🎶🎸All the neighborhood’s a stage

Happy Friday, Boston!

🗳️ Planning on voting in the state primary? If so, your deadline to register is Saturday. So consider this your reminder to check your registration status, and if you haven’t yet, register online before midnight, at City Hall before 5 p.m., or mail in an application.

👀 What’s on tap today:

• It’s (almost) early voting time

• Fall foliage forecast

• Olympic medals 🤝 Mirrorball

Up first…

SUMMER FRIDAYS

Smoothies, scavenger hunts, and shopping

There aren’t many summer weekends left, B-Siders. So let’s take advantage of this one while we have it. And lucky for us, it looks like Mother Nature is coming through in a big way.

Here’s what’s going on this weekend:

🎵 Catch a neighborhood-wide concert. Jamaica Plain’s annual Porchfest is back this Saturday, with over 100 performances, from music to dance to storytelling, on porches across the neighborhood. Check out the full schedule here.

🌟 Keep your summer cruel. Couldn’t quite swing Eras Tour tix? The Cruel Summer Tour, an all-Taylor dance party, might be the next best thing. And it’s coming to Big Night Live tonight.

🇮🇹 Hit the “feast of all feasts.” St. Anthony’s Feast, which runs through Sunday, is one of your last (and best) chances to fest and feast in the North End this year, with food, music, vendors, and more. Not sure where to start? One of the feast’s trustees gave Boston.com his top tips.

🍏 Have brunch that’s SO brat. Summer Shack is turning their weekend brunch brat this Sunday, with a live DJ, 365 cocktails and specials, and even “bumpin’ that” caviar bumps, if you’re feeling expensive. 

🛍️ Shop ’till you drop. And support some Black-owned businesses while you’re at it! Black Owned Bos. is hosting an Afro-Soul themed market in the Seaport this Sunday, with tons of shopping, food, and music.

🔍 Sleuth your way through Somerville. Aeronaut Brewing is putting on its sixth annual scavenger hunt this Saturday, where hunters will start at the brewery and solve clues leading them to the Allston beer garden. 

🎥 See a movie under the stars. Tonight, fuel your Cape shark obsession at a screening of “Jaws,” or head to the Chinatown Gate any day of the weekend for a free three-day kung fu movie fest with English subtitles. 

🎨 Unleash your inner Van Gogh. What better way to kick off your weekend than with a beginner watercolor class on the Common this morning? Just grab a ticket (and a blanket) and head over, no materials required.

⛰️ Hike Boston’s “twin peaks.” And by that, we mean … Fort Hill and Mission Hill. The founder of Boston’s Walking City Trail is offering a 3.4-mile guided urban hike that’ll hit both this Saturday morning.

🫐 Sip on a smoothie. At-home smoothies never turn out quite right? Never fear. The Fenway Community Center is hosting a smoothie-making event this afternoon, and they're providing all the ingredients.

TOGETHER WITH TOAST

And the Foodies’ Choice Award goes to…

🍽️ 🏆 Winner, winner, chicken dinner! The Toast Foodies’ Choice Awards have revealed Greater Boston’s top 20 dining spots. Want to know where to get the best coffee in town or take your parents for a great meal? Check out the full list of winners and find your next favorite spot by downloading the Toast app today (or if you’re a restaurant owner, book a demo to boost your chances of winning in next year’s awards). 

CITY

Quick & dirty headlines

🗳️ The ballot is in your court. Early voting opens on Saturday for the state primaries. And we all know that voting in local elections is HOT, so here’s the deal: Registered voters can cast their ballots in-person for the primary from then until Aug. 30 at any of these polling locations or drop boxes during their open hours. If you miss the window, you’ll still have the opportunity to vote on Sept. 3, but remember it’ll be the Tuesday right after Labor Day weekend.

💙 Massholes took center stage at the DNC. Speaking of elections, the Democratic National Convention came to a close on Thursday, and the event was chock-full of Mass. moments. Gov. Maura Healey, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and Rep. Katherine Clark all made their mark with speaking slots on the final night, and even Mayor Michelle Wu made headlines with her vulnerable comments at a breakfast for the N.H. delegation. But perhaps the most locally relevant moment of all: Cambridge native Mindy Kaling’s hilarious Massachusetts shout-out.

🍁 The forecast is in: Fall foliage is going to be LIT. Yankee magazine dropped its annual fall foliage forecast, and after a muted season last year, this time, New England is “primed for a big show.” After a solid growing season with minimal impact from droughts, overwatering, insects, and fungus, conditions are right for the leaves to turn pretty much on schedule (in Boston, that’s late October to early November). And bonus: the magazine even predicted eastern Mass. might have a particularly bright showing.

QUICK QUESTION

🍂 Are you channeling the fall vibes yet?

ONE LAST THING

Olympic medals 🤝 Mirrorball trophy

Thought you’d seen the last of “pommel horse guy?” Think again. Worcester native Stephen Nedoroscik, who took the internet by storm at the summer Olympics, is hopping off his pommel horse and hopping on the dance floor as a contestant on “Dancing with the Stars” this fall.

Nedoroscik was the first (and as of Thursday evening, only) contestant confirmed for the show’s fall lineup, which was announced on “Good Morning America.” And while the dance floor is somewhat uncharted territory for him (he’s previously said dancing is one of his biggest insecurities), with the bar set by some previous contestants … we’re sure he’ll be just fine.

The season kicks off on Sept. 17.

— Written by Gia Orsino

🪩 Thanks for reading! Emily is OOO right now, but I know when she hears this, she’s gonna freak out.

💜 Special shoutout to today’s sponsor, Toast, for supporting local journalism and making dining (or taking out) in Boston easy. 

💔 The results are in: Shockingly (to us) 62% of B-Siders said they don’t care either way about Bennifer’s breakup — with some readers writing in to tell us they didn’t even know who Bennifer was. One reader said: “Thought for sure my Y2K soul was mending but I guess not :(”

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