📲😭 It’s time to break up with bed rotting

🧶  Our fix for your winter blues: Granny activities and baked goods, duh! Join us on Jan. 28 at Boston Figure Art Center with Citizen Crochet for a beginner-friendly crochet-your-own beanie class. Our only ask: Plz bring a sweet treat for the potluck (store-bought works). Grab a ticket here.

🧋 Reminder: You can get FREE bubble tea today! Or any other drink from any of Bon Me’s brick-and-mortar spots, courtesy of the Boston Legacy. Our pick: This special strawberry matcha.

👀 What’s on tap today:

Up first…

For 80% of us, our New Year’s resolutions have about *checks calendar* two weeks left. So, we asked six local “I have my life together” experts for their dummy-proof ways to make your healthy habits stick throughout 2026.

Here’s what they said: 

📲 Create friction between you and your FYP. If you want to doomscroll less, try making it physically more difficult, said Hannah Chidekel, a clinical research coordinator at Boston Children’s Digital Wellness Lab. An easy swap: Only let yourself watch reels or TikToks on your computer. You’d be surprised how much a tiny bit of resistance, like clicking from reel to reel, will slow you down.

🍎 Learn to cook your fave DoorDash meal. The key to cooking at home more is to “work with what you're already excited about,” said the Boston Public Library’s chef-in-residence Kayla Tabb. Her suggestion: Start by learning how to cook your favorite takeout meal. Then, the next time you’re reaching for your phone, reach for your chef hat instead.

🍸 Stock your fridge with Diet Coke. Or whatever N/A bev you like. For folks looking to cut back on booze, having a plan for what you’ll drink instead can make a big difference, said Pat Dooling, owner of NA bottle shop Dray. Eliminating anything from your life is always gonna “create absence,” he said, so to fill that hole, having another drink at the ready, whether that’s an NA beer or diet coke, will make it easier. 

👚 Buy new hangers for your closet. Instead of plotting to re-organize your entire apartment, “go for the instant gratification,” said Deb Stone of Ship Shape Organize. Pick the area that bothers you the most and make a “quick, visible” swap. Think: Buying new hangers for your closet, or a spice rack for your pantry. “It's amazing how such a simple fix can create a sense of calm,” she said.

🏃 Take more hot girl walks. When it comes to fitness, consistency = progress, said Rev’d trainer Alyssa Pannozzi, so quick fixes and hacks are basically a no-go. “When you find that you actually enjoy something, you're more than likely to stick with it,” she said. So instead of schlepping to the gym, try walking while you listen to your fav podcast, rock climbing, or dancing. 

📝 Break out a pen and paper. Journaling can be daunting, said Boston Journaling Club founder Vicki Reyes Hernandez, especially if you’re not in the habit. But using prompts to guide your entries can help make it feel more accessible, even if you end up writing about “why you hate [the prompt],” she said. An easy one to start with: Why did you decide to start journaling?

📚✨When your job starts feeling a little too repetitive, that’s when you know you need a change. Brandeis University offers research-driven master’s programs in the liberal arts and social sciences for people ready to deepen their thinking and rediscover purpose in their work. Explore fields like psychology, history, English, philosophy, and anthropology while learning from internationally recognized faculty, accessing substantial graduate scholarships while staying close to Boston. Your journey to a more thoughtful, fulfilling career starts now. 

🔥 This City Council term is off to a “rocky start.” Their words! The drama hasn't cooled down since last week’s unusually messy council president election, which ended with a surprise W from councilor Liz Breadon. The spicy vibes continued this weekend, with not one, but two councilors (Gabriela Coletta Zapata and Brian Worrell) initially declining offers from President Breadon to be the council’s VP. Ultimately, Coletta Zapata changed her tune, but per Councilor Erin Murphy, the situation “has not been a clear or confidence-building start to the term.” Yikes!

🍺 Pour one out for The Burren(’s building). Good news: The beloved Davis Square bar is officially sticking around despite a major redevelopment project in the area. Bad news: It won’t be in the building we know and love. After some passionate community feedback about the project's impact on local businesses, developers forged a deal with The Burren and Dragon Pizza to re-home the businesses in the new building. That said, the revised plan still hasn’t gotten a green light. The next step: A community meeting in February.

💉 There’s still time to get a free flu shot! This month, the city is putting on a bunch of free vaccine clinics across the city, offering flu and COVID shots (no appointment, ID, or insurance necessary). While the best time to get vaccinated was technically in the fall, given Mass.’ recent flu explosion, there’s no time like the present. You can find the pop-up clinics in Dorchester and Hyde Park this week, but check out the full schedule here. 

🫠 Downtown is looking a little … weird. Which must mean that Winteractive is BACK! The annual, free wacky art exhibit responsible for giant clown heads and naked pink dudes officially launches its 2026 season today. There are 18 artworks and interactive sites all around Downtown, with hits like these giant building googly eyes, adult-sized see-saws, and a group of AI-generated dudes in the Shopper’s Plaza. Just as unhinged as we’d hoped. You can check out a map of all the pieces here.

Below are two of the hottest local things to do. This month, B-Side members can save more than $150 across our events, in addition to over 60 other awesome perks. 

🍕 Win free Sal’s Pizza for a Year | Jan. 14 | B-Side Members can enter our giveaway for a chance at winning free pizza for a year from Sal’s. Feeling lucky IRL? Buy a pizza from Sal's this week — five "golden tickets" and several “silver tickets” for smaller prizes are hidden in random boxes. 

💃 Tate McRae “Sports Car” dance class | Jan. 15 | 6 p.m. | DivaDance Boston | $10 member, $32 regular | Join our first-ever dance class with DivaDance Boston and groove to Tate McRae’s “Sports Car.” All levels are welcome for a confidence-boosting movement session. Click the members-only link on your perks sheet to get a ticket.

👀 Want to feature your upcoming event above? Click here.

Bayah, payah, bayah, chayah! Translation from Pure Bostonian: Bear, pear, bear, chair. But if you say it the first way, you could rack up millions of views on TikTok. Just ask 25-year-old Romano Duncan.

Recently, Duncan’s girlfriend was trying the viral “say the word on beat” game, when he decided to jump in … with his incredible Boston accent. As luck would have it, all of his words included dropped r’s (bear, chair, pear, hair), which, combined with the fact that he gets angrier with each round, made for an extremely silly and extremely Boston moment. You just gotta watch. 

As one commenter put it: “This should be Boston’s new ambulance siren.” Hard agree.

— Written by Gia Orsino, Emily Schario, and Claire Nicholas

🐻 Thanks for reading! It’s giving … this.

💜 Special shoutout to today’s sponsor, Brandeis University, for supporting local journalism and giving Boston students the tools they need to build better futures. 

💋 The results are in: 55% of B-Siders say they wouldn’t use a dating app to look for a job. One reader said: “So does this mean I’ll never find love OR a good job!?” 

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