One year ago, disappointed I wasn’t able to include the wacky-sounding “A Long-Expected Party: Tolkien Burlesque” in Cambridge Day’s events calendar – it had already sold out at the Crystal Ballroom during my compiling process – I wondered just one thing: What does it say about Cambridge and Somerville that “a burlesque, drag and musical tribute that will transport you to the fantasy realm of JRR Tolkien’s works” would be the hottest ticket in our towns?
At that point I’d been compiling the events calendar for five months and had made a couple of mental notes. One, keep checking The Sinclair’s calendar and quickly buy tickets in case Hania Rani – the acclaimed Polish-born and Berlin-based composer, pianist and sometimes singer – swung back through town. Two, do the same with MIT’s calendar, with an eye out for “Valis: An Opera by Tod Machover” should it be remounted there (or anywhere, really). You never saw those events listed in our calendars: Tickets were gone 10 days before the performances occurred. Space, time and readers’ frustration keep me from listing events when I know there’s no chance for you to see them.
So during that first month of 2024, as an experiment, I decided to keep a list of events I couldn’t list. I kept it going the entire year. Would it show trends, reveal gems or shed light on unmet demand? More importantly, should there be more of these kinds of events in 2025? My summary of the list is below, so you tell me by leaving a comment. (I’ve noted a few conclusions of my own.)
Events in 2024 that sold out too early to include in the calendar
Free cooking classes. Classes at the library, in particular those focused on Asian specialties (dumplings and bento), sold out. Same thing happened if it was free and at the CultureHouse pop-up (alcoholic herbal extract) or on the Urban Park Roof Garden with chef Joe Gatto (anything). I discovered one should think ahead to get into Afton Cyrus’ library classes (mulled cider jelly); same for name chefs making dinner items (catfish with chef Anthony Brooks from Coast Café and rainbow pride pasta with chef Simone from the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts). A home-brewing coffee class sold out twice (once at the Cambridge library’s O’Neill branch, once at the Boudreau).
Book groups, especially fantasy fiction. About eight times in 2024 there was no getting into the science fiction and fantasy book group at the Cambridge Main Library, even 10 days in advance. Side Quest Books & Games opened at Somerville’s Bow Market in August and has sold out many of its game-playing nights, but also a book group (discussing the spooky Southern Gothic “A House with Good Bones” by T. Kingfisher, on Oct. 29).
Free classes on darning, visible mending, creative mending, creative patching and repairing garment closures, especially when the instructor was Jessamy Shay. Nine times during 2024 Shay’s free classes in various Somerville libraries sold out in advance, and so did four additional mending classes at Somerville libraries with an unnamed instructor (same description of class, so I’m guessing also Shay’s). Did she also venture into Cambridge to teach that hand-sewing class at the Valente library on Dec. 17? No instructor was listed, but that didn’t matter: it sold out two weeks in advance too. Same thing for a mending class by Maggie Ruth Haaland at the Harvard Museums’ Materials Lab and embroidery with Lily Sandholm at CultureHouse. Conclusion? Keep any and all hand-sewing classes coming!
Other kinds of free sewing and fiber arts classes, with or without machines. Lenni Armstrong’s four-part “Fiber Arts Adventure” at the Cambridge Main Library sold out in advance twice (in January and March). There was also no room to squeeze into that library’s sewing circle at the end of January nor beginner’s crochet at the O’Neill in early February. If, at the Cambridge Science Festival, you wanted to make a leather wristband, use electronics to make fabric patches with LED-powered sequins, make wearables with 3D printing or your own wearable lights, you had to sign up at least two weeks in advance.
“All things counter, original, spare, strange.” This random line from a Gerard Manly Hopkins’ poem describes a few random events that were overly popular: The Boston Stupid Hackathon at the MIT Museum, Bad Art Night at Somerville’s West Branch library, a screening of 1922’s “Häxan” silent Swedish horror film with a live score from Apostrophebeats (also at the West Branch) and the Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony at MIT. And it describes why New York comedian and writer Julio Torres sold out in advance his three nights in a row at Crystal Ballroom (he’s every one of those adjectives, gloriously).
Printing and painting. For classes in linocut (free at Cambridge libraries) or woodblock printing ($40 each at the MIT Museum) or for free cozy watercolor painting, paint nights, paint parties and paint-and-sips indoors and outdoors, you had to sign up way in advance. Likewise for the $40 Liquid Lab art workshops at the MIT Museum, which included the uncozy-sounding photochromic painting, micropipette art, gel electrophoresis art, microfluidic art and its own version of paint night (thermochromic, i.e., using heat-sensitive pigments).
Crafting, in general. Sorry, but due to overwhelming early interest the free cornhusk weaving, free felted winter scene hoop making (in which you “paint” a seasonal landscape with wool fibers using a special needle), $40 jewelry crafting with digital technology and free unnamed craft activity paired (somehow) with waffle making on the Urban Park Roof Garden never made it into the calendar. These were only slightly more popular than a craft event that I could list, because there were still a couple more seats: “Recycled Magazine Bowl-making for Earth Day” at the Somerville West Branch library. For that one, a whopping 17 people – eagerly and with intention – arranged their schedules to “create a beautiful bowl from discarded magazines for holding trinkets.”
Crafting with fall themes. The Somerville libraries are where it’s at for popular fall crafting, so around August be sure to start perusing their calendars if you want to learn how to make items such as scented candles, mason jar luminaries (paired with a spooky movie screening), embroidered zodiac sign constellations, collages, artful Japanese gift wraps (furoshiki) and haunted terrariums (that last one specified “for adults only”). All these free classes, as well as a Cambridge library class on artfully repairing a broken ceramic piece with metal powders (kintsugi), were fully booked 10 days in advance or more. Same thing with a workshop at the Harvard Museums’ Materials Lab on how to make a leporello (an accordionlike book) for displaying photos.
Animals and insects, and not always in a good way. I’m relieved I didn’t have to list a Harvard Museum of Natural History workshop teaching how “to create and care for your own gray squirrel … taxidermy mount.” People clamored to pay $350 for that class ($400 for nonmembers). It specified no experience was necessary, “but basic hand-sewing skills may be helpful.” (This is where hand-sewing goes over to the dark side.) And what’s with the rush for tickets to the $80 “pinning and learning” classes for “sunset moth” and “five-horned rhino beetle”? Shouldn’t we be celebrating the lives of these wondrous creatures, as we did the evolution of domestic cats a week later at the Geological Lecture Hall? Surely they are more than “sustainably sourced specimens … to display at home.”
Birds, always in a good way. Mount Auburn Cemetery is the place for birds, especially in April and May. The Cambridge library’s bird-watching walks were early sellouts there, as were Bob Stymeist’s three spring migrants walks (starting at 6:45 a.m.!) and his three walks in August to catch the fall migration of the common nighthawk.
More walking (and sometimes biking). Whether it was to learn about medicinal plants, fungi or fall foliage, free walking tours in Somerville and Cambridge proved too popular to include. So was the “Watershed Bike Tour: Cycle to the Source” to learn where our water comes from.
Potlucks and book discussions, when mixed with beer. Held at Aeronaut Brewery by the Somerville library, Books and Brews fills up fast and sometimes sells out in advance, as it did in December. But to get a seat at the library’s cookbook-themed Supper Club at Remnant Brewery, you have to be fast on the draw: I couldn’t list that event a full seven times in 2024. We wrote about one club session here. Conclusion? If breweries can find the space each month, more cookbook potlucks, please.
Chocolate. I look at plenty of speed-dating events by various companies (Skip the Small Talk, Resonance Lab, Millennial Crisis, Pitch-a-Friend) held at our breweries, but none has been as speedy to fill up as the Singles Mingle Chocolate Tasting hosted by the Cambridge Center for Adult Education (held outdoors in the middle of July, no less, and for $40). For another “evening of chocolate tasting and possible friendship or even romance,” be sure to keep up with CCAE’s offerings.
Author talks. Some writers that our bookstores and libraries brought in during 2024 sold out too early for me to list. They include Robyn Hitchcock (Porter Square Books); Rupi Kaur (Harvard Book Store); Sebastian Smee and Carmen Maria Machado (Cambridge Public Library); Alice Hoffman (Lovestruck Books); and Gail Mazur and Robert Pinsky, for two readings (Grolier Poetry Book Shop).
Singin’. Wonder why no mention of A.R.T’s “Gatsby” musical in the calendar? I promise it’s not due to my dear friend – a former high school English teacher – reporting to me it lacked important nuances of the novel. I really, really did try to include it each week, but alas, whatever week I was compiling, that week of seats was sold out. I also wish I could have included “Off Book: The Improvised Musical” at the Armory on Dec. 8 and the Longy students’ presentation of the “Cendrillon” opera (“with a contemporary twist”) Dec. 18 and 19 at Arrow Street Arts.
Dancin’. Raise your fedora if you’ve heard of the annual “Club Drosselmeyer: An immersive, interactive Nutcracker in Swing time” with a live eight-piece band and floor show set in a 1940s nightclub (and set up in Porter Square’s Masonic Lodge, of all places). Yeah, I hadn’t either, because swingers in the know fight over tickets to this shindig. Other dance opportunities I couldn’t list were Samsara Nritya’s “Embracing Dualities through Indian Classical Dance” at the Dance Complex and, at the CultureHouse pop-up, Gender Expansive Ballroom Dance and “Dance and Dessert: Coco e Mugunzá” – all three happened last March. Lastly, there’s gotta be a day the beginner-level Lindy Hop dance sessions held Mondays at First Church in Cambridge have room to squeeze in someone even a couple days in advance? Who knew people loved learning Lindy so much?
Musicians and bands. Here’s some performers to check out, if only because their concerts sold out way early: Bo En (London-based musician and video game producer), Basel Zayed (vocalist and oud player of Arabic music), David Coffin (sea shanty-singer and multi-instrumentalist), Ezra Furman (Somerville’s own), Koo Koo (musical sketch comedy and hip-hop for kids), Catherine Cohen (cabaret and more), Laura Jane Grace (activist rock), Fort Nights Studios celebration (performers were Buffalo Tom, Tanya Donelly, Fuzzy and others), The Bygones (indie folk duo), Michael Hurley (freak folk), John Doyle and Mick McAuley (Irish folk), Lori McKenna (modern country and folk), Scottish Fish (traditional and contemporary Scottish and Cape Breton music), Lunasa (contemporary Irish), Meshell Ndegeocello (bassist, poet, funk, soul, jazz and more) and Ian Maksin (cellist and singer in many languages). Interesting to note that Maksin’s Dec. 14 concert at the Museum of Modern Renaissance wasn’t even advertised by that venue, or anywhere else I could find; a posted Facebook video brought it to my attention. Seems his following just finds him, no events calendar needed.
Conclusion? Here’s one: Quite a bit of the time, people flock to our libraries’ free programming for a wide range of events. To stay on top of library offerings in 2025, well in advance, check out their calendars here for Cambridge and here for Somerville, or follow them on Facebook. And after you’ve spent a great time at an event they’ve sponsored, why not send a little donation to the Friends of the Somerville Public Library and Friends of the Cambridge Public Library to help bring in even more of what you enjoy.
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