🏘️👭 No apartment? No problem!

It’s Wednesday, Boston.

😭 Post-marathon blues hitting? This compilation of the best signs we saw on the course will help you relive the good vibes. Our personal fave: “Leo would have stopped at 25.” 

🎂 Plus: Happy birthday to B-Sider Hannah Markelz! If our birthday wishes to you were a marathon sign we saw, they’d be: IDK U BUT I’M SO PROUD OF U! Have a great day!

👀 What’s on tap today:

• Who’s pulling the strings in Boston

• Fenway boxing > Fenway baseball

• Crawling to the finish

Up first…

HOUSING

POV: You’re looking for 9/1 rental

Finding an apartment for 9/1 move-in can feel like a competitive sport. And Gia can attest to that — in one month, she went from zero to signing a lease with three new roommates. 

Here are the top tips from local real estate pros, compiled by Boston.com, that helped her along the way:

📈 Crunching the numbers can narrow your search. Start with this tool, said Demetrios Salpoglou, CEO of Boston Pads, which shows real-time apartment availability and average prices per bedroom by neighborhood. It helped Gia make two important discoveries about her initial areas of interest (Allston, Brighton, and Brookline):

1. She’d have the most options in April and May. 

2. With a budget of $1,100 per person, a four-bed in Brighton (which averages $4,428) would be her best bet compared to Brookline ($5,663) or Allston ($4,741).

👭 Need roommates? Facebook is your BFF. Emily Downs, of Kingston Real Estate & Management, told Boston.com to hold off on looking for a place until you have roommates secured. Gia is losing all three of her current roommates to their boyfriends (thanks guys!), so she had some work to do. But FB groups like this came in clutch. A week of ISO posts, fielding replies, and coffee dates later, she found some fabulous new roomies.

🙋 If you’re paying a broker fee, at least make them work for it. Renter-paid broker fees will *hopefully* be a thing of the past, but unfortunately, we’re apartment hunting in the present. Even if you’re not explicitly hiring a broker, calling a property manager can help you get ahead of the competition, Tony DiMarsico, broker and owner at NFP Realty, told Boston.com. Gia’s roommate tried this strategy with EDGE Realty Advisors, which made scheduling tours and communicating with landlords much easier, and showed them the apartment they ultimately chose within a week.

💸 Be ready to drop major $$$ at any moment. And by “$$$,” we mean thousands of dollars. The day Gia found the right apartment, she toured it at noon, FaceTimed her roommates at 5 p.m., and submitted an application (and $975 deposit) by 5:30 p.m. But the process is often faster and more expensive than that, Downs told Boston.com. Sometimes, filling out an application pre-tour or putting down a deposit on the spot can be necessary to secure the bag.

🤸 And if a good deal pops up, BE FLEXIBLE. Gia can wish for a sunny Coolidge Corner apartment with in-unit laundry all day long (and she does). But when her group saw a big, four-bed in Brighton with a patio just steps from the T for just $3,900, it was too good to pass up. 

😭 All that said: Good deals can be found well into the summer (Gia signed the lease on her current place in July), so don’t give up hope, and good luck out there!

QUICK QUESTION!

📦 Are you planning a 9/1 move this year?

TOGETHER WITH ROCHAMBEAU AND DOORDASH

Oh these steaks are COOKED (to perfection) 

Or, as the French say, ✨ magnifique avec frites ✨. Rochambeau is serving up one of the best deals in Boston with steak, greens, bread, and bottomless fries for just $37 (which, in this economy, feels borderline charitable). Don’t miss out on this rare combo of luxury flavors with non-luxury pricing. Whether you’re soaking up the restaurant’s Parisian atmosphere in the heart of Back Bay or you’re too cozy to leave the couch, you can always get it delivered with DoorDash. Très chic. Très easy. Très delicious.

CITY

Quick & dirty headlines

👊 Wanna know who pulls the strings in Boston? Good, because Boston magazine’s 2025 Boston Power List just dropped. Besides the usual assortment of politicians and CEOs, a few picks stood out to us, like how the Celtics’ Jaylen Brown (No. 20) made the list sans Jayson Tatum, and Josh Kraft came in at No. 37 — 30 spots behind Mayor Michelle Wu. But it was the last two that really got us: Karen Read (who’s on trial for murder) snagged No. 150, followed by Mira Wu Pewarski (a baby) at 151.

🚇 The MBTA’s problems don’t stop at trains. And the proof is in the escalators: Last week, 13 out of the agency’s total 177 escalators were out of service, and over half have passed their useful lifespan of 28 years, according to the Globe. That might not sound dire, but for folks with accessibility needs, it is. Especially when the alternative is 60+ stairs and some outages go on for years (and we mean years: one has been out since 2017), indicating the agency simply isn’t planning on investing the resources to fix them.

🥊 Hot take: Fenway boxing > Fenway baseball. Or at least it will be on June 7. For one night only, Fenway is holding its first night of boxing since 1956. Picture it: A full 11-bout professional fight card (including the venue’s first-ever women’s match) from 5 p.m. to 10:45 p.m. in the stadium’s Big Concourse. You can check out the whole bill here. Unfortunately for those of us who are balling on a budget, GA tickets (which are on sale now!) will run you $100, and it only gets pricier from there. 

🌷 Boston IG baddies, this is your Super Bowl. A.k.a. Tulip Mania, a display of 75,000 tulips that’s opening for the season today through May 4 in Wellesley (just look at them!). A $21 ticket gets you tulip-peeping to your heart’s content, and access to pick your own stems while supplies last. More into trees than tulips? Cambridge is looking for folks to host young apple trees as part of a project to give new life to a beloved apple tree that was removed for construction. Sign up here!

GIVEAWAY

Together with Emerson Colonial Theatre

Enter to win two tickets to see Mean Girls on April 30! To enter, just refer a friend and have them accept your invite by the end of the day on April 23. 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.

ONE LAST THING

Crawling to the finish

The (literal) headlines from this year’s marathon painted a picture-perfect day. But some of the best (and tear-jerking) stories from Marathon Monday came from folks who didn’t have an ideal race.

See: The guy who collapsed less than 200 meters from the finish line. He had to literally crawl on his hands and knees to cross the line (his takeaway? “You don’t quit”). Or the guy who went viral after he stopped and sacrificed his sub 2:40:00 PB to help a man who couldn’t stand up just steps away from the finish line. 

All in all, if we had to sum up the day, this is how it made us feel.

— Written by Gia Orsino and Emily Schario

💩 Thanks for reading! While we’re talking Marathon Monday: Huge congrats to Davis Clarke, who not only didn’t poop his pants this year, but finished very strong!

💜 Special shoutout to today’s sponsor, Rochambeau and DoorDash, for supporting local journalism and bringing top-tier dining experiences to Boston. 

💼 The results are in: 40% of polled B-Siders say they’re non-profit workers … which means we should proooobably give them a B-Side Membership discount! One reader said: “i'm a lawyer so I def don't deserve a discount, but you've used my poll response for the last two newsletters so... let's go for the trifecta?” If we can’t give you a discount, we can at least give you this.

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