🤯🍹 Dry January doesn’t have to be … dry?

It’s Thursday, Boston.

📅 You might have made your ins/outs list for 2024 … but we made one for Boston. And it’s pretty on-point, if we do say so ourselves. Ins include: Complaining about the Pats and Blue Line supremacy. And on the outs: rainy weekends and waiting in line for the Cop Slide. See the complete list here.

👀 What’s on tap today:

• Snow storm news du jour

• ‘Rona on the rise

• A Masshole exodus

Up first…

DRY JANUARY

Boston’s free spirit

If you’re doing Dry January, but you don’t tell anyone, are you actually doing Dry January? Well, our way of sharing the news is by kicking off our three-part Dry January series covering everything from the best bars for mocktails to going “California sober.”

Up first: The state of spirit-free drinks around Boston. 

🤮 Until recently, certain booze-free alternatives haven’t been all that tempting. Specifically in the mocktail department. Most N/A cocktails have a tendency to taste over diluted or thin, “that’s why you see a lot of stuff with sugar and juice [in them],” said Tom Mahne, the bar manager at The Lexington in Cambridge. And mixing a sugar bomb doesn’t require a ton of craft as a bartender, “so if anyone can do it, why would a customer buy it?” asked Seth Freidus, owner of Good Company, a new cocktail bar in Charlestown.

🍹 So more local bars have begun treating their cocktails and mocktails as equals. Which is thanks, in part, to a recent cultural shift towards sober-curiosity: A recent study revealed that Gen-Zers are drinking less than older generations. “It’s a fun challenge to try to create [a mocktail] with the same satisfaction,” said Rob Ficks, Pammy’s bar manager, making sure there’s enough sweetness, bitterness, and acid. And those flavors are on full display with creative ingredients like ​​juniper and chamomile syrup in Pammy’s NA-groni, baobab powder and orange blossom water in Comfort Kitchen’s baobab express, and roasted red pepper in Good Company’s spicy margarita. 

🍸 And instead of having only one or two mocktails on the menu, there are several. Restaurants like Comfort Kitchen in Dorchester offer nearly the same number of alcoholic and booze-free options, and it’s not by accident. “I think we’re moving into a space where people are becoming more open-minded with how they want to experience the outside world in general,” said Kyisha Davenport, Comfort Kitchen’s general manager and beverage director, and it’s important for gathering spaces “to be as welcoming and accommodating as possible.” 

👀 But despite progress made in the booze-free department, we've got a ways to go. “If a 10 is ‘we’re doing it,’ we’re at like a four or five,” Davenport said. In addition to beefing up the number and quality of spirit-free alternatives on menus, Davenport thinks small things like hiding the spirit-free options at the bottom of a menu page need to change. “I think there’s something really to that,” she said. “It’s subtle, but it’s saying you’re ‘othering’ those folks ordering them.”

QUICK QUESTION

🍹 Are you participating in Dry January this year?

CITY

Quick & dirty headlines

❄️ Start warming up the plows! Most forecasters are now pretty confident that a “plowable” amount of snow will fall from Saturday night into Sunday, with significant sources indicating that we might see over half a foot of snow, and potentially even a winter storm watch sometime soon. No promises, though, since it’s still a little early to say for sure. Plus: Rumor has it that there might be another (if slightly more rainy) snowstorm on the horizon early next week. Stay tuned!

😷 The post-holiday COVID déjà vu is real. Coming off the back of a lot of holiday commingling, the conditions are right for a perfect COVID storm with a low vaccination rate and a new, highly infectious variant. And while there isn’t exactly consensus on if things are worse than last January (we’re still waiting on the most recent data), healthcare workers agree that infection rates are rising quickly, and it probably won’t stop anytime soon (one doctor said they haven’t seen so many of their employees sick since 2021!). 

💼 There’s a shred of good news on the migrant work permit front. The number of work permits held by new arrivals in Mass.’ emergency shelter program has tripled in the last two weeks, rising from 813 to 2,713 as of Dec. 28. The rapid growth is thanks, in part, to two weeklong clinics co-run by the state and federal government to speed the process along. These numbers signal a degree of hope that families will soon be able to exit the shelter system, which currently faces unprecedented demand, with about 391 families on its waitlist.

🚚 Massholes don’t wanna be Massholes anymore. A new study from a national moving company found that more people are leaving Mass. than nearly any other state, with 56.6% of their customers leaving the Commonwealth. Most cited reasons like family, retirement, and job opportunities. Meanwhile, our New England neighbors Vermont and Rhode Island both landed in the top five states that people moved to. Maybe it has something to do with the housing crisis. Or the MBTA. Or … the nightlife.

ONE LAST THING

Polar plunge pics

Have you ever found yourself wondering about the random holes in your walls? Or the standalone toilet in your basement? Whether they charm, annoy, or just straight up confuse you, if there’s something … quirky in your New England home that you can’t quite explain, it’s likely a remnant from another era. 

The day-to-day functionality of things like built-in calling card holders, laundry chutes, or even those pencil sharpeners that are attached to the wall might have gone the way of the dodo, but their presence in some older homes in New England provide a certain charm, delighting and confusing realtors and buyers alike, writes Megan Johnson for the Globe,

You can read about all of the random tidbits, including underground trash receptacles, here.

— Written by Gia Orsino and Emily Schario

🚽 Thanks for reading! BTW, those random toilets are called “Pittsburgh potties,” and yes, they do have a purpose. 

💰 The results are in: We’re impressed.Almost half of you knew that Boston’s minimum wage was just $11 dollars in 2018. One reader said: “Hey, at least we've finally headed in the right direction.”

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