The South Shore, Explained

People outside Massachusetts hear "South Shore" and picture one place. People from here know it's a dozen towns that would each argue they're nothing like the one next door — and they'd all be a little bit right.

Where it actually is

Roughly: south of Boston, hugging the coast from Quincy and Milton down through Weymouth, Hingham, Cohasset, Scituate, Marshfield and Duxbury, with Braintree, Holbrook, Rockland and the rest filling in behind. Bristol County starts bleeding in as you head toward Brockton and beyond. Nobody agrees on the exact borders, which is very on-brand for the region.

The tells

• The packie run. It's a package store. It is never a "liquor store." If you called it that, you're not from here.
• The exit as an identity. People describe where they live by the exit off the expressway. "I'm off 12." That's a complete address down here.
• The accent slides. It's not the cartoon "pahk the cah" — it's subtler, and it gets stronger the second two people from neighboring towns start arguing about whose is better.
• Dunkin' as infrastructure. Not a coffee shop. A landmark, a meeting point, a unit of measurement. "Two Dunkins past the rotary."

Why we started here

Because it's ours. You can't make town-pride apparel for a place you don't actually know — the whole thing falls apart the second the details are wrong. We know these towns: the fields, the harbors, the reunions, the exact stretch of road you'd defend to a stranger for no reason. So we started with Milton, Weymouth, Hingham and Braintree, and we're working outward from there.

Don't see your South Shore town yet? It's coming. Or get on the list and tell us to hurry up.