🤑 Weekend freebies you don’t wanna miss

It’s Friday, Boston!

🚨 Attention Millennial paw-rents: Saturday is National Dog Day, so you best be celebrating your furbaby with a free pup cup at these J.P. Licks locations and free treats at Lamplighter’s Yappy Hour. Don’t worry, there’ll be ice cream and beer for you, too.

👀 What’s on tap today:

• Red Line shutdown

• New pork regulations

• Pizza perks

Up first …

SUMMER FRIDAYS

Cinema Day, Chanel, and Carnival

Don’t freak out but … it’s the last Friday of August.

And it’s the second-to-last Summer Friday of the season. So we’ve put together a packed weekend of food, festivals, and freebies to distract you:

🇺🇦 Take in the sights, sounds, and flavors of Ukraine. Prepare for lots of pierogies and a big вечірка (party) at the Boston Annual Ukrainian Festival (they make a short trip to BU Beach feel like a journey across the pond). Showcasing Ukrainian music, dancing, food, crafts, fashion, and art, Saturday’s event also welcomes donations to support the war-torn country.

🌏 Matter of fact, hit up all the cultural festivals. For some elite jazz music from some of the best musicians in the biz, head to the Boston Jazz Festival in the Seaport. And you can also sing, dance, and celebrate Caribbean cultures at the Caribbean Carnival Parade in Roxbury. Don’t know what to wear? Here’s a complete guide to fête attire.

🎥 Catch a flick for $4. Sunday is National Cinema Day, and over 3,000 movie theaters across the country are celebrating by offering moviegoers $4 tickets. Here’s a list of participating theaters in Mass. But if you’d prefer something free, Thor: Love and Thunder is playing at the Hatch Shell tonight and Family Camp will be at The Boston Kroc in Roxbury.

💃 Live (or re-live) your Eras Tour dreams at BNL. Boston Swifites, rejoice! Big Night Live is The Taylor Party’s second stop on their extensive national tour of Taylor Swift Night — it’s like the Eras tour, but with more beat drops. A live DJ will mix T-Swift songs into club dance beats, giving you a whole new way to scream-sing and dance to your favorite hits from all the eras.

🇮🇹 Attend the “Feast of all Feasts.” The granddaddy of them all, Saint Anthony’s Feast, is currently underway in the North End with streets fully decked out and carts of Italian food parading the cobblestones. Expect no shortage of pizza, pasta, arancini, calamari, zeppole, cannolis, and all the works through Sunday. Mangia!

🧘 Break a sweat without breaking the bank. B/SPOKE is hosting a free yoga and strength class in Harpoon Brewery’s parking lot; you can squeeze in a free vinyasa flow on the Harborwalk out of Martin’s Park followed by a tea tasting from The Té Spa; and the Charles River Speedway is hosting a yoga class followed with beer and wine that starts at $10.

🌈 Get outside with Boston’s Queer community. There’s going to be a Big Queer Picnic on the Common this Saturday just for 20- to 30- year olds in the LGBTQ+ community (BYO food, drinks, and lawn games are encouraged). And the Queer and Trans Hiking Fell-ows will be hosting a free Sunday hike through The Fells in Medford as a way to meet new pals.

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

CITY

Quick & dirty headlines

🚇 Buckle up for a 16-day Red Line shutdown. Mark your calendars: The MBTA just announced an upcoming complete shutdown of the Red Line’s Ashmont branch, with shuttle buses replacing train and trolley service from Oct. 14 to 29. MBTA GM Phillip Eng said this shutdown will allow round-the-clock track work, allowing workers to alleviate 28 slow zones that would normally take six months to do under current circumstances. His words: “Get in, get it done, and get out.” To which the branch’s 40,000+ daily riders collectively eye-rolled.

🥓 Your favorite breakfast side dish might get pricer. New regulations on Mass. pork sales went into effect this week, making it so pork products can only be sold in stores if the pigs are raised in an environment that gives them enough space to lie down, stand up, and turn around freely. You know, the bare minimum. And since less than 4% of pork in the U.S. meets the new standards, there are concerns this could result in price increases or supply shortages. Luckily, hot dogs and sausages won’t be affected, as pork is usually just one ingredient.

🚚 PSA: Don’t get “Storrowed.” No seriously, the Dept. of Conservation and Recreation actually put out a PSA about this. The agency went full ASPCA in a recent parody video on the platform formally known as Twitter, showcasing images of Storrowed trucks with “Angel” by Sara McLachlan scoring it. If you’re a Boston newbie, the snarky video actually offers some helpful advice, like check the height of your moving truck (that’s usually right on the side of the vehicle). For $0 a day, we can stop hitting bridges with a truck.

POP QUIZ!

😬 How many trucks got “Storrowed” in August 2021?

TOGETHER WITH BOSTON LIGHTS

✨ Giveaway alert!

We’re giving away two tickets to Boston Lights at the Franklin Park Zoo. To be eligible, refer a friend in the widget above and have them accept your invite between August 23 and 25. If you have already referred a friend to B-Side (and they’ve accepted), you're eligible! Full details below*

ONE LAST THING

Pizza perks

Laundry? Check. A/C? Check. Free pizza once a week? Check.

There’s a lot to love about the apartment above Eastie’s location of Dirty Water Dough. But the free weekly pie might take the cake.

Shop owner Sam Sokol bought the building back in 2019 and needed a way to get future tenants see past the usual noise and smells that come with a restaurant. So he added a clause to the lease that guarantees them a free pizza every week.

Since then, several groups of tenants have called the apartment home, taking advantage of the deal. One made a TikTok video about the set up, and has nearly 4 million views.

And while the perk is technically out of the lease now that the rental market has tightened, Sokol hasn’t officially rolled it back. The newest tenants just learned about the perk after signing the lease in July and plan to break it in with a pepperoni pie.

🍕 Thanks for reading! And no, they don’t have plans on moving anytime soon.

🐌 The results are in: It was a close race, but according to our readers, the Green Line is the worst of all MBTA lines. One reader wrote: “At least we know the Red Line has the capacity to go faster. The B Line will always be a turtle.”

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