🥶❄️ Hot take: Boston winters SLAP

🧁 Boston has no shortage of delicious holiday treats. So much so that all the options can get a tad overwhelming. For those of us who need help narrowing down the list, WBUR has helpfully rounded up some of the city’s best.

👀 What’s on tap today:

Up first…

On the fourth day of B-Side the newsletter gave to me: Tips for Boston winters, a pop-up review, a slay local gift guide, and a Boston holiday tree. 🎶

As any true Bostonian knows, winters here can be rough. The cold, dark days aren’t exactly inspiration to leave your bed, let alone your apartment. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

⛷️ In a lot of other cities, winter is a time to *gasp* get outside. Just look at folks in places like Montreal, Edmonton, or Minneapolis, otherwise known as “winter cities,” where people use greenways to ski and snowshoe, attend outdoor music festivals, or hang by a fire pit in a local park. 

💭 Around here, that type of winter felt more like a pipe dream — until now. Recently, conversation around why Bostonians don’t get out and about in the winter has earned some buzz, from new outdoor programming options, to think pieces, to a City Council discussion. 

🥶 Our existing infrastructure doesn’t make it easy. According to Aaron Greiner, chief radness officer of CultureHouse (the folks behind last year’s City Hall sauna), the keys to winter recreation are light and heat, two pieces of infrastructure Boston just doesn’t have built into many of its public spaces. 

🙋 But we also might be part of the problem … “I think that we’re culturally stuck in a rut,” said Miles Howard, a local writer (and urban hiking pro) who’s done quite a bit of work on winter cities. Most Bostonians tend to write winter off as a time we spend hibernating in front of the TV or in bed. 

❄️ The fix? Step 1: Have a can-do attitude (and layers). According to Howard, the popularity of current activations like the Snowport show that Bostonians can be interested in getting outside in the winter. We just might need to apply that Snowport mindset to other types of activities, like ice skating, winter walks, or even just other winter markets. “There's nothing that a good hat and a good jacket can't prepare you for,” Greiner said.

⛷️ Step 2: You have to want to find things to do. Kate Weiser, a.k.a. @bucketlistboston, finds that most young people tend to have a negative attitude about winter in the city. But she argues that with a little digging, there’s a lot more to do than you’d expect — even if it isn’t outside. Some of her favorite recent winter to-dos include museum-hopping, catching a discounted show, snow tubing at Harpoon, outdoor art exhibits, and keeping up with Boston’s “Wake Up the Night” offerings. And pairing them with a hot drink or dinner can make it all the more enticing. 

☠️ Mayor Michelle Wu’s property tax measure is looking … “dead.” Those are the words of a state Senator following the Senate’s third delay of a vote ahead of a Wednesday deadline. ICYMI: The mayor has been pushing a temporary increase in commercial property taxes to try and soften an incoming major tax increase for homeowners. But thanks to some serious stalling and new data showing that the homeowner impacts might not be so bad, the odds of the measure passing by tomorrow look slim.

📅 Karen Read’s retrial has been postponed. Sorry, true crime junkies, you’ll have to wait a few more months for Karen Read’s infamous murder retrial. That’s because on Monday, Judge Beverly J. Cannone approved a request from both sides to push it back from its initial timeframe in late January to April 1. The delay will give everyone more time to prep, including scheduling new witnesses, which will hopefully make for a more “efficient and streamlined” trial, Judge Cannone wrote. Living under a rock? You can catch up on all the tea here.

🗳️ The culprit behind Boston’s ballot shortage: Human error. At a City Council hearing on Friday, election officials announced that a simple miscalculation was what led to 14 Boston precincts running out of ballots on Election Day. Apparently, Boston received enough ballots from the state, but didn’t send all of them to polling locations since they’d (wrongfully) determined that 80% turnout estimates would cover it. Officials said that in the future, they’ll be sending 100% of ballots out, and Sabino Piemonte, the city's head assistant registrar of voters, said he was willing to take the blame.

🌧️ This week is going to be MESSY. New England weather is weathering. Forecasters are already buzzing about a storm that’s set to bring some heavy rain and winds to Mass. on Wednesday. Early forecasts predict that the Boston area will see widespread 1-3 inches of rain, not to mention a 60-degree day, before it passes by Thursday morning. On the bright side, it looks like all the rain might “put a dent” in our ongoing drought. You can keep up with the latest here.

Enter to win a SoWa prize package including VIP Winter Festival passes, a $250 vendor gift box, a $100 Marseille dining gift card, and $250 in SoWa Health + Wellness class passes and merchandise. To enter, just refer a friend and have them accept your invite by the end of the day on Dec. 12. If you have already referred a friend to B-Side (and they’ve accepted), you're eligible! Full details below*

18+. NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Limit one entry per person. See Official Rules & an additional entry option here.

Celeb lookalike contests have been having a moment lately, from Timothée Chalamet, to Glen Powell to, right here in Boston, Tom Holland. But as anyone following the trend knows, even in the biggest contests, it’s rare that the winner actually looks that much like the celeb. 

That said, we probably could’ve guessed that it wouldn’t be hard to find a dude who looks like Noah Kahan at the University of Vermont. Last week, UVM held a Kahan lookalike contest, which drew over 300 spectators and over a dozen Noah Kahans, one of which, we have to say, was a dead ringer. Seriously, this guy looks like Kahan’s brother.

Even the singer himself signed off on it via Instagram, writing, in true Noah Kahan fashion: “you all win but nobody quite captured the tormenting loneliness behind my eyes.”

— Written by Gia Orsino and Emily Schario

🌲 Thanks for reading! We’re still really hoping for that Mark Wahlberg contest to pan out.

🏆 The results are(n’t) in: We’re going to wait for the official B-Side awards to share yesterday’s poll results with you about the most unhinged “One Last Thing” story … but one reader said this about Market Basket’s racy cease-and-desist: “my jaw literally dropped when I clicked the link on this story lol.”

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