🤯🏠 Buying a house in Boston IS possible

It’s Monday, Boston.

🍲 Soup season > stick season. If you’ve been craving a good bowl of soup, stew, chili, or bisque (and you don’t want to make it yourself), Boston.com put together a list of where to get ’em. Our two cents: Start with the lamb chili at Zo Greek.

👀 What’s on tap today:

• What’s up with the drones?

• Bad news for local rats

• Essex’s peacock problem

Up first…

12 DAYS OF B-SIDE

All I want for Christmas is good news

On the eighth day of B-Side the newsletter gave to me: Lots of good news, five delish hot chocolates, Phillip Eng’s Spotify Wrapped, volunteer opportunities(!) … tips for Boston winters, one pop-up review, local gift recs, and a Boston holiday tree. 🎶

Maybe it’s the Hallmark movie of it all, but good news and the holidays just go together. So consider these feel-good stories you might’ve missed our holiday gift to you:

🗞️ There’s a new newspaper in Roslindale. Like many of us, 11-year-old Joseph Zyber spends a lot of time laying around and playing video games — but his mom wasn’t a fan. So, she tasked him with creating a project that was good for his brain and body, and the Waterman News was born. It’s a one-page newspaper about their street, Waterman Road, and Zyber puts it together with his mom, then prints and delivers it to his neighbors. Adorable.

🌳 The Pokanoket Tribe got 225 acres of land back. After agreeing to the deal following a protest back in 2017, Brown University has transferred 225 acres of land in Bristol, R.I. to a preservation trust established by the Pokanoket Tribe, which has historical and cultural ties to it. “For the first time in over 340 years, we unlocked the gates to the property for ourselves and walked onto our land,” said the tribe’s Sachem (chief). Activists are hoping the deal sets a good example for other universities.

🏘️ Boston helped over 200 people become homeowners. For the average Bostonian, the idea of buying a home in the city is … laughable. But this year, the city’s slew of homebuying assistance programs — a focus of Mayor Michelle Wu’s administration — is changing that. In 2024, the programs facilitated the purchase of 235 houses, condos, and apartments by providing education and downpayment and loan assistance to prospective homeowners who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford it.

🏳️‍🌈 This Mass. high school will be a safe haven for LGBTQ+ students. Allison Druin and Ben Bederson couldn't find a school for their transgender son that they felt would support him academically and emotionally. So, the pair (who both have backgrounds in education) decided to make their own. No biggie. Enter: The J.S. Bryant School in the Berkshire foothills, the first private, nonprofit therapeutic high school in the country dedicated exclusively to the needs of LGBTQ+ students. It’ll open in 2025.

🎒 All Boston kiddos can enjoy free museums and zoos. Another Mayor Wu W: She expanded the Boston Public Schools’ Sundays program to include all Boston school-aged kids. The program previously allowed only BPS students (and their families) free access to the city’s best museums and zoos on the first two Sundays of the month. Plus, a few new museums, like the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, and the Museum of African American History, were also added.

B-SIDE AWARDS

Welcome to the first-ever B-Side Awards! 

A.k.a. our new mini year-end awards show that aims to recognize the best, worst, silliest, floppiest, and wildest things we covered in the newsletter. 

We’ll be asking you to vote for the best of the best in each category through Dec. 19 (we’ll reveal all the winners on Dec. 20). So without further ado, our next category is:

Mass.’ best viral moment.

TOGETHER WITH THE LINCOLN HOTEL

Ho-ho-home is where The Lincoln is

🎁 🎄 🎁🎄Trade blow-up mattresses for plush bedding and awkward holiday small talk for Michelin Key-winning charm. The Lincoln Hotel is ready to be your festive retreat, where cozy vibes meet Instagram-worthy decor straight out of a Hallmark movie. With special offers that’ll make your wallet cheer and all the holiday magic you need, it’s the perfect spot to make new memories. Your holiday glow-up starts in Maine. Book your stay today!

CITY

Quick & dirty headlines

🚌 We’re in a new era of MBTA buses. On Sunday, phase one of the agency’s Bus Network Redesign went into effect, changing routes and improving service frequency across six lines: the 86, 104, 109, 110, 116 and 117. We can expect service changes on every route (you can find the specific changes here); and routes 104, 109, 110, and 116 are now frequent bus routes that run every 15 minutes or better. All the new bus schedules are posted if you want to check them out. Now, we’ll be waiting to hear about phase two. 

🛸 It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a … drone? Folks across Massachusetts are reporting a bunch of mysterious drone sightings, from the Cape to the North Shore to Brookline, in a trend that follows thousands of similar reports in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. On Saturday, Gov. Maura Healey said she’s “monitoring the situation closely,” and state police are prepared to “support federal authorities,” but per the National Security Council, there’s no reason to believe the drones are a public safety threat. 

🐀 The rats are going to HATE this news. The North End has debuted 20 of its new rat-proof trash cans — which, unlike the old cans, need to be manually opened with a pedal. The new cans are one of the first steps in the city’s Rodent Action Plan, which explained that open trash cans can largely be blamed for Boston’s growing rodent problem since they basically moonlight as rat buffets. Next, the new cans will pop up on the Common and around Boston Housing Authority properties, too. Take that, rats!

🍺 Pour a big one out for Whitneys. Another local bar bites the dust: Whitneys, a 70+-year-old Harvard Square dive bar, announced it’s closing at the end of the year. According to Whitneys’ owner Dan McGuire, the closure is the result of a months-long battle with the building’s landlord that either boils down to petty complaints or overdue rent, depending on who you ask. This fall, it was settled in court that the bar would close by year’s end, but McGuire has vowed to “fight to the last hour.”

THINGS TO DO

Weekday plans

🛷 Hit the slopes in the Seaport. And by slopes, we mean the pile of shipping containers that create Harpoon’s Slopeside, three very legit snow-tubing lanes at the brewery. This year’s official hours aren’t live yet — so we’d recommend calling ahead.

🎄 DIY a last-minute gift. When all else fails, give an ornament. You can make your own chic painted oyster-shell ornament with Southie Social Circle on Tuesday.

🎥 Celebrate the history of Kwanzaa. The next installment of the Roxbury BPL’s Friday Films series is “The Black Candle,” which chronicles the holiday's growth out of the Black Power Movement in the 1960s. 

🧩 Sweet talk over Scrabble. Or … something like that. Club Cafe is hosting a board game speed-dating night for queer women tonight. There will be booze.

👠 Have A Very Hairy Christmas. No, we didn’t misspeak, that’s the name of drag queen Jolene Cuisine’s one-woman Christmas special on Saturday at the Huntington — but we’d nab tickets now.

🍪 Meal prep some cookies for Santa. Or … for you. Learn how to make killer cookies with Clover Food Lab’s director of hospitality on Tuesday, and then, either save them for Santa or bring them with you to Southie Social Circle’s cookie swap party on Thursday.

🏳️‍🌈 Find your new fave queer read. But don’t forget to bring one, too. We’re talking about the Queer History Book Swap with The History Project on Thursday. Any book celebrating LGBTQ+ history goes!

☕ Make your own gourmet hot cocoa. On Thursday, the BPL’s Mattapan branch will host a cocoa meltaway-making class. You’ll take home six little cups of chocolate, marshmallows, and other treats that melt in hot milk to make cocoa.

ONE LAST THING

Essex’s peacock problem

The town of Essex, Mass. has a bit of a problem. A peacock problem, that is. Since late summer, a rather bold peacock has been hanging out around town and expertly evading capture by animal control.  

Apparently peacocks are notoriously “almost impossible to catch,” thanks to their ability to sprint 10 miles per hour, climb, and fly. But this one seems to be rubbing it in. He’s been spotted on decks, at local restaurants, and peering into windows at apartment complexes. While all of that has made him something of a social media celebrity — The Essex Shipbuilding Museum now even sells a stuffed peacock — local animal control officer Amy Reilly has just about had it. 

“They’re so fast, it’s like trying to catch the Road Runner,” Reilly said. “Someday I’m going to write a book with all my animal stories, and this chapter is going to be called ‘Meep, Meep.’”

— Written by Gia Orsino

🦚 Thanks for reading! Peacocks are just hot turkeys. That’s to say, I’d be keeping my distance.

💜 Special shoutout to today’s sponsor, the Lincoln Hotel, for supporting local journalism and offering New Englanders a holiday getaway worth remembering. 

🏆 The results are in: Per usual, we’re not divulging any B-Side Awards results yet. But we will tell you that one reader said this (and we agree!): “Sorry Bennifer is very important to me, no one should eye roll!!” 

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