 Weekend Preview · Thursday Edition Thursday, September 17, 2026 | The Daily Spotlight · Presented By This spot is open. Reach 8,000+ Bostonians before 7am, in the email they open with coffee. September dates are 75% off — $29.75 a day. | Weather ⛅ 79° / 66° The National Weather Service has today partly sunny with a high near 79, a light south wind of 2 to 6 mph, and a slight chance of a shower after 5pm. Tonight the odds climb to 60 percent, with a thunderstorm possible, a low around 66 and between a tenth and a quarter of an inch possible · full forecast → | The T Right Now ● RL ● OL ● GL ● BL Green has three stops closed today: Symphony on the E, and on the C, Brandon Hall through Oct 4 and Dean Road inbound through Oct 9. Red, Orange and Blue are running normally. Plan ahead: on Saturday and Sunday there are no Green Line trains between North Station and Babcock St, Kenmore and Heath St, and shuttle buses replace the Red Line between JFK/UMass and Ashmont · live status → | Roads One daytime window on MassDOT’s planned board: in Revere, Beach Street southbound and Route 1A southbound between Route 129 and Route 145, both 10am to 2pm. Tonight the overnight work returns: I-95 in Waltham both ways between Exit 41 and Route 2 from 8 or 9pm to about 5am, the Revere cluster on Routes 1A, 16 and 60 from 7pm, and Medford on Route 16 eastbound, Main Street and Route 38 from 7:30pm. Nothing is posted yet for the weekend. |
| The number: 46 — separate events starting on Boston’s calendar between today and Sunday, counted yesterday morning and deduplicated by title. Fourteen of them are confirmed free. all of them → | ⚾️ Rangers 7, Red Sox 3 — Texas has taken the first two in Arlington, 4-2 on Tuesday and 7-3 on Wednesday night, and Boston is now 82-70. The series ends tonight at 8:05, then the Sox finish the road trip at Tampa Bay: Friday 7:10, Saturday 4:10, Sunday 1:40. At home this weekend: the Revolution host Orlando at Gillette on Saturday at 7:30, the Patriots open their home schedule against Pittsburgh on Sunday at 1, and the Bruins start the preseason at the Garden against Washington on Sunday at 5 · full scoreboard → | 📅 Weekend Preview Friday is the warm one. Saturday feels like fall. Today is partly sunny at 79 with a 60 percent chance of showers tonight. Friday clears to a mostly sunny 75, and then the temperature drops ten degrees: Saturday tops out at 65 under sunny skies, and Sunday slips to 63 with an 80 percent chance of showers. So tonight’s pick is indoors, Saturday’s is outdoors, and Sunday’s runs rain or shine. One thing to plan around: the MBTA is closing the central Green Line tunnel all weekend for signal work, with no trains between North Station and Babcock St, Kenmore and Heath St. Use the Orange Line between North Station and Back Bay, and the T says to allow at least 20 extra minutes. Thu ⛅ 79° / 66° Partly sunny | Fri 🌤️ 75° / 52° Mostly sunny | Sat ☀️ 65° / 52° Sunny | Sun 🌧️ 63° / 56° Showers |
Thu 9/17 Legion of Mary was the Jerry Garcia side project that came before the Jerry Garcia Band, and tonight a lineup drawn from Boston’s own Grateful Dead scene pays tribute to it on Mass Ave in Cambridge: David Rubin and Chris Belden of Diamond Blues, Dan Crea of the Garcia Project, Justin Lopes of Dead Ahead and Kade Parkin of Bella’s Bartok. Tonight carries a 60 percent chance of showers, so this is the indoor night of the four. | Fri 9/18 Friday is the mild, mostly sunny evening of the four, and United South End Artists spend it opening their weekend: a reception at Piano Craft Gallery with a group exhibition previewing the artists who will have their doors open on Saturday and Sunday, 11am to 5pm. Those studios are spread across ten South End addresses, from the Boston Center for the Arts on Tremont Street to Wareham Street Studios and the Harrison Avenue buildings, so Friday night is the easy way to decide where to walk. If you want a table: Myers + Chang is a short walk from the Harrison Avenue studios and takes bookings on Resy. | Sat 9/19 Marshmallow Fluff was invented in Union Square, and Somerville has thrown it a party for 21 years now. This year’s theme is “Legally Fluff: A Toast to Union Square”: boardwalk-style midway games that are free to play, an Innovation Alley where a robot makes you a s’more, two stages, and a lot of things made out of Fluff. Saturday is 65 and sunny, the best outdoor afternoon of the weekend. The organizers say plainly that Union Square is short on parking and ask people to walk, bike or ride in, and Mass Bike is running two free bike valets. | Sun 9/20 Nearly 100 New England food vendors, two demo kitchens and about half a mile of the Greenway between the Carousel and High Street, free to walk in, with the tasting paid for booth by booth. Sunday carries an 80 percent chance of showers, and the Sustainable Business Network runs this one rain or shine; its rain date of Sept. 27 is only for severe weather. Bring a jacket, go at 11, and eat your way south. If you want a table: Bostonia Public House is a short walk up State Street and takes bookings on OpenTable. |
Last chance: Tracy Letts’s The Minutes, the Footlight Club’s 150th-season opener in Jamaica Plain, plays its final two performances on Friday and Saturday, Sept. 18 and 19. Upper Deck Golf at Fenway Park, the nine-hole course played from the upper deck onto the field, closes Sunday, Sept. 20. |
| Pizzerias take over City Hall Plaza for two days. Admission is ticketed and comes with two slice tickets; more slices are sold on site or in advance. Saturday is the dry day of the two. | The satirist who hosted Al Bernameg, the first political satire show in the Middle East, brings his stand-up to the Wilbur for two nights. Both shows start at 7. | The first look at this year’s Bruins at home. With the Green Line out of North Station for the weekend, the Orange Line is the train to the Garden. | The family funk-and-fusion band, bassist Victor Wooten among them, on Sunday night. Green Line trains are not running to Kenmore this weekend, so plan on the shuttle buses along Commonwealth Avenue or another way in. |
| Public Safety Three days into Boston police’s 2025 trial of about 45 Flock Safety license plate cameras, the department learned that law enforcement agencies across the country could reach the data through a nationwide sharing feature, which the city’s annual surveillance report says the vendor had enabled “in error” despite a contract that barred sharing. Police had it switched off, and the city and BPD now say they will not use Flock again. The report, released Monday, also counts 15 requests to add plates to a police watchlist during the trial, 12 of them approved. Per Boston.com. Read more → | Education The former Harvard Business School professor, who studied honesty and ethics, lost her tenure in May 2025 after a years-long investigation that followed misconduct accusations from the Data Colada blog in 2021; GBH says she is the first professor in Harvard’s history to lose it. She is suing Harvard, alleging discrimination and breach of contract, and Harvard has countersued, alleging she defamed the university and sent investigators a falsified dataset. In her first major interview since, she told GBH why she believes administrators forced her out and why she has accepted funding from Bill Ackman. Per GBH News. Read more → | Politics The Massachusetts Teachers Association gave $500,000 this summer to Yes for a Safe Massachusetts, the campaign to keep the state’s 2024 gun law, which makes it by far that campaign’s biggest financial backer, CommonWealth Beacon reports. The Boston Teachers Union endorsed the same side on Tuesday. The biggest single donor to the repeal effort is still firearms maker Smith & Wesson, which gave $50,000 when the campaign launched two years ago. Worth knowing before November: Question 9 runs backwards from the rest of the ballot, so a yes vote keeps the law and a no vote repeals it. Read more → | The Burlington developer has started building Vantage, 154 apartments at 110 Stergis Way in Dedham near Legacy Place, on a $54.6 million construction loan from Eastern Bank, with occupancy scheduled for spring 2028. Burlington’s Planning Board approved its 188 apartments on Middlesex Turnpike this month, the town’s first MBTA Communities development, and Boston said on Tuesday it will back tax breaks for its 333-apartment plan on the Audacy radio studios site in Brighton, Banker & Tradesman reported. Read more → |
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