👭🤫 How to make friends in Boston

🚀 College student with a big idea? At Fetch’s Defeat the Odds Competition, students can win up to $30,000, connect with expert mentors, and pitch live at The Boston Globe’s Tech Innovation Summit on June 9. Apply for free and learn more here! Submit your application by March 20.

☘️ It’s time to start pregaming St. Paddy’s. Thankfully, Shy Bird South Boston just dropped their boozy take on a Shamrock Shake. Not into booze? Cannonball Cafe has a new lucky charms latte that’s equally festive! You’re welcome.

👀 What’s on tap today:

Up first…

Here’s a puzzle: Boston is brimming with young people, yet most of us are lonely. 

Case in point: Boston magazine’s Makena Gera recently realized she hadn’t organically made a new friend since college. So, she set out to investigate, and see if she could find friends in a seemingly hopeless place. Here’s what she found:

🧍 Yes, Boston has a loneliness problem. A recent study found that 43% of adults in Greater Boston reported feeling lonely — above the national average. Statewide, 25% of 18- to 24-year-olds say they “usually or always” feel isolated from others. The problem: “We are seeing a drastic change in society in terms of social ties. Especially after the COVID pandemic — we have Zoom, and everything is virtual, and we don’t know our neighbors anymore,” BU Professor Koichiro Shiba told Boston.

🤝 One solution: Friendship-making groups. In recent years, tons of local community-building groups have cropped up to get people meeting IRL, from run clubs to supper clubs to crafting meetups and more. “I noticed there were a lot of people like me who were looking for connection and didn’t know where to find it,” Boston Babes founder Rebekah King told Boston. Or, as Northeastern behavioral scientist Kristen Lee put it: “They give more opportunity and inroads that aren’t organically happening.”

👭 Some of them have an impressive track record. 28-year-old Luce Kelly basically found an entire friend group through Girlfriends Boston. She’s planning a birthday party with eight women she met through the group, all of whom she said she’d never have met otherwise. “They work in different sectors, or they live in different parts of the city or in other suburbs,” she told Boston. “There would have been no overlap whatsoever with a single one of the people who are my friends now.”

😬 But they don’t = automatic friendship. Over the winter, Gera set out to give the groups a try, attending painting classes, crafting meetups, dinners, and a comedy show. “I approached them all with mild apprehension, worried they would feel like networking — performative or contrived,” she wrote. Turns out, sometimes they were, but “the more groups I tried, the more natural it began to feel.” Eventually, she found her people among the Boston Drunken Knitwits.

💬 Ultimately, it’s up to you to shoot your shot. Gera’s takeaway: “The groups can put you in the room. They can hand you the conversation starters and seat you next to someone who also loves heated Pilates and has strong opinions about Yellowstone, but they can’t do the rest. You have to put in the work.” And if all else fails, at least you didn’t spend the evening doomscrolling.

🫂 Want to know more? You can read the whole story here.

🐍 Swap your usual weekend plans for something with a little more ✨lore ✨. Discovering King Tut’s Tomb drops you straight into the 1922 discovery of the Boy King’s burial chamber — complete with immersive recreations, exquisite handcrafted replicas, and an audio guide that walks you through the magic. Since the original artifacts will never leave Egypt again, this is as close to the real thing as you’re (probably) ever going to get. Grab your tickets and visit the NOW OPEN exhibit at The Saunders castle today! Boston Globe members save 15% off regular priced tickets with code: GLOBETUT.

This offer is valid through Aug. 30 on Adult and Kids Admission tickets. To redeem, go to tutboston.com and use GLOBETUT in the voucher/gift voucher box.

🍷 New liquor licenses, incoming! Last week, Boston doled out 13 new liquor licenses to restaurants in the South End, JP, East Boston, Roslindale, and West Roxbury. The new licenses are the latest batch to be handed out from the pool of 225 licenses the city created back in 2024 — an effort to make them more accessible and drive economic growth (they sell for up to $600,000). This round of recipients include Perch and Ula Cafe plus soon-to-open spots like Italian Express and Agosto. Check out the full list here.

🏀 Jayson Tatum is back in business. On Friday, the Celtics star finally made his return to the court at TD Garden 298 days after tearing his achilles in last year’s Eastern Conference Semifinals … a night we’d rather forget. Though he had some rust to shake off, Tatum looked good, sinking 15 points in 27 minutes. Not only is this great for JT, it’s a huge add for the C’s, who were already looking like legit contenders without him. Just listen to the crowd when he hits his first shot. 

🥡 This is your sign NOT to DoorDash tonight. Ordering through third-party apps like DoorDash, Uber Eats, and GrubHub can cost diners a whopping 80% more than picking up takeout, and 600% more than cooking at home, per a recent report. Why? Most restaurants pay the apps a 15 to 30% fee on each order, which has forced some local spots to hike up delivery app prices to make up the difference. See: Stoked Pizza Company’s prices are at least 20% higher on the apps.

🍺 We see after-work drinks in your future. ‘Cause March 7 to 14 is Massachusetts Beer Week, an annual celebration where breweries across the state go all out to promote local craft beer. Interested? We’d recommend The Somerville Brewery Crawl. Between now and March 14, if you grab a stamp card at any participating spot and get it checked at Winter Hill Brewing, Portico Brewing, Aeronaut Brewing, and Remnant Brewing, you’ll win yourself a cute commemorative glass! What’s not to love?

🧠 Learn some local lore. Tonight, the Somerville Museum is hosting a Tavern Talk at Aeronaut Brewing about the infamous The Blizzard of ‘78. It’s like school, but way more fun, and with beer!

❄️ Say goodbye to winter … or wish it good riddance. Either way, Longwood’s lunchtime Winterfest on March 10 will have games, free coffee and cocoa, live music, and food trucks.

✍️ Genuinely enter a flow state. Trident’s writer’s group meets on the second Tuesday of every month (including March 10) to work on their projects using the pomodoro method.

🌃 Stargaze with strangers. Cambridge’s annual community astronomy night is March 11. You’ll explore the sky (and some free pizza) guided by folks from the Center for Astrophysics.

🎨 Make art after dark. March 12 is the ICA’s latest FREE nighttime art-making session. This week, you’ll learn about the Indigenous history of beading, and then try your hand at it. Grab tickets here!

🍝 Enter your mob wife era. Coppa will transform into an old-school red sauce joint à la “Goodfellas” on March 12. Expect an Italian prix fixe menu, black and white movies, and on-theme decor. Snag a res here.

🦢 Get your sad girl on. The Museum of Science is cosplaying as a Lana Del Rey concert on March 12. Iconic tribute singer Niki Luparelli will sing her hits accompanied by a 10-piece orchestra.

✂️ Join a crafty club. On March 12, Mayfly’s Stitch and Mend Club invites you to bring your crafty projects, start a new one, or just hang out and have some snacks.

United passengers will have to make like Addison Rae … and put their headphones on. 

Recently, the airline created a new rule that passengers can be kicked off of flights for listening to personal devices out loud. But according to Globe travel writer Christopher Muther, that’s just the tip of the airline etiquette iceberg, 

Apparently, most airlines already say passengers can be booted for going barefoot or wearing “lewd” clothing. JetBlue even says it’ll have folks removed for “an offensive odor.” If only someone could have told her …

Since airlines seem to be tinkering with the rules, Muther floated a few suggestions: Passengers with middle seats should get both armrests, and people who recklessly recline their seats should be banned. Fair enough!

You can check all of his suggestions here.

— Written by Gia Orsino

🦶 Thanks for reading! While we’re here, should we just ban middle seats altogether?

💜 Special shoutout to today’s sponsor, Discovering King Tut’s Tomb, for supporting local journalism and bringing one of history’s greatest discoveries to Boston.

🍩 The results are in: Well, it was very close, but 35% of B-Siders said that Dunkin’ shouldn’t be able to sell drinks with 100+ grams of sugar. One reader disagreed: “It’s actually medically necessary for teenage girls to be drinking iced coffees with 100g of sugar. You can trust me, I was one of those girls.” Whatever you say!

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