I’ve spent my life telling stories — on the page, stage and screen, and lately on the streets of Boston. People remember how a place feels long after they’ve forgotten names and dates. I make it stick.
Nine years as a Boston Globe staff reporter taught me how my city thinks and feels: its contradictions, pride and sense of humor. Every block has two stories, the one that people tell you and the one that hides underneath.
Now those instincts shape the way I guide. So I tell guests about how the most powerful politician in Massachusetts had an older brother — the bloodiest criminal in Boston’s history, the FBI’s most wanted — who beat the feds at their own game.
And why Boston gave its official stamp of approval to a red-light district, The Combat Zone, something that not even New York or Vegas had ever dared. Where “urban renewal” met vice and murder as the city’s good intentions burned out under neon lights.
That’s Boston for you — righteous and reckless in the same breath. Because Boston’s beauty lies not in perfection, but a persistence born on September 7, 1630. My kind of town, one that still whispers between brick facades, arguing with itself.
Post-journalism, I took up a different kind of storytelling. After a decade in community theater, I earned my SAG-AFTRA and Actors’ Equity cards. The voice that I play to the last row also carries across cobblestone streets. Acting taught me what you can’t get from a script: that you don’t perform at people, you invite them in.
When I returned to Boston last year after a stint as a guide in my native North Carolina, I wanted clarity. This city had tried to love me once before, but I was too restless. Finally, I knew what I wanted: the chance to build something of my own.
The best guides are part historian, part performer, and part listener. Journalism gave me curiosity. Acting gave me empathy. Life gave me resilience.
Along the way, I’ve found the voice that keeps people coming back. Every tour I give is in a sense a rediscovery of a city and its people, myself included.
Kind regards/Freddy
