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Boston Globe
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
A sad gas station becomes a happy gathering space in Jamaica Plain
Stamatos, who grew up in Foxboro, launched artful designs that are much happier. At first, it was a basketball that became a planter. 'I posted it on social media, and I had like 30 people reach out wanting one,' she said. She expanded her idea into a line of Get Love Letters: The Newsletter A weekly dispatch with all the best relationship content and commentary – plus exclusive content for fans of Love Letters, Dinner With Cupid, weddings, therapy talk, and more. Enter Email Sign Up 'I do a lot of like wedding pieces,' she said. 'if it's like a destination wedding, I'll make their like airport outfit.' Advertisement After some success, Stamatos began hosting popups for her brand around town. The next step was to make the concept a destination. An obvious sad place that could be happy was a shuttered gas station in Jamaica Plain (the former JP Gas), which had been sitting there, walled out, Stamatos and Hyde Park's Roundhead Brewing teamed up to turn the space into a hangout spot. With inspiration from Advertisement Making Sad Things Happy in Jamaica Plain. Eric Romaniecki The spot is open on Fridays from 3 to 8 p.m. and Saturdays noon to 8 p.m., with plans to stay open through September. The GPS address: 561 Centre Street. Stamatos has brought in food vendors who sell hot food outisde; The place hasn't needed much marketing, she said. Locals spotted the new paint and a Making Sad Things Happy sign and were already curious. When the spot opened on May 1, it was gorgeous out — and packed within hours. The crowd at Making Sad Things Happy at closed gas station in Jamaica Plain on May 2, 2025. The pop-up event included beer from Roundhead Brewing Company. Christina Stamatos says MSTH will be there during weekends all summer. Eric Romaniecki 'The gas station is a beautiful place to sit. It has cover. It absorbs the sun — it's great for that. It was an eyesore because it was like a dead spot,' he said. 'But put some greenery on some fence and bring beautiful people inside. That's the missing part. [It's about] using spaces and leveraging the beauty they hold for the events you want to make, in contrast with like demo-ing it down and going shiny new from top to bottom." Advertisement Meredith Goldstein can be reached at
Boston Globe
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Here's something new: Saturday is the first international Vintage Store Day.
Emma Lewis, the owner of Get Love Letters: The Newsletter A weekly dispatch with all the best relationship content and commentary – plus exclusive content for fans of Love Letters, Dinner With Cupid, weddings, therapy talk, and more. Enter Email Sign Up 'We're very, very pleasantly surprised for the first year,' Lewis said in a recent phone call. 'It's as grass roots as it gets.' Advertisement Plenty of the participating shop owners have told her that the creation of a Vintage Store Day feels 'overdue,' she said. Jeans from Groovy Thifty. Handout 'We've seen lines down the block for Record Store Day,' Lewis said. Another inspiration for the vintage store event is Advertisement Stores around Boston that have signed on for the inaugural Vintage Store Day include Sadie MacIver opened her garden-level 'It's all high-quality and niche,' MacIver said. She maintains a wide range of price points. Some of her rarer inventory, going back to the 1960s and '70s, is priced for collectors, she said, 'but I also recognize that my demographic is college students. I'm 10 minutes from BU. I remember being in college, when I did not have $80 to spend on a T-shirt.' At her own store in Chicago, Lewis sells vintage apparel, home goods, and jewelry. But she specializes in antique art prints. 'For me, it's about historic preservation,' she said. 'I'm keeping these pieces alive, and out of the landfill.' For many vintage shop owners, sustainability has become a key by-product of their business. Consumers are more attuned than ever, they say, to the drawbacks of the 'fast fashion' industry and big-box retail, including environmental damage and the exploitation of underpaid workers. Advertisement At Nest in Portsmouth, Ardito gets excited when a shopper buys a functional piece of home decor from her rather than spending at Target or Walmart. 'Instead of going to a big-box store looking for a plant stand, they buy something from me that has oodles of character and patina,' she said. 'I love bringing a piece of furniture back from the brink, refurbishing it, and it becomes somebody else's new heirloom.' She abides by a favorite quote from William Morris, the 19th-century architect and designer associated with the Victorian-era Arts and Crafts Movement in England: 'Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.' Ardito also has a motto she came up with on her own. 'We're saving the planet, and being badass doing it,' she said with a laugh. James Sullivan can be reached at . James Sullivan can be reached at
Boston Globe
22-04-2025
- Boston Globe
The Karen Read trial: Even in Australia, people have opinions. But why?
How did the trial of a relatively obscure woman, charged with murdering a relatively obscure man, reach the heady heights of The investigation should probably start with Court TV, the network that helped launch the trial-tainment juggernaut. Read's retrial has made the network's prestigious Get Love Letters: The Newsletter A weekly dispatch with all the best relationship content and commentary – plus exclusive content for fans of Love Letters, Dinner With Cupid, weddings, therapy talk, and more. Enter Email Sign Up I was eager to know what about Karen Read's case intrigued the network, and on a recent morning, Grace Wong, the senior director of courtroom coverage and field operations, came to the phone. Advertisement 'Most murder trials I cover, it's self-defense or an alternate suspect,' Wong began, speaking from Dedham, where she's been deployed with three other staffers. 'This case has an alternate suspect, but it's not just an ordinary alternate suspect. She's accusing the police — the very people who are investigating her — of framing her. That's what makes it so fascinating.' She listed other elements, too, of course, which we'll return to, but in the meantime, if you search Court TV's online page of 'trials to binge,' as one does, the categories alone will provide a window into what vaults a trial to national status. Advertisement They are: celebrities on trial; crimes of passion; kidnapping; kids who kill; killer cults; killer parents; killer spouses: love triangles; mass killers; medical crimes; murder and mayhem; murder-for-hire; police brutality; scorned lovers, self-defense or murder; and sex crimes. To my surprise, Read's trial archive isn't on that particular landing page, but elsewhere on the site, it's tagged 'vehicular murder' and 'murder and mayhem,' and Wong thought it would fall somewhere between 'scorned lovers' and 'killer spouses,' although Read is not quite either. Read, as people in Whether the second jury buys the defense's alternate theory or not, the corrupt-cops angle resonates with the public, said true crime bestselling author and former Boston Herald reporter Dave Wedge, who's 'Accusations of police wrongdoing are catnip for social media,' he said. 'I don't want to compare it to OJ,' Wedge added, 'but what made that so sensational, besides it being OJ, was [Los Angeles detective] Mark Fuhrman and his racist comments and the police wrongdoing.' Advertisement That same element has been famously stoked in the Karen Read case by local blogger Aidan Kearney — a.k.a. the 'Turtleboy.' As the Globe Read's assertion that she's the victim of a law enforcement frame job comes at a moment when distrust of authority and information is running high, said Daniel Medwed, a professor of law and criminal justice at Northeastern University. 'There's this idea that there's more to the story,' he said, 'that we don't know exactly what the police did or did not do, or what she did or did not do.' Beyond that, the enormous amount of evidence — 'It becomes a self-fulfilling machine of information,' said Medwed. The defense has fueled interest by providing new content and, in fact, authorized a documentary filmmaker to cover the first trial, and the resulting series, Cameras — and viewers — are in the car as Read and her team drive to the courthouse. In the 'war room' as her lawyers practice their statements. With her as she styles her hair for court. As a law professor, Medwed wonders about the legal impact this secondary body of evidence could have on the jury pool and the case itself. But viewed as a way to build engagement, he said, it's working. The defense is giving people the 'dopamine' hits they crave. Advertisement Indeed, when I asked the documentary's director, Terry Dunn Meurer, what made her want to spend time on the trial, she responded instantly. 'The access.' In addition to the entertainment value, Read's predicament is compelling because it's one that many people fear for themselves, experts said. 'A lot of people get really drunk and have had a bad night,' Wedge, the true crime writer, said, 'and they think, 'What if I got drunk and hit my husband after a fight?' That's a very real human emotion in this case. 'I could suddenly be charged with something horrible I didn't mean to do.'' Then, of course, there is the 45-year-old defendant herself, a professional, middle-class white woman with no criminal history who is considered traditionally telegenic. For many, Read is not only a relatable figure, but an 'aspirational' one, said Sue O'Connell, a commentator on NBC 10's 'Canton Confidential: The Karen Read Murder Trial.' 'She owned her own home, she worked at Fidelity, she was an [adjunct finance professor] at Bentley, she was dating a good-looking Boston police officer,' O'Connell said. 'She has an allure to her that people find attractive.' As Shira Diner, a Boston University School of Law lecturer and a clinical instructor in LAW's Defender Clinic, said, if all those things weren't true — if Read weren't a white woman of means — 'this case would look completely different than it does now. 'For starters, many people who are charged with second-degree murder are held on bail while the case is pending,' she said. 'All the work she and her defense have done to garner interest in the case, someone who is held on bail couldn't do any of that. That's an important angle when you think about how much of what we're seeing is because she has decided to tell her story.' Advertisement Indeed, Court TV's Wong said she could not think of another trial where a murder defendant was regularly greeted on the way into court by fans eager for selfies. 'She's like a folk hero,' she said. Beth Teitell can be reached at
Boston Globe
11-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Michelle Obama and her brother to launch a podcast with weekly guests
Other guests include filmmakers Seth and Lauren Rogan; soccer star Get Love Letters: The Newsletter A weekly dispatch with all the best relationship content and commentary – plus exclusive content for fans of Love Letters, Dinner With Cupid, weddings, therapy talk, and more. Enter Email Sign Up The first two episodes — the first is an introductory one and the second features Rae — will premiere Wednesday. New episodes will be released weekly and will be available on all audio platforms and YouTube. Advertisement 'With everything going on in the world, we're all looking for answers and people to turn to,' Obama said in a statement. 'There is no single way to deal with the challenges we may be facing — whether it's family, faith, or our personal relationships — but taking the time to open up and talk about these issues can provide hope.' Obama has had two other podcasts — 'The Michelle Obama Podcast' in 2020 and another in 2023, 'The Light We Carry.' Her husband, Barack Obama, offered a series of conversations about American life between him and Bruce Springsteen. The new podcast is a production of Higher Ground, the media company founded in 2018 by the former president and first lady.
Boston Globe
29-01-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
More than a dozen ways to celebrate Black History Month
Get Love Letters: The Newsletter A weekly dispatch with all the best relationship content and commentary – plus exclusive content for fans of Love Letters, Dinner With Cupid, weddings, therapy talk, and more. Enter Email Sign Up SOFAR SOUNDS BLACK ARTIST CELEBRATION AT BOW MARKET Sofar Sounds kicks off Black History Month at Somerville's Bow Market with a night of live music by local Black artistsperforming hip-hop, R&B, and soul. Between sets, take a walk through Bow Market's vendors, or purchase cocktails Upstairs at Bow. Feb. 1, 7:30 p.m. $27. 1 Bow Market Way, Somerville. Reserve at Advertisement 'WEE GOT THE JAZZ' CHILDREN'S EVENT Wee The People teams up with several Boston Public Library branches for a program focused on the phenomenon of jazz and its impact on Black America. The educational program will be available at the Roslindale, Parker Hill, Grove Hall, and Chinatown BPL locations. Children ages 6 and up will enjoy an hour of storytelling, music, and art-making. Feb. 3-6, at 11 a.m. See the schedule of locations at MFA 'FIRST FRIDAYS' CELEBRATION This monthly series brings museum-goers together for a night of art, dancing, and specially crafted cocktails. Black History Month's first Friday will center 'Power of the People: Art and Democracy,' an exhibit representing civilizations' use of art in expressing democratic ideals. Advance tickets required. Feb. 7, 6 - 9 p.m. Free for members; $27 for non-members. 465 Huntington Ave. Advertisement Vegan soap company Artifact Soapworks at the 2023 Black History Month Marketplace event hosted by the Cambridge-Somerville Black Business Network. Cambridge-Somerville Black Business Network BLACK-OWNED BUSINESS MARKETPLACE POP-UP The Feb 7 & 8. Times vary. 1 Brattle Square, Cambridge. RSVP for a free ticket at Quilts created by Sisters In Stitches Joined By The Cloth. Sister in Stitches 'SOJOURNER TRUTH: SEWING THE SEEDS OF JUSTICE' QUILTING EVENT 'Make your own block' with the Feb. 8, 1 - 4 p.m. 46 Joy St. Suggested $20 donation. Reserve your spot at (G)RACE SPEAKS' 'A REVOLUTIONARY ENCOUNTER IN LONDON' PLAY (G)RACE Speaks at Old South and Boston-based playwright Debra Wiess stage a dramatic reading of 'A Revolutionary Encounter in London' at Old South Church. The play centers on a conversation between Phillis Wheatley, the first Black woman to publish a collection of poetry in the United States, and founding father Benjamin Franklin. Feb. 9, 2:30 - 4:30 p.m. Free. 645 Boylston St. Register at HERO ART2HEART SILENT WALK Join local non-profit Feb. 15, 11 a.m.-1 p.m. 500 Walk Hill St., Mattapan. Advertisement Members of Afrobeats Dance Boston. Cynthia Odiah AFROBEATS 101 CLASS Feb. 15, 2:30-4 p.m. 1350 Blue Hill Ave., Mattapan. . Registration required. 'BLACK IS BEAUTIFUL!' EVENT WITH DELTA SIGMA THETA The Boston chapter of the historically Black sorority Delta Sigma Theta Alumnae has organized a family-friendly gathering for Black History Month and in celebration of the 40th anniversary of its event, Afternoon of African American Culture for Children. The event features live performance, food, and bonding activities. Feb. 22, 1 - 3:30 p.m. Bruce C. Bolling Municipal Building. 2300 Washington St., Roxbury. . Registration required. CITY OF BOSTON BLACK VETERANS APPRECIATION LUNCHEON In honor of Black Veterans and their families, Boston hosts a tribute lunch. Some will also be honored with community and outstanding service awards. Feb. 22, 10:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Boston City Hall, 1 City Hall Square (lower level 2); 617-635-3026 . Berklee College of Music students honored Robert Honeysucker in 2020. Laura Pernas ROBERT HONEYSUCKER SPIRITUALS CONCERT The Boston Conservatory at Berklee presents a free concert of spirituals in honor of Black History Month and the life of late faculty member voice faculty member since 1981. The student-curated event is supported by Berklee's Vocal Arts and Africana Studies departments. Feb. 28, 8 p.m. Free. Seully Hall, 8 Fenway, Floor 4. Advertisement Marianna Orozco can be reached at
