Sat, Nov 14
The Move
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We picked our favorites from over 2,000 Boston places. Tell us what you’re up for and we’ll recommend up to three.
Meetups
Screenings, watch parties and nights out with Secret Boston.
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Sports & social
Morning Touchdown with Secret Boston
Sun, Nov 15, 2026 9:30 AM – 1:00 PM
Time Out Market Boston
Watch the game with Secret Boston. You don't need to be a sports person, but we love those too. Come to meet people, root for the Pats or spend the morning with some fellow fans.
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Social
Wharf Social with Secret Boston
Thu, Nov 19, 2026 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM
Night Shift Brewing, Lovejoy Wharf
Cocktails on the wharf with your current and future favorite IG handles. Put faces to usernames and have a little pre-holiday fun.
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SECRET BOSTON MEETUP
Tweed Night at The Haven
Tue, Dec 8, 2026 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM
The Haven
Trade the inbox for a proper Scottish pub. Come solo or bring a friend and put some faces to the Secret Boston crew.
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Somaek Korean
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Aeronaut Brewing Company
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Josephine
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Waypoint
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Guides
Where to catch A Christmas Carol in Boston, starting at the hotel where Dickens first read it in America
Boston banned Christmas from 1659 to 1681. Less than two centuries later, it was the first American city to hear Charles Dickens read A Christmas Carol. According to the Omni Parker House’s history, Dickens gave his first American reading of the story privately at the Parker House in 1867, then read it publicly at the Tremont Theatre, and WBUR dates the start of that reading tour to Dec. 2, 1867, in Boston. The hotel still has the mirror he used to practice his reading, and the original door to his suite came back in 2015 and is on display in its History Gallery. This year you can hear the story in that hotel, see it on stage with the voice of PBS’s Frontline as Scrooge, watch the Muppets do it with the Boston Pops, and finish with a toast at taverns that were pouring before Dickens was born. The hotel’s historic Press Room hosts A Christmas Carol readings on Saturday, Dec. 19 at 7 PM and Sunday, Dec. 20 at 2 PM and 5:30 PM. Veteran actor Johnny Kinsman reads the story while vocalist Ann Moss and multi-instrumentalist Justin Ouellet weave in carol tunes and foley sound effects, and Parker House historian Susan Wilson opens with the story of Dickens and the hotel. The show is for ages 6 and up, and refunds are available up to seven days before. That Press Room has its own history, too. The hotel’s timeline says a six-year-old John F. Kennedy gave his “first public speech” there in 1923, and he held his bachelor party in the same room in 1953. The Omni Parker House is running two holiday pop-up bars this season, according to the reading’s event page. Ebenezer’s Bar at Parker’s Bar leans into the darker, Dickens side of the season, and Blitzen’s at The Last Hurrah goes merry and bright. Blitzen’s opens Friday, Nov. 27 and pours daily from 4 PM to midnight, with cocktail recipes from Julie Reiner, a co-founder of New York’s Clover Club and a judge on Netflix’s Drink Masters. The Last Hurrah takes its name from the 1956 novel inspired by James Michael Curley, who was a Parker House regular. Parker’s Restaurant has its own claims to fame. The hotel says the Boston cream pie and Parker House rolls came out of Parker’s after French chef Augustine Anezin was hired to open it in 1865, and JFK proposed to Jacqueline Bouvier at table 40 in Parker’s Restaurant in 1953. Commonwealth Shakespeare Company’s Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol runs Friday, Dec. 11 through Sunday, Dec. 20 at the Emerson Cutler Majestic Theatre, with Will Lyman, the longtime narrator of PBS’s Frontline, as Scrooge. Steve Wargo’s adaptation is full of 19th-century carols arranged by Dianne Adams McDowell, the vocal arranger for Broadway’s A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder, and Steven Maler directs. Every performance is open captioned. The Saturday, Dec. 19 evening show and the Sunday, Dec. 20 matinee are ASL-interpreted, and the show runs about two hours with one intermission. Students can get $25 rush tickets in person at the box office starting two hours before curtain, and groups of 10 or more save 10%. WBUR has hosted a reading of A Christmas Carol every year since 2002. This year’s is Thursday, Dec. 17 at 7 PM at CitySpace, 890 Commonwealth Ave., with doors at 6 PM. Steve Brown, Meghna Chakrabarti, Tiziana Dearing, Ben Brock Johnson and Robin Young read, The Mistletones sing, and there are cookies and hot cocoa at intermission. Ticket sales support Rosie’s Place, which opened in 1974 as the first women’s shelter in the United States. Disney’s The Muppet Christmas Carol in Concert plays Symphony Hall on Sunday, Dec. 27 and Monday, Dec. 28, both at 2 PM, with the Boston Pops and conductor Lawrence Loh. Michael Caine is Scrooge, Kermit is Bob Cratchit, and Gonzo narrates as Dickens with help from Rizzo the Rat. The songs are by Paul Williams, who also wrote “Rainbow Connection.” For a spookier night, Massachusetts Poet Laureate Regie Gibson reads two Victorian Christmas ghost stories at Old North Church on Saturday, Dec. 12 from 7:30 to 8:30 PM. One is Dickens’s The Goblins Who Stole a Sexton, which the church calls a sinister precursor to A Christmas Carol. The other is A.M. Burrage’s Smee, where a Christmas Eve game of hide-and-seek in a dark mansion goes very wrong. Josiah Reibstein leads an ensemble playing a live original score. Everyone sits in the church’s box pews. A single ticket is $36, and private pews are $100 for three, $130 for four or $160 for five. For $12 more, a 20-minute crypt tour at 6:30 PM takes you beneath the floorboards to 37 brick tombs holding the remains of 1,100 early Bostonians. Three of the city’s oldest drinking and dining spots sit within a block of each other near Creek Square, according to the Historical Marker Database, a short walk from the Parker House. The Bell in Hand was founded in 1795 by Jimmy Wilson, the city’s last known town crier, and its marker says the only time it ever closed was Prohibition, from 1920 to 1933. Women were not allowed in until the late 1960s, and in the early days last call was 9 PM and the last round was on the house. Union Oyster House has served food since 1826 and calls itself America’s oldest restaurant. Daniel Webster was a constant customer at its oyster bar. Around the corner, The Green Dragon Tavern carries the name of the tavern established in 1654 where, its site says, plans for the march on Lexington and Concord were overheard. Across the river in Charlestown, Warren Tavern dates to 1780, calls itself the oldest tavern in Massachusetts and says it once welcomed George Washington and Paul Revere.
Boston’s 200-year-old oyster house is being sold, plus 7 more old-timers
Union Oyster House turned 200 this year, and in August the Boston Globe reported that it was being sold to the family of Houston billionaire Tilman Fertitta, who owns Landry’s. The sale still needs a liquor license transfer, and the buyers say the name, the staff and the traditions are staying put. Here are the oldest restaurants and bars in Boston that are still open, in order of age, from a 1780 tavern to a 1974 pizza counter, plus one famous pub that isn’t as old as it looks. Warren Tavern on Pleasant Street opened in 1780, five years after the British burned most of Charlestown during the Battle of Bunker Hill. It’s named for Dr. Joseph Warren, the Patriot leader who was killed in that battle. Paul Revere came here for Masonic lodge meetings in the 1780s. Fans of Robert B. Parker will also recognize it, since Spenser eats here in the 1982 novel Ceremony. The Freedom Trail ends nearby at the Bunker Hill Monument, so it’s an easy stop at the end of the walk. The Bell in Hand takes its name from Jimmy Wilson, Boston’s town crier, who carried a hand bell on the job and, by tradition, opened the bar in 1795. It calls itself America’s oldest continuously operating tavern. A 2025 Globe story found its current building dates to about 1844, and that the bar moved in much later. It’s still a fun, loud spot for oysters and a beer, a few doors down Union Street from the oyster house. Union Oyster House opened on October 7, 1826, as the Atwood & Bacon Oyster House, in a building that went up around 1716. It’s a National Historic Landmark and is widely called the oldest restaurant in America still serving. Daniel Webster was a regular at the raw bar. Upstairs, booth 18 was John F. Kennedy’s, and a plaque has marked it since 1977. Every November 22, the anniversary of his death, the staff put a single white rose on the table. Sit at the curved oyster bar downstairs and order a dozen and a cup of chowder. The Parker House hotel opened on School Street in 1855, and its kitchen gave the world two things Boston still eats. Parker House rolls came from here, and so did Boston cream pie, now the official state dessert. The hotel says JFK proposed to Jacqueline Bouvier at table 40, a plaque marks the spot, and Boston.com reports couples still book it for their own proposals. Get the pie. It would be rude not to. Amrheins on West Broadway has served Southie since 1890. The Boston Preservation Alliance counts it as the neighborhood’s oldest restaurant and bar. Go for brunch, served every day until 2, and enjoy the free parking, which is rare in Southie. J.J. Foley’s Cafe on East Berkeley Street opened in 1909, and the Foley family has run it ever since. Its biggest night came in 1919, when Boston police officers met in Fay Hall, the room upstairs, and voted to form a union. On September 8 they met there again and voted 1,134 to 2 to strike. That vote led to the Boston police strike and made Governor Calvin Coolidge a national name. The J.J. Foley’s downtown on Kingston Street is a separate bar run by another branch of the family. Make sure your friends go to the right Foley’s. Kelly’s opened on Revere Beach, just north of Boston, in 1951 as a hot dog stand. The roast beef sandwich came later, and the company story says it was born from beef left over after a cancelled wedding. New owners bought the business in 2025, but the stand on the beach is the original, so eat your sandwich on the seawall facing the water. Umberto Deuterio opened Galleria Umberto on Hanover Street in 1974, and it won a James Beard America’s Classics award in 2018. The menu is short: square slices of Sicilian pizza, arancini and calzones. It takes cash only, serves lunch only and closes when the food runs out, so get there early. One famous pub isn’t as old as its sign. The Green Dragon Tavern at 11 Marshall Street puts 1657, 1773 and 1776 on its sign. The real Green Dragon, where the Sons of Liberty met, stood on Union Street and was torn down in the 1800s. The Globe found the current pub opened in 1993 in a building from around 1850. So the Sons of Liberty never met in this building.
Get to know Boston
What the colors of the Zakim Bridge lights mean
Green on the Zakim does not automatically mean the Celtics. Purple does not have one permanent meaning either. The Zakim Bridge lights change for holidays, memorials, and awareness campaigns, and the same color can stand for several unrelated things in a single year. MassDOT publishes a dated lighting calendar. Match the night to the entry, check that the Zakim is one of the bridges listed, and you have a better answer than guessing from the color alone. That last part matters. The state schedules several bridges on the same page. An entry for the Longfellow or the Braga is not automatically an entry for the Zakim. Where to check the Zakim Bridge lights The MassDOT bridge lighting schedule lists the occasion, color, date, and participating bridges. Use the current year, especially if the photo you are looking at has been reposted without a date. The 2026 calendar is a useful demonstration of why a universal color key would fail. Green has already been used for St. Patrick’s Day, Boston Legacy Football Club, and Living Donation Week. Blue has appeared for World Parkinson’s Day and for the twenty-fifth anniversary of September 11. Those are not competing theories. They are different nights. A blue bridge photographed in April cannot explain a blue bridge photographed in September. Two September nights this year make the point. On September 11 the Zakim was blue. On September 13 it was green, and that night the Zakim was the only bridge on the list. Same week. Different colors. Different reasons. Multi-color displays can be easier to tell apart, though the date still matters. The schedule names combinations as well as single colors. Read the full line before attaching a meaning to a picture, particularly when the occasion is a memorial or a health campaign. Who gets to decide MassDOT’s bridge lighting policy, dated November 14, 2023, says special displays express the agency’s official views. The bridges are not a public billboard and not an open platform for anyone’s message. A change needs approval from the department’s Office of the General Counsel and the transportation secretary’s concurrence. The policy covers state and federal holidays, other national observances, and public commemorations and celebrations at the national, state, or local level. The calendar can still move after that approval. A screenshot is useful evidence of an earlier plan. The live page is the better place to check what is scheduled now. The Zakim is one of several state bridges with programmable lights. The policy also names the Longfellow, Fore River, Kenneth F. Burns, and Braga bridges. Matching colors across the state can be one coordinated observance, not a coincidence. Why blue looks familiar Blue is also the bridge’s ordinary night look. Color Kinetics, which worked with MassDOT on the LED system, describes the design as blue-lit towers with the cables picked out in white. The company cites architect Miguel Rosales, who wanted a formal entrance to Boston. The LED system was unveiled in December 2012. It replaced older metal halide lights that had been on the bridge since it opened in 2002 and had grown dim. The new fixtures can hold the familiar blue or shift for a listed occasion. The lighting is not a new coat of paint. It is a programmed change. Blue by itself is therefore not enough to identify a tribute. Check whether a special blue display was on the calendar for that night before assigning it a meaning. Read the date before the symbolism For an old photograph, establish the date before looking up the color. For a night you have not seen yet, check the calendar again close to the date. If the page has no matching entry for the Zakim, leave the occasion unconfirmed rather than borrowing one from another month or another bridge. The fastest route to the answer is the least dramatic: date, bridge name, calendar line. Boston has other lights with a code, including the weather beacon on the old Hancock. This one usually comes with a schedule.
Why Bostonians say “wicked” so much
“Wicked good” is a compliment. “Wicked expensive” is a complaint. The same word does both jobs without any concern for whether the subject deserves praise. In Boston, “wicked” often means very or extremely. It turns up the volume on whatever comes next. Say someone is wicked tired and you mean they are very tired, not that they have become a worse person. The meaning comes from how the word is being used. That is the useful thing to know before attempting a Boston impression. You can pronounce every R and still use the word correctly. You can also drop every R and put “wicked” in a sentence where it sounds like you learned to speak from a souvenir sweatshirt. Why Bostonians say wicked before almost anything In this usage, “wicked” is an intensifier. Merriam-Webster records its adverbial meaning alongside the older adjective meaning morally bad. The two uses can occupy the same language without confusion. A wicked person and a wicked good sandwich are different propositions. Think of “wicked cold,” “wicked funny” or “wicked crowded.” The word strengthens the description. It does not tell you whether to like the thing being described. Someone saying the restaurant was wicked busy might be recommending it, explaining a long wait, or wishing they had stayed home. The placement is more important than putting on an accent. “That was wicked good” has the familiar local construction. “That was wicked,” meaning excellent, is another slang use, but it does a different grammatical job. Adding the word everywhere will not make every sentence sound more Boston. The Puritans do not get automatic credit Boston’s reputation makes an origin story involving stern Puritans tempting. But the fact that an old word existed in England does not prove that seventeenth-century settlers brought this particular local use with them. The language program A Way with Words discusses “wicked” as a New England intensifier. That regional association is useful. It does not supply the name of the first person who said it, or a neat date when everyone in Massachusetts agreed to start. There is no need to invent a founding ceremony. People repeat words they hear in their families and communities, and a familiar expression can feel entirely ordinary to one speaker and immediately regional to another. “Wicked” works perfectly well without a colonial certificate of authenticity. Ordering a frappe does not require dropping an R Other local words need a little more translation. A frappe is a thick milkshake; the familiar New England pronunciation rhymes with “cap.” The spelling can make visitors expect a different word, especially if they are thinking of a coffee drink. For an order, the menu is more useful than a debate over terminology. Ask what is in the drink if the distinction matters. Regional vocabulary is interesting until it becomes the reason you receive something other than the ice cream you wanted. “Bubbler” means a drinking fountain, with a history that reaches beyond Massachusetts. Our bubbler explainer separates the regional word from a frequently repeated manufacturing story. Calling it a water fountain is also a perfectly effective way to ask for water. Vocabulary is not the same as an accent The Boston accent concerns sounds: which R’s a speaker pronounces, what happens between words, and how vowels are formed. Vocabulary concerns the words chosen. They overlap in conversation, but one does not require the other. A person raised here might say “wicked” constantly, occasionally, or never. Another might arrive from elsewhere and pick it up. Neither case is a useful citizenship test. Boston contains more than one way of speaking, and ordinary conversation is less uniform than the movie version. If the word is new to you, listen to what follows it. Good, bad, fast, slow, cheap, expensive: the next word does the describing. “Wicked” just makes sure you heard.