Congrats to South End chef and restaurant owner, Andy Husbands, who is the latest local visiting chef to be featured at Dine Boston at Logan Airport’s Terminal E. Located before you need to enter security, Andy’s menu starts tomorrow, December 5th and includes fried Brussels sprouts; hanger steak with Swiss chard, wild mushrooms, and fontina-stuffed tater tots (OMG); and goat cheese cheesecake.
While I was away, Blink, a light and sound show started a six week run in Faneuil Hall.
Blink includes music from the Boston Pops, 350,ooo LED lights and an 85′ high Christmas tree. It looks quite beautiful, and I hope to see it firsthand but until then I have BMadden from YouTube to thank for sharing this taping when they were testing it one evening.
Blink occurs between 4:30 to 10:00pm each half hour through December 31st.
Toys for Joys Boston is one of my favorite (and one of the most social) holiday parties held each December. Thanks to the organizers, sponsors and the community this party donates thousands of dollars of gifts for children, but to attend this party you must register. To tempt you into coming, I’ve included photographs from the 2011 Toys for Joys party in Boston, here.
Use the link below to register if you are planning to join. This party always sells out so share the registration link with your friends. Note that this year there is a $10 donation at the door in addition to the gifts.
More about Toys for Joys – a volunteer group made up mostly of members of the GLBT community who care about children and their basic desire to have something to make them smile for the holidays.
Posted in Boston, Christmas, Gay, Philanthropy
Tagged BosGuy, Boston, Boston Guy, Toys for Joys
The Boston Ballet Nutcracker opens tonight. This year’s ballet is a reimagined production with all-new costumes and sets by Robert Perdziola and some new choreography by Boston Ballet artistic director Mikko Nissinen.
Boston Ballet Nutcracker runs November 23 to December 30
Attending the Nutcracker will get you into the holiday spirit. You may purchase tickets here.
The image is a sketch of Clara from costume and set designer Robert Perdziola’s in the reworked “Nutcracker’’ for Boston Ballet.
Last week Boston Magazine hosted The Taste of Boston at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. While the photos above clearly show me having a lot of fun with my good friend and blogger, Frenchie and Yankee, overall the event left a lot to be desired, and I hope that Boston Magazine can do better next year.
While the venue was beautiful, The Mandarin Oriental really didn’t have appropriate space for the event. Tables were spread throughout four rooms (some quite tiny) and accessing many of the tables proved troublesome. However, perhaps the biggest disappointment was the food (or maybe I should say the lack of it). There were too far too few restaurants serving food, but this may have been in part due to the limitations of the space, which were significant.
Lest you start to think of me as a glass half full kind of guy, I’ll shift gears and tell you what I think Boston Magazine did right. As the photos at the top of the post show, the “Chef’s TV Booth” was both a great idea and clearly the hit of the party. We may not all be celebrity chefs, but it certainly was fun pretending.
Bobie’s Candy Bar also proved to be extremely popular. The lines near the end of the evening were not however, and allowing people to access this colorful candy bar from both sides would have gone a long way in making this less crowded for attendees.
When it came to my favorite foods, I have to tip my hat to Post 390. They served a delicious house smoked salmon, garlic chive goat cheese with a touch of jalapeno jelly (below left). Asana also deserves a nod for the bay scallop sashimi with a bacon vinaigrette and togarashi kale chips (below right). These combined for my favorite dishes served at an otherwise lacking tasting. 
I hope Boston Magazine moves to a more open and larger venue next year. It will make it far easier to access the tables and allow for more options for people to truly get a “Taste of Boston”.
One month from today Boston will host the 13th annual Santa Speedo Run. This year the local beneficiary will be Play Ball Foundation.
Over the years, this hilarious and fun tradition has spread to other cities so check and see if a similar event will be taking place in your hometown.
The run starts at 1pm on Boylston Street near the Prudential Mall so arrive early to cheer runners who will be in speedos running to raise money for the Play Ball Foundation. Never been or won’t be able to attend? Here is a video from last year.
Posted in Boston, Christmas, Philanthropy, Video
Tagged BosGuy, Boston, Boston Guy, Santa Speedo Run
I stumbled upon this crazy photograph by Arthur Pollock of a dinosaur being delivered to the Boston Museum of Science back in 1984 on Boing Boing, but the source of the photo is Retronaut.com. I wonder what people in Boston must have thought as they looked up and saw a life sized dinosaur attached to a helicopter.
Starbucks rolled out free WiFi in all its stores two years ago. Now 
Starbucks has identified 17 locations around Boston for a “limited time in-store trial for wireless charging.”
According to Starbucks chief digital officer Adam Brotman, “We’re building the Powermat technology into some of the tabletops, just to get a sense for how our customers will react, compared to having to plug their mobile devices into the wall.”
The first three stores where this technology is being installed are all in the Financial District: One Financial Center, 125 Summer Street, and 101 Federal Street. Want to find out what other Starbucks will have this technology installed? Read the story in today’s Boston Globe here.
The Boston Ballet 2012-2013 season starts tonight with The Fall Program, a trio of contemporary works to be presented October 25 – November 4 at The Boston Opera House.
The program features three visionary choreographers, including Christopher Bruce’s Rooster, William Forsythe’s The Second Detail, and a world premiere by Boston Ballet’s Resident Choreographer, Jorma Elo.
I’ll be attending opening night and can hardly wait. If you have not been to the ballet before (or perhaps it has been awhile), consider The Fall Program that runs for little more than a week. Purchase tickets here.
Boston’s annual book festival (the largest literary event in New England) is this Saturday (October 27) in Copley Square. This year’s festival features more than 40 events and 150 presenters.
Whatever your interests, fiction, history, science, food, writing, sports, crime fiction, etc… they have something for you. You can check out the full calendar of events on their site, www.bostonbookfestival.org.
Boston’s Mayor made national headlines late last week when he expressed his displeasure with Trojan condoms plan to distribute “Trojan Vibrations” sex toys from their “Pleasure Carts” on City Hall Plaza. When I first heard the story, I figured I’d save it for today since it is technically “Hump Day” and the theme of the post seemed to lend itself so nicely.
It is hard to say if Trojan will be allowed to distribute their product but if a similar promotion, that was held in NYC earlier this year (also over the objection of their mayor), is any indication of the public’s interest there will be quite a buzz on City Hall Plaza.
Will this give-away come to pass or will the Mayor’s uptight response be the ultimate buzz kill? Who can say for sure, but I’ll do my best to keep you posted.
Source: Decodollop blog
One of my favorite poems by Robert Frost is, Nothing gold can stay. It is obvious that Frost was inspired by the fall foliage in New England when he wrote this poem back in 1923. Nothing gold can stay won the 1924 Pulitzer prize for poetry.
Nature’s first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
The photograph above depicts the Boston Public Garden by Michael Krigsman and is called Impressionist Boston Public Garden.
The 15th LGBT MBA conference, starts tomorrow (Thursday, Oct 18th) in Boston. The conference was last held in Boston in 2005 and this year’s event is expected to be much larger with more than 1,000 attendees from North America, Latin America, Europe and Asia. The goal of this annual conference is to promote the networking, visibility, and education capabilities of LGBT business leaders around the globe.
To all those who are coming to Boston for the event, I’d like to say Welcome! To those who live in Boston and are trying to think of something different to do this weekend, I’d suggest crashing their party on Friday. The Conference organizers have joined forces with Boston’s very cool The Welcoming Committee “Guerrilla Queer Bar” and together they will take over Tequila Rain in the Fenway starting at 9pm. A $5 cover charge discount is available to conference attendees.
For the ADHD: Friday, 9pm at Tequila Rain on Lansdowne St.
You read that correctly, car service startup, Uber, is offering free taxi rides in Boston (up to $25 in value) when requested through their app from 5 a.m. Tuesday (today) until 8 p.m. on Thursday.
“No strings — all someone has to do is signup for Uber and they can take as many taxi rides for free as they’d like through Thursday,” Uber’s Boston general manager Michael Pao said in an email. More information about their promotion is here.
Rainfall didn’t arrive until later in the day on Sunday so I went to check out this large one-day festival. Cooking demonstrations, food to sample and for sale as well as lots of entertainment and good people watching filled this four block festival along the Rose Kennedy Greenway park. 
Local shops like Southie’s American Provisions and local farmers had all sort of locally grown food and drink. Unfortunately, the weather was gloomy so I was happy when I bumped into the sun at the festival.
The variety of stalls selling so many products made me think twice about how easy it can be to buy from local and sustainable sources.
Want to find out more about this annual festival and the organization that makes this possible? Check out the event website, here.
BosGuy 