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The exhibit will be on display from May 8th – 31st from 8am – 11pm daily.

The Harvard Square Business Association and Gazit Horizons are pleased to announce the first installation at the (snobby) institute located at 1420 Massachusetts Avenue in Harvard Square. The exhibit, “Happiness Fantasy” will be on display from May 8th – 31st from 8am – 11pm daily. The opening reception will be held on May 8th at 7pm.

“Happiness Fantasy”, curated by Harvard Graduate School of Design students, Pin Sangkaeo and Benson Joseph, is an exploration of architecture and collective identity through the lens of moment-making. Pin + Benson commented “This exhibit delves into the interplay between architecture and sociotechnical imaginaries—visions of desirable futures crafted by shared social understandings.  Designed as a hyper-designed object that aims to control and predict environments, it utilizes modern technologies for interaction and collaboration, while challenging the notions of individual and collective existence. The project examines how these nodes of concentration serve to maintain economic, cultural, and political influence, proposing that the pursuit of utopian visions inherently carries dystopian elements by reinforcing singular sociotechnical imaginaries. Through a blend of participatory and non-participatory observations, the exhibited works explore the creation of utopias and dystopias encapsulated in the metaphorical ‘temple’ and ‘garden’.”

This exhibition features a diverse array of media, from meticulously detailed drawings, videos, and sculptural works, each piece weaving together narratives of urban dynamics, historical monuments, and the ever-evolving notion of “collective self” within the cityscape. These pieces represent (snobs._)’s collaboration series with various partners across Harvard and beyond.

Opening Reception

May 8th, 7pm

An evening of engaging discussions and an opportunity to view the essential role of design and architecture. Refreshments will be served, and you will have the chance to meet the minds behind the work.

RSVP    

A cookie chain that is based in New York City is expanding further into the Greater Boston area, with a new location on its way to Cambridge.

According to an article in The Harvard Crimson, Chip City is planning to open in Harvard Square, joining three others locally in Boston’s West End and Back Bay along with Arsenal Yards in Watertown. It looks like the new outlet will open in July, and based on the other locations, expect to see a rotating list of cookie options, including chocolate chip, cookies and cream, cannoli, dark chocolate peanut butter, confetti, and more.

Chip City got its start in Queens back in 2017.

The address for the upcoming location of Chip City in Harvard Square is 1 Brattle Square, Cambridge, MA, 02138. The website for the company can be found at https://order.chipcitycookies.com/

Thanks to Adam of Universal Hub for bringing this to our attention.

One Reason Garden Bar will be returning to the Charles Hotel on May 5, marking the bar’s second year in business after it first opened in July 2023.

New this year is the bar’s partnership with Taqueria El Barrio, which currently operates out of Time Out Market in Boston and Portico Brewing in Somerville.

The new partnership will bring pollo, birria, carnitas, and veggie tacos to the bar’s menu, all of which will be served on the taqueria’s hand-made tortillas. The restaurant’s “Torta del Dia” sandwich, as well as chips, dips, and seasoned watermelon will accompany the selection of tacos.

One Reason Garden Bar’s drinks menu will consist primarily of natural wines and local beers, according to general manager Augusto Barbosa Lino. The establishment will also offer a whiskey smash as well as a lineup of frozen drinks on a rotating basis.

The bar itself is built in the style of Cape Cod houses, with its cedar shake siding, white trim, and shingled roof.

“It’s basically a small Cape house, made by Cape builders,” Barbosa Lino said.

Accompanying the bar will be picnic tables, lawn games, and a garden, which provided inspiration for the name.

The name is also a nod to Tracy Chapman’s hit song “Give Me One Reason.”

“She was busking in Harvard Square early in her career, and Harvard Square has a tradition of music in almost a nostalgic way,” Barbosa Lino said.

“We wanted to make sure that we honor that tradition,” Barbosa Limo added.

One Reason Garden Bar hosted several musicians last year, but the bar’s late opening and the rainy summer put a damper on plans to bring more performers.

“Some great musicians came through last year. We already developed a little bit of a following and we’re just looking forward to getting it started early and hoping for a drier season,” Barbosa Lino said.

Chip City Cookies, a New York City-based company offering cookies that clock in at more than a third of a pound, will open a Harvard Square location at 1 Brattle Sq. in July — the latest business seeking to sweeten up the Square.

The new location will be the third Massachusetts outpost for the company, which has 37 locations dotting the East Coast.

The chain, founded in 2017 by Peter Phillips and Theodore Gailas, offers a rotating cookie menu that features its five top sellers — chocolate chip, s’mores, cookies and cream, confetti, and dairy-free chocolate chip — alongside a range of other options.

The rotating offerings include cookie flavors inspired by other desserts, such as baklava and cinnamon roll, nods to favorite snack items like the peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and even a “cookie butter cookie,” — something Gailas called “cookie-ception.”

“We make these giant ooey-gooey cookies. Crispy on the outside, gooey in the center,” Gailas said of his company’s product. “They’re pretty big. They’re about five and a half ounces each.”

Chip City began as a side gig for the cofounders, whose initial location in Queens, NY was only open a few days a week. After amassing a devoted following of cookie-lovers, the pair expanded to new cities but stayed focused on their signature product.

“We take pride in our ingredients,” Gailas said. “I think that’s what sets us apart.”

However, Chip City will not be the only cookie purveyor in the Square when they land in July. Insomnia Cookies, a campus mainstay on Mt. Auburn St., will also be vying for cookie fiends’ dollars.

Unlike Insomnia, which is open through 3 a.m. Thursday through Saturday, Chip City’s Boston location closes at 10 p.m. daily, and the new outpost is likely to be no exception.

Still, competition in the Harvard Square cookie business is nothing to worry about, according to Denise Jillson, executive director of the Harvard Square Business Association, who likened the situation to the market for pizza.

“There are a whole bunch of Harvard kids who absolutely love Pinocchio’s. And then there’s another whole set that really love Joe’s. And there’s another whole set that think that Otto is absolutely the best or that Oggi Gourmet is the best,” Jillson said.

Jillson said she expects that just like the pizza restaurants did, Insomnia and Chip City will each settle into their own niche and be successful.

According to Jillson, cookie customers will “benefit” from having two cookie shops in the Square.

“When there’s competition, everybody sets that bar just a little bit higher,” Jillson said.

After two years of building and permitting delays, Harvard Square has a cannabis dispensary.

Zoom in: Yamba Boutique opened this week at 31 Church St., a small brick building that once housed a Cambridge police station.

• The jail cell in the back is now an inventory room.
• The boutique is a Black woman-owned dispensary catering to women, seniors, vets and queer people — really, anyone who hasn’t felt seen in the cannabis scene, says CEO Leah Samura.

Axios took a peek inside.

Since legalizing marijuana for adult recreational use in 2018, Massachusetts has seen nearly $6 billion in recreational marijuana sales. But to some, Cambridge has failed to capitalize on this momentum.

When Leah Samura left her job in 2019 to open a cannabis business in Harvard Square, she didn’t know it would be five years before her shop — Yamba Boutique — opened its doors.

Yamba Boutique opened Sunday on Church Street, making it the latest entrant to the Cambridge cannabis market, alongside Western Front, Herbwell, Kush Groove, Blue River, and a sister Yamba location in Central Square.

The dispensaries have opened at a time when states across the country have increasingly warmed up to legal cannabis, both answering demands from activists to reverse what they see as overbearing and discriminatory laws and hoping to take advantage of a lucrative source of tax revenue.

Since legalizing marijuana for adult recreational use in 2018, Massachusetts has seen nearly $6 billion in recreational marijuana sales.

But to some, Cambridge has failed to capitalize on this momentum.

When the city first established the permitting process for the newly legalized marijuana industry in 2018, it stipulated that from September 2019 to September 2021, only “Economic Empowerment” applicants could be considered for permits.

To qualify, prospective cannabis purveyors had to meet certain criteria laid out by the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission, such as being from an area disproportionately affected by the war or drugs or having majority Black or Latino ownership.

The moratorium was extended twice — in 2021 and 2023 — and now runs until September of this year.

Many dispensary owners praised Cambridge’s progressive approach to retail cannabis permitting, recognizing it as an important way to increase minority representation in local business.

But some said that the city’s policies — combined with the newness of the cannabis industry to both state and local regulators — have impeded the growth of the industry.

‘Remedying Past Wrongs’

When the city introduced its selective permitting process, it made clear that its goals were oriented around social justice. Its policies aimed to support minority entrepreneurs, especially those who were most sharply impacted by the war on drugs.

“They were extremely forward-moving given the regulatory structures they placed to give priority and preference to the minority-owned enterprises such as ourselves,” said Herbwell Cannabis co-owner Arish Halani.

Beyond enabling independent entrepreneurs to enter Cambridge’s cannabis industry, the city’s decision to prioritize EE applicants served partially to redress the harms of the war on drugs, according to Dennis Benzan, the co-owner of Western Front.

“It’s a way of remedying past wrongs,” Benzan in an interview.

Halani and his sister Sareena Halani opened Herbwell on Massachusetts Ave. last November — during what Arish called a “relatively slow” time of year for marijuana sales.

However, because of the head start afforded to EE cannabis business owners, the Halanis were able to weather the slow months as they waited for business to pick up.

“The moratorium was instrumental in leveling the playing field for people like us as minority entrepreneurs,” Sareena Halani said.

The moratorium on non-EE business owners prevented multi-state medical marijuana retailers from pivoting to recreational sales, corporations that Sareena Halani said would have been hard to compete with.

Benzan explained that careful allocation of retail cannabis permits could help reimagine an industry whose illicit nature had for so long made it damaging to those involved.

“The idea was to create wealth for communities of color that have been disproportionately harmed by the war on drugs,” Benzan said.

‘Winners and Losers’

While many supported Cambridge’s selective cannabis permitting, some have criticized the moratorium as being too restrictive.

Sean D. Hope, a co-owner of Central Square’s Yamba Market and Harvard Square’s Yamba Boutique, said that the limited pool of potential business owners created by the EE program made it harder to raise money or find partners for a Cambridge-based cannabis business.

“Because of the way these empowerment licenses are set up, you are extremely limited on raising capital, bringing in partners, doing the things that businesses need to do,” said Hope.

Hope said that the ban on non-EE applicants “made a lot of sense” when Cambridge was first handing out cannabis permits, but that now “business owners are dealing with market realities.”

“I think this is where well-intentioned government says, ‘We’re gonna pick winners and losers,’ right?” Hope said.

Still, he called for the city to loosen its approach.

“Just allow us the opportunity and the flexibility and let the market decide,” Hope said.

“If you give someone a special license without the flexibility and options, you really created a system that’s doomed to fail,” he added.

In addition, some expressed disappointment that the selective permitting extinguished a chance to put the resources of large brands to work for independent retailers.

Samura said that without the moratorium, corporations with deep pockets would have been allowed to enter the Cambridge market, creating taxable revenue that could have gone to support minority business owners.

In a 2021 interview with The Crimson, she said that the exclusivity period could cost her and other cannabis entrepreneurs millions of dollars.

In a recent interview, she said her stance has not changed.

“I still feel the same. I feel like if we would have done that…” Samura trailed off. “There’s nothing I can do about it now.”

‘We Don’t Have Millionaire Family Members’

Despite concerns, the city maintained that the moratorium provided a necessary head start for business that otherwise would have been overtaken by better-resourced companies.

“The efforts to prioritize economic empowerment and social equity applicants was motivated by the understanding that, without implementing priority groups, existing companies could potentially transition or expand their businesses into cannabis retail businesses and prevent new, locally owned businesses from having a chance to succeed,” Jeremy C. Warnick, a city spokesperson, wrote in an emailed statement.

In addition to concerns about medical marijuana providers pivoting to recreational retail, some have expressed concerns that the entry of national recreational cannabis retailers could push independent operators out.

One example of this came when Cookies Cannabis, a Los Angeles-based dispensary chain, faced pushback when its planned opening was announced in 2020.

But Samura disputed the validity of these criticisms, asserting that partnering with a large brand like Cookies is often the only way a local entrepreneur can make it in the cannabis industry.

“We don’t have millionaire family members,” Samura said. “I think that it’s unfair, that people want to tell other people how they should make it in the business.”

Competition, she said, is simply a part of being an entrepreneur, no matter who those competitors are.

“There’s a Dunkin’ Donuts here, you cross the street and there’s a Starbucks,” Samura said. “You know what I mean? It’s just the nature of businesses.”

For Hope, Samura, Benzan, and the Halanis, the attempt to promote minority representation in the Cambridge cannabis industry served an important purpose. Still, they said, it had a flawed execution.

“You have these artificial rules that aren’t really based on business principles, which are coming to roost,” Hope said.

Local grocery store Wholesome Fresh suffered a hit-and-run on Sunday night, leaving a store-front window shattered.

CPD spokesperson Robert Goulston wrote that a motor vehicle “struck a street sign” in front of the grocery store, fleeing the scene before the police arrived.

“The sign broke away from its base and went into the window of the business, shattering the glass,” Goulston wrote in an email to The Crimson.

Wholesome Fresh – a grocery store located at the corner of Church and Brattle Street — has operated in Harvard Square since 2018.

According to Goulston, a pedestrian was sprayed with broken glass during the incident. The individual was treated by medics on the scene but suffered no visible injuries and refused any further care or treatment.

Rigo Pérez — an employee at Wholesome Fresh — said that debris from the crash was littered on the store’s floor when he arrived at work on Monday.

“It was pretty bad,” he said. “Even in the morning, when I showed up to work, it was like pieces of glass everywhere.”

The driver of the vehicle remains unknown to authorities.

The store opened as normal on Monday and Pérez said the window will be fixed on Tuesday.