Another week, a new rink of cheap ice to skate. This week’s forecast calls for 90+ highs (that’s 32+ for Bastille Day enthusiasts) and outdoor movies in spades. And don’t anyone dare try “thanking” me with any Slurpee gifts tomorrow — yeah I’ve got your game, tightwad.
Monday, July 11
Oh thank heaven for corporate promos. It’s 7-Eleven’s Free Slurpee Day nationwide in honor of the convenience chain’s 84 years in the lotto-and-donuts racket. No topping off though — to complete the gimmick trifecta, 7-Eleven is giving you 7.11 oz of frozen colors on 7/11.
The Cambridge Multicultural Arts Center presents its annual BOOMTOWN Festival this week with performances, exhibitions and workshops by Boston artists and musicians. Cambridge poet Toni Bee will read at 4:30 PM, followed by the Cambridge Symphony Orchestra Wind Quartet at 6 PM. All BOOMTOWN events take place at the Center, near the Lechemere stop on the Green Line.
Allstonians can mooch off of Brookline’s bounty with the (pirate-themed!) Summer in the Parks Outdoor Film Series that kicks off tonight with The Goonies at Devotion School Field, 345 Harvard Street near Coolidge Corner.
Tuesday, July 12
It’s always the Tuesdays that are most difficult to find anything to do. Tuesday is the throwaway, I guess. In any case, consider one of the Cheapskate stand-bys for tonight. Appy polly loggies all around.
Wednesday, July 13
The all-free-all-the-time Boston Landmarks Orchestra begins its summer run of Mozart and Tchaikovsky tonight at the Esplanade Hatch Shell at 7 PM. Each week the Landmarks Orchestra will feature world-renowned sopranos, tenors and guest musicians in addition to the core populist instrumentalists.
Thursday, July 14
Adam Mansbach and Ricardo Cortés, author and illustrator respectively of the adult bedtime storybook hit Go the F*@# to Sleep (famously narrated by Samuel L. Jackson and Werner Herzog) come to Brookline Booksmith in Coolidge Corner at 7 PM for a reading and signing. Leave your screaming infants at home, I’d say, or bring any with keen senses of irony.
Meanwhile, (as if you need anyone to tell you to go to the beach this week) Revere Beach kicks off its annual Sand Sculpting Festival, from Thursday night until July 18. For the cost of trainfare to the shore, you can feast your eyes on some awesome sculptures that will put the “epic” sandcastle you and your friends built in Summer of ’01 (the one with the moat? you know) to retrospective shame.
The Forest Hills Cemetery in J.P. hosts the 13th annual Lantern Festival tonight, which draws on the Japanese Buddhist Bon Festival of ancestral remembrance. The festival runs from 6 to 9 PM with taiko drummers, folk and Irish music and the culminating floating lantern display on Lake Hibiscus. The festival itself is free, but a $10 donation is requested for those interested in floating a lantern.
I nearly didn’t include this next event for the considerable trek… before realizing that Twilight-rabid cheapskates (granted, a niche I’m not sure I’ve fully tapped) would go to the ends of the immortal earth to watch whats-his-fangs in the outdoors. And so: SomerMovie Fest 2011 slumps, sparkling and moody, into its second week with Twilight Saga: Eclipse in Seven Hills Park near Davis Square beginning at dusk (for purely practical reasons). But honestly, if you schlepp to Davis instead of midnight premiering HP7.2, may Dumbledore have mercy on your Horcrux-split soul.
Friday, July 15
The Highland Street Foundation’s Free Fun Fridays scores you gratis admission to the Museum of Science all day. The Museum has some great exhibits up now, including a showcase of everything you don’t know about dinosaurs (a lot of it is dirty) and Peter Menzel’s cerebral photo installment “What I Eat: Around the World in 25 Diets.” Free admission does not, unfortunately, get you into the Butterfly Garden (it’s 5 bucks extra), IMAX screenings or the right to climb the giant Van de Graaff.
The Somerville Arts Council keeps up its fever pitch of summer festivals with ArtBeat 2011: Red this Friday and Saturday. A smattering of musical acts will take the stage in Seven Hills Park to open the festival beginning at 6 PM tonight, including bluegrass, roots rock and funk performances, although the fire sculpture reported to be erected in Davis Square might draw a few moths away from the music stage.
Free Friday Flicks at the Esplanade Hatch Shell finally starts onto its regular schedule with Megamind (2010) at sundown.
The Boston Harbor Hotel’s Movies at Midnight series continues with another classic at dusk on Rowes Wharf — the original Pink Panther (1963) with Peter Sellers and Robert Wagner.
Saturday, July 16
The team behind SoWa Open Market (every Sunday in the South End) are bringing their wares to the Rose Kennedy Greenway for the Greenway Open Market each Saturday. Thanks to Boston’s burgeoning food truck scene the Greenway is dotted with the likes of Grilled Cheese Nation and BBQsmith. Find a whatsit at the market, devour a locally-sourced Blue Man Goo at GCN, walk it all off on the Greenway’s interactive art trails and call it a yuppie day in urbania.
Massachusetts Peace Action marks the 66th anniversary of atomic testing in New Mexico with its Festival for a Nuclear Free Future on Copley Square. The festival features a variety of musical acts, taiko drummers and street theater performances, as well as speakers on non-proliferation and safe energy alternatives to nuclear power.
Somerville’s ArtBeat 2011: Red continues today with roaming (and egg-laying?) performance artists, a pirate parade of beating hearts, a craft center dedicated to constructing a one-story tall dragon, food and craft vendors plus live music on four stages. Most of that didn’t make much sense to me, either.
The Boston Sailing Center at Lewis Wharf hosts its last Open House from 1 to 5 PM with free sails around the Harbor.
The Pru’s Family Film Festival continues tonight with Steve Carrell, Russell Brand and the musical stylings of Pharrell (yeah, look it up) in Despicable Me (2010). Show begins at sundown in the South Garden.
Sunday, July 17
Harvard Square’s Bastille Day Festival is one of the peaks of the Cambridge summer festival season. La Fête Nationale brings the blue, white and red across the Pond with traditional events such as the waiters’ races (it’s acceptable to cheer for spills), high end street food a la carte (read: CHEAP), music and an international beer garden. Berets, accents and other stereotyped Francophisms will be donned at 3 PM and continue until 10 PM with street dancing on Holyoke to French techno once le soleil sets. Bonne pamplemousse!
Here’s one last outdoor movie offering that has managed to slip entirely under my radar all summer. Friends of Christopher Columbus Park present E.T. in all its product placement glory beginning around 8 PM at the North End wharfs near Government Center.
