Samantha Brown's Places to Love

-I'm in a destination that is easily one of the most enjoyable in the world.

A historic city bursting with a youthful vibe, you can't help feeling a part of.

It's a destination that knows its place in history and wants you to understand yours.

And where locals inspired by founding principles create revolutions of their own.

It's a city where the world is your oyster that hits all the right notes.

-[ Singing operatically ] -Oh!

[ Laughs ] I'm in Boston, Massachusetts.

[ Upbeat tune plays ] I'm Samantha Brown and I've traveled all over this world.

And I'm always looking to find the destinations, the experiences, and, most importantly, the people who make us feel like we're really a part of a place.

That's why I have a love of travel and why these are my places to love.

Samantha Brown's "Places to Love" is made possible by... [ Bird chirping ] -The rhythm of the waves.

The calming sounds of nature.

On the Southwest Florida coast, there are wide open beaches and hundreds of islands.

Sometimes doing nothing can mean everything.

Learn more at fortmyers-sanibel.com.

-We believe watching the world go by isn't enough.

That's why we climb... ...pedal... ...and journey beyond the beaten path, on storied rivers, with a goal to ensure that every mile traveled turns into another memory.

You can find out more at amawaterways.com.

-All the untamed beauty of the Canadian Rocky Mountains and the American Southwest, experienced on a journey by rail.

Rocky Mountaineer, proud sponsor of "Places to Love."

-The world is full of breathtaking destinations and experiences.

AAA wants to help turn vacation dreams into reality.

Wherever you want to go, AAA has services to help you before, during, and after your trip.

Learn more at AAA.com/LiveTV.

-I grew up about an hour from Boston, and even though the harbor is undeniably famous, it's this city's river that holds a lot of romance for me.

I have always loved watching people out on the Charles.

But today I am no longer a spectator.

Alright, so now we're going to start to incorporate the arms here.

Right, see there?

Yeah.

-[ Laughs ] -That is the part that trips folks up.

It's a relatively simple motion with so much to refine.

So if you get frustrated, that's okay.

-The Olympians in Tokyo had the same frustration I'm having right now.

-Exactly, you are literally and figuratively in the same boat with everybody else.

-[ Laughs ] -I'm Malcolm Doldron, head coach of lightweight women's rowing at Boston University.

This is my 10th year as head coach at B.U.

-Once Malcolm was satisfied that I had the basics down, he introduced me to the rest of my teammates this morning.

-So we're just going to treat her like a teammate.

-Alright?

-Oh!

Oh, no.

I mean, like, a nice -- like, like like -- treat me like your grandmother is here.

[ Laughter ] -Putting the boat on the water, you give it a shove, and you can -- everything kind of quiets down.

When you're out there on the river, it's just quiet and peaceful, and you have you and your teammates in the boat, and your oars, and a singular focus of making the boat move as gracefully and as quickly as possible.

Okay, you'll come forward.

Put the blade in the water.

Push, lean, finish.

Alright.

And then you want to make sure that you tap the handle down.

-Like Malcolm said, this is a simple motion that is very difficult to refine.

-Nice.

That was a good one.

-Oh, sorry.

-Little early.

That's alright, that's alright.

-Yeah, keep rowing.

-The goal is for all eight of us to have one perfect stroke... -Keep your arms straight.

-...every time.

-There you go.

-Go.

-While crewing for Boston University may not be in the cards for you, anyone can get out onto the water with an organization called Community Rowing Initiative.

-Rowing is probably the most inclusive sport that there is.

We have masters rowers age 60 and above.

We have para athletes, collegiate athletes, high school athletes all trying to perfect the same stroke.

It's just a great community to be a part of.

-How many oysters do you shuck in a day?

-So, as a house, we normally do between 2,000 to 3,000 oysters a day.

And there's usually a couple of us back here, though, so... -2,000 to 3,000 oysters a day?

-On a weekday.

-For three years running, Dan Coll has won the title of fastest oyster shucker on the East Coast at Boston's International Seafood Festival.

-My fastest time was a dozen oysters in 48 seconds.

-Let's see it.

So for doing these guys real quick, just... -Wow!

Along with being the oyster shucker of the most famous oyster house not only in Boston but possibly the United States, is you -- you are a showman, right?

This is your stage.

-You come here for an experience.

You got to talk to the customers.

You got to keep them entertained.

They want to be here.

They want to see some fun stuff.

They want to hear the jokes, they want to see you shucking.

You got to put on a little show, like a little song-and-dance kind of thing.

The important thing is that when you're shucking, you always want to pay attention to the knife while you're going.

You never want to be looking away because that's when you might mess up and slip.

So always pay attention to the knife.

It's the most important thing.

-[ Laughs ] But I wasn't here just to watch the show.

I was ready for my close-up.

So, Joe, I love the fact that I am eating a plate of oysters in the same way they have for hundreds of years at this very restaurant.

-The restaurant is -- goes back to 1826, so in five years we will be celebrating our 200th anniversary, the oldest continually operating restaurant in the United States.

-In the United States.

-And it has another distinction as well.

-It's a national historic landmark.

-The restaurant is old, but the building is even older.

Records show it's been a landmark for over 250 years.

The building is full of history, both American and international.

The upper floor is where Isaiah Thomas published The Massachusetts Spy, considered the oldest newspaper in the United States.

-An exiled Frenchman who lived on the second floor, went back and became the common man's king, Louis Philippe.

Fascinating.

-He became the king of... -King of France.

And he lived in this building, that we're aware of, for six years.

-How does it feel to be the owner of a place that is historical on so many levels?

-It's maintaining tradition.

We have to shepherd what the people come here for.

The expectation factor.

-With its dedicated staff and history, oyster-loving patrons will always find their landmark at the Union Oyster House.

I have to tell you, I'm really nervous about this.

Are people generally nervous when they're about to find out what I'm about to find out?

-Sometimes.

-Do they have a reason to be nervous?

-Almost always.

[ Laughter ] -My name's Lindsay Fulton.

I'm the vice president of research and library services, and I'm also a genealogist.

The New England Historic Genealogical Society was founded in 1845.

So we've been doing family history research for 176 years.

Our library and archive is eight stories.

We have thousands and thousands of volumes of material.

Anyone can come and use our facility to connect with their past.

A good genealogist is a good detective.

There is so much to be done on everyone's family history.

We looked first into your maternal line, and we found a whole lot of German.

-[ Laughing ] Yes, there are.

Yeah.

All those Germans can be traced back to my eighth great-grandfather, Johann George Heckman from Hessen-Cassel, Germany.

And came to America during the Revolution as a soldier in King George's army.

Uh-oh, well, you know, we'll let that slide.

-And we have a map here actually of where your ancestors are from in Germany.

-Okay.

And how old was this map?

-This is from 1795.

It's part of our rare book collection, but we still like for our members and guests to use what we have in the collection.

So even if it's something old, we still let you look at it.

So now we're going to look at your dad's side.

-Yes.

-Brown is very difficult to research because they have incredibly common name.

You can see here that John marries a Smith.

-[ Laughs ] -Great.

Very helpful.

-We just want to keep it easy for many, many generations.

-Yes.

Yeah.

So I'm going to show you the connection that I think is most interesting is you are related to this Thomas Carter who marries Arabella Williamson.

-1672?

It went all the way back to -- oh, my goodness.

-Yes, exactly.

I just want to show you in this book.

This is Thomas and Arabella, right?

And then their children is Daniel.

And then this goes so on and so forth.

But you'll notice that there's an individual that you might recognize there on the end.

-Theodore Roosevelt Jr. -Yeah.

So he is your cousin.

-Theodore Roosevelt is my cousin?

-Yes.

Yes.

Yeah.

-[ Laughs ] Oh, my gosh.

-And because you're related to Theodore Roosevelt, you're also related to Eleanor.

-[ Gasps ] -Mm-hmm.

-[ Laughs ] That's incredible.

-Yes.

-Oh, my gosh.

Who knew that I, Samantha Brown, am related to one of the most revered, celebrated women ever?

But Lindsay wasn't quite finished.

-I just want to bring your attention to another person that's -- that's in this family.

And the last name might sound familiar to you.

-Okay.

No.

Joseph Oswald Jr. -Yes, exactly.

So you are seventh cousins with Lee Harvey Oswald.

-Oh, my gosh.

[ Sighs ] Family.

We take the good with the bad.

But I certainly loved finding out about my ancestors, how far my family goes back, and how our story goes on.

Why do you think it's important that we really know where We come from, who our family is?

-Because there's people like the Heckmans, your eighth great-grandfather.

They're not the Teddy Roosevelts of the world.

They're just normal people in your ancestry tree that you might not have known about and that might have been forgotten.

And that's why I love this job.

176 years later, we're still inspiring people to connect with their past and learn more about their family history -With history clearly on my mind, I'm visiting one of Boston's most iconic landmarks, the Old South Meeting House, built in 1729 as the city's third church.

-So think of this as a place where neighbors gathered together to worship, where they came to see each other's children be baptized.

Think of this as a seat for the community.

-So looking down at just the physical aspects of this meeting house, I've never seen anything quite like it.

Are those boxed seats?

-Yeah, the box pews, as they were called, were rented by families, and we have records that tell us who had which pew at different points in time.

If you were on this level, the balcony where we're standing right now, you were probably a tradesperson.

You were an artisan.

You worked with your hands.

If you were up in the upper balconies, you were enslaved or you were a junior apprentice, you were under somebody else's supervision.

So to be in this space was to know immediately what the structure of the community of Boston added up to.

-The Old South Meeting House would go down in history for the role it played in a defining event -- the Boston Tea Party.

-On the night of December 16, 1773, there were probably 5,000 people in this room, which now has a capacity of like 650.

So they were angry and ready to take action, and they charged out and down to the wharf and pushed the tea overboard.

-I mean, clearly, the Revolutionary War truly defined who we were as a nation, like, for us and the rest of the world.

What do these spaces, like the Old South Meeting House, inform us of our future?

-It's a great question.

While the Revolution may have defined the direction for our country, it didn't resolve the fundamental debates that sit at the center of what it means to be an American, right?

We still argue over what the word "we" in "We the people" means, who belongs in that circle of we.

We still wonder what our recourse is if our voices aren't heard or if the community that we belong to is being ignored.

To step in here is to remember that we too are revolutionaries.

We are part of that same unbroken conversation going back over 250 years, and our job is to grapple with those same questions, to find the answers that are right for our own time, and to build the city and the country that we want to live in together moving forward.

-If we could, just to get my full Italian experience, if we could like...this and do the passeggiata.

-Perfetto, perfetto.

-See?

See?

In Italy, we go like this.

It says perfetto.

This is the Italian sign.

-This is the Italian way.

-I'm Frankie Pasquale, and welcome to my North End.

This is where I live, this is where I work, and this is the place that I love the most.

-Frank's family emigrated to America from the Amalfi Coast when he was four, and now he's a major restaurateur here in the North End.

You are referred to as the mayor of the North End.

And there's a lot of -- a lot of advocacy you do.

All these businesses that we see are really a part of maintaining the authenticity of the North End, right?

-You're not going to see the lines in the streets that the red, white, and green and a thousand flags.

We know we're Italian.

And I don't think -- I don't think we have to prove it.

-[ Laughs ] And yet the proof is everywhere.

Bricco Panetteria makes over 1,000 loaves a day in this small, tucked away bakery.

And I do mean tucked away.

A narrow alley isn't the only thing that keeps this bakery from being hidden.

And if you're still confused, just follow the smells.

It's a subterranean bakery?

And the bread that's made here goes into the sandwiches made here.

Next door to the bakery is the Salumeria and Pasta Shop, personally stocked by Frank from his trips to his mother country.

-Our number one sandwich is the panino with cheese -- prosciutto, homemade fresh mozzarella, the tomato, the fresh basil, and the extra virgin olive oil.

When people come here, they have everything that's Italian -- the cheese and the pasta and the making of the mozzarella.

-Can we just talk about the making of the mozzarella?

Come any day of the week, and you'll find Joe handmaking them, forming each and every white glowing ball.

And if he likes you, you may be offered a baby bocconcini.

It's so good.

-Thank you.

-My walk with Frank through the neighborhood ended in a perfect spot.

-I saw this sign in Italy and I said, "Wouldn't it be nice if we put a sign right here on the 50-yard line of the North End?"

So one morning at about 4: 00 in the morning, I put a little ladder up there.

I had it already premade.

And it's been up there now for about 28 years or so.

And today there's probably more pictures of that than Paul Revere's house.

-I'm Colin Knight, and I'm a Roxbury native.

Grew up in this neighborhood my whole life, and I give people the chance to experience the food, history, and culture of Roxbury, Dorchester, and Jamaica Plain.

This neighborhood is very special to me because it is the Black epicenter of history and culture since the 1960s.

-Colin is founder of Live Like a Local Tours Boston, and he's showing me how his neighborhood has quite a few civil rights icons.

Malcolm X lived here, as well as two others who aren't always associated with living in Boston.

-So here we're at the Roxbury Love Story.

This was created by ProBlak.

This is Coretta Scott King here.

And on the other side, you have Martin Luther King Jr. And so this love story starts with a phone call.

-She's on the phone.

-She's on the phone.

-There's the cord.

-Yes.

And so a mutual friend introduces him through a phone conversation, and they had that phone conversation and actually end up having their first date through this phone conversation, in the South End.

-Do people know about Martin Luther King Jr.'s -- -I think that they know that, you know, he came here to study at B.U.

in 1951, he studied theology, but I don't know if they know his real significance to the neighborhood of Roxbury.

Instead of living on the B.U.

campus, he decided to live amongst his people.

-Is there any civil rights movement history that happened here in Boston?

-Absolutely.

The March on Roxbury happened in 1965, and he came back after doing marches in the South.

And this March on Roxbury was actually the first civil rights march of the North.

He marched with 22,000 people from Columbus Avenue all the way down to Boston Common Ground.

Yeah, and so what he said was that Boston wasn't Birmingham, but we had to do better as a city to take care of people of color.

And at the time, we're looking at the 1960s, we're looking at urban renewal, we're looking at needing resources for schools.

All of these things are happening, and he's coming back to support us as a neighborhood because he loved the neighborhood so much.

-But Colin feels that it's important in his tours to introduce visitors to local businesses to understand their vital role in strengthening the community.

-Frugal Bookstore, we're in the heart of Roxbury.

We wanted to just really bring books and literacy to this community.

There was always a library here, but not an actual bookstore here.

We wanted our books to reflect the people in the community to showcase just the vast selection of authors of color.

And there are so many books written by authors of color.

So when children come in the store, their faces light up because they see books that -- covers that look like them.

And so for us, that's where it all is.

That's where the magic is.

-Could you have this bookstore in anywhere else but Roxbury?

-We would not want to be any -- any place else.

I actually grew up in Roxbury.

It means a lot.

This is where we were meant to be.

-Everything we're doing, from art to culture to food in this neighborhood is to make sure that we showcase the area in a positive light.

Come and see and walk amongst the people.

-In the nearby town of Brookline is a neighborhood restaurant where the mood is modern, the food is tingling, and the cocktails award-winning.

-My favorite cocktail is the Father's Advice.

This is a cocktail that's very special to me because I actually won a national rum competition with this in 2015, so I was able to represent the United States.

-You actually represented the United States?

-I went to Australia and battled I think it was 42 other countries.

My name is Ran Duan.

I'm the proprietor, bartender, of Sichuan Garden and Blossom Bar.

This is our family business.

We've been here for 25 years.

-I got to taste Ran's famous Father's Advice.

Ohh.

-It's like really balanced.

-Oh, it's perfectly balanced.

And then I got to meet his actual father, Michael, and his mother, Den, who cook, serve and treat people to their authentic Sichuan recipes.

-If you look at the menu, we have a lot of our O.G., what we call authentic mom recipes in the front, and then on the back of our menu we have "Americanized" comfort food, we call it, where, you know, it's best of both worlds, if that makes any sense.

Sichuan spice isn't just about, like, in your face, like spicy, like habanero spice, but, you know, it still gives you a little bite where you know -- Sichuan cooking is all about what we call xiang, which is very fragrant.

-Xiang.

-Xiang.

So we use a lot of sesame oil, garlic, ginger, stuff like that.

Super aromatic, that when you cook, it just kind of transitions into that.

And this is actually a perfect example of a dish that I think is the definition of xiang.

Essentially, this is [Speaks Chinese] which translates to pretty much "water boiled beef."

-These are your recipes, Den?

-Yeah.

-Yes, you do all the cooking.

-Yeah.

-And these guys don't help at all.

-We do all the eating.

[ Laughter ] So right now I'm tasting that mala, that Sichuan pepper.

And I feel it just right here on the side of my tongue, but not -- nothing crazy.

We've kind of figured out a wide range where it's kind of approachable for everyone.

-The goal was to be more than a Chinese restaurant, but a neighborhood gathering place in a relaxed setting with great cocktails... Oh, my gosh!

...and food.

So, what brought you to this country?

-I study in the Louisiana University.

I get master.

One year there and then transfer, go to B.U., Boston.

-What did you study?

-Opera performing.

Singer.

-Opera?

-Yes, he's very good at opera.

-You're an opera singer.

-[ Laughs ] So good.

-[ Singing operatically ] -Oh!

[ Laughs ] That's amazing!

-So when a traveler comes to Boston, there are a lot of great neighborhoods to see.

But I would love for you guys to explore the neighborhoods of Boston that are away from the downtown area, because when we think about the city of Boston, we don't often think about the melting pot that exists here of cultures from all over the world.

-When you come to Boston, I encourage you to ask as many questions you can of Bostonians.

We really love talking about our city.

We love talking about the history that happened in this city.

And we'd love to share that with you.

-Why do people come to the North End of Boston?

Because it's so European.

This is the authentic neighborhood of Boston.

-This is a place that's becoming more inclusive.

It's building communities.

Over 200,000 students descend on this city every year in search of intellectual thought.

And so we're excited to see what Boston can become while still keeping its roots and being that beautiful city on a hill that it always was.

-When a city allows us to learn from our history and get excited about what's ahead, that is when we share a love of travel.

And that's why Boston, Massachusetts, is a place to love.

-For more information about this and other episodes, destination guides, or links to follow me on social media, log on to placestolove.com.

Samantha Brown's "Places to Love" was made possible by... [ Bird chirping ] -The rhythm of the waves.

The calming sounds of nature.

On the Southwest Florida coast, there are wide open beaches and hundreds of islands.

Sometimes doing nothing can mean everything.

Learn more at fortmyers-sanibel.com.

-We believe watching the world go by isn't enough.

That's why we climb... ...pedal... ...and journey beyond the beaten path, on storied rivers, with a goal to ensure that every mile traveled turns into another memory.

You can find out more at amawaterways.com.

-All the untamed beauty of the Canadian Rocky Mountains and the American Southwest, experienced on a journey by rail.

Rocky Mountaineer, proud sponsor of "Places to Love."

-The world is full of breathtaking destinations and experiences.

AAA wants to help turn vacation dreams into reality.

Wherever you want to go, AAA has services to help you before, during, and after your trip.

Learn more at AAA.com/LiveTV.