brattle Square, Cambridge, 617.354.2096, www.secondtimearound.net), across the street and around the corner, is a roomful of upscale used and antique furniture for those who favor the mahogany and upholstered look. Crate & Barrel (48 Brattle Street, Cambridge, 617.876.6300; 1045 Mass Ave, Cambridge, 617.547.3994, www.crateandbarrel.com) has two outposts in the Harvard Square vicinity; the one on Brattle Street features all sorts of all-purpose housewares, and the other on Mass Ave stocks furniture exclusively. Not far from Crate & Barrel furniture is Bowl & Board (1063 Mass Ave, Cambridge, 617.661.0350, www.bowlandboard.com), a family-owned place with nooks, knobs, shower curtains, salt and pepper shakers, cutlery, rugs, and occasionally live acoustic music. Sooner or later something will bring you to the Middle East in Central Square, and right nearby there's an Economy Hardware (438 Mass Ave, 617.864.3300, www.economyhardware.com), another brimming hardware shop to help you carve your niche wherever you happen to live.