🤯🍔 This dinner deal SAVED date night

⛵ A 300-foot schooner + up-and-coming musicians = this super secret concert we’re hosting with Sofar Sounds (on a boat!!!). I mean, do we see these Boston Harbor views? Members-only tickets are LIVE, so become a member before they increase to $32 in ONE WEEK! (You’ll get an additional 20% off AND a free drink aboard!)

🎸 Welcome to Levitate Backyard. Levitate Music Festival may be over, but their outdoor Marshfield venue, Levitate Backyard, is very much open. We’ve partnered with the folks at Levitate to offer FIVE B-Side members-only show discounts in August: The Heavy Heavy, Whitney, Stolen Gin, Donavon Frankenreiter, and Bobby Alu. Go get your tix!

👀 What’s on tap today:

Up first…

*Checks restaurant bucket list. Checks calendar.* It’s go time. Sunday marks the start of Dine Out Boston, the city’s two-week foodie extravaganza where Boston-area restaurants offer prix-fixe lunch and dinner menus. But if I’ve learned anything from my Dine Out stints: Not all Dine Out menus are created equally, as some spots withhold their most popular bites (boo!). 

After scouring the Dine Out deals, in my humble foodie opinion, here are some fave restaurants that’re serving up *actual* menu items that *actually* save you money:

🍖 The Smoke Shop BBQ, multiple locations. Lunch $27/pp. Dinner $38/pp. The three-course dinner deal is basically grocery shopping, with all the leftovers you’ll have (speaking from personal experience). Their wings are a gorgeous balance of sweet and smoky — the fatty burnt ends, cloaked in char, melt in your mouth — and their gooey butter cake tastes like a dessert forbidden fruit. Let’s just say … you’ve got A LOT of options.

The rest of this newsletter, including where to find $250 dresses for $5 in Boston and eight exclusive things-to-do recommendations are for our premium members who contribute to our journalism.

If you start a 14-day trial, you’ll be able to continue reading at bside.beehiiv.com!

👀 Plus, our members get access to curated Boston Globe content every Saturday — paywall-free. Here are this week’s reads:

😅 It’s giving … eugenics. Here’s how American Eagle’s Sydney Sweeney ‘good jeans’ ad went SOOOO wrong. Oh, and Dunkin’s new ad is also causing a stir …

🍣 This list was MADE for us. From omakase to casual, these seven spots around Boston are a sushi lover’s dream.

🤯 Well, this wasn’t on our 2025 bingo card. It looks like Justin Trudeau and Katy Perry might be … dating?!? I mean, his face at her recent concert says it all.

👀 Got a restaurant hot take? From weird server sayings to tipping on the spot, these are the Globe’s food critic’s top eight pet peeves.

💃 These New Englanders better make it work! ‘Cause TWO of them are on the new season of “Project Runway.” Nantucket and Rhode Island, represent!

👀 Could Ben Affleck be in the Karen Read movie? Let’s just say that he recently hung out with Turtleboy (IYKYK), and let’s just say … people noticed.

😡 Need to just … feel something? How about rage? That’s how we felt after we learned that JetBlue lost a woman’s wedding dress and DIDN’T reimburse her at first …

🥤 Pour one out for high fructose corn syrup. Coca-Cola confirms a cane-sugar version of its trademark cola (a.k.a., Mexican Coke) is coming to the U.S. this fall!.

🤑 Additionally, members gain access to 60 Boston-area perks like:

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