And it starts!

I haven't been posting much recently because, well, there hasn't been that much going on. No holidays and cold weather don't give folks many reasons to have free events. But all that is changing. Warm weather, here we come! Get ready for a fabulous Spring full of Earth Day celebrations, culture festivals and general let's hang-outside-because-its-super-nice parties.

Earth Day on the Greenway - This Friday

11am-1pm Dewey Square

Really we should be celebrating the Earth and the fact that we have this gorgeous greenway here in Boston, instead of a superhighway, everyday. This festival will showcase the new gardens at Dewey Square, interactive music making and an historic Boston tour with BostonWalk.

Greek Independence Day Parade - This Sunday

1-4pm Boston Common

Poor Greece, they aren't doing so well these days. But 100 years of independence, that's some good news. The Federation of Hellenic Americans will be celebrating with a Big Fat Greek Wedding parade and festival on the Common. I'm pretty psyched to see what they have in the parade. And who doesn't love some good feta and olives?

Cambridge Science Festival - starting Friday

All week! Cambridge, MA

Holy camoly. Calling all nerds, RadioLab lovers, amateur tinkerers. The festival starts with a frickin' carnival on Friday at noon. The week-long festival will feature 'Everything You Wanted to Know About Slideshows' (really), a Light Blades show, 'Math and Origami', an author talk on How the Hippies Saved Physics, and more. Literally 100% of this looks fascinating. I won't judge if you take a week off of work and just hit this up all week.

All this and more over on Beantown on the Cheap. Know of a cool event? Let me know!

Trick or Treating for Adults

One event to feature this week: the antidote to the sugar overload you're bound to suffer from this weekend. It's the

Saturday, October 29, 2011, 11AM* - 6PM

Sunday, October 30, 2011, 10AM - 4PM

This year the festival runs for two days at Roxbury Community College. This is the motherload of free samples. Energy bars, smoothies, teas, faux meat, healthy cookies - row after row of vendors shoving food and coupons into your hands. It's trick or treating and you don't even have to get dressed up!

I do believe there's some speakers and cooking demos besides all the eating that will happen, so head over to the Boston Vegetarian Society website and see the full schedule.

More events, as always on the Boston on the Cheap calendar.

* Bonus tip: 80% off gift certificates on Restaurant.com with the code PUMPKIN

The Festival Season goes out with a bang!

Warm weather has lingered and so has festival season. This is about the last really great weekend of outdoor events. As the weather retreats inside, so does the fun. But while it's still 70 and (hopefully) sunny - let's party!

Honk Fest Friday - Sunday

This festival is for all of us recovering high-school marching band members - and all lovers of brass, music, funky costumes and dancing in the street. The event spans three days and goes all over Somerville, centered around Davis, and down to . . .

Harvard Square Oktoberfest and Honk Parade Sunday 12 - 6 PM

Honk Fest's finale is a parade down Mass Ave., all the way from Davis down to Harvard Square. This is your chance to see all the Honk bands at once and soak up a bit of the gemuchlichkeit of the German street festival.

Boston Local Food Fest Saturday 11 AM - 5 PM

Best outdoor food fest hands-down. All local, all free. Almost 100 vendors dishing out samples of delectable delights. Demos of things like making mozzerella and *gulp* butchering a pig. It all goes down on the Fort Point channel waterfront and to boot, it's a zero-waste event.

Somerville Oktoberfest Sunday 12 -6 PM

Somerville gets in on the Oktoberfest action. Much more German than the Harvard Square event. Here you'll be able to get sauerkraut and bratwurst. No Honk bands, but you'll catch some of New England's finest leiderhosen-wearing oom-pah bands.

**Bonus Tip: Restaurant.com is having a 90% off sale. Today only!

Green Music Sunshine Diving

In the lineup for this weekend: two excellent looking festivals, urban cliff diving and an oldie but goodie.

Boston Greenfest

Boston City Hall plaza fills up with eco-clothing, energy efficient ways to remodel your house, recycled bottle earrings, and other things you should buy to be more earth friendly. (sarcasm) Ok, in addition to that stuff, there's some great organizations you should take part in to make Mass more green through political action and great music. (I just picked myself up a free CD of rockin' soul music.)

JP Music Festival

There's no better place to have a music fest. Jamaica Plain is full of musicians and greenspace. Put them both together and you get a great Saturday afternoon. I'm most excited about Erin Harpe & the Delta Swingers, slated to rock at 6 PM.

Urban Cliff Diving

Men in speedos jumping off the Institute of Contemporary Art into the Boston Harbor?! If this sounds to amazing to be true, you'll just have to go and find out if this is a prank or not.

KC and the Sunshine Band

I'm a fan of Get Down Tonight and Shake, Shake, Shake Your Booty and this is free, so why not? Bring a picnic, but don't plan on sitting down for what promises to be a rump shaker of a concert. Do you think they still look like this? --->

As always, full schedule of the months events and beyond at the bottom of the homepage.

Fiesta, Festa, พรรค

When August rolls around I don't know about you, but I feel I've got to milk this last month of summer for all it's got. My personal calendar is filled with parties - and so is the Beantown on the Cheap calendar!

Hungry Tiger Street Festival Saturday 7-10PM Union Square

This one looks fantastic. Union Square in Somerville will be done up like a night market of the far east. (I'm thinking Chinese lanterns and firecrackers?) Restaurants from Thailand, Brazil, Mexico and more will be representing. Performances. Cooking demos. I'm in.

August Moon Festival Next Sunday (14th) 9AM-7PM Chinatown

Chinatown's festivals are pretty generic, but cute. There's a stage where they bring out all the kids to do some frickin' cute Chinese dances. The lion dance will strangely captivate you. My favorite is the karate kids that come and demonstrate how they will kick your ass. Not much street food here, but you're in Chinatown, just hop in somewhere for a bite of authentic grub.

Italian Saint Festivals Just about every weekend, all weekend

There are a ton of Saints and just about every one has a birthday, which means they get a party. My favorite is the Saint Anthony's Feast, but really they're all great. Greasy DJ's, lots of cheap cannolis and pizza, crowds of fat grandma's and the parading of the Saint's idol. Go ahead, get down there and buy yourself a F***ing Cannoli!

Put down that bud and pick up a Craft Beer!

Why is American Beer like having sex in a canoe?

. . .

It's f*king close to water!

Thankfully this joke isn't quite as true anymore. By 2011 we're up to over 1760 breweries (that's back to 1900 numbers) and all but 20 are craft breweries. Still craft beer is only 5% of all sales in the US. Now if you're one of those sorry ostriches sticking your neck down a bottle of bud - what the heck?! There are a million much tastier local brews you could be drinking.

But if you're a good beer fan or beer-curious here's your week.

Boston Beer Week: a week for celebrating craft beer from inside 495 and beyond. All week there is plenty of opportunity to take part in free tastings at your local liquor store or meet-the-brewer events at bars.

I've put the freest most fun events on my calendar, but you might want to head over to Beer Advocate to check out the full schedule. In general it's a good place to always check out. They keep tabs on all the beer events around the country, so say you're doing a summer trip to Denver. Check out what's happening the week you're there.

As for myself, I'll be heading out of town to Hill Farmstead Brewery for their first anniversary party in Vermont, which will include camping in a field on-site, two bands, a farmer's market, and twenty beers on tap.

Cheers!

Festival Season Starts with a Bang!

We just had the snowiest Winter and the rainiest Spring. Does this mean we'll have the sunniest Summer? We deserve it I think. Saturday forecast is iffy, but Sunday is all clear. There are at least a dozen top-notch events to take advantage of this weekend. Here's the best. Which will you do?

Free Sailing Open House Saturday 1:00-5:00 PM

No sailing knowledge necessary, just duck when your captain yells the boom is coming. Probably one of the coolest places to sail is the Boston Harbor and one of the coolest ways to do it is for free.

Free Beer, BBQ and Wine Saturday 1:00-3:00 PM

It's a bit of a track out to Lexington, but check out the free sample spread these guys will have: pulled pork, mini hog wings, corn bread, Tempranillo, Chardonnay, fancy cheese, Cape Cod potato chips, Ommegang ale, Brooklyn beer, Pretty Things and Cisco brewery.

Somerville Porchfest Saturday 12:00-6:00 PM

I'm amazed Jamaica Plain didn't think of this first, but here they are. 75 Somerville bohemians will be on their porch playing music for free all afternoon.

JP Springroll Sunday10:00-1:00 PM

JP'ers love their parades. I was woken up the other week by about 100 kids and some firetrucks marching down the street to kick-off softball season. This round we'll be decorating our bikes and rolling around the neighborhood

Earthfest Saturday 11:30-5:00 PM

Boston's Earthfest generally has little to do with the Earth. In fact, it creates quite a lot trash, but lineup seems good: Ok Go, some guy from Live, samples from Whole Foods.

For the full calendar of events scroll to the bottom . . .

Good Morning!

Wipe those sleepies out of your eyes. Do a big stretch. And get ready to . . .

Wake Up The Earth! Yes, that's right. Today is the hippie-tastic festival of the year. It's origins are celebrating local activists' work in 1979 to stop a massive highway from cutting through the neighborhood. I don't know about you, but I sure prefer our beautiful Southwest Corridor and orange line to a highway.

Today the festival is full of great ethnic food, half a dozen stages showing everything from Japanese drumming to jazz to circus acts and loads of dancing. Everyone looks like they had a 5 year-old dress them that morning and the vibe is positively groovy. The parade gets started at 11am and festivities go until about 6pm right outside Stony Brook T stop.

Think groovy is over? There's plenty more to do this weekend. Festival and fee stuff season is just getting started.

Lilac Sunday is held on Mothers' Day. It's when hundreds of mothers with their kids flock to the Harvard Arboretum and have their pictures taken with flowers. Looking past this, the flowering trees are actually quite spectacular and smell gorgeous.

Free Comic Book Day proves that indeed, the best things in life are free. Stop by a participating store to revel in geekdom and get a free comic book.

Free Southern Food with Expensive Hats Did you know today is the Kentucky Derby? (I wouldn't have except for a story on

NPR.) Really for us Northerners, this is an excuse to drink mint juleps, eat hush puppies and wear seersucker. Woodwards will be showing the Derby and serving up free apps in honor of the race. Goorin Brothers will be there selling hats. Drinks are on you.