This weekend in Boston: Flowers, photos, festivals and more
By: Jim Martinho - Friday, Jun 6, 2014 - 10:44am
(Photo credit: Andreanna Moya/Creative Commons)
This weekend Boston offers up some solid date ideas, plus a class on getting better at dating so you can take advantage of them. Although it’s totally OK to go to any of these events alone. You have a phone, right? You’re never alone when you have a phone, that’s what I always say.
* The Bridge Repertory Theater’s production of “Gidion’s Knot” opens Saturday night, but you can catch a special pay-what-you-can preview Friday. The suspenseful two-person drama follows a tense parent-teacher conference between a mother and her son Gidion’s fifth-grade teacher. Mom probably just wants Gidion to do well in school so he’ll go to a good college and get a good job and be able to afford full-price theater tickets instead of having to scour the internet for special pay-what-you-can preview showings. 6.5. 7:30p. Pay what you can
* Highlighting the talent and creativity of artists using low-tech tools to create high-art images, the Somerville Toy Camera Festival kicks offFriday with simultaneous opening receptions at five galleries. The exhibition will be shown through June 28, and there’s a workshop Saturday on using toy cameras. If stuff made with toys is considered art now, I might have to dig up that eight-minute recording of fart noises I made on a Talkboy in 1993. 6.6. 6p. FREE
* Sorry, hippies, ICA First Fridays: Flower Power doesn’t have anything to do with ‘60s tie-dye art (the MFA did that last year). Nope, they’re just celebrates the opening of Jim Hodges’ “Give More Than You Take” exhibition that features a stunning installation of silk flowers. Eastern Standard mixologist Naomi Levy will lead three demonstrations incorporating flowers into craft cocktails. I was taught that the only acceptable colors for an alcoholic beverage were black, brown, clear, and beer, but I might have to add “infused with lavender simple syrup and covered in elderflowers.” 6.6. 5p. $15
* Speaking of flowers, or maybe not because a clover is kind of a flower but also kind of just grass, pick a team, clovers. Anyways, Clover teams up with Dann and Martha Paquette of Somerville brewery Pretty Things for Clover + Pretty Things Take Cambridge, a two-mile beer crawl from between Clover’s Kendall and Inman Square locations, featuring the launch of Pretty Things’ brand new Fringe Union brew. 6.6. 6p. $49
* Boston Center for Adult Education’s Art of Effective Dating class with author and dating coach Lauren Mackler will take you from single to snuggle-buddy in 90 minutes. You might even meet a potential partner in class, even if that sounds like a romantic comedy pitch: Late-twenties career-focused woman takes a dating class hoping to ace her romantic life and meets an aimless stoner/”entrepreneur” who thought he enrolled in “How to Add Bacon to Any Sandwich.” 6.7. 10a. $60
* Due to construction projects on the Charles, this year’s Cambridge Arts River Festival ditches the river for Mass Ave in Central Square — but don’t worry, there will still be plenty of Cambridge, Arts, and Festival. The annual event attracts 200,000 people to check out music and performance stages, art demonstrations, games, food, and the Japan Festival. That’s right: A festival within a festival. Festival inception. If you die in Japan Festival, you wake up in Cambridge Arts and River Festival. 6.7. 12p. FREE
* You can do more with herbs than just mix them with a stick of butter and rub them under the skin of a whole chicken that you roast for a guaranteed crowd-pleaser at dinner parties: You can also heal yourself. The Herbstalk 2014 community conference at the Armory in Somerville offers a variety of classes on herbal topics, urban plant walks, and a free marketplace featuring herbal vendors from around New England. 6.7 and 6.8. 9a. $15
* It’s yoga. At Fenway. It’s FenwaYoga. You just need to pay the $25 registration fee and, here’s the kicker, raise $250 for the Red Sox Foundation. That sounds tough, but it’s like a quarter from each of your Facebook friends, or a dollar from each of your Twitter followers, or $50 from each of your real-life friends, or probably $125 from each of your parents because they’re the only ones who can’t resist your sad-puppy face. 6.8. 9a. $25