😎💸 FREE things to do in August

It’s Monday, Boston.

🦪 It’s also National Oyster Day! If you’re looking to celebrate without breaking the bank, there are $1 happy hour oyster deals around the city quite literally every day of the week. Happy slurping!

👀 What’s on tap today:

• Our cruel Sumner is OVER

• Stephen Nedoroscik’s two-peat

• An Olympic-sized paycheck

Up first…

AUGUST FREEBIES

It’s a free-for-all

Bad news: It’s the last full month of summer. Good news: The freebies go HARD this month.

Here’s what’s going down around Boston in August that won’t cost you a dime:

👋 Kiss your back-to-school FOMO goodbye. Miss your college pals? Let the “Make Friends After College” Facebook group be your guide. The 20,000-person group of 20- and 30-somethings on the hunt for buds will host its annual summer party at The Grand on Aug. 17 with free food, drinks, and a DJ. Not into clubbing? They’re also hosting a Cambridge ice cream crawl meetup on Aug. 9.

🍿 Truffle shuffle your way to the Common … because Alamo Drafthouse is putting on a special outdoor screening of “The Goonies” on Aug. 9. Bonus: There will be an IRL treasure hunt with prizes and free Goonies flags for the first 1,000 people. 

🎥 Speaking of free outdoor movies … The Seaport is closing out summer with a series of free Monday movie nights (which kick off tonight!), featuring a lineup of some of B-Side’s favorite comfort movies like “Mean Girls” and “School of Rock.”  

🏓 Dink like no one’s watching. Harpoon Brewery is celebrating National Pickleball Day on Aug. 8 with free court rentals at the Pickleball Social Club. New to the game? You can drop by for a free beginner clinic on Aug. 10 and learn your way around the kitchen. Just make sure to register!

🚴 Bluebike because you want to. Not just because there’s a T shutdown. Blue Cross is sponsoring free Bluebikes Day Passes each Monday in August for National Wellness Month. You can get unlimited two-hour pedal bike rides and free ebike unlocks. Here are the unique codes for each Monday:

• Aug. 5: BLUECROSS05

• Aug. 12: BLUECROSS12

• Aug. 19: BLUECROSS19

• Aug. 26: BLUECROSS26

🇮🇹 Feast your eyes on the North End. August is THE month for feast season, where the neighborhood celebrates a different Italian saint or martyr each weekend with music, dancing, street food, and parades. Make sure to pencil in Saint Anthony’s Feast from Aug. 22 to 25, which has become the largest Italian Religious Festival in New England.

🎤 Head to Boston’s OG free venue. The City of Boston announced its upcoming lineup of free festivals and events at City Hall Plaza, and this weekend is stacked. See: the GLD FSTVL celebrating hip-hop culture with live music and DJs, a free chess tourney for all levels, and an open mic series for LGBTQ+ communities of color (with free food!). 

🥮 Shoutout good health and the harvest. Chinatown’s August Moon Festival, one of the GOAT Chinese festivals, is back on Aug. 11, with a day of Asian folk dancing and lion dancing, along with tons of food and shopping vendors. 

TOGETHER WITH LONG’S JEWELERS

Go ahead, fwd this to your S.O. 

💍✨ Now is the time to say “I do” to discounts. Long’s Jewelers is offering special pricing on a stunning collection of high-quality wedding, anniversary, and stackable rings in celebration of their Wedding & Anniversary Band month. This is your chance to splurge on that special someone (and still save for the honeymoon). Whether you’re getting married, celebrating a milestone, or just want a little extra bling, you can find the perfect ring today.

CITY

Quick & dirty headlines

🚗 Tell a friend to tell a friend, the Sumner Tunnel is baaack! After a month-long glow up, the Sumner Tunnel is scheduled to reopen this morning, just in time for your commute. While the tunnel was out of office, the entire length of the roadway was repaved and lined, and the tunnel was given a thorough cleaning. In even better news, this means we’re officially in the home stretch of this multi-year, multi-million-dollar renovation. There should just be a few weekend tunnel closures between now and the fall to finalize the project.

😡 Mayor Michelle Wu is v disappointed with Beacon Hill. State lawmakers dropped the ball on passing key legislation before the end of formal sessions last week, and Boston was one of the biggest losers. Key priorities for Wu like reshuffling the city tax burden and adding hundreds of new liquor licenses were left on the drafting room floor, and it’s unclear when they’ll be taken up again — a reminder that many of Wu’s ambitions need a greenlight from the legislature, giving Boston less control over its own affairs compared with other major cities.

🤢 The “dirty water” jokes are getting a little too real. In recent years, record numbers of Mass. beaches and ponds have been shut down due to unsafe levels of bacteria, and this summer is no exception. Why? Aging infrastructure and more intense rainstorms are causing flooded systems that send more bacteria-laden runoff water into our swimming holes. The irony is that hotter temps from climate change will also push more people to go cool off …

🥉 Worcester’s gymnastics meme king nabbed an Olympic bronze. Stephen Nedoroscik, Team USA’s clutch pommel horse specialist turned America’s sweetheart, added another bronze medal to his Olympic resume after swinging his way to the pommel horse podium this weekend. For those of you who can’t get enough of Nedoroscik’s Clark Kent glasses, his mom said he’s scheduled to join Simone Biles’s Gold Over America tour, which stops Oct. 6 at TD Garden. Just don’t get too excited, ladies (me), he’s been dating his girlfriend for eight years and they’re sickeningly cute.  

POP QUIZ!

🏅 How much money does the U.S. pay its gold medal-winning athletes?

ONE LAST THING

An Olympic-sized paycheck

What do a $745,000 check, 100 bags of rice, and a meatball restaurant have in common? They’re all official “medal bonuses” given by countries to their Olympic athletes.

If you thought that a medal was the only prize for landing on the podium, you’re (mostly) mistaken. Although this year’s prizes from the International Olympic Committee include a medal, a stuffed animal, and a poster, many countries kick in some (sorely deserved) additional wares to their winning athletes, which vary wildly from country to country.

For example, while gold-medal athletes in Singapore can expect a $745,000 paycheck to accompany their medal, other past prizes have included 100 bags of rice (Japan), an apartment (Kazakhstan), free public transit for life (Hong Kong), and … five cows and a meatball restaurant (Indonesia). Yes, you read that right.

— Written by Gia Orsino and Emily Schario

🐮 Thanks for reading! TBH, I can think of worse prizes than a few new cows. It’s giving cottagecore!

💜Special shoutout to today’s sponsor, Long’s Jewelers, for supporting local journalism and making ring shopping easy and enjoyable. 

🏉 The results are in: The B-Siders have spoken: Rugby (and TikTok) star Ilona Maher is their fave New England Olympic athlete with 38% of the vote, followed closely by our pommel horse king Stephen Nedoroscik. One reader said: “She’s my Roman empire.”

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