🤪💃 City Hall is getting TURNT

🫵 Do you have a beard and a guitar? Can you rock French braids? It’s your time to shine: Blackbird Doughnuts is hosting a Noah Kahan lookalike contest at the ~end of August~ with a $100 cash prize AND free doughnuts!

👀 What’s on tap today:

Up first…

We refuse to accept that sunsets are getting earlier … So we’re making the most of our summer weekends while we can. You in?

Here’s what’s happening:

🤑 Snag a sweet secondhand steal. PSA: Raspberry Beret’s end-of-summer sale is happening all weekend long at its Allston and Cambridge locations, where all summer stock will be 30-50% off.

💃 Dance the weekend away. First up: Boston’s Summer Dance Party at City Hall on Aug. 14 with DJs and local food faves. Then throw it back at High Street Place’s Home by Midnight Party on Aug. 15 (for the party gals who’ve got pilates Sunday morning). Expect ‘90s and ‘00s bops all night long till 11 p.m. 

🐟 Feast your eyes … on the fisherman! I.e., eat your way through the North End’s Fisherman’s Feast now till Sunday. And make sure to bookmark the Best Meatball Contest ($10 cover) on Aug. 15 and the “Flight of the Angel” show on Aug. 16.

🏮 Get lit at the zoo. Your jaw will be on the floor after journeying through the Franklin Park Zoo’s epic Boston Lights experience starting Aug. 14. Expect lanterns of penguins, great white sharks, tropical fish, and more!

🎶 Get turnt on the Greenway. Grab a drink and some glow sticks, then bust down at Dewey After Dark on Aug. 14 to house, EDM, and techno hits. Bonus: Night Shift Beer Garden is staying open late just for you!

🧺 Picnic in the name of self-care. Join Aesthetic Rose’s community picnic on Aug. 15 to make friends, chat about all things wellness, and even enter a gift raffle. Just make sure to BYO picnic blanket, food, bevs, and water!

🛍️ Treat yo’self to a vintage haul. Select Markets is shuttin’ down Harvard Square for a vintage block party on Aug. 15. Think: 70+ vendors, free drinks, temp tats, the works. Ready for round two? Check out Style Exchange’s Southie thrift market that same day.

😘 Pick out a mushy book for your main squeeze. Harvard Book Store is hosting a book swap on Aug. 15 for Bookstore Romance Day. You and your bestie/SO will ~secretly~ shop for each other (plus get 15% off the book!), then reveal your picks at the end. RSVP here!

🖼️ Catch a vibe at the ICA. Get down on Aug. 14 at Vinyl Night in Seaport for soul, reggae, and disco music, then mosey on over to Eastie for the Watershed Block Party on Aug. 15 for live tunes, games, art installations, and more. Note: There’s no water shuttle this time, sorry.

🥒 Celebrate your gut health in style. Enter: Somerville’s Fermentation Festival on Aug. 16. Sample and shop local fermented foods, like kombucha and pickles, and learn how to make sauerkraut in a guided demo. Bonus: It’s free to attend! 

🥳 Interrupting today’s newsletter for a very special announcement: It’s Kelly’s birthday! You know her words! You love her jokes! And Emily is particularly grateful for her superb office barista skills. While it’s only been a few months, it truly feels like she’s been a B-Sider forever. <3 We hope your special day is filled with a killer Olivia Dean playlist, some new camera gear, and 2028 Olympics tickets. Everyone say: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KELLY!

Boston is running out of time to work out al fresco. Our advice? Take advantage of RITUAL, the high-energy wellness party that takes over Park City in Southie on Saturday mornings through October. A ticket to RITUAL includes your choice of workout — RITUAL Run Club, Battista Bootcamp HIIT, or Handle Bar Pilates. Stay after class with pals to enjoy a live DJ, redeem your drink ticket, try the cold plunge lounge, and browse wellness freebies from on-site vendors. Catch them tomorrow morning in Southie!

💃 Boston’s thinking about how to keep the party going. Mayor Michelle Wu met with local leaders this week to talk about ways to rally the good vibes and the $$$ boost we saw this summer. For context, locals and tourists spent ~$83 million for World Cup festivities and generated ~$1.5 million in taxes, just in the second half of June. Some ideas that got thrown around: streamlining permits, providing more support and funding for small bizzes, and making 3 a.m. last call and social drinking districts more permanent. Yes, yes, and yes, please! 

🔥 Meet our new heat chief. You know our climate change situation is bad when Gov. Maura Healey appoints the state’s first — and the nation’s second — heat resilience officer. Meet Katie Schlick, formerly at U.S. Climate Alliance and the Biden admin (under the National Climate Advisor). With hotter summers and more heat waves, her goal is to tackle the impacts of extreme heat in Mass. and create an action plan to address challenges on vulnerable communities, infrastructure, and national resources. 

💅 The Harvard COOP is starting ~fresh~. In case you’re new here, the COOP used to be much cooler back in the day … but now it’s all Crimson gear. So they’re testing a new model in its Allston location, ft. curated books and vinyls, products from student startups, and an events space, to see whether customers stick around and come back. Plus, they’ve zhuzhed up their merch at their flagship store, expanded their programming, and even plan to host supper clubs (copycat, jk), plus other community gatherings.

Four Hobbits walk into a bar … And no, it wasn’t a Saturday night in Southie.

“Lord of the Rings” stars and former Hobbits Sean Astin, Elijah Wood, Dominic Monaghan, and Billy Boyd were having the ultimate boys weekend in Boston for this year’s Fan Expo (celebrating 25 years of LOTR!) — anddddd ofc they documented the whole thing. 

They dined at La Royal in Cambridge for some Peruvian grub, said hi to our famous historical statues, chowed down at Neptune Oyster, and even grabbed a brew at Green Dragon. 

The funniest part? People magazine saw the photo of them at La Royal and reported they “look unrecognizable” (lol).

Naturally, Monaghan called out People in an Instagram selfie: “All four of us have been luckily blessed with slow aging skillz! What an odd headline! ‘Unrecognisable’?! Hard disagree!” 

FWIW, we think you look great!

— Written by Kelly Chan and Emily Schario

💉 Thanks for reading! What can we say? Second breakfast is nature’s Botox.

💜 Special shoutout to today's sponsor, RITUAL Boston, for supporting local journalism and giving us the best way to be a morning person … even on Saturday.

🍣 The results are in: 47% of B-Siders think cream cheese on sushi is 100% a sin. One reader said, “Bagels and lox is the only time cream cheese and seafood belong together.” Correct take!

📝 Correction: Bookstore Romance Day is taking place at Harvard Book Store, not Lovestruck Books. Our bad!

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