🧙 There are WITCHES on the Common

It’s Wednesday, Boston.

🌭🍹 It’s also National Hot Dog Day AND National Daiquiri Day. So be sure to pick up a $1 weenie at The Silhouette from 4 p.m. to 1 a.m. and pop by the Daiquiri Deck on the patio at Time Out Boston for a celebratory Guava Colada.

👀 What’s on tap today:

• Orange Line win

• New Italian spots

• Wild penguin spotting

Up first...

ARTS & CULTURE

Shakespeare on the Common returns

Toil and trouble start on the Common tonight. The Commonwealth Shakespeare Company’s annual Shakespeare on the Common series kicks off this evening with the premiere of Macbeth. And in case you forgot, it’s free.

So whether you’re a Shakespeare aficionado, or you haven’t read the play since high school (me), here’s what to know:

📚 First, catch up quick with some SparkNotes: Essentially, Macbeth is a cautionary tale of what happens when ambition surpasses loyalty. The very successful general, Macbeth, murders the leader of the country, Duncan, to become king himself. But once the insurrection starts, “the blood just keeps flowing, the collateral damage keeps increasing,” said Steven Maler, the company’s founding artistic director.

⚔️ The company specifically chose Macbeth because its themes hit close to home these days. As the play’s description says, “amid intense civil strife and a decaying social fabric — an insurrection takes hold." And for Maler, “the conversation that’s so powerful right now is leadership and divisions and how we heal divisions…Whether it’s Ukraine or here. We see this happening all over the world.”

⛈️ This summer’s unpredictable weather has made production a doozy. But the company is one step ahead of the game, and has a meteorology team to get the most granular weather reports about what’s happening exactly over the Common. It’s rare for a performance to be cancelled, but if it does rain, they just take a beat until it passes, then squeegee the stage. The show must go on.

🤑 Making theater free and accessible to all is at the core of the company. “There are no barriers, no walls, no process, you just show up,” Maler said. Or in many cases, you just stumble upon it. And for Maler, there’s something exciting about how many of the people who see the play don’t know how it ends because “they’re not theater people.” Theater was a classless event in Shakespeare’s day, so this is their attempt of democratizing it.

🎭 Performances run tonight through August 6. You can see the full show schedule here. Bringing your own blanket or chair is strongly encouraged, but if you forget, you can rent one for $10. Plus, you can make it a dinner and a show as you’re allowed to bring in your own food. But you’ll have to leave thine alcohol at home.

👀 Bonus: All performances will be Open Captioned.

TOGETHER WITH GUYS BOSTON

Giveaway alert!

We’re giving away four tickets to Guy’s Boston Glitz & Gala Drag Brunch on July 22. To be eligible, refer a friend below and have them accept your invite between July 17 and 19. If you’ve already referred a friend to B-Side (and they’ve accepted), you're eligible! Full details below*

Share The B-Side

You currently have 0 referrals, only 1 from receiving Eligibility to all B-Side Giveaways (Free!)*.

Click to share

Or copy and paste this link to others: https://bside.beehiiv.com/subscribe?ref=PLACEHOLDER

CITY

Quick & dirty headlines

🚇 The T declares victory on a nasty Orange Line slow zone. One slow zone down, 216 to go! The “Tufts curve” between Tufts Medical Center and Back Bay stations has been under some kind of speed restriction since 2019, until now. The T announced it completed repair work on that slow stretch and now the Orange Line can finally run at full speed in both directions. This also ticks off one of the 39 "corrective action plans" the FTA imposed on the T after last year's safety inspection. But a win is a win.

🚣 If officials can’t fix Boston’s transit problem, locals will. Or at least they’ll try to. As commuters slog through the T’s slow zones and inch their way through Sumner Tunnel traffic, entrepreneurs are advocating for tech-focused ways to fix the status quo (like paving over Commuter Rail tracks for electric, autonomous vehicles). One local entrepreneur is hoping to get permission to start running a water shuttle service on the Charles between Watertown and Back Bay as soon as this summer. But it’ll cost you an estimated $35 to $50.

🤸 The Longwood neighborhood just got an injection of fun. The “Outside//” initiative, a cornerstone of the area’s heartbeat during the warmer months, is officially in full swing. Now through October, live music, food trucks, fitness classes, free bike tune-ups, organized lawn games, and more will be open to the public (you can see the full schedule of what’s going on here). And today just so happens to be “Wag Wednesday,” one of their most popular programs where you can visit and adopt dogs. Stop by Josslyn Park from noon to 2 p.m.!

🍝 There are two new spots for singing “That’s Amore.” Watertown is home to the latest location of Bar ‘Cino, a Rhode Island-based restaurant serving Italian-inspired eats and refreshing spritzes. You can see the full spread here. And Umbria, the storied Italian steakhouse that once was a FiDi hotspot is getting new life in the North End. The new locale is a little smaller than the original but has an updated menu to reflect the change in Umbrian cuisine. And bonus: It has a slick new roof deck, a boon for the neighborhood.

QUICK QUESTION!

🚗 Which mode of tech-focused transport could you get behind?

ONE LAST THING

Wild Boston penguins

One Bostonian thought he was tripping when he spotted what looked like a penguin hanging around downtown. And you can’t blame him, just take a look at the photo he took of it.

But unfortunately, those fantasies of spotting a penguin in the wild were dashed when Boston 311 chimed in on Twitter, noting that “it is possibly a night heron” as “[p]enguins typically can’t perch like that due to their webbed feet.”

These kinds of herons have that same kind of penguin chunk and spend their days sleepily hunched in trees near the water and are more active at dusk.

So in case you, too, thought you were trippin’ after seeing a similar bird, just remember that wild penguins mainly stick to the Southern Hemisphere and only go as far north as the Galapagos islands.

🐧 Thanks for reading! The aquarium should let one penguin on the loose just to mess with people.

🚗 The results are in: Despite the Blue Line being free, nearly 50% of our readers would rather take their chances on traffic and spend a little extra dough to take an Uber to Logan. And, unfortunately, I’d have to agree.

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