DEAR READER: FIVE DRINK MINIMUM: NEIGHBORHOOD EDITION

If an alien anthropologist dropped down in Boston to study our culture, I would take him to a bar.

Not because I think we’re all over-boozed drunks (no matter what the studies say), but because you can tell a lot about a place by its bars and pubs—by who goes there and what they’re drinking and talking about.

There are few places where we go, voluntarily and regularly, and put ourselves in a social environment, and it’s the people who make a bar distinctive. Life happens in a bar: first dates and chance encounters and friends catching up over many pints.

Stories are made and told. Problems are solved and created.

Many Boston bars were once strongholds for ethnic groups—Irish or Portuguese or Chinese—or of a local union. While, arguably for the better, this is not as common today, you can still see signs of the city’s characteristic drinking culture: the comforts of a Jamaica Plain pub, the youthful chic of a Central Square cocktail bar, the mixed pack of longtime residents and recent grads at an Allston dive.

For this rendition of our bi-annual Five Drink Minimum, we visit five different areas of Greater Boston (Allston, Jamaica Plain, Kendall-Inman-Central Squares, Davis Square, and downtown Boston), and five different bars in those neighborhoods for a taste of the city’s diverse bar scene.

Spoiler alert: This is a great drinking town. Get out there and explore it.