Sun, Nov 15
Pinocchio’s Harvard: documentary premiere
1:30–4:30 PM
Boylston Hall, Harvard University · Cambridge
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Morning Touchdown with Secret Boston
Sun, Nov 15, 2026 9:30 AM – 1:00 PM
Time Out Market Boston
Watch the game with Secret Boston. You don't need to be a sports person, but we love those too. Come to meet people, root for the Pats or spend the morning with some fellow fans.
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Social
Wharf Social with Secret Boston
Thu, Nov 19, 2026 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM
Night Shift Brewing, Lovejoy Wharf
Cocktails on the wharf with your current and future favorite IG handles. Put faces to usernames and have a little pre-holiday fun.
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SECRET BOSTON MEETUP
Tweed Night at The Haven
Tue, Dec 8, 2026 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM
The Haven
Trade the inbox for a proper Scottish pub. Come solo or bring a friend and put some faces to the Secret Boston crew.
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Guides
9 Boston holiday guides for what to do, where to go and what to buy
Boston once banned Christmas. From 1659 to 1681, taking the day off or throwing a Christmas feast could cost you five shillings. Now the city’s holiday lightings start the Saturday before Thanksgiving, and the plans pile up from there. Every Secret Boston holiday guide is right here, plus our own shop, sorted into what to do, where to go and what to buy, with a line on what’s inside each one. Start with the lightings if you have kids, the party spots if you’re planning the office party, and the gift guide if you’re shopping for someone who loves Boston. Our Boston holiday lightings guide has all six, from Sat, Nov 21 through Thu, Dec 3, including the night Santa arrives by boat at Martin’s Park and the Boston Common tree that Nova Scotia sends every year. Boston has 6 Nutcrackers this December, with ballet, burlesque, big band jazz and one in French, and every show runs between Fri, Nov 27 and Thu, Dec 31. Our A Christmas Carol guide starts at the hotel where Dickens first read it to Americans, then sends you to the Muppets singing it and a 1795 tavern for a toast to Scrooge. Hanukkah in Boston runs Fri, Dec 4 to Sat, Dec 12, with a Hanukkah day at the MFA, menorahs on Hummer limos in Brighton and where to get your latkes. Mariah Carey’s holiday bar makes its Boston debut in the Seaport on Wed, Nov 25, and our pop-up guide has six more Christmas bars, with which ones take walk-ins and which are 21+. These 9 holiday party spots build the office party around a game, with axe throwing, skeeball, darts and dueling pianos, and room for 10 people or a few hundred. Our Snowport guide explains how the Seaport’s holiday market works, plus the curling, Betty the pink yeti and what to check before you go. Our Boston gift guide has gifts we designed ourselves, starting at $16, plus a gift membership we email on the day you choose. Our shop’s Boston Ugly Christmas Collection starts with the Boston Ugly Christmas hoodie, from $52 in navy, with knit-style snowflakes and trees, BOSTON across the chest and the CITGO sign worked into the pattern. The same design comes on a crewneck, a tee, a beanie, a pom-pom hat, an ornament and wrapping paper. Our Wicked Good Christmas Collection puts “Have yourself a Wicked Good Christmas” on a hoodie, a tee, a beanie and an ornament. Free shipping on orders over $50. Order by Saturday, Dec 5 to get it in time for Christmas. The Boston craft fairs guide has 20 markets, Snowport, SoWa and Harvard Square included, in date order through Christmas.
5 Boston pet hotels for when your besties just need to get away
Boston dogs can get a suite, daycare and even a bedtime snack. Cats have rooms too. These five boarding spots include a South End dog hotel, a Charlestown stay and a West Roxbury resort with cat villas. The dog still needs a bed, and the cat has not agreed to any of this. One Boston pet hotel will not board a new dog until it has done three days of daycare. Another stops drop-off at noon. MSPCA-Angell will not take a pet it has not already seen. A new dog cannot book The Urban Hound the week of the trip. The hotel, at 129 Malden Street in the South End, wants a full-day temperament test on a Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday, then three full days of daycare, and only then a boarding reservation. Staff stay in the building overnight. The lobby does not. The rooms are a standard 4-by-6 and a larger 6-by-10. Posted non-holiday rates are $105 and $135 a night, daycare included. The solo rate drops the group play and substitutes four walks. Half the stay is due up front, and that deposit does not come back. Cancel inside 72 hours and the card is charged for the whole reservation. Holiday weekends want 10 days’ notice. Food has to arrive in a labeled bag for each meal. A small blanket is fine. One toy is fine if it is quiet. Dogs older than six months have to be spayed or neutered. The vaccine list includes both rounds of the canine flu shot, so a last-minute booking can die there. Suite Escape puts dogs in glass-fronted suites at 200 Terminal Street and walks them in the Charlestown Navy Yard. It is taking new clients. The tour is by email, not by wandering in off Terminal Street. Drop-off ends at noon every day, Sunday included. Pickup runs until 8 p.m. A flight that lands after lunch does not get the dog in the door that afternoon. At Red Dog on 274 Southampton Street, a dog stay is either social or private. Social means daycare and two potty walks, after the dog passes a daycare evaluation. Private means no other dogs, and four potty walks. Cats have separate rooms, meals the way you wrote them down, and a report card at pickup. Half the bill is due when you book. A dog or cat that is 10 or older needs a senior questionnaire before the stay is confirmed, and Red Dog will not give that older pet an injection. The care team is there overnight. The lobby is not: weekdays 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., Saturday 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., Sunday 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. It is also closed for check-in and check-out on New Year’s Day, Easter, Memorial Day, the Fourth, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. The Boston price list includes a bedtime tuck-in with the Presidential Patio and the Seasonal Suite. On a cheaper room, the tuck-in is an add-on, and so is a pup cup or a mid-day snack. Luxe Pet Resort, at 1220 VFW Parkway in West Roxbury, will sell a cat a Beachfront villa for $100 a night. Garden View is $50. A standard villa is $45. Food and the litter box sit in separate parts of the room. Two cats from the same house can be joined through a porthole. Dogs get their own crate-free suites, daycare included, at a posted premium rate of $90 a night. Peak dates add $10 for a dog and $5 for a cat. Luxe says someone is on site all night. The hours for walking in the front door do not match from one part of the site to the next, so ask for the pickup time before you pay. Grooming and dog hikes are extra. Dry food has to be portioned by meal. Wet food can stay in the can. MSPCA-Angell boards healthy dogs and cats at 350 South Huntington Avenue, and only if that pet has seen one of its non-emergency veterinarians in the past year. An emergency visit does not count. The suites are separate from the hospital wards. Dogs get four private walks a day, and photos go out twice a day. If the animal gets sick, the vets are in the same building. Pets that need more care than a healthy stay can be booked as medical boarding instead. Bathing is available before pickup. Drop-off and pickup run 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. every day. A boarding assistant can be reached from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. After that, nobody at the boarding desk is picking up. Get the tour. Ask which vaccines they want, whether a new dog has to pass a trial day, who is in the building after the lobby locks, what time pickup actually ends, and what the stay costs once the deposit and the holiday rate are on the bill.
Get to know Boston
Why happy hour in Boston is still banned
A bar can knock a few dollars off your oysters at five o’clock. Your martini is another matter. Happy hour in Boston is still restricted by a Massachusetts regulation that prohibits temporary drink discounts, free drinks and promotions built around drinking more for less. The rules apply across the state. Cambridge and Somerville cannot offer an escape route, and calling a promotion an industry night does not create one. As of September 19, 2026, the legislature is still considering a change. A Senate vote in favor of happy hour is not the same as permission for your local bartender to start pouring two-for-one margaritas. Why happy hour in Boston disappeared One of the events behind the ban happened outside the Ground Round in Braintree on September 9, 1983. Kathleen “Kathy” Barry, a 20-year-old woman from Weymouth, died after riding on the hood of a car driven by a friend who had been drinking at the restaurant. Some of the driver’s beers had been prizes in a music trivia contest. Reporting based on interviews with Barry’s family and former state officials describes how her death helped turn alcohol promotions into a public-safety issue. Her parents pressed for stronger measures against drunken driving. Massachusetts introduced the restrictions in 1984, during Michael Dukakis’s administration. They targeted the offers that could encourage someone to drink quickly or keep ordering: free rounds, discounted drinks and contests with alcohol as the reward. The ban dates to the same period as many of the clubs in our look at Boston’s bars of the 1980s. The rules have outlasted quite a few of the rooms. An all-day special is not a loophole The key phrase in the regulation is “same calendar week.” A bar cannot offer a drink for less than its regular price during that week. Selling a margarita for $8 all Tuesday and $12 on Wednesday does not get around that restriction merely because the Tuesday price lasted longer than an hour. A reasonably priced drink is allowed. A temporary discount on that drink is what creates the problem. Those are different things when you are comparing menus, even if both might leave you with a smaller bill. The regulation also prohibits charging a selected person or group less than the general public that day, with an exception for private functions not open to the public. Being a restaurant worker, a regular or the person celebrating a birthday does not, by itself, create an exemption. Bottomless brunch has a problem too The restrictions cover unlimited drinks sold for a fixed price during a set period. That rules out the usual public bottomless-mimosa promotion. Increasing the amount of alcohol without a proportionate price increase is prohibited as well, so a bigger pour is not a substitute for a discount. There are limits on service alongside the pricing rules. A licensee cannot deliver more than two drinks to one person at once. Pitchers of beer or mixed drinks must be served to at least two people. Drinking games and contests that award drinks are prohibited. Some provisions make exceptions for private functions. Buying a ticket does not necessarily make an event private; a publicly advertised offer still needs to comply with the rules. Food specials are a different story The regulation’s exceptions expressly allow free food and entertainment, as well as a drink included in a meal package. A discounted appetizer or oyster offer can therefore be legitimate even when its advertised time sounds like happy hour. Read what the offer actually includes. A food discount does not necessarily mean a cheap evening once drinks, tax and tip arrive. And a meal package is not blanket permission for unlimited cocktails alongside a plate of fries. For an evening built around the room and the drinks rather than a promotion, our Boston speakeasies guide is a useful place to start. The latest attempt to change the rules In July 2026, the Senate passed economic-development legislation containing a local-option proposal for discounted drinks. It would allow participating cities and towns to authorize time-limited discounts, subject to conditions including advance notice and a 10 p.m. cutoff. At this article’s September 19 check, the official bill history still showed House and Senate conference committees appointed on July 30 to resolve their differences. The proposal had not become law. Until that changes, a free birthday drink from the bar remains prohibited. Your friends, however, can buy the round.
What the colors of the Zakim Bridge lights mean
Green on the Zakim does not automatically mean the Celtics. Purple does not have one permanent meaning either. The Zakim Bridge lights change for holidays, memorials, and awareness campaigns, and the same color can stand for several unrelated things in a single year. MassDOT publishes a dated lighting calendar. Match the night to the entry, check that the Zakim is one of the bridges listed, and you have a better answer than guessing from the color alone. That last part matters. The state schedules several bridges on the same page. An entry for the Longfellow or the Braga is not automatically an entry for the Zakim. Where to check the Zakim Bridge lights The MassDOT bridge lighting schedule lists the occasion, color, date, and participating bridges. Use the current year, especially if the photo you are looking at has been reposted without a date. The 2026 calendar is a useful demonstration of why a universal color key would fail. Green has already been used for St. Patrick’s Day, Boston Legacy Football Club, and Living Donation Week. Blue has appeared for World Parkinson’s Day and for the twenty-fifth anniversary of September 11. Those are not competing theories. They are different nights. A blue bridge photographed in April cannot explain a blue bridge photographed in September. Two September nights this year make the point. On September 11 the Zakim was blue. On September 13 it was green, and that night the Zakim was the only bridge on the list. Same week. Different colors. Different reasons. Multi-color displays can be easier to tell apart, though the date still matters. The schedule names combinations as well as single colors. Read the full line before attaching a meaning to a picture, particularly when the occasion is a memorial or a health campaign. Who gets to decide MassDOT’s bridge lighting policy, dated November 14, 2023, says special displays express the agency’s official views. The bridges are not a public billboard and not an open platform for anyone’s message. A change needs approval from the department’s Office of the General Counsel and the transportation secretary’s concurrence. The policy covers state and federal holidays, other national observances, and public commemorations and celebrations at the national, state, or local level. The calendar can still move after that approval. A screenshot is useful evidence of an earlier plan. The live page is the better place to check what is scheduled now. The Zakim is one of several state bridges with programmable lights. The policy also names the Longfellow, Fore River, Kenneth F. Burns, and Braga bridges. Matching colors across the state can be one coordinated observance, not a coincidence. Why blue looks familiar Blue is also the bridge’s ordinary night look. Color Kinetics, which worked with MassDOT on the LED system, describes the design as blue-lit towers with the cables picked out in white. The company cites architect Miguel Rosales, who wanted a formal entrance to Boston. The LED system was unveiled in December 2012. It replaced older metal halide lights that had been on the bridge since it opened in 2002 and had grown dim. The new fixtures can hold the familiar blue or shift for a listed occasion. The lighting is not a new coat of paint. It is a programmed change. Blue by itself is therefore not enough to identify a tribute. Check whether a special blue display was on the calendar for that night before assigning it a meaning. Read the date before the symbolism For an old photograph, establish the date before looking up the color. For a night you have not seen yet, check the calendar again close to the date. If the page has no matching entry for the Zakim, leave the occasion unconfirmed rather than borrowing one from another month or another bridge. The fastest route to the answer is the least dramatic: date, bridge name, calendar line. Boston has other lights with a code, including the weather beacon on the old Hancock. This one usually comes with a schedule.