🙋‍♀️⚽ A sports bar MADE for the girls

It’s Monday, Boston.

💥🎟️ Best Day Ever is just FIVE. DAYS. AWAY. Sooooo … we’re dropping another flash sale! If you haven’t grabbed your tickets yet, now’s your chance for a sweet deal. Tickets are 50% OFF until Tuesday at 11:59 p.m., so act fast! Snag your ticket here. 

🥳 And happy (belated!) birthday to Corinne Holroyd and Leah Barrett Demers! Come to Best Day Ever, and we’ll sing to you IRL. We hope your days were AMAZING.

👀 What’s on tap today:

• Higher ed’s firing spree

• Self-driving cars face a rough road

• In sickness and in … Storrowing?

Up first…

GOOD NEWS

Sports, skydiving, and shore birds

It’s summertime and the sun is shining … that’s all the good news we need, right? WRONG. Real ones already know the B-Side’s policy on good news: You can never have too much. 

Here are the feel-good stories you might’ve missed this month: 

🏀 This hometown hero got her flowers. Everybody knows Caitlin Clark was in Boston this month. But for teammate Aliyah Boston, a Worcester native and No. 1 pick in the 2023 WNBA draft, the league’s second-ever Boston game was also a homecoming. While she was in town, Boston not only announced herself as an investor in Boston Legacy FC, but the state honored her by declaring July 14, 2025 “Aliyah Boston Day”. Go OFF.

🙋‍♀️ You’ll never need to beg a bartender to turn on a women’s game again. How’s this for iconic? The same group of besties who created Watch With Us Boston after getting repeatedly shut down trying to watch women’s games at local sports bars … is now going to be at the helm of Boston's first-ever brick-and-mortar women’s sports bar, our local franchise of The Sports Bra. Talk about full circle.

✈️ An 86-year-old skydiver is barnstorming New England. On this episode of “you’re never too old to do the thing,” 86-year-old Kim Knor jumped out of her first airplane in 1959. Sixty-six years later, she’s *this* close to her goal of hitting 1,000 dives, and this month, she notched a ton of jumps in New England during a trip that’ll bring her to 900 by August. Watch her take an EPIC leap at Boston Skydive Center.

🐦 These tiny birds are doing BIG things in Mass. Meet the piping plover. Back in 1986, these adorable birds (they’re basically walking cotton balls) were dangerously close to becoming endangered. Now? With protections, their numbers on the Atlantic Coast have almost tripled … mostly thanks to the nearly 1,200 nesting pairs that currently call Massachusetts home. That’s more than double the number in any other coastal state. 

🏆 This BU coach made the Hockey Hall of fame … with a little help from his friend. Legendary coach Jack Parker was expecting some of his former players to be inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame this year. What he wasn’t expecting? That one of his friends, Bernie Corbett, had been secretly campaigning for Parker himself to join them. Corbett spent over a year researching, compiling, and eventually presenting a pitch to show the committee how deserving Parker is. And spoiler: It worked.

TOGETHER WITH THE MASSACHUSETTS STATE TREASURY

New side quest unlocked: Find unclaimed money 

💰 You’ve looted every chest, collected every coin, and searched behind every waterfall… but have you searched your own name? The Massachusetts State Treasury holds billions in unclaimed funds, from forgotten savings accounts to a phone bill you might have accidentally overpaid. A free name search could reveal surprise money waiting for you — no cheat codes required. Search your name, complete the quest, and collect your reward today. 

CITY

Quick & dirty headlines

🎓 Who’s bearing the brunt of university layoffs? Hint: It’s not faculty. As universities grapple with a laundry list of ~economic challenges~, non-teaching staff like event planners and marketing professionals are usually the first on the chopping block. That’s a big change of pace for an industry with unusually high retention rates thanks to its solid benefits and pay. And here in Mass., where ~320,000 people work in higher ed and universities dole out tens of billions in pay and benefits every year, the impacts of cuts are even more pronounced.

🚇 The MBTA’s low-income fare program is popping off. In its nine months up and running, it has already exceeded the agency’s year one expectations. So far, nearly 30,000 people have enrolled, including over 13,000 Bostonians, mostly hailing from Dorchester, East Boston, and Beacon Hill. Now, trips with discounted fares make up 3 to 4% of all the MBTA’s rides. Want in? If you’re in an approved state assistance program like SNAP or MASSGrant, you’re eligible for half-priced fares across the system. Apply here.

🚗 Boston officials aren’t too hot on self-driving cars. And they let us know at a City Council hearing last week. ICYMI: Autonomous vehicle (AV) company Waymo recently mapped Boston for potential future service. But at the hearing, local officials worried whether AVs are equipped to operate in Boston’s unhinged traffic scene (think: windy streets and snowy winters) and about their potential to displace human drivers. To be fair, Waymo reps did dispute most of these points, but with potential regulations on the way, don’t expect a robot Uber anytime soon.

📵 You won’t see any videos of Ghost’s TD Garden show. That’s because it was the venue’s first-EVER cellphone-free concert. Tickets to see the Swedish metal band came with the condition to lock your phone away in a pouch you carry on a lanyard during the show. The pouches were locked and unlocked at the door, and in case of emergency (or … compulsive texting?), phones could be used in five designated areas. And guess what? Despite the 11,000+ crowd, the process went smoothly, and the effect was pretty epic.

QUICK QUESTION!

📲 What do you think of locking up phones at a concert? 

THINGS TO DO

Weekday checklist

💄 Catch this summer’s must-watch series. “The Summer I Turned Pretty” is in its final season, and The Anchor is hosting weekly watch parties every Wednesday to celebrate with themed frozen drinks AND free popcorn.

👠 Keep up with your hot drag summer. Aeronaut’s monthly drag night is BACK July 30 with performances by queens Coleslaw and Severity Stone. The vibe: Summer beach bangers. The dress code: Show some skin. Grab tickets here.

🎄 Celebrate Christmas in July. For its annual movie night, Fenway Park is spreading some Christmas cheer and playing “Elf” on July 31. Tickets are $12 a pop. Don’t wanna shell out? Catch “The Avengers” for free July 30 at Hood Park (with free snacks!).

👭 Make friends in your 30s. You’re 30-something, flirty, and thriving, but where do you meet new friends? At the Thirty & Thirsty Thursday Club … duh! They’re meeting for drinks at D16 on July 31. Grab tickets here.

📚 Looking for your next romantic read? Step one: Grab a copy of Meghan Quinn’s “Till Summer Do Us Part” and lock in. Step two: Discuss alllll the ~romance~ at Porter Square Books: Boston Edition’s romance book club July 31.

🌃 See this local museum after dark. Harvard Art Museums at Night is the museum’s monthly bash with FREE access to all 50+ art galleries, plus food, drinks, and a DJ. And it's going down on July 31.

🏺Join the granny hobby gang. Pottery with a purpose is coming to Trident on July 31 for a night of pottery and speed friending. Tickets are $50, but that includes all pottery materials, instruction, all your new creations … and hopefully a new bestie!

⛺ Book an EPIC local camping trip. On Aug. 2, you can be part of the first ever camping trip on Spectacle Island. Here’s the deal: It’s BYO-everything, including camping supplies and food, and it costs $55. But if you have the goods, your ticket covers ferry fare, your campsite, nature walks, s’mores, and breakfast!

ONE LAST THING

In sickness and in … Storrowing?

Tired: Storrowing your U-Haul on Sept. 1. Wired: Storrowing a party bus … on your wedding day. YUP. That actually happened. 

Newlyweds Steve and Varteni Akian were on their way to their reception at Venezia Boston from St. James Armenian Church — where they had literally JUST said “I do” — when they felt a little bump. Turns out, like countless U-Hauls and trucks before it, their party bus had hit the top of a bridge on Storrow Drive. And yes, the moment is on video.

Thankfully, everyone was safe, and as locals, the couple understood exactly what had happened. Even better: Miraculously, the bus driver was able to back out of the situation and get them to the reception only 10 minutes late. 

As for the couple? They didn’t sweat it. In fact, they’re taking it as a sign that they’re meant to be together. 

— Written by Gia Orsino

💒 Thanks for reading! A couple minutes of inconvenience for the most iconic wedding story ever? TBH, we’d take it.

💜 Special shoutout to today’s sponsor, the Massachusetts State Treasury, for helping residents reclaim what’s rightfully theirs.

🥵 The results are in: 35% of B-Siders said that 90 degrees on a summer day is WAY too hot. One reader said: “I live in New England so that I don’t have to deal with this weather 😭.”

🎵 🛍️ Don't forget to grab your tickets to Best Day Ever, our Aug. 2 food, music, and shopping par-tay at Artists for Humanity!

💃 Keep up with us @BostonBSide on IG, TikTok, and Twitter. Send comments and suggestions to [email protected] or [email protected].