-
2 weeks ago | 
bostonglobe.com | Billy Baker
When the first Striper Migration Map appears, on a Friday in late March each year, it starts a delirium in a certain segment of the population. We’ll call them “striped bass enthusiasts,” because at least a few of them are not yet full-blown obsessives. Mind you, it’s not a small group. More than two million people viewed the first map this year, when it was published March 28 on the website and social media feeds of Cape Cod-based On the Water magazine.
-
1 month ago | 
bostonglobe.com | Billy Baker
ROCKPORT — The culprit is a bird. Or birds. Or perhaps it’s the start of the great bird apocalypse of 2025, and history will record that it started in the Squam Hill neighborhood of this North Shore town. For what is happening is so comically absurd that it feels like the beginning of a bad movie. Day after day, a pileated woodpecker has been smashing the side view mirrors on cars throughout the neighborhood.
-
1 month ago | 
bostonglobe.com | Billy Baker
Listen my children, and give your applause,For the midnight ride of William Dawes. Meh. Doesn’t have the same ring to it. It’s tricky to rhyme anything with Dawes. Gauze. Claws. Straws. Flaws. But rhyming Revere is so clear, my dear.
-
1 month ago | 
bostonglobe.com | Murray Whyte |Billy Baker
IPSWICH — “Welcome to the most exclusive pub in the world,” said Eamon Murray, the fuzzy-haired bodhrán player for the Irish band Beoga, speaking into the mic. He wasn’t exaggerating. On Friday night, Beoga was warming up the small crowd assembled here, in “The Old Phone,” a pop-up Irish pub built in an Ipswich parking lot for the evening’s main event: superstar Ed Sheeran.
-
1 month ago | 
bostonglobe.com | Billy Baker
If you’ve got $20 million to spend and a one-story indoor slide is on your list of must-haves, an estate has popped on the market in Weston that could meet your needs. The home, at 67 Byron Road, is listed for $19,850,000, and is billed as “timeless elegance meets modern luxury,” but with a hint of Chuck-E-Cheese thrown in.
-
1 month ago | 
bostonglobe.com | Billy Baker
CAMBRIDGE – It’s a cold afternoon along the banks of the Charles River, and the Leslie brothers are doing what they do nearly every day of the year, which is chasing big fish. It’s something they are exceptionally good at, which is why Kyler, 13, and Ryker, 10, have exploded onto the local fishing scene over the last several weeks, racking up big awards, state records, and one mega-viral video.
-
1 month ago | 
bostonglobe.com | Billy Baker
Dragon Pizza owner Charlie Redd made this post on Instagram after asking a family to leave his Somerville restaurant.InstagramExperts on how children should behave in restaurants — a group which seems to include anyone who has children, knows a child, or was once a child themselves — have been loudly voicing their opinion in recent days, after a kerfuffle at a Somerville pizza shop turned into one of those online battles where everyone feels entitled to call everyone else entitled.
-
Feb 4, 2025 | 
bostonglobe.com | Billy Baker
It’s rare, you tell yourself as you board a ski lift. You have a better chance of being injured on the way down the hill. Or on the drive to the mountain. Or in the shower once you strip off your long johns. But then your chair passes alongside a support tower, and the arm holding the chair to the cable rumbles as it goes over the little wheels, and your stomach drops, and it occurs to you that you are in a chair, in the sky, and it’s a long way down. Fear of chairlifts is common in skiing.
-
Feb 1, 2025 | 
bostonglobe.com | Billy Baker
Phones rang. Text messages flew. Late Wednesday and early Thursday, the community of competitive figure skating in Massachusetts pondered the unthinkable: Was anyone from their circle aboard the flight from Kansas that had crashed in Washington, D.C.? Several skaters, parents, coaches, and officials had just wrapped up an elite training camp in Wichita, Kan., including Kathaleen Cutone, a US Figure Skating official who had just arrived home in Middleton when she got a text asking if she was OK.
-
Jan 25, 2025 | 
bostonglobe.com | Billy Baker
NORTH ANDOVER — It’s just after school on Friday, and a pack of sixth-graders are crammed into a small outdoor rink, doing what packs of sixth-graders do. Five boys are seeing how far they can slide on their butts. Two girls are complaining that they can’t feel their fingers. And another girl is telling a boy that she is taller than him. “This feels like old-timey New England,” said Rick Gorman, as he watches the children skate behind the North Andover Youth Center, which he runs.
