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Guides
Best pumpkin patches in the Boston area
A pumpkin trip can be a quick stop for something to carve or an afternoon involving a wagon ride, apple picking and several doughnuts. Before choosing among pumpkin patches in the Boston area, decide which version you want. The activities, admission arrangements and distance from the city vary considerably. These four farms are in Harvard, Tyngsboro, North Andover and Northborough. They are day trips out of Boston, and their pumpkin offerings are seasonal. Check the farm’s daily update before leaving, particularly after rain. A farm store can be open while its fields or wagon rides are closed. Westward Orchards takes visitors to its pumpkin patch by wagon on fall weekends. Its 2026 schedule runs from September 19 through October 18, with rides from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Rain stops the wagon, so this is one to check again on the morning of your visit. The farm also sells pumpkins, gourds and seasonal decorations around the store, which gives you an alternative if you only want to shop. Add apple picking while the orchard is open, or buy apples, cider doughnuts and produce inside. Pumpkin-patch rides and the store have different hours; an open shop does not mean the wagon is still running. Parlee grows its pumpkins on the farm, then moves them into a display patch for visitors to choose from. You are selecting a harvested pumpkin rather than cutting one from a vine. That distinction is useful if the field-picking experience is the whole reason for your trip. There is enough else here to fill an afternoon: apple picking in season, cider doughnuts, warm apple crisp and Annie’s Animal Barns. The farm’s daily news page lists what is open, picking deadlines and food service. Its regular fall schedule closes the farm on Mondays. Activity hours can end before the farmstand closes, so do the patch first if you arrive later in the day. Smolak’s fall weekends combine choosing a pumpkin with activities such as hayrides, animal feeding and the Cow Train. This is the option for a family that wants more than one stop after parking. The farmstand and bakery give you somewhere to pick up food before heading home. Read the fall festival details for your date before paying. Activities can be bought separately or in packages, and the packages do not automatically include everything on the farm. Compare the listed contents with what your children will actually do. Apple picking, flowers and food have their own arrangements. Tougas stocks its patch with carving pumpkins, decorative varieties, smaller pumpkins and gourds. Ask staff which are suitable for cooking if you want one for the kitchen as well as the front steps. The farm sells pumpkins by weight with a minimum charge, so a bigger pumpkin also means a bigger bill. Use the picking and pricing page to compare pumpkin-patch hours with the orchard and farm kitchen. They are not interchangeable. Apple picking has a separate purchase and admission arrangement, while the barnyard, playground and cider doughnuts give families other reasons to stay. Check conditions before setting off; fields can close when supplies or weather change. Choosing between pumpkin patches in the Boston area For a wagon ride to the patch, look at Westward’s weekend schedule. For pumpkins plus animals and food, compare Parlee and Tougas. Smolak is the choice here for a day built around several children’s activities, with the costs checked individually before you buy a package. Wear shoes that can handle soil and damp grass. Leave pets at home unless the farm explicitly permits them; Westward, Parlee and Tougas publish restrictions. If a member of your group needs a step-free route, ask specifically about the patch, wagon boarding and toilets. Farm-store access does not tell you whether the field will work. For a closer-to-home afternoon on another day, our free and cheap Boston outings include parks and indoor options. Save the farm trip for a day when you have time to stay.
A free Oktoberfest in Southie, then Halloweentown
Castle Island Brewing pours a free Oktoberfest in Southie on the 17th. Friday is a scare in the Seaport, with pumpkin painting on Newbury later in the month. Play It By Fear is the night for a costume without a ticketed maze. It is Friday, October 16, from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. at The Rocks at Harbor Way, 111 Harbor Way. The Seaport’s own listing has candlelight caricatures, a tarot table, and a photo booth. DJ Brian Halligan starts at 6:00 p.m. JAM’N 94.5 host Ashlee Feldman is the host. At 7:00 the Glass Artists string quartet plays Halloween classics and themes from slasher films, an hour after the DJ starts. A stand will be scooping $1 ice cream, and Union Square Donuts and The Sweetish Fish are on site. Seaport VIP Insider deals that night run from 5:00 to 9:00 p.m. The list includes Flight Club, Levain Bakery, and Puttshack, along with other Seaport businesses. The page does not list a ticket price, so check before you treat the caricature as free. Castle Island Brewing’s Oktoberfest is Saturday, October 17, from 11:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. at 10 Old Colony Ave in South Boston. It is free, and you have to be 21. The day is German lagers, a make-your-own pretzel necklace, hot beer poking, and oompah music from Kier Byrnes. The listing asks for lederhosen and dirndls. Date Faster’s Halloween singles mixer is Saturday, October 17, from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. It is 21 and over, and there are no timed dates. The page lists name tags, hosts, drink specials, and a game of Two Truths and a Lie. The prize is a ticket to another Date Faster mixer. Drinks are bought at the venue and are not included. Costumes are encouraged. Ticket totals run from $9.30 to $23.17. You can ask for a refund up to 7 days before the event, or exchange the ticket for another date. The calendar lists Howl at the Moon, 184 High Street. The description on the same event also says the venue is to be announced. Read the ticket page the day you go, and do not plan the night around the pianos at Howl at the Moon until that line is gone. The Boston Public Market Association’s Harvest Party is Thursday, October 22, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at Boston Public Market, 100 Hanover Street. The market closes at 3:00 p.m. that day for the party. Tickets cover unlimited tastings from market vendors, local beer, wine, and spirits, plus live entertainment and a silent auction. Individual tickets are sold through Zeffy, so the nonprofit keeps the full price. Sponsorships and in-kind gifts are open too. Boston Landing screens Halloweentown indoors on Saturday, October 24, at the TRACK at New Balance, 91 Guest Street. Admission is free and an RSVP is required. The pre-party is at 3:30 p.m. and the screening is at 5:30 p.m. It is all ages. The page linked here lists 3:30 to 8:00 p.m. The Eventbrite listing ends at 7:00 p.m. This entry uses 3:30 to 8:00 p.m. Refunds can be requested up to 7 days before the event. PruBoo is a free family Halloween event on Sunday, October 25, from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. at the Prudential Center, 800 Boylston Street. Kids trick-or-treat at more than 30 stores and restaurants. The page also lists face painting, Halloween crafts while supplies last, magic shows by Robert Clarke at 11:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m., and The Stacey Peasley Band. A trick-or-treat bag is a $5 donation to Boston Children’s Hospital. The band is listed from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. and from noon to 1:00 p.m. The 10:30 start is before the stated 11:00 a.m. start. Sonsie hosts pumpkin painting on Monday, October 26, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. in the downstairs Wine Room at 327 Newbury Street. The ticket is $44.52 and includes a pumpkin, paints, a welcome mocktail, and light bites, and you take the pumpkin home. Food at Sonsie is 20 percent off before or after the event if you stay to eat. Refunds are available until seven days before the night. The location is still a secret. Experience Halloween Night 1 is a costume rave on Friday, October 30, from 9:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m., and the venue is listed only as TBA. Experience and Techno Brooklyn are hosting. Briela Veneno, Crossbow, and L9 play. Costumes are encouraged. It is 21 and over, and tickets are listed from $25. Ned Devine’s Halloween party is Saturday, October 31, from 8:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. at 1 Faneuil Hall Marketplace. There is a DJ and a costume contest. First prize is $300 and the runner-up prize is $200. Guests have to be in the door by 10:00 p.m. It is 21 and over with a valid ID. Angry Orchard is the sponsor. Sales are final. The poster says advance tickets are $10. Eventbrite’s total is $11.54. Trixie’s Halloween is a 21-and-over dance party on Saturday, October 31, at Royale, 279 Tremont Street. Doors are at 9:00 p.m. Tara Dikhof opens, Trixie Mattel DJs, and the night includes pop-up performances from Boston drag performers plus a $1,000 costume contest hosted by Trixie. Katya is not performing. Presented by Royale Boston. Ticket sales are final. A promo code, DISCO, is $5 off. It does not apply to every show. Send us a message if you have an event you want added. Visit our Holidays events page for more.
Get to know Boston
4 Boston-area gangster hangouts with brutal backstories
The Winter Hill Gang once conducted business in a Somerville garage that now welcomes a church congregation. On Prince Street, Mafia associates talked inside an apartment while the FBI recorded them. In South Boston, a couple opened a liquor store and soon found themselves being told to hand it over by men threatening to kill them. Boston mob headquarters were a first-floor apartment on Prince Street, a liquor store on Old Colony Avenue whose owners kept saying no, and two garages, one later filmed by state police and one now used as a church. The North End headquarters with microphones in the walls 98 Prince Street, North End Gennaro Angiulo and his associates used a first-floor apartment at 98 Prince Street as a Mafia headquarters. From January 19 to May 3, 1981, the FBI recorded the conversations through hidden microphones, and a concealed camera outside photographed people coming and going so the voices on the tapes had faces. Those recordings became evidence in federal court. An FBI supervisory special agent later told the Senate that one slice of the Angiulo family's numbers business was bringing in $30,000 a day. For nearly a year before those tapes, the FBI could not get video of the address. People nearby reported suspected investigators to the Angiulos, often with a license plate, and they were usually right. Across 103 days of pictures, someone brought the brothers a new car or a new face on nearly every day. Agents hid a camera in a vehicle and changed that vehicle every evening. They were not spotted. The liquor store Whitey Bulger refused to take no for 295 Old Colony Avenue, South Boston Stephen Rakes and Julie Rakes opened Stippo's Liquor Mart in 1983. Julie later used the name Julie Rakes Dammers. In January 1984, James "Whitey" Bulger, Stephen Flemmi, and Kevin Weeks let themselves into the family's South Boston home. Bulger said they had been paid to kill Rakes and had decided to buy the store instead. Rakes said it was not for sale. Bulger said he would be their partner. Rakes refused that, too. They were back that evening. They sat at the kitchen table, showed a gun and a switchblade, and threatened to kill him. Flemmi picked up the couple's one-year-old daughter, stroked her hair, and said it would be a shame for her not to see her father again. Bulger handed Rakes a paper bag with roughly $65,000 and promised $25,000 more, which he later refused to pay. Flemmi said the store had new owners. The First Circuit's account of the extortion lays out that visit. The Rakeses held out for weeks, left for Florida, and came back still trying to keep the business. Julie's uncle, Boston police detective Joseph Lundbohm, asked FBI agent John Connolly for help. Connolly told Bulger. Bulger then told Rakes to make Lundbohm back off, and the family signed the title over. The store was at 295 Old Colony Avenue. Public records show Kevin Weeks bought the property. In May 1986 the building was sold to Weeks, Bulger, and another person, and South Boston Liquor Mart, Inc. was set up to do business there. The shop was also known as Columbia Wine and Spirits and by its original name, Stippo's Liquor Mart. A federal forfeiture appeal is where the address and the 1986 company are traced. The garage where the afternoon visitors weren't coming for repairs Lancaster Street, near the former Boston Garden Mechanics had the Lancaster Street Garage in the morning. Most days around 1:30 p.m., Bulger and Flemmi arrived, Bulger in a black 1979 Chevy that he pulled into a bay, and the visitors came for them rather than for a repair. Dick Lehr and Gerard O'Neill describe that routine in Black Mass. George Kaufman, who had operated Marshall Motors in Somerville as a front for Howie Winter, ran this garage for the two of them. They had moved the meetings downtown, a short walk from 98 Prince Street and a couple of blocks from Boston Garden. Massachusetts State Police filmed Bulger there in 1980. The Justice Department still has the footage. The Winter Hill headquarters that became a church 12 Marshall Street, Somerville Marshall Motors, at 12 Marshall Street in Somerville, was the garage they left behind. Kaufman ran it as a front for Howie Winter, and the back room is where Winter, John Martorano, and Bulger met. The Boston Globe described the place as the Winter Hill Gang's office for gambling and loansharking. James Sousa was killed there in October 1974, after other gangsters worried he would talk to police about a botched plan to rip off a dentist with a fake gold sale. A mobster, remembering the room years later, said, "There was blood everywhere." A church bought the building in 2008. In May 2026 the Globe found it open as Greater Works Church of God Somerville. Reporter Danny McDonald went to a Sunday service and found purple seats, screens welcoming worshippers, and a mural of people being baptized in a river. Rev. Collin Green led the prayers. After the service he brought up Howie Winter on his own. "It's changed," he said. "It's not that way. God is in the building."
Bostonians call drinking fountains ‘bubblahs’
Ask for a bubbler in parts of New England and someone may point you toward a drinking fountain. Ask in Wisconsin and the same thing can happen. Boston does not have this word to itself, even when it pronounces the ending differently. “Bubblah” is a written attempt to capture the local pronunciation of “bubbler.” The object is familiar: a fixture that sends up a stream of water for someone to drink. Its regional name has generated a surprisingly persistent origin story involving a plumbing company and a trademark. A bubbler is a drinking fountain Merriam-Webster identifies “bubbler” as a drinking fountain. The word is not a joke invented for visitors or a different kind of beverage. If someone tells you there is a bubbler down the hall, they are giving you directions to water. The name is descriptive enough. Water rises from a small outlet, making a short bubbling stream. “Drinking fountain” describes its purpose; “bubbler” describes what the water appears to do. Neither name requires a complicated explanation to be useful. That does not mean every Bostonian uses it. A family’s vocabulary, where someone went to school and the people around them all help shape which words feel ordinary. Hearing “water fountain” from a Boston resident is not evidence that they are secretly from somewhere else. The Kohler story needs a correction One popular account claims that Kohler invented the fixture, called it the Bubbler and watched the brand name become a general term. Versions of the story even identify an inventor named Harlan Huckleby. WUWM investigated that account with historian Beth Dippel, who had worked with Kohler’s archivist. The company records did not establish the supposed employee, and the dates in the story did not fit the business’s manufacturing history. Kohler did later make a design called a bubbler. But the word was already in use. That is the important distinction: a company using a name does not establish that it invented the name. Dippel discussed an older attachment on school water containers as one possible explanation. She presented it as a theory. The reporting does not replace one tidy invention story with another proved beyond doubt. Why the final R sometimes disappears The spelling “bubblah” moves the discussion from vocabulary to pronunciation. In the traditional Boston accent, an R after a vowel may disappear before a pause or another consonant. That is the pattern people are trying to represent with the “ah” ending. It does not mean a speaker removes every R from every word. R’s at the beginning of words remain, and an R can connect a word to a following vowel. The same person can sound different when saying a word alone and when using it in a sentence. The word and the accent also travel separately. A speaker can call a fixture a bubbler while pronouncing its R. Another can have a strong local accent and call it a drinking fountain. Treating those choices as inseparable makes a caricature out of ordinary speech. Other words that can trip up a visitor A frappe is another useful example. The dictionary records the thick-milkshake meaning and the pronunciation “frap.” Recognizing the word helps you order; copying the server’s accent adds nothing to the transaction. Then there is “wicked” used to mean very. It changes the strength of a description rather than naming a different object. These are separate features of regional English, not a script that everyone in Boston follows. A bottle-filling station may stand beside a traditional drinking fountain, but the fixtures serve different actions: one fills your container, while the other lets you drink directly from the stream.The next time you hear “bubblah,” you do not need to settle a trademark dispute or demonstrate your local credentials. You just need to find the fountain.