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Parking a vehicle for a concert at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, is quite a challenge. Before heading to the BTS concerts this past week I did some research, even asking Chat GPT about how to handle parking. To its credit, with my hints about what I wanted, it ended up putting us at a pretty good spot in someone’s yard. The spot was a 25-minute walk from the stadium. We were staying at a hotel about four miles south of the stadium. Our tickets provided us free parking in the general parking lot across US-1, but I was skeptical. A bit of reading said you could end up waiting in that lot for quite a while after a concert. After day one, we talked to some folks who parked there and discovered they had literally not moved their car in the lot for about two hours. Not waiting in line, but literally just sitting in their car unable to move into a line. US-1 does not allow any left turns heading north toward the stadium starting anywhere from 2-4pm, and I assume something similar happens north side of the stadium. Earlier in that time slot you can sometimes sneak a left turn into a gas station when heading north, but as the day goes on you will probably get a ticket (or in an accident) if you try to do that. If you also need to head south after a show, parking where we did is a pretty good option. You can text the number on that page to reserve a spot. In our case, reserving was $40, but if you drove up to the lot it would have been $60. I’m sure prices vary per event. If you don’t park there, finding one of the few side streets to park on like this one on Pine Street is a good bet since you have easy right-turn access onto US-1. (I think that Lafayette House was also doing parking on Pine.) There are many businesses directly on US-1 south of the stadium that offer parking, but most don’t offer traffic control to get you out of the lot past the walking concert leavers and into the bumper-to-bumper traffic on US-1. If you’re heading north, I’ve read good things about parking at South Walpole UMC. I assume you could take some side streets from there to a less congested version of the busy road that you need to get to. Parking on Pine Street might even work for heading north if you can head west from your spot to 115 and on to 1A. The city does block off some residential roads in the area to protect neighborhoods from all the traffic, so your mileage may vary (heh). I did see some people leave lots on Pine and head west, though. If you need to take ride share, good luck! I read of people waiting at the ride share lot on site until 2 or 3 in the morning. At a certain point I think that drivers just stop being willing to drive there. I believe your best bet would be to start walking toward a side street like Pine and scheduling a car for a time about 30 minutes after you start walking. (Of course, cars cannot turn right from US-1 to Pine and I don’t think they’re allowed to enter Pine from the west, so YMMV on this as well. Probably you can’t do what I’m recommending!) If you need to take the event train back toward the city, good luck! For these concert there was only a single train and tickets sold out in five minutes. I assume there’s always only a single train. Some booked the commuter train that was scheduled between 10:30 and 11 pm. You will need to leave the show early to make that train. There are two hotels on site. If you want to book them for a show, you’ll need to book them well before the show tickets actually go on sale, so good luck! For these shows I checked every week to see if some rooms were cancelled and later became available. About a month before the show a few rooms became available, probably because they released accessible rooms that they have to hold back. Those rooms were…over $1,000 a night. I’m not sure if that’s the original price if you booked pre-sellout or if that’s just the “we’re sold out” price. A final option is to check if some of the restaurants to the west of the stadium are open for a couple of hours after the event. In that case, I may suggest parking in the general lot and hanging out for a meal after the game. Reply by email
We have collectively been recovering from a physically and emotionally draining two weeks of marching band. We all were caught napping at some point throughout the early days of this week! It’s been nice to have activities wind down this week, and we’ll have a bit of relaxation for a few weeks going forward. It’s been raining a lot around here. No flooding in our area, but I think there’s been some within an hour or two of us. We’re hoping our annual July 4th festivities are not washed out this year. My brother and his family are visiting today. We only get to see them once or twice a year, so we’re excited to hang for, well, 24 hours or so. 🙂 Time to get cooking in preparation for all of this. Cole slaw, cucumber salad, some desserts, and more. Let’s go! I saw this screenshot and a lot of memories came flooding back. I had totally forgotten about this game! For whatever reason it immediately made me think of these two games: This is nothing new, but the Social Security Administration sending out Trump bootlicking emails to the whole country has been one of my least favorite things of the past couple years. I’m not going to screenshot the whole thing, but rest assured it includes lots of “Thanks to President Trump” statements. What a sadly unique time in history. It’s interesting to see someone go the way of rebuilding a socials recommendation algorithm for themselves. What a fun visual comparison! (h/t Amit) Reply by email
Spent this morning at Minnebar. This year was the 20th anniversary. I’ve had several posts about Minnebar on this blog through the years. I’ve only been able to go a couple times over the past ten years and it was good to see many familiar faces. (Even some Minnesota expats. 👋, Luke!) I called TRUNCATE on a Postgres database table in production for the first time. That was nerve wracking! I did some wood work for the first time in a while. I’m working on a loft for Emma. I don’t know whether it’s time away from woodworking or just the type of project, but this felt a lot more like work and a lot less like hobby. Part of it might also be because it’s such a physically big project and that is a lot for my older body. You can never have too many clamps I’m way behind, but I just learned that Songkick was purchased by Suno. Did I know what Suno was before I learned that? No, but it sounds pretty ick. From their own home page: Make any song you can imagine Start with a simple prompt or dive into our pro editing tools, your next track is just a step away. Yeah, ick. Time to migrate to Bandsintown? Something else? Give up? I just finished the excellent Fela Kuti: Fear No Man podcast by Jad Abumrad and team. Highly recommended. I think I might become an Onion paper subscriber. Anyone else going back to paper? Discovered NOT A HOTEL. A man can dream. Reply by email
Short, and late, rendition of Friday this week as I’m traveling. We took a spring break to Phoenix and were able to fit in a Project Hail Mary IMAX screening. It was excellent! Two of us have read the book, and we enjoyed both versions of the story on their own terms. We got in to Phoenix late on a Friday, stayed at a hotel, and kicked around the city proper on Saturday before checking into our VRBO. Out of nowhere I found an afternoon performance of Come From Away at The Phoenix Theatre. It was our first time seeing the musical, and it was fantastic. Lots of memories flooded back for those of us who lived through 9/11. Other than the two events above, this trip was pure relaxation for us. A few meals out, a lot of ice cream, and otherwise lounging around the pool at the VRBO. We all are coming home with some new tans (and a few burns). We wrapped the last meal of our trip at Fabio on Fire in Peoria. Excellent pizza, excellent pasta. Ravioli Al Brasato Fritti Reply by email
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Lunch this particular Saturday started on a bit of a sad note. To get to the restaurant from Shaftesbury Avenue requires walking past the site of 10 Greek Street, once one of the most reliable restaurants in Soho, now sadly empty and forlorn. I know, it's 2026, lots of places are struggling and restaurants open and close all the time but I though 10 Greek Street would be there forever, a kind of Soho stalwart bistro like Duck Soup or Antidote Wine Bar or Noble Rot, always available for a glass of something natural and some reasonably-priced small plates. Anyway, life goes on, and after welcoming the lovely Impala into the Soho fold we also have Osteria Vibrato, a buzzy, already-popular little spot aiming to do for Italian food what Impala did for, well, whatever the cuisine at Impala is. After squeezing onto our table (the food may be Italian but the distance between the tables is very Parisian Bistro) I was presented with an ice-cold martini in a pretty little frozen glass, so on the martini front at least they're doing everything right. Decent sourdough, crispbreads and olives were also very nice - a surprising amount of flavour from the bread/crackers, and the miniature olives were little flavour bombs. These were all unordered, but weren't free - a cover charge of £3pp appeared on the bill later, which is either fine or a minor irritant depending on your point of view. Would an experience at Osteria Vibrato be measurably worse if guests were allowed to skip the bread and olives? It's hard to imagine it would. Sicilian red prawns were the first menu item to arrive. Drizzled in excellent olive oil (you really do notice the quality of some of the ingredients at Osteria Vibrato), they were sweet and salty and although perhaps not the very best prawns I've ever had in my life, could certainly have a shot at the top 10. They were also £4 each (£16 for 4) for these fairly small beasties so I made absolutely sure there was no head juice left un-snaffled to get my money's worth. Sardines stuffed with pine nuts and raisins felt like the kind of dish the ancient Romans would have enjoyed, although from what I can gather from my ancient Roman food history they would have eaten the whole fish - bones, tails and all - which we didn't do. Still a fun little dish though. If this doesn't look like a lot of sage and butter agnolotti for £28 then it's because they let us split two portions between the four of us, which was nice. I mean there's still a debate as to whether 6 agnolotti are worth £14 either, but they were certainly very well made and incredibly moreish. Whole grilled sole was absolutely beautiful, and at £39 for a whole fish, actually noticeably better value than a lot of the other dishes. Simply cooked, drizzled with olive oil and capers and seasoned well, the meat lifted off the bone in satisfying meaty chunks, and in fact I've just noticed on the bill they only actually charged us £35 for this so it was even better value than I thought. If you go to Osteria Vibrato, if they have the sole, you should order it. The mixed grill was, I'm told, nicely done too - chunks of lamb and veal (I think - I didn't try this one) cooked pink piled on top of roast potatoes. And yes £95 is a lot for a T-bone steak but it was expertly cooked with a good, dark, crunchy char and lovely strong, smoky beef flavour. Sides were enjoyable too - a pommes boulangère affair (sorry, patate al forno) with a nice crunchy top above rich, beef-stock soaked layered potato, and even a green salad was noticeable for a good sharp dressing and bold seasoning. Or maybe by that point we were just desperate for something that wasn't a giant slab of meat. I have heard the Osteria Vibrato amaretti described variously as "a must-order" and "the best you'll ever have". So maybe they were having an off day or accidentally missed an ingredient because despite clearly being straight out of the oven they were distressingly dry, to the extent they were actually quite difficult to swallow. Or maybe real fresh Italian amaretti are supposed to taste like hot bags of sand. Either way, I'm not sure I can recommend them. Very odd. Buckwheat, fig and almond cake was better though, as were a selection of house gelato and sorbets I forgot to take photos of. And credit where credit's due, staff were lovely and helpful and attentive, which more than made up for the occasional niggle I had with the food. It's clearly a very slick little operation and has definitely already got a fanbase - tables are quite hard to come by and the place was full this particular Saturday lunchtime. Maybe I've just been spoiled recently with some literally flawless meals, and my standards were unreasonably high. It's perhaps just unfortunate timing on behalf of Osteria Vibrato and that, objectively, the place has a lot going for it. Don't get me wrong, it is very good, but I think at these prices (£136pp which included a rather cheeky 14% service charge) it should be something approaching great, and really only the sole reached that level. Still, they seem to be doing something right, as I say, as the place seems to be running almost full occupancy, so well done them. If I was going to spend that amount of money again, I'd go to Impala. But as my Grandma used to say, it wouldn't do if we were all the same, would it? 7/10
As the sun sets in Tokyo, its alleyways become illuminated by the lights of “sunakku” snack bars. But OrySnack is illuminated by something entirely different: the gentle, glowing eyes of six small humanoid robots that are pouring drinks and interacting with customers. But you would be mistaken to assume that the robots have replaced human […] Related posts: Pop-Up Café In Tokyo Will Allow Severely Disabled to Work Using Robotic Avatars Braille Nueu Typeface Communicates Visually and Physically in English and Japanese Takafumi Tsuruta’s Fashion Label HaHa Makes Clothes For All Walks of Life
Every couple of days, I’ll drink a hojicha latte at a coffee shop I like. It’s delicious and gives me a perfect energy lift. I intentionally make sure it doesn’t happen every day, because I don’t want to rely on caffeine to get work done. I drink one beer very occasionally, perhaps once a season. […] The post Space easy rewards out appeared first on Herbert Lui.
And why it has a basement like a yellow submarine.
