My friends and I were members of a veterans club for a few years, despite not being veterans. We were in our 30s and 40s and they called us "the kids." $30 a year membership, cheap drinks, Keno, talking shit with old-timers. We wound up moving to the other side of town but it was fun.

A lot of these social clubs will accept anyone who wants to join. They're mostly run by old guys who just want a clubhouse to hang out in. They almost never have much of a web presence. Just walk up and ask, they're likely to be friendly!

This. I've lived in 2 and 3 unit condo buildings and our dues have been VERY low, nobody's getting paid for the work. The tasks for the head of a small HOA are:

• Track dues coming in and common area utility and insurance bills going out (approx 1 minute per month, everything should be on autopay)
• Coordinate whose turn it is to shovel/weed/garden/vacuum common areas or hire someone to do that.
• Buy new trash cans when damaged (if the city doesn't issue municipal trash cans).
• Keep an eye on the checking account to save up enough for the inevitable repair of the roof/siding/etc. in a few years.
• Every few years get a rebid on the master insurance policy to see if you can find a better rate.

There's no reason for any HOA officer to be paid anything in an HOA that small. All of your dues should be going directly to the HOA checking account, and nothing should be coming out of it that isn't paying for insurance or specific services that everyone agrees upon.

Bike boom in Davis and Trek out in Alewife both service ebikes, even ones they didn't sell.

Ace only services ebikes they sell, last time I checked.

Zuzu in central.

Parlor Sports. They're the best. Also good for group watching soccer, rugby, and for some reason The Bachelor.

I'd love a place that showed motogp but it's never on at any reasonable times anyway so I just watch it streaming when convenient and avoid looking at /r/motogp on race weekends.

Not as good as it was when Scelfo was working there. (And yes, I'm aware of the allegations — knowing about them makes me not want to eat at his current places even though the food is good).

Gainesville tried to legalize infill construction and DeSantis overruled them. Normally he's in favor of property rights but not if a liberal city council does it and especially not when their motivation is affordability or inclusion.

This is a really good point.

(Off topic but it frustrates me when people understand this, then then around and say supply and demand doesn't apply to housing and that building new homes can't address the housing crisis. Or they say Airbnb is bad but also oppose new hotels. )

Yes. There are also substantial national tax rebates as of this year for switching from gas to heat pumps. OP may have a little more trouble finding contractors familiar with the latest advances in heat pump systems (they sucked in the 70s and their reputation has not kept up with the reality that they're way better now).

LOL I should operate a bike pastry tour. Start at Colette for trad French.

Then True Grounds for Rae's neo-excellence. Then get Montreal bagels at Turenne, English muffins at Vinal, and finish off with trad French at Beatrice.

I know there was an ice cream crawl by bike last summer. And a hot dog crawl.... Although I think that was like "collect stamps from participating hot dog places over the course of several weeks" because nobody should eat that many hot dogs all at once.

No, totally different! Both very good.

(If they don't have a fierce rivalry about their Kougin Aman, they should!)

Cafe Beatrice in Cambridge Crossing and Colette in Medford both do a great selection of traditional patisserie.

And don't miss Rae the Baker's pretzel croissant at True Grounds for a nontraditional take. (The miso morning bun is also an incredible mix of savory and sweet laminated pastry!)

Amateur housing wonk, glad to talk about it, DM me if you want to know about local housing advocacy groups. :)

Philips puts together a pretty good 3 legged stool analogy: supply, stability, subsidy.

Supply: Unless there are enough homes for everyone, people will get priced out. The region has added jobs faster than housing for decades, and we have a serious supply problem. Adding to the total quantity of homes is necessary but not sufficient.

Stability: tenants need protection. Even when there's enough supply, people can still get screwed by landlords, and we need to have good protections.

Subsidy: even when there's lots of homes and tenant protections, not everyone can pay market rent. So we need subsidies.

Now, the subsidies go further when there's more supply. The tenant protections are bolstered by the ability of tenants to go "f this I'm moving" and find another apartment.

All three reinforce each other.

Scam: asking for money before you see the apartment.

Bullshit but actually happens: application fees and the fee of 1 month rent to a broker who does no work.

I've been told so! Haven't had it in ages so I can't confirm for sure.

Doh! I should read more carefully. I didn't know about the Sox thing, that's good advice.

The Druid in Inman Sq, and the Burren in Davis, are good for Irish pub stuff. Druid has truly excellent shepherd's pie.

The ICA can be good, although it's a bit pretentious.

Look for discounts to get into the MFA, there are a bunch of different weird offers (like, free for people with Visa credit cards one Thursday a month, that kind of thing.)

I think the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum is free if you're named Isabella. It's a pretty different sort of museum than most places and the atrium is truly beautiful especially when the weather is terrible. Worth a visit even if you don't have a discount IMHO.

Jaju did a pretty good run of a truck-like concept in Bow Market but switched to doing frozen/grocery store distribution.

For cheap, no idea. You'll save tens of thousands over buying and owning a car, but they're still $$ to buy.

Bicycle Belle is, I'm told, America's #1 Urban Arrow dealer.

Depending on the thickness of the painting and its size you may be able to buy a standard prebuilt frame and a custom mat. Or even a precut mat. The custom part gets expensive.

Framebridge also does framing by mail for pretty reasonable prices but they're not exactlycheap.

Yeah. Ticketmaster sucks, no doubt about it, but it's separate from the fact remains that an artist can only perform so many shows per year, and that means there are only so many tickets.

So, yes, break up their shitty monopoly. It'll help venues, it'll help less famous artists, it'll probably help regular fans of less famous artists.

But it won't make Taylor Swift tickets easier to get or cheaper.

There's a tenants union online to coordinate with: https://twitter.com/alphatenants?lang=en

See also https://bostontenantsunion.org/

Somerville ISD is understaffed so keep calling them. Good luck.

Sorry for your loss. As others have said, most police stations and CVS pharmacies have unused medication disposal stations.

If those aren't convenient, you can do what my family did when my father passed and just open the bottles and dump the pills in the trash with coffee grounds/food scraps/kitty litter/anything that would make them gross and unusable.

The thing to avoid is flushing them, because they'll go straight into the water supply.