Let’s Help Musicians In Allston Secure New Practice Space

This holiday season, we can help musicians in Allston secure new practice space. They're being forced to vacate the Sound Museum.

If you're not familiar with the story, I'll give you the brief background. The Sound Museum in Allston has provided practice space for local musicians and artists for over 40 years. The building, located at 155 North Beacon Street, was recently purchased by developers. And while the bands who called the space home have advocated for an exit plan, none has been put in place. Local music blog Allston Pudding shared this tweet thread over the weekend:

The post reads:

Thousands of musicians are losing their practice spaces at Sound Museum next month due to the failure of the city to put pressure on the developer & Des from Sound Museum to include musician practice space in their proposed development. A real shame and loss for our neighborhood.

The thread continues:

Thank you to the countless advocates who DID fight to save space for these musicians. We truly need a miracle it seems to keep our neighborhood from becoming less and less friendly to musicians, artists, and working class people.

And it looks like there might be room for said miracle:

Some good news, for a change! Turns out the project proposed for where the Sound Museum is currently located? It has yet to be approved by the state. As Allston Pudding reported: "Due to its size and impact [the project] has to go through a hefty approval process."

So if you want to help local musicians who've had a home in Allston for decades pull of a bit of a Christmas, submit a public comment here. Tell them that they cannot approve this project without adequate and affordable music practice spaces built within reasonable distance of the current site to be constructed ahead of the lab space construction. Thank you!

While you were catching up with the 2023 Grammy Awards nominations, The Allsties being doled out right in your own back yard.

What are The Allsties, you ask? Well, they're the brainchild of Twitter user @allstonratcity. Randomly, this past Monday afternoon, they tweeted: "ok it's time for the allsties. vote for your favorite / sorry." Then, they proceeded to roll out a series of tweets with Twitter polls that allowed followers to vote in a variety of categories.

The categories? Best Bar. Best Venue. Best Supermarket. Best Bus. Favorite Store That's Gone. Favorite Park. Favorite Dangerous Bike Segment. Favorite Restaurant (Pizza). Favorite Restaurant (Breakfast). Favorite Restaurant (Chicken). Favorite Restaurant (Korean). Favorite Restaurant (Chinese). Favorite Restaurant (Vegan). Favorite Street. Favorite Harvard-owned Plot of Land Wasting Away. Favorite Convenience Store (Must Sell Tobacco). Favorite Bar That Is Gone. Favorite TV Show. Favorite Band.

My plan, initially, was to link up all the categories and help get the word out and get the vote out. Unfortunately for me, the polls have all ended! My good dude @allstonratcity, did you set the Twitter polls to one day instead of one week? Why would you do that? If you had set the Twitter poll to one week, my listener(s) could have voted! But now they cannot. So I guess all that's left to do is check out the results.

While I am disappointed we can no longer vote, it is nice to have the results to see what's doing in Allston these days. Especially restaurant-wise. Both of my kids are meatless, and they're dragging me down with them, so now we have a quartet of vegan restaurants we can check out together. So thank you, @allstonratcity. I will now follow you on Twitter. And I encourage everyone to do the same.