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Lifestyle Features

From the Web to the Workplace

Polish your tweets and blogs with a course in online social networking
Nearly nine percent of the Massachusetts workforce is unemployed this summer, and with local colleges cranking out a glut of degree recipients in a lousy job market, many of them are inevitably lounging around on futons, blogging and posting on Facebook walls in between job applications.

By: ASHLEY RIGAZIO | August 14, 2009

Melody makers

So you started a band — now what? Berklee and Topspin are here to help.
If you’re an up-and-popping band or artist, you first need to find fans, friends, and fiends on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and, of course, in real life. But where do you go from there?

By: CHRIS FARAONE | August 13, 2009

One Night in Boston

Fifteen photographers. Eight hours.
Our sister publication STUFF magazine presents its annual all-photo issue, capturing Boston after-hours. Visit www.stuffboston.com to see more photos.

By: STUFF BOSTON | August 18, 2009

For those about to lock

Somerville's champion lockpicker Schuyler Towne can't be stopped.
It's too bad Skip Gates didn't have Schuyler Towne's cell number on that fateful day last month. If he did, the Somerville-based lockpicking champ likely could have gotten in to the good professor's home in no time at all, and a national controversy (and international beer summit) might have been averted.

By: IAN SANDS | August 05, 2009

Beat the Tweet

Social networking is ruining your summer vacation — just accept it already and go outside
Warm weather is supposed to be accessorized by lackaday, by a breezy sensibility best enjoyed with a frosty tall boy in one hand, the sloppy product of a back-yard barbecue in the other. Instead, I find myself struggling to balance my beer between my knees and my overstocked paper plate on my thigh as I furiously poke at my BlackBerry.

By: SARA FAITH ALTERMAN | July 22, 2009

Only the awesome need apply

Free Money Dept.
What if Eli and Edythe Broad, two important financial backers of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in Cambridge, had gone batshit crazy back in the early '00s and decided to go in a different direction with their philanthropy?

By: IAN SANDS | July 22, 2009

Rethinking liberal arts in the digital age

Liberal Arts is due for an update
They didn't teach genderfuck, iteration, or micropolitics when I was in college. But times have changed.

By: MIKE MILIARD | July 23, 2009

Photos: NE Sand Sculpting Festival 2009

New England Sand Sculpture Festival 2009 at Revere Beach
Photos from the New England Sand Sculpture Festival 2009 at Revere Beach

By: PHOENIX STAFF | July 20, 2009

Scratch and Whiff

A non-junkie lottery player comes to grips with cardboard crack
I have 53 fully scratched (and completely worthless) Billion Dollar Bonanza scratch tickets sitting in my desk drawer. Each cost $20.

By: JIM SULLIVAN | July 17, 2009

The Search for America's Biggest A-Hole

Grossest casting couch in History Dept.
This week in Boston, Spike TV held auditions for its new sub-low-culture program, America's Biggest Asshole . You're right — all reality show tryouts are essentially auditions for America's Biggest Asshole, but this one is transparently egregious, as if the NHL re-named hockey "Kill the Man with the Puck."

By: CHRIS FARAONE | July 15, 2009

The dark knight

Merry prankster Sir John Hargrave is a square peg at a round table
By his calling card alone, Sir John Hargrave sounds like he may be a world-renowned botanist, or the first man to set foot in some remote part of Papua New Guinea.

By: IAN SANDS | July 08, 2009

Fresh Lobsters bring the crowds

Shoe Fly Dept.
Stinking junkies weren't the only ones sleeping on Harvard Square sidewalks this past week. More than 300 sneaker heads queued outside of street-shoe mecca Concepts, on Brattle Street, for five days and nights in anticipation of last Saturday's release of the world's only 260 pairs of Nike Blue Lobster SB Dunks.

By: CHRIS FARAONE | June 24, 2009

Living beyond their means?

The go-go '80s have receded into the oh-no aughties, but not everyone has gotten the memo.
I'm at Bond on a Thursday night, and it's simmering with testosterone and possibility. Spaghetti-legged cocktail waitresses coo at businessmen. Tables spill forth with bejeweled women speaking too loudly and young couples sipping Champagne.

By: KARA BASKIN | June 17, 2009

Photos: American Idol Season 9 Auditions in Boston

June 12-14 at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough
Thousands of American Idol hopefuls lined up very early outside the Gillette Stadium to register and secure an audition for the show.

By: MATT TEUTEN | June 16, 2009

Summer Guide 2009

Live music, film festivals, art exhibits, and more
New England's Best Summer Guide 2009

By: PHOENIX STAFF | June 11, 2009

Livin' la Vida Locavore

If farmers and artisans are packing their best goods and schlepping them to your 'hood, cheap, what's your excuse for not consuming them?
Winter has always traumatized New Englanders, but because of the economy (thanks, rapacious mortgage-bundling douche bags!), this past season was particularly grim.

By: SHAULA CLARK | June 10, 2009

Survive the econopocalypse

Want to keep your head above water in post-meltdown America? Here's some ways to get your own bailout bucks — without a W2.
If you're like the more than nine percent of Americans currently unemployed, your "Yes We Can!" has lately lost some of its gusto. You've hit up everyone you know for work, including your mom, your ex, and your ex's ex.

By: LISSA HARRIS | June 11, 2009

Heart of sharkness

Shark expert Greg Skomal torpedoes the great white hype
Unless you are a spectacularly moronic Masshole hell-bent on getting shark-shanked, New Englanders are more likely to be mowed down by a molasses tsunami or felled by Lizzie Borden's ax than they are to die in the maw of Jaws.

By: SHAULA CLARK | June 11, 2009