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Guides
4 Boston Halloween events with pumpkin painting, Hocus Pocus and a museum after dark
Kids can wear costumes to hear the pipe organ at Old South Church, and the suggested donation of $25 to $50 a family goes to free organ lessons, so the night does something after you leave. It’s Saturday, October 31, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at 645 Boylston Street on Copley Square, and you get there on the Green Line at Copley. Boston Children’s Museum stays open after the regular day ends so you can trick-or-treat inside at 308 Congress Street, which is a lot easier than dragging a costume down Congress Street, and the night is Saturday, October 24, from 5 to 8 p.m. On the museum’s Halloween page it’s $25 a person through October 16 and $30 after that, and Pumpkin Patch of Play is its own daytime visit, so this ticket doesn’t get you in for that one too. You have to be 21 to get into Loretta’s Last Call, and once you’re in they hand you a pumpkin and something to carve it with while Hocus Pocus plays, with the food 20% off so you’re eating through a movie you’ve probably already seen. Doors are at 6:30 on Tuesday, October 27, it runs until 10, and the ticket throws in a welcome drink, listed at $28.52. Take a kid to Sonsie and paint a pumpkin in the downstairs Wine Room, then stick around and eat because dinner that night is 20% off, which is the fun part of doing this on a Monday. It’s all ages, running October 26 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. with doors at 6, and the ticket includes the pumpkin, the paints, a welcome mocktail, and light bites while you’re down there, listed at $44.52. If you’re going to their painting night event, don’t duck out when the paint is done, because dinner that night is 20% off and they’re open late enough that 8:30 still leaves you a real sitting. Sonsie has been at 327 Newbury Street since 1993, with French doors and sidewalk tables, and you can get wood-fired pizza or stay for a fuller dinner, since Mondays they serve from 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Show up for the Hocus Pocus event and eat there too, because the donuts come out at 7 when the movie starts and you can get Nashville hot chicken or smoked brisket without going anywhere else. Loretta’s Last Call has been the country bar at 1 Lansdowne Street since 2014, they open at 4 on Tuesdays, and the bar stays open until 1 a.m., with Kenmore the Green Line stop.
5 after-work drink spots near Copley Square
After-work drinks near Copley Square can mean a hotel bar with an 83-foot copper counter or a beer in a tavern built into a parking garage. Both are reasonable answers to the end of the workday. The useful question is which one your group actually wants. These five stops run from the square itself toward the Prudential Center and Dalton Street. Choose OAK if you want to stay close to Copley, Lolita for Mexican food with your drinks, or Bukowski if beer is the priority. If dinner is likely to follow, decide that before reserving: a dining-room table and a drinks-only visit are not always booked the same way. OAK Long Bar + Kitchen is inside the Fairmont Copley Plaza, right by the square. The long copper bar gives the room a clear focal point, while the hotel setting makes this a good choice when you want the evening to feel a little more considered than stopping at the nearest counter. The restaurant’s current information lists dinner from 4 p.m. on weekdays, with food orders continuing until 11 p.m. That makes it possible to turn one drink into a meal without changing addresses. Book a table if dinner is the plan, and contact the restaurant about a larger gathering rather than assuming a row of neighboring bar seats will be free. Earls Kitchen + Bar at the Prudential Center has a dining room, lounge and rooftop patio. It is the option here for a group that wants a choice of settings as well as something substantial to eat. The Prudential location page links its current menu and reservation system, so use that branch when organizing the visit. The restaurant advertises the rooftop as a year-round space, but ask about seating and weather arrangements for your particular date. A reservation for the restaurant does not by itself settle where you will sit. If everyone is arriving at different times, agree on the meeting area beforehand; “we’re at Earls” leaves a little room for confusion. Trifecta is the street-level lounge at Four Seasons Hotel One Dalton Street. Its cocktail menu uses Boston neighborhoods as its organizing idea. The Green Monster combines poblano tequila, citrus and cilantro oil; Mike’s or Modern uses vodka, espresso and cannoli cream. Several drinks have spirit-free versions, and there is a separate spirit-free option too. Prices place this firmly in hotel-cocktail territory, so look at the list before inviting the whole office. The lounge’s hours currently start at 3 p.m. on weekdays, with dinner available into the evening. It suits a planned drink or dinner more than an attempt to keep the bill as small as possible. Lolita’s Back Bay location is on Dartmouth Street, making it an easy choice when you want to stay near Copley and eat Mexican food alongside your drinks. Its menu includes guacamole, hot queso, tacos and quesadillas, so the table can start with something to share before deciding how hungry everyone is. Read the reservation policy before booking. Reservations are for full dinner service, and the restaurant seats a party when everyone has arrived. That is useful to know if half the group tends to get stuck at work. For drinks alone, ask about the bar arrangement instead of reserving a dinner table you do not intend to use. Bukowski Tavern at 50 Dalton Street gives this list its beer-first option. The bar is built into a parking garage, and its own FAQ lists rotating taps, a substantial bottle selection and wine. It does not serve liquor, so choose another stop if someone’s entire plan revolves around a martini. The food menu runs until 11:30 p.m., and the staff play vinyl from the bar’s collection and their own records. There are televisions for games, too. This is the place to choose when a beer and bar food are enough of an occasion, without needing the setting or cocktail menu of a hotel lounge. Make the plan easy to join Send the exact venue and location when inviting people. Earls and Lolita have other local branches, and the Four Seasons at One Dalton is a different hotel from the one on Boylston Street. If the plan depends on sitting outside, confirm the patio arrangement rather than assuming an ordinary reservation includes it. For a group with a fixed budget, share the current menu before booking. One person’s quick drink can become another person’s expensive evening once food arrives. Give everyone the chance to choose a beer, a cocktail or something without alcohol without making it a negotiation at the table.
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."
The famous Boston accent and its obsession with the letter R
Say “car,” then say “car engine.” For someone with a traditional Boston accent, the R can disappear in the first version and return in the second. The next sound makes a difference. That detail gets lost in plenty of Boston impressions. Removing every R gets you only so far, and eventually gets you somewhere nobody here is from. The accent has patterns involving consonants, vowels, and the way words meet in a sentence. It also varies considerably among the people who use it. Which R’s does the Boston accent drop? Linguists call the traditional accent non-rhotic. In ordinary terms, speakers often leave out an R after a vowel when another consonant or a pause follows. Think of “park,” “card,” or “car” said on its own. The R at the beginning of “red” stays. So does the one in “bring.” A Boston speaker is not applying a blanket ban to the letter. An R can also return at the end of a word when the next word starts with a vowel sound. In “car engine,” the words connect through the R. This is called linking R, a pattern also found in other non-rhotic English accents. Try saying the phrases naturally rather than giving each word its own pause. The difference is easier to hear in a sentence than in a list of words written with “ah” at the end. And where do the extra R’s come from? Then there is intrusive R: an R sound between words where no R appears in the spelling. “The idea of it” can sound like “the idear of it.” The vowel at the beginning of “of” creates the setting for that extra sound. It does not mean every Boston speaker says “idear” whenever the word appears. The University of York’s explanation of linking and intrusive R describes how one pattern developed from the other. Speakers extended an existing way of joining vowel sounds to words that did not have a written R. The extra consonant helps two vowel sounds meet. It follows a pattern, rather than arriving wherever an actor decides to put it. The vowels matter, too Listen to “cot” and “caught.” For many traditional Boston speakers, those words sound alike. That shared vowel is another important part of the accent, although it receives considerably less attention than “pahk.” Some speakers also use a broad A in words such as “bath” or “half,” bringing the vowel closer to the one in “father.” These features are not a checklist every Bostonian completes. A person can have a recognizable local accent without using all of them. You can hear examples in WBUR’s recordings and explanation of Boston speech, which includes Dartmouth linguist James Stanford discussing the sounds. Listening is more useful than trying to reconstruct an accent from exaggerated spelling. How Boston came to sound this way Boston speech belongs to the broader Eastern New England dialect region. Its history includes the English spoken by early settlers and the region’s continuing connections with England. Boston University linguist Neil Myler points to settlers from East Anglia as an important influence on the region’s R-dropping speech. Stanford also emphasizes the close contact Boston maintained with southeastern England, where non-rhotic pronunciation gained social prestige. That history helps explain the connection, but the accent has continued changing here. The way someone speaks also reflects their family, community, education, and social surroundings. Four centuries of Boston life did not leave the original dialect untouched. “Wicked” and “frappe” are a different part of the story An accent concerns pronunciation. A dialect includes vocabulary and grammar as well. “Wicked,” used to mean very or extremely, is vocabulary. In “wicked cold,” it increases the force of “cold.” It does the same job in “wicked expensive,” with less pleasant financial implications. “Frappe” is another regional word, pronounced “frap” in the familiar local usage. Merriam-Webster records both that pronunciation and the thick-milkshake meaning. Someone can order a frappe, complain that it is wicked expensive, and pronounce every R. Knowing the words and having the accent are separate things. Not everyone raised here sounds the same Research has documented differences across age groups and communities. In a 2010 study of Boston and two New Hampshire towns, linguists Naomi Nagy and Patricia Irwin found that younger speakers pronounced more post-vocalic R’s than older speakers. Education and other social factors also mattered. Those results concern the people in the study, rather than every younger person in Boston. They also measure one feature: someone who pronounces more R’s can retain other local sounds. The accent does not disappear the moment one pronunciation changes. For some people, sounding local is a source of pride. Others have felt pressure to soften their pronunciation to avoid being judged. Both experiences help explain why a city can have such a recognizable accent without all its residents sharing it. Pronouncing the R in “Dorchester” does not cancel out having grown up there.