😳📚 The BPL looks a little ... different

It’s Wednesday, Boston.

🍔 It’s also National Hamburger Day! Which = FREE BURGERS! That’s right, Big Grin at The Lineup food hall is giving away FREE burgers from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. to the first 100 guests today. Bonus: Even if you miss the free burger, you can still snag a voucher for free fries. 

🤤 FWIW: These burgers were our favorite bite when we taste-tested each stall at The Lineup … so RUN!

👀 What’s on tap today:

• Harvard takes another punch

• An MBTA underground concert?

• Galeophobia final boss

Up first…

ARTS & CULTURE

Boston bets big on public art

What’s up with the giant Coraline-looking house in the middle of the BPL? It’s the first-ever Boston Public Art Triennial. And for the next six months, it’s taking over the city.

Here’s what to know: 

🧑‍🎨 The vision: Put Boston’s public art scene on the map. Despite its long history of public art, the city doesn’t exactly have an artsy rep. Bostonians tend to be surprised when big, splashy pieces of public art pop up here, and many “still perceive that they're unwelcome” at the city’s fine arts museums, said Pedro Alonzo, the Triennial’s artistic director. The Triennial’s mission = Disrupt those assumptions by filling the city with public art, making it clear it's for everyone.

🏙️ The plan: Commission and install 20 new pieces of public art across the city. Through Oct. 31, folks will be able to view 16 installations for free, plus four at local museums, including Mattapan’s Boston Nature Center, Back Bay’s Central BPL branch, Charlestown’s Navy Yard, and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. And that’s just a taste! Here’s the full map.

📅 Plus, expect “hundreds” of events to help viewers go even deeper. Think: Conversations, gatherings, artist talks, workshops, and performances throughout the summer and fall. Check out the events calendar here!

🤝 The artist’s inspiration? Research. This year’s theme, “The Exchange,” is based around “the idea … that artists are fueled by input,” Alonzo said. In this case, each piece is inspired by the work of researchers, doctors, and NGO leaders (and Boston is kinda known for those). The art represents a sort of collaboration between the artist and the expert, or research that inspired them, resulting in pieces that explore identity, climate, health and recovery, and our shared humanity.

🏚️ For example: That Coraline-esqe house in the BPL unpacks the stories we tell about addiction. Artist Swoon drew on the work of local addiction and trauma researchers Judith Herman and Bessel van der Kolk to create the piece. 

🤯 But research-based ≠ boring. “Public art done well draws a lot of attention, gets people excited,” Alonzo said. And this year’s pieces are poised to do just that. See: Sculptures made for animals at the Boston Nature Center, a phone where you can call the Amazon rainforest, and … a boat that’ll be burned in effigy on City Hall Plaza in September (which’ll look something like this).

👀 Need to see it for yourself? You can find more info about the Triennial here.

QUICK QUESTION!

🎓 Do you think grad school is worth it?

CITY

Quick & dirty headlines

😅 “It was nice doing business with you … NOT!” — Trump to Harvard. OK, that may not have been verbatim, but it sure felt like it after President Trump told federal agencies to end ALL contracts with Harvard, severing the final $$$ ties between the university and the government. It’s Trump’s latest attempt to bring Harvard to its knees, and he’s hitting them right where it hurts: its financial health and global influence. And while Harvard technically has a $53 billion endowment, tapping into it isn’t as simple as withdrawing cash from an ATM …

🔦 Cambridge’s newest concert venue: a T tunnel? You might be able to one-up your artsy friend who knows all the “underground” spots, as the Harvard Square Business Association is proposing to look into transforming an abandoned MBTA tunnel into an entertainment venue. Seriously! Long story short, folks have been thinking about this for a while, but COVID and money concerns slowed things down. However, the association now has the funding to explore making it happen. We’d go to a concert here just based on these pics.

🧺 Farmers market season is SO back. Grab your reusable bags, besties! ‘Cause the Central Square, Davis Square, and Copley Square farmers markets are officially open for business. Even better: Now that a big chunk of the Copley Square Park reno is over, the market will return to its OG home on Tuesdays and Fridays, hosting a full roster of vendors after operating in front of the BPL with limited vendors the last two seasons. Bonus: The Kendall Square market is slated to open May 29.

🦪 $1 (oysters) makes us holler. Give us a 75-degree day, an outdoor patio, and Boston.com’s new list of where to get $1 oysters every day of the week in Boston, and we’re golden. The list covers restaurants from Southie to Cambridge to Newton, giving you the dirty details of when you can snag the elusive $1 deals (pro tip: it’s everyday at La Brasa from 5 to 6 p.m.). $1 oysters are the closest thing we’ll get to happy hour around here, so consider us slurping till Beacon Hill gets its act together.

ONE LAST THING

The swim heard round the Vineyard

Meet galeophobia’s (fear of sharks) final boss.

55-year-old endurance athlete Lewis Pugh just became the first person to swim around the ENTIRE island of Martha’s Vineyard on Monday, completing the 60-mile trek over 12 days. 

And you might ask: Why would a middle-aged guy subject himself to 24 hours of swimming in 47-degree water during a nor’easter? All in the name of protecting sharks, obv!

Sharks never exactly had a warm and fuzzy reputation, but they definitely needed a new PR team after the movie “Jaws” doubled down on the cold-blooded-killer vibes. So with the film’s 50th anniversary approaching, Pugh took the plunge to help change their public perception and encourage protections for the at-risk animals.

And while he got the job done, Pugh said it was one of the hardest swims of his life, which is MAJOR coming from the same guy who swam across the North Pole (and was so cold the cells in his fingers burst and he was in pain for months). Pass!

— Written by Emily Schario and Gia Orsino

🦈 Thanks for reading! We hope the shark PR team cut Pugh and the folks behind “Baby Shark” a fat check.

🚇 The results are in: About half of readers are team MBTA till they die, buuuuut the other half admit their alliance changes to Uber after midnight (understandable). We literally choked on this response: “Not coming home to Train Daddy Eng with Uber on my breath!!” AH!

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