👍🗳️ This Tuesday is going to be SUPER

It’s Monday, Boston.

🚚 We hope your week starts off better than this guy’s. Storrow Drive added another truck to its list of victims last week, but this time, the Storrowing ended with an excavator falling off a flatbed and blocking the road. We’ll never learn.

👀 What’s on tap today:

• COVID guidelines a-changing

• Debunking Green Line “express” trains

• Boston’s newest leaplings

Up first…

ELECTION 2024

Super duper Tuesday

Tomorrow is Super Tuesday, a.k.a, the titan of all presidential primary election days, with more than a third of all delegates to the Republican or Democratic conventions up for grabs.

15 states are hitting the polls tomorrow, including Mass. So if you haven’t been paying attention to the 2024 election until now, here’s what to know:

WHO’S ON THE BALLOT?

🫏 Democrats: Incumbent President Joe Biden (obv), U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips, and Marianne Williamson (who technically suspended, then unsuspended her campaign). 

🐘 Republicans: Former President Donald Trump and former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley are the only major Republicans left in the race. But race dropouts like Chris Christie, Ryan Binkley, Vivek Ramaswamy, Asa Hutchinson, and Ron DeSantis, will technically still be on the ballot.

🦅 Libertarians: It’s a five-way race between Jacob George Hornberger, Michael D. Rectenwald, Chase Russell Oliver, Michael Ter Maat, and Lars Damian Mapstead.

🤠 Registered as an independent? Mass. has an “open” primary, meaning voters who aren’t enrolled with a party can vote for any party at the ballot box.

🤷 You can also just vote "no preference." Seriously! It’s an option. Organizers at a Cambridge march for a cease-fire in Gaza this weekend encouraged the crowd to vote this way on the Democratic ballot in Mass. to protest Biden’s support for Israel in its war against Hamas.

WHAT ARE THE CURRENT NUMBERS?

🥊 Barring an act of God, November will likely be a rematch of Biden vs. Trump. Both have been crushing their primary opponents so far (no other Dem has secured any delegates, and Trump is beating Haley six fold). But despite a thumping in South Carolina’s primary (Haley’s home state), Haley’s vowed to stay in the race, with Super Tuesday likely being her last chance to stay alive. She bagged her first GOP primary win (D.C.) last night.

👴🏻 And Biden’s age is clearly an issue for voters. A new New York Times/Siena College poll found that a whopping 61% of voters who supported him in 2020 think he’s too old to be an effective president. But according to the same poll, voters don’t seem to feel the same way about Trump, who at 77, is just four years younger than Biden.

WHEN CAN YOU VOTE?

🗳️ Polls open at 7 a.m. and close at 8 p.m. Before you head there, double check your polling place location, see if your town has early polling hours, and take a look at a sample primary ballot here. Mail-in ballots are due by the time polls close Tuesday (8 p.m.), so if you’re cutting it close, drop it off at your local election office or drop box. Unsure if your mail-in ballot made it? You can check its progress here. 

👀 Results will start rolling in after polls close. You can stay up-to-date on the Globe’s homepage or keep an eye on the AP’s delegate tracker.

QUICK QUESTION

🗳️ Who are you voting for on Super Tuesday?

CITY

Quick & dirty headlines

😷 The COVID landscape’s a-changing. The CDC just dropped their new COVID guidelines, and the days of five-day isolation are officially O-V-E-R. Now, people who test positive can go to work, see others, and go sans-mask as long as their symptoms are mild. The move is in effort to keep the guidelines in line with other, similar illnesses like the flu, and to address the fact that COVID isn’t having the same widespread effects on our population as it once was. However, some experts in the field aren’t fully on board.

💊 Mass. and Rhode Island are taking a major step in abortion access. This month, the abortion medication mifepristone will be available to pick up at CVS and Walgreens locations in both states like any other prescription, with (hopefully) more states to follow. The pharmacies got the go-ahead for this back in 2023 after the FDA changed a rule allowing them to dispense the abortion pills in-person or by mail (though neither are sending them via mail yet). But the Supreme Court is hearing a challenge seeking to reverse mifepristone’s approval, so watch this space.

🚃 Ever been the victim of a Green Line train that randomly goes express? Same. But the MBTA says they’re working on it. They’re now taking proposals for ways to better communicate the seemingly random changes to riders who have previously been left at the mercy of in-the-moment announcements from drivers, asking them to get off and wait for the next train. Plus: Apparently, there is a method to the MBTA’s express train madness. It’s a tool to avoid “bunching,” when two trains are running too close together. The more you know. 

🍺 Mass.’ latest food and drink news is brewing. And with that genius pun: It’s officially Mass. beer week! Tons of breweries statewide are hosting events and offering exclusive sips to commemorate the occasion. And afterwards, you can tide yourself over until next year by daydreaming about the massive “Great American Beer Hall” expected to open in Medford in late summer. Bonus: Van Leeuwen, a popular NY ice cream spot (and this B-Side writer’s favorite ice cream ever), is coming to Harvard Square, the Seaport, and Chestnut Hill soon.

THINGS TO DO

Weekday plans

💃 Swing your partner ‘round and ‘round. Tonight at 7 p.m., bring a partner and your dancing shoes to Loretta’s Last Call’s partner swing workshop.

🫖 (Re)make some pottery. Kintsugi is the ancient Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold. Learn the technique and bring home a Kintsugi pot on Tuesday at Nirvana Healing Arts in Cambridge.

🩷 Dive into some philosophical Barbie discourse. Tickets are selling out fast for Thursday’s “Re-Fashioning the Self: Barbie and Identity” talk by The Philosophy Project at Acropolis Boston.

🍷 Do a rare kind of wine tasting. What makes it rare? It’s free! Head to Bar Volpe for their Wine Wednesdays from 4 to 6 p.m. for good vibes, a wine lesson, and maybe a midweek buzz. 

🎂 Make sure your cake isn’t underbaked! Get in, bakers. We’re going to Quincy for The Great Quincy Bake-Off at the North Quincy Library on Tuesday. This month’s theme: Decorated cakes.

— Written by Claire Nicholas

🎉 Want more things to do recommendations? Refer five friends to unlock four bonus items. For those who already have, enjoy below.

ONE LAST THING

Boston’s newest leaplings

This Leap Day, a couple of very special babies got some very special birthdays. Once again, a handful of babies around Mass. managed to beat the odds (one in 1,461!) and secure the most unique birthday possible: Feb. 29. 

According to the families of the Lead Day babies (also called leaplings) interviewed by the Globe, the unique birthday is a welcome surprise, with some already weighing whether they’ll celebrate the birthday on Feb. 28 or March 1, planning future Leap Day pranks to play on their children, and researching area groups of fellow leaplings. 

Check out the rest of the kooky and adorable leapling stories here.

— Written by Gia Orsino and Emily Schario

🐸 Thanks for reading! Personally, we can’t get over those special-made Leap Day frog hats. Adorable!

🏠 The results are in: 47% of B-Siders see the good and the bad with going back to the office, followed semi-closely by WFH die-hards. One reader said: “If I’m going to give my entire salary to rent, let me at least spend some time there.”

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