Dance parties, naked bike rides, and more weekend events

(Photo credit: rekha6/Creative Commons)

We’re getting into that time of year when you can’t leave the house without immediately sweating through your shirt, so you might as well get sweaty on the dance floor with a bunch of other sweaty, sexy people. And if you wake up with a hangover the next morning? Just sweat it out, baby. Sweat it out.

* Like free stuff? Like fun? Like Fridays? Like alliteration, or at least begrudgingly accept it as the crutch of a lazy writer? Then you’re going to love Free Fun Fridays. The Highland Street Foundation’s summer series offers free admission to museums and cultural venues across the state, kicking off Friday with the Franklin Park Zoo, Mass MoCa, the MIT Museum, and more. Check out the website for a full list of free stuff so you can plan for some spontaneous three-day weekends. 6.27. Various times. FREE

* Cambridge closes down Mass Ave in front of City Hall in Central Square for the city’s annual Dance Party, welcoming thousands of residents to get their groove on to DJ-spun music. This almost makes up for Cambridge declaring war on Uber. Actually if I was running Uber I’d give everyone free rides to the dance party just to stick it to the city council. How about it, Uber?  6.27. 7p. FREE

* Oh, you thought Somerville was going to let Cambridge get all the attention with its quirky dance party? Yeah right. Somerville Local First’s ‘90s Prom: Right Here Right Now fundraiser invites older guests to reluctantly acknowledge that the ‘90s were 20 years ago, while finally giving people born in the ‘90s the chance to slow dance to “I Swear” by All 4 One. Mixologists will be stirring up cocktails with throwback ingredients like Crystal Pepsi and Squeeze-its, OK not really but that would be sweet. 6.27. 8p. $20 

* If you prefer watching actually talented people dance instead of doing it yourself, check out Calamity Co Dance’s modern pop art and variety show at the Democracy Center in Cambridge. The show also features music, comedy, and theater, and you can save $4 on admission if you bring a snack for the communal snack table. And if that snack is a 99-cent bag of Market Basket-brand pretzel sticks, you’ll come out $3 ahead plus you can snag the empty bag and dump the leftover salt right into your face. 6.28. 8p. $10

* “The JerkFest called. They’re running out of you!” Sweet comeback, Costanza, but Saturday’s JerkFest Caribbean festival celebrates Jamaican jerk-spiced food and all things spicy and hot, instead of celebrating jerks (if that’s what you want, just find a Financial District bar). Two sessions will feature tons of food vendors, rum and beer tastings, chef demonstrations, cocktail throwdowns, and live reggae music. 6.28. 11a and 4p. $12

* The World Naked Bike Ride welcomes Boston’s pro-bike, anti-clothing population to ride out from the Common through Cambridge and Somerville. Organizers expect a couple hundred participants, which pales in comparison to the 9,000 that showed up to Portland’s naked ride last month wearing nothing but unkempt beards, tattoos and probably artisan-crafted leather bracelets. Full nudity isn’t required, so if you’re shy you can wear body paint, glitter, pasties, underwear, or even show up fully clothed and say you’re just baring your soul. 6.28. 9p. FREE

* “Get off my lawn!” is probably what your pops would say if someone staged a live concert in his front yard, but luckily the “pops” referenced in Pops on the Lawn is the Cambridge Symphony Orchestra and it’s happening in a public park, not on your dad’s painstakingly manicured lawn that he spent all his time mowing instead of playing catch with you. The program includes a variety of songs from Broadway shows and the movies, and they’ll even give kids a chance to conduct the orchestra. Which as far as I can tell will be totally indistinguishable from what a professional conductor does. 6.29. 3p. FREE

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