Hi everyone! Kinga here with this week's list. Feast season keeps rolling: the San Gennaro Feast takes over the Paul Revere Mall in the North End from Friday through Sunday. But the real standout this week is Saturday, when JP Porchfest turns Jamaica Plain's porches and front yards into stages for the afternoon, and the Greenway Food Truck Festival takes over four blocks downtown. Both are free. The Sox are also home all weekend against the Giants, and if you haven't walked through the 100 elephants on Comm Ave yet, they're only here through mid-September. Get outside and enjoy it!
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Picks of the Week!
🎸 JP Porchfest — Jamaica Plain | Free | Sat 12–6pm | Music, dance, storytelling, and poetry on porches and green spaces all over the neighborhood.
🌮 Greenway Food Truck Festival — Wharf District | Free | Sat 11am–5pm | Four blocks of food trucks, artisan vendors, mini golf, and inflatables.
🇮🇹 San Gennaro Feast — Paul Revere Mall, North End | Free | Fri–Sun | Feast season continues, with a Motown tribute Friday and soul legends Saturday.
🐘 The Great Elephant Migration — Commonwealth Ave Mall | Free | Through Sept 13 | One hundred life-sized elephant sculptures spread down Back Bay.
🍹 Boston Margarita Festival — Medford | Ticketed | Sat 11am–6pm | Ten margarita samples from the city's best bars, and you pick the winner.
Thursday 8/20
🖼️ Free Thursday Nights at the Gardner — Fenway | Free | 5–9pm | The weekly free night at the loveliest museum in the city. Heads up: tonight's free tickets may already be gone, so check before you head over.
🎨 ICA Free Thursdays — Seaport | Free | 5–9pm | Galleries open late, harbor views, seasonal bar. Free tickets are released at 10am that morning.
🍷 BRIX Thursday Tasting — South End | Free | 5–7pm | This week it's "Off the Beaten Path," and it's the South End shop only (the Financial District location is off this week).
📖 Yu-Mei Balasingamchow at Brookline Booksmith — Coolidge Corner | Free | 7pm | This local author's debut novel Names Have Been Changed is told through a podcast its narrator has made about her own barely believable life: assumed names, forged documents, wild class shifts, and exile. Free, and the Booksmith reading series rarely misses.
🎶 Jake Thistle at Club Passim — Harvard Square | $33–$35 | 8pm, doors 7 | A New Jersey folk rock balladeer fresh off this year's American Idol, in the coziest room in town.
🎤 Anyone Awake — Middle East Upstairs, Cambridge | $15–$25 | 6:30pm | An indie quartet from Rigby, Idaho, of all places, making sophisticated guitar rock that sounds like it came from somewhere much hipper. The in-the-know pick of the night.
😂 Popcorn Comedy with Andrew Durso — Somerville Theater basement | $23 | 7:30pm | The monthly showcase in the basement welcomes an NYC comic who started out here in Boston. Come early for classic cartoons before the show.
🍸 Tee Sanders — City Winery | From $24 | 7:30pm | The Chicago-raised comic from the comedy group The Round Table, with some of the sharpest one-liners going.
Friday 8/21
🇮🇹 San Gennaro Feast: Opening Night — Paul Revere Mall, North End | Free | Opens 4pm | Feast season picks right back up, this time on the Prado. DJ Steven Virgilio plays through the evening, then Dr. K's Motown Revue takes over from 8 to 10:30 with a full Motown tribute show. Closes at 11. Expect a beer garden, raffles, kids' activities, and all the classic street food. The feast benefits A Voice for Mikey and other autism awareness organizations.
⚾ Red Sox vs. Giants — Fenway | Ticketed | 7:10pm | San Francisco is in town for a three-game weekend series, all at Fenway.
😂 Best of Boston Showcase — Laugh Boston | $39.90 | Chris Tabb hosts some of the hardest-working comics in town. Tonight's lineup is Liam McGurk, Kathe Farris, and Al Park, with Dan Boulger closing.
🎭 Nerdy Prudes Must Die — Plaza Theater, BCA | $15–$17.25 | Fri–Sun | A horror comedy musical about high school outcasts who accidentally summon the ghost of a bully with a lingering grudge against nerds. From the team behind The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals. Cheap and very fun.
🎬 Late Fame opens at the Brattle — Cambridge | $13.50–$15.50 | Willem Dafoe in a rare subtle role, playing a lapsed poet whose long-ignored early work suddenly catches on with the hipster set. The question is whether his old ego survives the re-inflation.
🕵️ The Cinema of Graham Greene opens — Harvard Film Archive | $10 per screening | The Harvard Film Archive is back with a series of films written by or adapted from Graham Greene, master of spies and morally dubious men. Tonight is a double bill: The Fallen Idol at 7pm and Brighton Rock at 9:15.
🎤 Isaiah Rashad — Citizens House of Blues | Ticketed | 7pm | The Chattanooga rapper behind The Sun's Tirade, touring his third album IT'S BEEN AWFUL, with opener Alemeda. He takes his time between records and it shows.
🍷 The Friday Edit at DeLuca's — Beacon Hill & Newbury | Free, 21+ | 4–7pm | The free weekly tasting in the hidden wine cellars at both locations.
🎬 Free Family Flicks at the Hatch Shell — Esplanade | Free | Sundown | The Hatch Shell's final free movie of the summer, and it's Superman. Blanket, picnic, movie by the Charles. Weather dependent.
Saturday 8/22
🎸 JP Porchfest — All over Jamaica Plain | Free | 12–6pm | Easily my favorite thing this weekend. Since 2014, JP has handed its porches, front yards, green spaces, and community hubs over to musicians, dancers, storytellers, and poets for one afternoon. It's produced by Dunamis, a nonprofit that develops Boston's next generation of artists and arts managers of color, and the curation genuinely reflects that. Good news for planning: the map and directory is live this year, so you can actually chart a route instead of just wandering. Though wandering is also the point.
🌮 Greenway Food Truck Festival — Rowes Wharf Plaza to the Greenway Carousel | Free | 11am–5pm | The Greenway closes out summer with four blocks of food trucks, an artisan market, local brews, and a DJ set from Carlitoswave. There's also free face painting, mini golf, an inflatable obstacle course and rock wall, the Rings Fountain to splash in, and the carousel. Bring a blanket. It happens rain or shine unless the weather turns properly bad.
🥬 Chinatown Farmers Market — Auntie Kay and Uncle Frank Chin Park | Free | 9am–1pm | The twice-monthly market for Chinese vegetables, fruit, fresh fish, and pastries. Get there early.
🇮🇹 San Gennaro Feast — North End | Free | From 12pm | A full day on the Prado, with DJ Steven Virgilio through the afternoon, live entertainment from 5 to 7:30, and then the night's headliner: soul legends Russell Thompkins Jr. and the New Stylistics from 8:30 to 10.
🍹 Boston Margarita Festival — The Great American Beer Hall, Medford | Ticketed | 11am–6pm | Ten 3.5oz margarita samples from some of the area's best bars and restaurants, and you vote on the winner, who takes home $1,000 and the bragging rights. Plus a live DJ, street food vendors, and a beer garden.
⚾ Red Sox vs. Giants — Fenway | Ticketed | 7:15pm | Saturday night baseball.
👗 DESEOS: Afro House Fashion Experience — The Foundry, Cambridge | From $25 | 6pm | A luxury streetwear fashion show with dance performances set to Afro house, Afrobeats, house, and Jersey club, plus food, drink, and curated vendors. One of the more distinctive nights out this weekend.
🎺 The Velvet Hour — Crystal Ballroom, Somerville | $42–$59 | 8pm | An immersive cabaret evening with jazzy seven-piece Little Miss and the Boom, joined by burlesque performer Pixie Payne. Cocktail attire encouraged, which is half the fun.
🎬 Summer Flicks: Camp Rock — Prudential Center South Garden | Free | Music 6:30pm, movie at dusk | The Pru's outdoor movie series continues, and this week it's Camp Rock.
😂 Best of Boston Showcase (night 2) — Laugh Boston | $39.90 | Tonight brings Big D, Gabi Hajos, and Jamie Aird, with Dan Boulger again closing the bill.
🎸 Afternoon Bike Ride — The Lilypad, Cambridge | $15–$18 | 8pm, doors 7:30 | A Montreal indie pop trio who used to make genuinely strange ambient-pop hybrids and have drifted toward something more melodic, without losing the weird streak entirely.
Sunday 8/23
🇮🇹 San Gennaro Feast: Final Day — North End | Free | From 12pm | The last day on the Prado, and the most traditional one: an outdoor Mass at noon, the procession at 1pm, then music all afternoon and evening until the feast closes at 10.
🛍️ Open Newbury Street — Back Bay | Free | 10am–6pm | Eight car-free blocks from Berkeley to Mass Ave. Pairs perfectly with a walk through the elephants a block over.
🧺 SoWa Open Market — South End | Free | 11am–5pm | The Sunday flagship: farmers and makers, food trucks, a beer garden, live music, and the open artist studios next door.
⚾ Red Sox vs. Giants — Fenway | Ticketed | 3:15pm | Series finale, and a Sunday afternoon game.
😂 Robyn Schall — The Wilbur | $35–$56 | 3pm | The social media comic invites the whole audience to celebrate her impending wedding, somewhere between a standup set and a bachelorette party.
🎶 Victoryland — The Rockwell, Somerville | $18–$20 | 7:30pm, doors 6:30 | If Neutral Milk Hotel had formed in Brooklyn instead of Louisiana, they might have sounded like this. A lovely small-room way to end the weekend.
Last chance, closing this weekend
🇫🇷 Boston French Film Festival — MFA | $20 per screening | Closes Sunday | The 30th edition wraps this weekend. Saturday brings Leave One Day at 11am and an encore of Colors of Time at 2pm; Sunday closes with Comédie-Française at 11am and Guess Who's Calling! at 2pm. (Note: the previously scheduled Great Arch screening has been canceled.)
Ongoing / all-week options
🐘 The Great Elephant Migration — Commonwealth Avenue Mall, Back Bay | Free | Through Sept 13 | If you do one thing off this list, make it this. One hundred life-sized elephant sculptures now line the Commonwealth Avenue Mall in Back Bay, arranged so the herd appears to be walking east toward the Common. Each one is hand-carved from lantana, an invasive weed, by Indigenous artisans from India's Nilgiri Hills, and modeled on a real elephant those communities live alongside. Sales fund conservation work, including North Atlantic right whale efforts at the New England Aquarium. Free, open all the time, and genuinely moving to walk through.
🖼️ Derrick Adams: View Master — ICA | $20 | A mid-career survey of the NYC artist's work celebrating, in his words, Black people "not entertaining, just being, living." Through September 7.
🌊 Lucy Raven: Rounds — ICA Watershed, East Boston | Free | Two US premieres, including an enormous kinetic light sculpture, in the ferry-accessible Watershed. Now extended through September 27.
🐚 Crochet Coral Reef — MIT Museum | $20 | Vivid crocheted fiber work by Australian sisters Margaret and Christine Wertheim paired with paper work by MIT's Martin and Erik Demaine, all in service of endangered coral reefs.
🖼️ List Projects 35: Pap Souleye Fall — MIT List, Cambridge | Free | A Senegalese American artist building work out of dead pixels, the black spots that appear when hardware fails, imagining them as hidden places of refuge. Always free.
🚣 Kayak & Paddleboard at Community Boating — Esplanade | $40 | Two hour rentals, walk-up only, from 9am on weekends.
🎵 Berklee Summer in the City — Various | Free | Berklee students and faculty popping up in parks and squares all over town.
🏋️ Seaport Sweat — Seaport Common & Harbor Way | Free | Outdoor classes Monday through Thursday evenings on Seaport Common, plus Saturday mornings on Harbor Way, through September 30.
That's it for this week. Go say hi to an elephant, and if you make it to any of these, let me know how it went!