category: Harvard
By: Jim Martinho - Monday, Apr 2, 2018 - 9:28pm
Keep your calendar (and your wallet) full with our picks for 20 free things to do around Boston in April.
1. National Poetry Month Festival
T.S. Eliot’s epic poem “The Waste Land” opens with the line “April is the cruelest month.” But that was way before April was declared National Poetry Month. Boston celebrates with a five-day festival in the Back Bay that wraps up with a weekend of readings by established and emerging poets at the Boston Public Library. All of the festival’s events are free and open to the public.
Wednesday to Sunday, April 4-8 | Event website
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By: Jim Martinho - Tuesday, Mar 20, 2018 - 12:57pm
Today is the first day of spring. Another nor’easter is on its way to dump even more snow on top of three blizzards worth of old snow. Both of those things are true. But it’s also true that any day now it’s going to warm up and all this snow is going to melt and you’re going to forget all about winter like it was a bad date. So take today to mark your calendar with ten of Boston’s biggest and best annual spring events that will be here before you know it. (more…)
By: Jim Martinho - Wednesday, Jan 31, 2018 - 9:37pm
February doesn’t have a lot going for it. It’s one of the coldest and snowiest months. It’s the hardest to spell. And it’s the shortest month, even when it’s a leap year, which is pretty cool! Hey is this year a leap year? It is not. However: You still have to exist through this month, so here’s twenty free events around Boston to keep your calendar (and your wallet) full all February long. (more…)
By: Jim Martinho - Tuesday, Oct 31, 2017 - 4:31pm
We start off November with a Halloween hangover and finish it in the middle of the holiday season. In between, there are plenty of free things to do around Boston. Check out our picks and save your money for Black Friday sales or Christmas shopping. (more…)
By: Jim Martinho - Wednesday, Oct 4, 2017 - 12:39pm
October isn’t just one of Boston’s best months for weather, it’s also home to some of the area’s best free events, from Somerville’s Honk! festival to the Head of the Charles Regatta. Here’s our monthly recap of the best free things to do in Boston this month. (And because it’s October, don’t miss our picks for pumpkin and apple and picking and Halloween events around Boston.) (more…)
By: Jim Martinho - Wednesday, Aug 30, 2017 - 5:57pm
Whether you’re a student moving back to town or just feel like one after a summer spending splurge, everyone loves free things to do. From Allston Christmas to free museums, street fairs and cultural festivals, here’s 50 free events to keep your calendar — and your wallet — full through September. (more…)
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:
By: Jim Martinho - Thursday, Sep 17, 2015 - 4:30pm
You’ve been wiping the sweat off your brow and dreaming of fall weather for most of the last month, and now it’s finally here. So throw on a cozy sweater and feel the leaves crunch under your feet on your way to one of Boston’s many street fairs, artists’ open studios, university lectures, the first-ever HUBWeek festival, and so much more. Oh, and all of these events are FREE to attend, because those pumpkin spice lattes aren’t going to pay for themselves, and no, the guy whose weird name is written on your cup instead of yours isn’t going to pitch in, either. (more…)
By: Jim Martinho - Thursday, Apr 2, 2015 - 1:21pm
Photo by leecullivan on Flickr (Creative Commons license)
You did it, Boston. You survived another endless winter. Except it did end, finally, and now you can go outside without making sure you brought your Chapstick and cradling your phone to your bosom to preserve its battery life. Throw on a hoodie, maybe a light jacket, and check out some of these 200 events happening in April, possibly Boston’s greatest month of the year (that T.S. Eliot was full of crap).
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By: Jim Martinho - Monday, Mar 30, 2015 - 9:29am
(Photo credit: Spablab/Creative Commons)
Get ready for another week of fun beer tastings, cocktail workshops, theater and music events around Boston. Except on Wednesday, April 1, when there aren’t any good events. APRIL FOOLS! There totally are some good events that day. Man, we got you good. You should have seen your face just then. (more…)
