🍁☕ Your long weekend plans

Happy Friday, Boston!

🏘️ If we know one thing about B-Siders, it’s that you love to snoop in rich peoples’ homes. So when we saw this video of a $9.2 million, six-floor Beacon Hill home … we had to show you. And the realtor’s name is the most Beacon Hill thing we’ve ever heard.

👀 What’s on tap today:

• Property tax sticker shock

• The end of a foodie era

• NYC’s best (Boston) bagel

Up first…

THINGS TO DO

Cheers to the (long) weekend

A long weekend + light jacket weather = A FIRE lineup of things to do around Boston.

Here’s your long-weekend itinerary:

🖼️ Take advantage of FREE museum entry. Per usual, the big three Boston museums (MFA, ICA, and Isabella Stewart Gardner) are offering free admission on Indigenous Peoples’ Day. MFA tickets are on a first-come, first-served basis for Mass. residents, but for the other two, you can grab tickets online ahead of time. Bonus: The MFA and ISG will each have themed exhibits/programming.

🍁 Revel in the fall vibes. On Saturday, head to Atlantic Wharf’s Fall Festival with cookies, crafts, and a “Hocus Pocus 2” screening. Then, on Sunday, pop over to Boston Landing’s Fall Crawl, with similar cozy vibes, plus local food vendors, tie dye, and a makers market.

🎶 Listen to some home-grown hip hop. Cousin Stizz is the king of local TTD recs. And this Saturday, he’s giving us another one: Commonwealth Fest, a FREE one-day music festival at City Hall Plaza with a lineup of heavy-hitter hip-hop artists (plus local food!).

🍺 Don your lederhosen one last time. This weekend is the last call for local Oktoberfest cellies. Tonight, try the oldest craft beer in the world at Craftoberfest, or try your hand at stein holding at Lamplighter. Or, on Saturday, hit up the only Oktoberfest we know of with axe-throwing at the LOT.

⛴️ Wave goodbye to ferry season. With $5 ferry tickets! To celebrate the end of ferry season, tickets to Spectacle Island are only five bucks on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. Our two cents: Bring a fall picnic for maximum enjoyment.

🍎 Spice up your annual apple cider run. Tired: Picking apples for $40 a bag. Wired: Short Path Distillery’s free annual Fall Apple Booze Bash on Saturday. Expect food pop-ups (including fresh cider doughnuts), music, cocktail bars, and yes, lots of apple-y booze.

🍂 Celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Don’t forget the reason for the season, so to speak. On Saturday, hit up Passim’s Indigenous Peoples’ Day concert, or head to Brattle Theater on Sunday to catch the Sundance Institute’s Indigenous Film Tour.

🛍️ Get thrifty at a vintage market. And boy, are there a LOT. On Saturday, start with the Boston Women’s Market at Assembly Row and Select Market’s spooky vintage market at Time Out. Then on Sunday, head back to Time Out for the Fenway Flea, and finish the weekend at Bow Market’s curated vintage market.

🍦 Scream for (fall-flavored) ice cream. Get in losers, we’re getting authentic maple creemees at Momma’s in Porter Square AND this apple pretzel twist ice cream from Far Out in Brookline.

📚 Channel dark academia vibes. And by that we mean, head to a spooky book fair. On Saturday, there’s Read My Lips Boston’s haunted romance bookshop pop-up with beer and book pairings. Then on Sunday, there’s Trident’s spooky book fair with witchy brews and birth-chart readings.

CITY

Quick & dirty headlines

😬 Boston property taxes may give some serious sticker shock. The average Boston single-family home will likely see property taxes spike by 14% in FY25 (about a $770 increase for the average home). Why? Thanks to office vacancies, commercial property values and tax revenues have plummeted while residential values have increased. But since property taxes fund over 70% of Boston’s budget, in order to avoid steep cuts, someone’s gotta pay up. That said, a stalled, controversial plan by Mayor Wu could shift the onus onto commercial properties. Stay tuned.

🦪 It’s the end of an era in Boston’s foodie scene. Iconic restauranteur Barbara Lynch (think: No. 9 Park, B&G Oysters, Menton) has announced that she’s closing and selling her remaining restaurants in Boston and Gloucester due to pandemic-related financial woes. Lynch has won tons of awards and recognition for her work in Boston’s food scene, but has been in some hot water the past few years, facing allegations of creating a toxic workplace, and another round of closures earlier this year.

🛍️ Local Black-owned businesses saw a boom and bust after BLM. After the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in 2020, many local Black-owned businesses saw a massive bump in support as consumers looked for ways to support Black folks. But since then? Not so much. A combination of inflation and lessening consumer interest has meant that after that initial boom, many businesses have seen a big dip in sales, investment, and overall support. That’s particularly concerning given Boston’s huge racial wealth gap. Here’s a list of Boston Black-owned businesses to support.

😋 Love a good bite? Love a good deal? Look no further. The Fenway just launched The Fenway Foodies Club, a group of nearly 20 restaurants in the neighborhood (MIDA, Yard House, FOMU, etc.), which are banding together to offer secret menus, limited offerings, exclusive deals like build-your-own hotdogs, late night $1 oysters, and wasabi roulette. All you have to do to get them is follow @thefenway on IG and/or sign up for their newsletter. Happy eating!

GIVEAWAY

Enter to win free entry to Charles River Museum’s “Craft Beer for a Cause” event!

We’re giving away three tickets to Charles River Museum’s suds-centric fundraiser, Craft Beer for a Cause! It’s the craft beer To enter, just refer a friend and have them accept your invite by the end of the day on Oct. 12. If you have already referred a friend to B-Side (and they’ve accepted), you're eligible! Full details below*

21+. NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Limit one entry per person. See Official Rules & an additional entry option here.

MEDIA SPONSORSHIP

You or someone you know getting hitched? We have a fun new feature for that.

If you want to celebrate your engagement or wedding (or anyone’s!), here’s where to go! It’s the Globe’s brand-new wedding announcements product where you and your loved ones can upload photos, videos, and notes about the happy couple onto their “Forever Page.” Just circulate the link and start celebrating! Cute, right? AND, at the 2nd-tier level, the page comes with a heartfelt video—bring tissues for that. 

B-Siders (known lovers of love) get 1st and 2nd tier Forever Pages for ONE DOLLAR. We have unlimited inventory at the first-tier level (code: BSIDE98) and only six left at the second-tier level (code: BSIDE248). Questions? Reach out to [email protected].

ONE LAST THING

Boston’s best bagel

What if we told you that NYC’s best bagels were actually … in Boston? Well, that might not be completely true. Or even a little bit true. But a Boston bagel company did just win “Best of the Fest” at NYC’s BagelFest, and we’re taking the W.

The winning bagel came from Bagelsaurus, the well-loved Porter Square bagel spot. It beat out 47 other bagels to earn its title, including over 30 bagels from NYC itself, and managed to nab the festival’s “rising star” award to boot. 

The moral of the story: Think twice before you trash Boston’s bagel scene.

— Written by Gia Orsino and Emily Schario

🥯 Thanks for reading! Or at least, go to Bagelsaurus first.

📝 Programming note: We’ll be taking Monday off for the long weekend, but we’ll be back in your inbox Tuesday. Enjoy the extra day off!

👖 The results are in: 66% of B-Side readers still think that Boston is NOT fashionable. One reader said: “They can pry my basic black top and jeans from my cold dead hands.”

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