☔😭 Hot take: Rainy weekends are FUN

It’s Thursday, Boston.

🚨🍦 FREE SWEET TREAT ALERT: If you buy a summer drink at Brookline’s Blank Street (think: Watermelon matcha spritz) today starting at 12 p.m., you’ll get a free scoop of ice cream while supplies last. Go, go, go!

🏓 Also … Remember our super fun pickleball party on July 19? Here’s the link to register!

👀 What’s on tap today:

• Kraft and Wu’s low blows

• Dinner specials on the Common

• Is the Cape worth the traffic?

Up first…

TELEPHONE TAG

Our rainy weekend era is BACK

After a one-week reprieve … Boston’s rainy weekends are back with a vengeance: Rain is in the forecast for Friday, Saturday, AND Sunday. 

So for this edition of small biz telephone tag, we asked folks from Boston's most iconic rainy day spots for their favorite things to do when it’s gloomy. Here’s what they said: 

📚 The MFA loves Harvard Book Store. On an ideal rainy day, Imani Michael Vieira, the MFA’s manager of public programs, pulls on a good pair of rainboots and heads to Harvard Square. The itinerary: A burrito at Felipe’s, followed by hours of scouring through the Harvard Bookstore basement. It’s cozy, kitschy, and PACKED with piles of used (read: discounted) books. 

🧶 Harvard Book Store sent us to Gather Here. “I love an excuse to not leave my house,” said Lily Rugo, Harvard Book Store’s marketing manager. But if she is heading out on a rainy day, it’s to this adorable craft store in Inman Square. Rugo loves to crochet, so she’ll grab some yarn and get to work, but for crafting newbies, she suggests a quick, beginner-friendly project like a Woobles crochet kit or this darling embroidery kit.

🎬 Gather Here sent us to The Brattle. When Gather Here’s sewing instructor Lisa Grief visited The Brattle for a collab event, she left thinking, “oh, yeah, going to the movies is amazing.” So her rainy day rec (or really, any extreme weather rec) is to grab a tub of popcorn and check out a film at The Brattle. Bonus: Tuck in for a double feature this weekend for just $19.

🏓 The Brattle sent us to Pop’s Pinball Parlor. Ned Hinkle, The Brattle’s creative director, likes to treat himself to something out of his usual routine when the gloom sets in. For him, that looks like a day of pinball at Pop’s Pinball Parlor at Bow Market. The atmosphere is immaculate: retro and cozy but well-maintained, and the way it’s tucked into an almost hidden corner makes it feel “a little bit like a speakeasy,” he said.

🎳 Pop’s Pinball Parlor sent us to Central Park Lanes. “If it's raining, your day is probably also kind of glum already, so you might as well play a game that's just going to torture you,” said Pop’s co-owner Ty Ueda. His preferred form of torture: Candlepin bowling. Eastie’s Central Park Lanes is “an instant time travel back to the 50s and 60s,” he said. We couldn’t get ahold of them to confirm, but reviews say it’s reasonably priced, BYO food and drink, and you keep score by hand. Sold.

TOGETHER WITH FENWAY BOWL

Shoutout your favorite teacher 

📚✊ They let you eat snacks in class, got you through finals week, and low-key changed your life. Now, nominate them for the Wasabi Fenway Bowl Honor Roll as a way of saying “thank you.” Each year, 15 educators across New England are recognized with grants, a BostonGlobe.com spotlight, and a game day celebration at Fenway. Nominations close soon, so take two minutes now and make your favorite educator’s day. 

CITY

Quick & dirty headlines

🗳️ When they go low, we go … lower. That seems to be the strategy of the super PACs backing Josh Kraft and Mayor Michelle Wu this mayoral election. These groups have dropped millions on the race so far, much of which has been funneled into nasty attack ads. Think: Unsolicited texts tying Wu to City Hall controversies, or ads comparing Josh Kraft to Donald Trump. And though these groups are technically unaffiliated with the candidates’ campaigns, tonally, they’re not far off from the IRL jabs Kraft and Wu have been trading for months.

🎓 Harvard just dropped its first Trump contingency plan. Plan A: President Trump’s mission to ban international students from Harvard gets blocked in court. But if that doesn’t work, the Harvard Kennedy School now has a plan B: It’ll allow its international students (a.k.a. over half the student body) to work on their degrees online or at the University of Toronto in Canada, depending on their circumstances. In the meantime, we can expect other Harvard schools to follow up with plans of their own.

😋 Boston’s newest dinner spot? The Common. BIG news: Flour’s new outpost on the Common just announced a summer dinner series, Flour Uncorked. Expect a *special* rotating seasonal dinner menu on Thursday and Friday evenings in July and August (plus Sunday brunch!). They’re kicking things off with a preview TONIGHT from 4 to 8 p.m. with a “picnic in the park” theme, starring pulled pork and chicken salad sammies, egg and tomato salads, and homemade guac. Let’s just say, if it tastes as good as it looks, we’re IN. 

📲 Seaport stans, we’re about to blow your mind. The swanky hood’s new “Seaport Insider” app is officially live. Here’s the deal: The goal = spend money, earn points, redeem for deals. You mainly earn points by linking your credit card and spending money at participating local businesses, then, you can redeem said points for discounts at local haunts like Island Creek Oysters and Lakon Paris Patisserie. Bonus: Flash the app today at Stubbys pop-up on the Seaport Common for free fries or a hot dog from noon to 2. You can check it out here.

QUICK QUESTION!

🚗 How many days on the Cape does it take to make the traffic worth it?

ONE LAST THING

Is the Cape worth the traffic?

Massholes have been complaining about Cape traffic since the dawn of time. And for good reason. During peak hours, the ~70 mile drive from Boston can take over three hours. 

But it wasn’t until this week that a brave soul at the Globe dared to ask: When all is said and done, is a weekend on the Cape actually worth the misery of sitting in hours of traffic? While the Cape is undeniably magical, he wrote, the traffic is so bad that it can come close to cancelling it out.

Unsurprisingly, his take caused an uproar. More surprising? Most people seemed to sympathize. Folks wrote-in with stories about the wild things the traffic has driven them to do, from selling houses on the Cape, to avoiding visiting their parents who moved to the Cape. 

Read alllll the responses here.

— Written by Gia Orsino and Emily Schario

🚗 Thanks for reading! And no, driving down at 11 p.m. on a Friday night or 4 a.m. on Saturday morning is NOT a life hack.

💜 Special shoutout to today’s sponsor, Fenway Bowl, for supporting local journalism and honoring the outstanding educators in our community. 

🥵 The results are in: 35% of B-Siders guessed Boston’s all-time highest temp was 107 degrees. It’s actually 104 — close, but no cigar. One reader said: “Outrageous, those temps belong in AZ not here!!”

🎵😋 Don't forget to grab your tickets to Best Day Ever, our Aug. 2 food, music, and shopping par-tay at Artists for Humanity!

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