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Rodney’s reopens in Harvard Square

Rodney’s occupied a central spot in Central Square for over two decades, a singular shop for used books, vintage posters, and sturdy bookshelves for sale, but the end of a lease just as the pandemic began forced the place to close, and a bank took over the space. Owner Shaw Taylor said at the time that he’d be keeping his eye out for another good home for the bookstore, and he found one recently in Cambridge. Rodney’s reopened earlier this month in Harvard Square, taking over the space previously occupied by Raven Used Books at 23 Church St. (Raven, which had occupied the space since 2015, recently moved to Shelburne Falls in Western Mass.) The new Rodney’s is smaller than the Central Square location, about a third of the size, which will mean a tighter focus on books, with a basement area for keeping stock. Rodney’s got its start in Hyannis in 1996 before Shaw moved the business to Cambridge in 2000. Shaw named the store after his dog, who died the same year the Hyannis shop opened. On the day of its opening, a handwritten sign in the window read “Welcome! Open today while still working hard to organize and alphabetize.” Rodney’s is open Monday-Saturday noon-9 p.m. and Sunday noon-8 p.m.

For many Boston jazz fans, the question of whether the Regattabar would ever present music again seemed open and shut. Like every other music venue in the area, it was closed by the pandemic in March 2020. But as, one by one, entertainment venues started booking shows, it remained shuttered. A full year after crosstown rival Scullers Jazz Club had reopened, and jazz artists were showing up at City Winery and the Crystal Ballroom, the Regattabar remained dark.

“Like most businesses that closed during the pandemic, there were phases where we thought: Maybe it’s time,” says Alex Attia. As general manager of the Charles Hotel and Charles Square complex in Harvard Square, Attia was responsible not only for the Regattabar, but also the hotel and three restaurants — loosely categorized in business parlance under the moniker “hospitality industry,” one of the hardest-hit sectors during the pandemic.

Rodney’s Bookstore opened in Harvard Square at 23 Church St. on Sept. 1. By Tracy Jiang

Nearly three years after closing in Central Square in 2020, Rodney’s Bookstore has found its new home in Harvard Square.

Located on 23 Church St., Rodney’s replaces Raven Used Books as the only used bookstore in Harvard Square.

After shuttering the Central Square location, Shaw Taylor, owner of Rodney’s Bookstore, spent the last few years collecting “tens of thousands” of books before settling on Harvard Square as the bookstore’s next home.

Named after Taylor’s dog, Rodney’s Bookstore first opened in Cape Cod in 1996 before branching out to Central Square — and briefly to Brookline. Now, the Harvard Square storefront remains the sole location, and the focus is “to keep fresh books in the store,” according to Taylor.

“I just have to be good about replacing what sells, so there’s always new things to look at,” Taylor added.

The store opened on Sept. 1 and is still in “its early stages,” according to Ethan Gaffney, an employee of the bookstore and Taylor’s nephew.

“It just needs to be a little more organized,” Gaffney added.

While the Central Square branch was larger and allowed for more variety of books to be displayed, Gaffney said “the foot traffic is a lot better” in the new location.

“Everyone in the community has really welcomed us with open arms,” Gaffney added. “We just hope we’re here for a long time.”

The sign survived a recent renovation, and will continue to overlook the square indefinitely — living on as one of the area’s most beloved landmarks.

By the early 1990s, big things were happening for the Magliozzis’ little radio show.

“Car Talk,” the call-in program the Cambridge brothers launched on WBUR in 1977, had gone national, and their blend of good-natured humor and expert advice on car troubles was garnering attention far beyond Boston.

So they wanted to look the part — sort of.

“My brother and [producer Doug Berman] thought we needed a pricey office in Harvard Square to show that we were a real, serious entity,” said Ray Magliozzi, who co-hosted the show with his brother, Tom, for 35 years. “We knew we weren’t, but we wanted to at least make people think we were.”

In 1992, the same year they won a prestigious Peabody Award, they leased space on the third floor of 5 John F. Kennedy Street, overlooking the square; set up a table and a handful of folding chairs; and established the “Car Talk” global headquarters.

Among the first orders of business, of course, was cracking a good joke. For itswindow, they hired someone to install authenticgold-leaf lettering like you’d find outsidea respectable law firm. But instead of using their own names, or that of their popular program, they had a lawyer pun spelled out: “Dewey, Cheetham & Howe.”

It’s been there ever since.

In its many years watching over the eclectic neighborhood, the sign has become one of the city’s most treasured, if unusual, landmarks. In case there was any doubt about its historic significance, the sign most recently survived extensive renovations in the building where it’s long held court, after city officials mandated that it be preserved.

Work on the property finished last year, and retail tenants have moved in, including a soon-to-open Union Square Donuts outpost. As Harvard Square continues to rapidly change, the sign — perhaps the world’s most famous joke written in hand-laid gold letters — will remain there indefinitely.

“Car Talk” fans will recognize the wordplay on the window as part of a long-running bit on the show, whenlisteners were told to submit answers to weekly “Puzzler” questions via letters addressed to the fictional law firm. It was one of countless other groan-inducing and name-based puns the brothers would rattle off at the end of each show.

While they can’t take credit for the jokeon the sign — Magliozzi admits they lifted it from “The Three Stooges” — the brothers may have gotten more mileage from it than the comedic trio ever did.

Magliozzi and Berman still remember the day the sign was put up. While the installer, an older man, worked quietly at the window, the Magliozzis and Berman were putting together a newspaper column responding to a reader who’d been swindled by a car insurance salesmen. They were loudly ranting about the insurance industry when they heard the man clear his throat.

“This old guy got off his little stepladder and he turned to us and with a quavering voice said, ‘You know, my brother was an insurance agent,’” Magliozzi recalled. “And I thought, ‘Oh, my God, we’ve insulted this guy and his family!’ And in the next breath, he said, ‘And he screwed everybody!’”

They had no ideajust how long the man’s handiwork would remain in its perch atop the square.

“We didn’t even know how long the show was going to last on NPR,” Magliozzi said. “But they foolishly kept renewing our contract.”

They did have an inkling that the sign would make an impression on people who spotted it from the street, whether they knew about the show or not.

“We did hope it would be a landmark of sorts,” said Berman. “Not like the Widener Library, but something fun. A reminder not to take life too seriously.”

It certainly generated laughs along the way.

Magliozzi said a man and his girlfriend knocked on the office door once to inquire about the name of the supposed firm, and whether they knew that when spoken out loud it made them sound like crooks.

The Magliozzi brothers and Berman played along, pretending they were actually attorneys, and insisting that the combination of surnames “had a nice flow to it.”

The man “had a bewildered look on his face, Magliozzi said, and as he was closing the door, “I could hear him say to his girlfriend, ‘What a bunch of dopes!’ And he was right!”

The office was never anything fancy. A small staff worked there at a couple of desks editing, receiving mail, and sending out demo tapes.

The brothers recorded the show at Boston’s WBUR radio station, but would swing by to write their syndicatedcolumn — or host late-night poker games while puffingcigars.

To “Car Talk” fans, meanwhile, the sign became part of the lore of the show, which at its height played on more than 600 public radio stations. Some would even pop in to say hello.

“They’d all ask the same thing: ‘Is this really Car Talk Plaza?’,” Berman said. “And we’d apologize and say, ‘Yeah, this is it. Pretty shabby, huh?’”

Things are a lot less shabby now. In the recent renovation of the building, the cigar smoke-inflected office and the floor it sat on were removed. The window now sits in the second-story wall above a sparkling new yoga studio in a rock climbing gym.

“I’ll have to visit them someday,” said Magliozzi, when told about the current tenant. “Maybe I’ll get a free class.”

It wasn’t always a sure thing it would remain in its place. There were rumors — never confirmed — that a prior owner had planned to remove the sign, and put it on display in a New York office.

But the city would never allow such a thing, said Charles Sullivan, executive director of the Cambridge Historical Commission.

The sign was preserved as part of a years-long approval process that included around 25 hours of public commentary. While plenty of specifics were weighed, Sullivan said, the sign’s status was never up for debate.

“It’s a character-defining feature of that building,” he said.

Many touristscome specifically to see it, said Denise Jillson, executive director of the Harvard Square Business Association.

Recently, she met two women from North Carolina who told her it was on their “bucket list” to have their photo taken in front of the sign.

Itssurvival sends an important message that the city is capable of preserving its cultural touchstones, Jillson said — even, or perhaps especially, the quirkiest ones.

“While there’s a lot of change going on in Harvard Square, the thoughtful discussion with input from the public, particularly around what that window means to people, is all part of a much bigger discussion,” she said.

It isn’t the only “Car Talk” landmark in Harvard Square. A plaque honoring Tom Magliozzi, who died in 2014, was installed in Brattle Square in 2019.

Magliozzi and Berman, meanwhile, are just pleased, and maybe a little surprised, that people can still get a kick out oftheir tongue-in-cheek signage.

“We didn’t think we were building our legacy or anything like that. That was the farthest thing from our minds,” Magliozzi said. “We were just really having some laughs.”

Friendly Toast, an all-day brunch restaurant and bar, unveiled its new home in Harvard Square in late July.

The newly opened restaurant at 1230 Massachusetts Ave. is the sole Friendly Toast in Cambridge after the chain closed its Kendall Square location amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Harvard Square is the 11th location for the Friendly Toast chain, which was founded in 1994 and has since expanded to four states in New England.

The restaurant first announced its opening via a sign on its storefront in March 2022, but supply chain issues and city permit licensing caused delays, according to Harvard Square location manager Ryan Ford.

Friendly Toast officially opened on July 24, but the restaurant welcomed customers for a soft opening two days prior. According to Ford, Friendly Toast typically avoids heavily promoting openings in the hopes of giving staff a “fighting chance” against crowds of restaurant-goers.

The menu boasts standard brunch fare, such as breakfast burritos, omelets, pancakes, and waffles, as well as an array of alcoholic beverages and flights.

Still, various menu items have their own twist — including the “Bulgogi Steak & Cheese” sandwich, which combines Korean and American cuisine, and the “Doughnut Stop Believin,” a breakfast sandwich that uses donuts as bread.

“We’re just excited to play off different flavors and, you know, make it unexpected for people,” Ford said.

Harvard College students offered positive reviews of the restaurant, citing a variety of menu offerings and a welcoming ambiance.

“The menu was really extensive,” Jeslyn Y. Liu ’26 said. “A lot of creative things on there.”

Where to: Las Palmas in Harvard Square.

Why: For fresh empanadas, towering sandwiches, and bowls from a Roslindale favorite, now a storefront at the Garage on Mt. Auburn Street. Las Palmas isn’t a complete Cambridge newcomer; until recently, it was based at MIT and later inside Harvard’s Smith Campus Center.

The backstory: Seila Green, a former education registrar, bought Las Palmas in Roslindale in 2016, hoping to spotlight the foods she grew up eating and loving in the Dominican Republic: empanadas; yellow rice and stewed chicken. Her mom worked for the original owners, so it was a natural fit.

“It was very hard for me to find the same quality of food that I was accustomed to eating — my mom’s cooking. It’s very different when you buy food elsewhere. So I wanted to really tell people: This is how we cook; this is how we eat. It has a lot of flavors, but it can be also healthy. I think there’s maybe a little stigma where people think that Caribbean food, or Dominican food, might be greasy or not very healthy. That’s not true,” Green told the Globe in July, right before opening this location.

It was a fortuitous move: Since college students have returned, business has boomed (so much so that empanadas were sold out on my visit). The space is bright — pleasantly jarring so close to the slightly seedy, shopworn Garage — with a jaunty sign out front announcing: “Welcome to the Dominican Republic!” Inside, there’s lots of faux greenery, window paintings depicting island scenes, and a clubby neon pink sign beckoning passersby: “Talk Spanish To Me.”

The food: Empanadas ($3 for chicken, beef, and veggie) are the signature; a smiling woman behind the counter apologized profusely that they were out of dough when I tried to order an assortment. Oh, well, next time.

“We don’t store or freeze anything; we make them fresh for the day,” Green explained, so plan to arrive at lunchtime (I made the mistake of visiting in the midafternoon; they’re typically open until 6 p.m.).

The boisterous festival of street activist bands returns to Davis Square Oct. 6-8.

From Friday, Oct. 6 through Sunday, Oct. 8, street bands take over Somerville’s Davis Square for a weekend of music making and community celebration during the 18th annual HONK! Festival of Activist Street Bands. 

Hundreds of performers travel from around the country and beyond to Davis Square for the celebration, putting on lively shows. Most performers are housed by community members, and the entire effort is grassroots and nonprofit. The street bands will play all different styles of music, like Klezmer (Jewish folk music), Brazilian samba, Afrobeat, New Orleans second line, punk, hip hop, and Romani music, all with a spirited, Carnival-esque energy.

The weekend kicks off Friday with a musical lantern parade through Somerville. On Saturday, dozens of street bands take over Davis Square for a day of partying and dancing. On Sunday, local activist groups supporting causes like environmental, economic, and racial justice join the bands for a musical parade along Mass Ave. from Davis to Harvard Square, coinciding with Harvard’s Oktoberfest in which food vendors line the streets. 

Bands play without amplification and at street level, blurring the lines between performers and spectators and using public spaces as their stage. HONK! in Somerville has inspired other activist street band festivals throughout the world in places like Brooklyn, Seattle, Austin, and as far away as Australia and Brazil.

“Throughout the country and across the globe, a new type of street band movement is emerging—outrageous and inclusive, brass and brash, percussive and persuasive—reclaiming public space with a sound that is in your face and out of this world,” wrote organizers on the event website.

Add these new restaurant openings to your list.

As summer slips away, there’s an entire lineup of new restaurants we can’t wait to visit this fall, including a just-opened 18-course omakase in the South End, a New York Spanish tapas bar debuting in the Seaport, and the highly anticipated reveal of Michelin-star chef George Mendes’ Amar at Raffles Boston.

Take a look at the five new restaurants we’re craving a bite at in September 2023.