Things to do in Boston: Sept. 29 to Oct. 5
By: Jim Martinho - Wednesday, Sep 28, 2016 - 6:57pm
Photo by Wenjie Qiao | Creative Commons
October gets a lot of love as the best month of the year in Boston, so get out and enjoy the weather, the festivals, and our sports teams just owning everyone. Here’s everything going on around the city this week.
* If you’ve never seen the Chicken Slacks play a Thursday night at the Cantab, what are you even doing here, man. What concerts are you going to, artists you heard on the radio? Come on. The band celebrates its 11th anniversary of holding it down in Central Square with a combination of old school funk/R&B and strong mixed drinks that are guaranteed to get you out on the dance floor. 9.29. 9:30p. $6
* The HUBweek festival keeps rolling this week (like a wheel, get it, wheels have hubs) showcasing Boston’s innovation, creativity, and ability to throw a pretty good party when we need to. The week’s biggest social event, Celebrate Boston takes over six floors of the WeWork South Station building Thursday for the kind of not-stuffy night where you won’t feel bad for partying a little at a networking event or for networking a little at a party. Then the festival wraps up Saturday with a warehouse party in the South End featuring Brew the Charles, which is exactly what you’re afraid it is: six local breweries making beer from the Charles River. It’s filtered by a water tech company in Newton, so you can take a big sip and say “I love that dirty water!” and you’ll really mean it. 9.29 + 10.1. Various times, prices
* The fall edition of ArtWeek Boston is back with ten days of mostly free events (yeah that’s more than a week, give ‘em a break they’re artists not mathematicians). The festivities kick off at Thursday’s free Party on the Greenway, a block party meets nighttime arts festival featuring one-of-a-kind musical performances at Rings Fountain, food trucks, games, artistic activations and more. ArtWeek events begin Friday, check the website or the list below for more events. 9.29. 6p. FREE
* If you stopped at the phrase “artistic activations” in that last sentence and wondered if that was just a fancy way to say “art” then yeah, basically. It’s like the neighborhood is a gift card on the shelf before you bring it to the cashier (the artist) and they swipe it (make art) so it’s not worthless anymore. Artists are activating Franklin Park for Saturday’s Franklin Park Art Grove with sculptural installation, music, performance, and dance. And food, because who doesn’t love a picnic on a nice fall Saturday. 10.1. 12p. FREE
* It’s getting to be that time of year when we scare ourselves on purpose, at least a kind of superficial scare that temporarily takes our minds off the existential dread that plagues us all. The Imaginary Beasts ensemble’s production of Angela Carter’s ‘The Fall River Axe Murderers’ at the BCA Black Box Theatre takes a closer look at the tale of Lizzie Borden, Fall River’s second most famous resident, after Emeril. 10.1 to 10.22. Various times. $24
* Yeah, when I was a teen, Emeril was that dude. Sure he didn’t have tattoos or a drug problem like cool chefs, but he made cooking look fun. And now I cook myself restaurant quality meals almost every night. Why am I talking about food right now? Because (segue alert) the Globe’s Let’s Talk About Food festival serves up a day-long smorgasbord of fine food, cooking demonstrations and discussions Saturday in Copley Square. Let’s talk about food, baby! / Let’s talk about umami / Let’s talk about all the gouda, the bad…I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. 10.1. 9a. FREE
* If you like barbecue, or you’re at least barbecurious, this one’s for you: East Cambridge’s Smoke This Rib Fest pits (get it, barbecue pits) some of the city’s cue-masters for the title of best ribs in town. There’s also live music from Ali McGuirk, Roy Sludge Trio, Vapors of Morphine and more. Lately when something starts going well for me, I’ll say “Oh yeah, now we’re cooking with gas.” I highly recommend it, except at the barbecue festival where cooking on a gas grill is a total amateur move. 10.2. 12p. $25 tasting ticket or pay as you go
* The idea of combining music with visuals in a planetarium has been around for decades, probably ever since the first time someone got high and realized it would be even cooler if they were playing Pink Floyd in there instead of an astronomy lecture. Sunday’s special ArtWeek presentation of SubSpace: Prince at the Museum of Science fuses the sounds of one of music’s greatest icons with stunning and inventive visuals on the dome of the Charles Hayden Planetarium. 10.2. 6p. $12
More events that don’t suck:
- 9.29 Le Laboratoire Opening Reception + Block Party
- 9.29 Chance the Rapper at Blue Hills Bank Pavilion
- 9.29 to 10.2 Boston Latino International Film Festival
- 9.29 to 10.2 GlobeDocs Film Festival
- 9.29 Emo Night Boston at the Sinclair
- 9.29 Bar Bocce at Aeronaut
- 9.29 Beachbody Live: Insanity at Lawn on D
- 9.29 Harpoon Yoga & Dance Party
- 9.29 Streets Are For People Rally
- 9.29 Amy Schumer at TD Garden
- 9.29 to 10.1 Richard Lewis at Laugh Boston
- 9.29 Roast Battle at Davis Square Theatre
- 9.29 Aardvark Jazz Orchestra
- 9.29 TedxCambridge
- 9.29 Music + Medicine Panel
- 9.29 Latinx Queer Film Night
- 9.29 International Pancake Film Festival
- 9.29 Chris McDougall + Back on My Feet Run at Janji
- 9.29 MIT Starr Forum: The Warming Arctic
- 9.29 Make It New at Middlesex
- 9.29 elements at Phoenix Landing
- 9.29 to 10.2 Machine de Cirque
- 9.29 to 10.10 Street Pianos Boston
- 9.30 + 10.1 Harpoon Octoberfest
- 9.30 Vundabar at Brighton Music Hall
- 9.30 The Barbazons Final Show at the Middle East
- 9.30 Aussie Wine + Music Rooftop Party
- 9.30 College Night at the Museum of Science
- 9.30 ICA After 5: Henna + Horoscopes
- 9.30 Concrete Sounds: Electronic Music at City Hall
- 9.30 Lot F Gallery Opening Reception
- 9.30 Live Mural Pop Up at PLUG Cambridge
- 9.30 Tanya Donelly at ONCE Somerville
- 9.30 + 10.1 Richard Lewis at Laugh Boston
- 9.30 + 10.1 Raphael Xavier Dance at the ICA
- 9.30 Palaver Strings at the Armory
- 9.30 Fashion Show at Old South Church
- 9.30 Fashion Week Finale: A Kreyol Soiree
- 9.30 MMMMaven Record Fair
- 9.30 EPROM at the Middle East
- 9.30 Forro Zabumbeca at the Milky Way
- 9.30 ‘Sound Politics’ at the Athenaeum
- 9.30 ‘The Market Will Save Us’ on the Common
- 9.30 The Gas Comedy 8th Anniversary Special
- 9.30 + 10.1 Shit-faced Shakespeare: ‘Romeo and Juliet’
- 9.30 The Midnight Zoo at Franklin Park
- 9.30 Sanjay Patel at the MFA
- 9.30 Darko EP Release Party
- 9.30 ImprovBoston Best of Boston Sketch Comedy
- 9.30 Friday Night Flights at GrandTen
- 10.1 Boston Harbor Islands Regatta
- 10.1 Somerville AgriCultural Festival
- 10.1 Free Fall Cruise to Spectacle Island
- 10.1 Somerville Homeless Coalition Road Race
- 10.1 Lauryn Hill at the Wang Theatre
- 10.1 Diarrhea Planet at the Sinclair
- 10.1 Gladys Knight at Lynn Auditorium
- 10.1 Masta Ace, Akrobatik at ONCE Somerville
- 10.1 Alessia Cara at the Orpheum
- 10.1 Waka Flocka at Storyville
- 10.1 Boston Glow Ignite the Nite
- 10.1 New Orleans Suspects at Thunder Road
- 10.1 BPL Concert in the Courtyard
- 10.1 Oktoberfest at Magoun’s
- 10.1 Gilded Fest Music Festival at the Lawn on D
- 10.1 E-Som Market at La Brasa
- 10.1 Boston Flute Festival
- 10.1 Boston Public Library Book Sale
- 10.1 Then We Move: Modern Dance + Street Pianos
- 10.1 Work in Progress at Liquid Art House
- 10.1 Shit-faced Shakespeare: ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’
- 10.1 Equinox Autumn Celebration at Marsh Post
- 10.1 Yoga + Mimosas at Coppersmith
- 10.1 Yes We Catan at Cambridge Innovation Center
- 10.1 Fashion Technology at the MoS
- 10.1 Boston Cupcake Crawl
- 10.1 DIY Gift Wrapping
- 10.1 The Rotating Portrait at Boston Public Garden
- 10.1 Google Geek Street at the Children’s Museum
- 10.1 Somerville Banned Book Readathon
- 10.1 Thorpe Street Epic Block Party in Somerville
- 10.1 Medford Harvest Your Energy Festival
- 10.2 East Cambridge Smoke This Rib Fest
- 10.2 Create Boston
- 10.2 Cambridge Oktoberfest 5K
- 10.2 Somerville Growing Center Harvest Fest
- 10.2 South End Open Market
- 10.2 SoWa Open Market
- 10.2 Barktoberfest at SoWa
- 10.2 The Somerville Flea
- 10.2 Stephen King Burlesque at Oberon
- 10.2 Behind the Scenes at the Theater of Electricity
- 10.2 School of HONK! Dance Party
- 10.2 ‘Life Without Envy’ Book Launch
- 10.2 Beyond Wrestling at the Armory
- 10.2 Billy Bragg at the Wilbur
- 10.2 Nemes at the Lilypad
- 10.3 Science on Screen at the Coolidge
- 10.3 Harvard Science + Cooking Lecture
- 10.3 Chefs for Clefts at the Tip Tap Room
- 10.3 Pairing Wine and Seafood at Select Oyster Bar
- 10.3 Wine and Cheese Tasting at Trident
- 10.3 Urbanity Dance Open Rehearsal
- 10.3 Free Reading at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre
- 10.4 to 10.8 Company One: ‘We’re Gonna Die’
- 10.4 Community Mural Painting at Aeronaut
- 10.4 The Moth StorySlam at Laugh Boston
- 10.4 to 10.16 Broadway in Boston: ‘Jersey Boys’
- 10.4 Business of Hip Hop Symposium at Berklee
- 10.4 Tavern Road Cooking Class
- 10.4 Titus Andronicus at Brighton Music Hall
- 10.5 Creative City: Dancing Elotes in East Boston
- 10.5 Allston Arts and Eats Tour
- 10.5 The Novel Ideas Residency at Lizard Lounge
- 10.5 to 10.7 Actors’ Shakespeare Project: ‘Hamlet’
- 10.5 + 10.6 Boston Design Market
- 10.5 + 10.6 Boston Made & Friends Pop Up
- 10.5 Porches, Japanese Breakfast at the Sinclair
- 10.5 ‘Blue Man World’ Book Release
- 10.5 The Art of Sake Brewing
