American Fiction|Athan's Bakery, Washington Square — Three Days of Brookline on Call

When a production takes a neighbourhood it takes more than one address. American Fiction spent three days shooting in Brookline, and the bookstore scene was only the anchor; the crew worked out from it into the surrounding blocks, and Athan's Bakery at 1621 Beacon Street was one of the rooms they used.

Athan's has been a Greek-American family bakery in Washington Square since the 1970s — one of a small handful of places on this stretch of Beacon Street that predates every rent rise around it. The long curved glass case runs the width of the room: baklava and galaktoboureko in sticky rows, éclairs, almond cookies, marzipan fruit, and a wedding-cake window that has not changed its typeface in decades. Marble-topped tables, tile floor, the espresso machine going constantly. It is the kind of ordinary, specific, slightly formal room that a film about class and taste can use without underlining anything.

The C branch of the Green Line stops directly outside; the trolley noise is part of the room. Order a coffee and something from the case, take the table by the window, and watch Washington Square do what it does at four in the afternoon — school kids, dog walkers, the trolley bell. Cord Jefferson said he wanted a Boston with no Fenway and no duck boats in it. This is what that looks like from the inside.

Photo: bakery display case with bread and pastries (Pexels, free licence) — illustrative of a neighbourhood bakery counter.