Memorabilia and the hope of helping its owners re-open drew extensive support for the Harvard Square institution. There may be more to sell next weekend.
Part of the crowds that gathered outside of Charlie’s Kitchen for its farewell sale Oct. 3, 2026.
Hundreds of people came by Charlie’s Kitchen to buy memorabilia and support its co-owner, David Toraji Oshima. Charlie’s, a beloved dive bar in Harvard Square, closed earlier this year due to internal flooding from a dishwasher malfunction. Oshima started the “everything must go” sale to prepare for whatever happens next, which might include relaunching the restaurant and bar.
Re-opening, perhaps at a new location, depends on how a pending insurance claim plays out, since the damage and repair is estimated at near one million dollars. Oshima and partner Derek Luangrath own the bar and restaurant business, while the property is owned by Paul Overgaag, the previous proprietor of Charlie’s and the nearby Red House.
While Oshima hopes to restart, he said the sale was also meant to help to connect with the community and to preserve memories of the place. His sale was slated to start at 3 p.m. Saturday but there were dozens lined up at 1:30PM, which both warmed Oshima and overwhelmed him. “Today was way better than I thought,” Oshima said. “I told everybody 3 to 5, but I started setting up at 1, and by about 1:30, I had hundreds of people here supporting me.”
The vast wilds of Alaska are where James Belmont (Brad Pitt) goes to tamp down the PTSD he suffered as a former special ops sergeant, as well as heal the war scars of his loyal German Shepherd Odin, who served with Belmont during multiple Middle East tours. The two are flying around the wilds of the 49th state to do some birding, fishing and communing with nature.
Odin’s scars are more visible: titanium fangs (someone smashed him with a brick during combat) and a prosthetic paw. Belmont matter-of-factly says he shot the responsible parties “in the head” during a campfire encounter with a jovial old coot also roaming the wilds, played by none other than the baritone-blessed J.K. Simmons (“Whiplash”). The two enjoy some tasty Belgian beers and go their separate ways in the morning as a storm is closing in.
From there “Heart of the Beast” becomes one long perilous survival journey after Belmont suffers a heart attack (if the storm don’t get you cardiac arrest will) and the plane goes down. Frigid lake waters revive Belmont. He and Odin go on to endure encounters with bears, wolves and moose (oh my!), not to mention steep ravines and white-water rapids. Through all this, man and best friend seemingly have nine lives, in part because they take turns saving each other’s lives (the dog may get a tad more screen time than Pitt).
This is the second pooch-and-person flick in two months, after August’s “The Dog Stars,” directed by Ridley Scott. This one, thankfully, spares us the human actor (in “Dog Stars” it’s Jacob Elordi) over-explaining the plot to the canine actor. This one is also set on Earth where the sweeping mountainous terrain of Alaska does a lot of cinematic heavy lifting.
Unfortunately, “Heart” suffers from woeful computer FX to conjure the tooth and clawed furries of the wild — if he was still alive, Bart the Bear (from 1997’s “The Edge”) would have been a massive upgrade. The movie pretends to be a based on true-events kind of film, but it’s not, which makes the sepia-tinted flashbacks to war time both disruptive and unnecessary. Still, Pitt and Odin (played mostly by a dog named Uber) convincingly sell the deep connection of two beings who have seen the worst of the world and are seeking peace and solace both from within and through each other.
Director Kent Jones (“Diane“ (2018)) works with a killer cast in this reset of a novella by Arthur Schnitzler, with 1890s Vienna transposed to modern day New York City (the script’s by Samy Burch, “May December” and the upcoming “Coyote vs Acme”). The esteemed Willem Dafoe stars as Ed Saxberger, a New York City postal worker who back-in-the-1980s-day penned an obscure work of revered poems. He’s rediscovered by a gaggle of youthful writers and artists who brand themselves the Enthusiasm Society. There’s a beatnik vibe to the group, led by a scarf-wearing dilettante who goes by the moniker of just Meyers (Edmund Donovan, who gives his pompous character a modicum of depth and vulnerability). They embrace Ed as something of a Bukowski-esque literary lion and through fawning flattery entreat him into their circle. The newfound notoriety rekindles Ed’s creative passions. As he starts to see the world through the progressive lens of his admirers, he calls out fellow old White guys for the intolerance he had become numb to over the years. The rising arc becomes Ed’s mounting affections for the much younger Gloria (Greta Lee, the soulful heart of “Past Lives”), the group’s aspiring actress, chanteuse and something of a Blanche DuBois in the making.
Lee, who you can also catch in the subpar sci-fi thriller, “The Last House“ over on Netflix, strikes the screen as a luminous wonder, but at times feels miscast and out of place. She does strike a genuine (if more platonic than romantic) chord with her veteran costar. Ultimately, the film feels drawn out, as Dafoe’s Ed never brings congruence to a hodgepodge of ideas and icons, despite the actor’s affable effort.
By nine o’clock the video had been viewed more than nine thousand times.
It wasn’t much to look at. Forty-three seconds of shaky cell phone footage posted to Nextdoor. A ribbon fluttering in the breeze. A city councilor applauding. A bronze plaque catching the afternoon sun. Somewhere off-camera, a child let out a sing-song whine about ice cream.
The title read simply: “That new bench on the Common.”
The first dozen comments were predictable.
“Beautiful addition.”
“Nice to see people giving back.”
“Great, but needs shade trees.”
Then, at 8:17 p.m., CantSitStill, an anonymous account that no one seemed to recognize, joined the conversation. “Too bad his father won’t sit on it,” was all they said, and nothing more.
By morning, the post had turned into an online trial.
Victor Haskell refreshed the thread every thirty seconds. He half-expected the dedication to earn a polite newspaper brief and perhaps get a well-framed photograph for the annual report of the Haskell Foundation. Instead, strangers were debating his childhood, his marriage, his taxes, his politics and, most bafflingly, his father.
“Isn’t his dad dead?”
“No, just saw him at Whole Foods.”
“T heard they’re estranged.”
“My cousin worked for Victor. He can be difficult. Believe the comment.”
“Believe what?”
“Believe what you see is not reality. Wealth comes easily to those who have not earned it.” CantSitStill responded and then went silent in the wake of the tidal wave of follow-up questions.
Victor had paid nearly forty thousand dollars for the bench —fine, marbled New Hampshire granite, reclaimed ash and a custom bronze plaque honoring his father:
What if a top tennis player faltered in their career and had to slum it on the pickleball circuit? That’s kind of the loose “Happy Gilmore”—esque concept behind this not quite pickled-enough comedy that stars Jake Johnson (“New Girl,” “Drinking Buddies”) as said fictional tennis star Dustin Boyd. Boyd is a one-time rival of real-life great Andy Roddick, but an injury means he now toils as a club pro. When he dips his toe into the pickleball waters he gets crushed by a pair of 70-year-old grannies — Dustin, known as “The Hammer” in his tennis heyday, doesn’t understand finesse or the parameters of the smaller court. Then there’s the heralded, anemic drop-shot of the title (which the film uses as a running gag until it is past tired).
As the might-have-been superstar trying to pivot, Johnson doesn’t quite have the bravado needed for the part. The ace serve here — the script’s written by “Kevin Can F*** Himself” scribe Sean Clements—comes in Dustin falling for an older woman (a pitch perfect Mary Steenburgen) who’s not so sure she’s attracted to her younger suitor. The May-December pairing does score points when the two sit down for a movie night “date” and watch “The Graduate” and Dustin, busts on the other Dustin for having a big nose (Johnson has a pretty protuberant proboscis himself).
Directed by Josh Greenbaum (“Strays”) and co-produced by Ben Stiller, who has a small part too, the flick built around a feeble flick shot does best when the Greek chorus of feisty Floridian nanas are taunting Dustin and Roddick — who plays himself — in a match where the winner claims the deed to the tennis club owned by Dustin’s dad (Ed Harris, poorly used here). Heckling, it turns out, is the crosscourt humor that saves this cinematic dink from busted string ruin and John McEnroe’s woefully wooden intonations.
Samara Weaving seems to be typecast as an onscreen punching bag. In the “Ready or Not” films and now this dour rom com/thriller, she plays a fetching can-do femme transformed by the masochistic madness of the plot into a purple bloody mess. Directed by Jorma Taccone, “Over Your Dead Body” is a remake of 2021’s grim Norwegian film “I Onde Danger” (lamely rebranded as “The Trip” in the United States).
The story begins with Weaving’s Lisa and her husband Dan (Jason Segal) having marital problems, not least of which are a two-year drought in the conjugal bliss department. He’s an indie film director who scored critical success early but now is relegated to making “pop-up ads.” Lisa is a struggling stage actress cheating on Dan with a fellow thespian. Money is another sizable problem. A getaway to Dan’s dad’s cabin on a lake in Upstate New York during a stunning fall season (the landscapes are shot in Finland but look legit) becomes an opportunity for Dan to off Lisa and cash in an insurance policy. But when he hesitates to apply Chloroform, she tases him and ties him to a kitchen chair to put her own permanent separation plan in play. But then, murder interruptus — a trio of escaped convicts (Timothy Olyphant, Keith Jardine and Juliette Lewis) drop through the ceiling. The couple have to team up or die.
The main problem with “Over Your Dead Body” is that neither Lisa nor Dan is all that interesting or likable. It’s the trio of malevolent misfits that hold our attention, especially Olyphant’s smooth but demonic mastermind and Lewis’s edgy Allegra, who is sexually aroused by the clamor of violent confrontation. The movie may be even more gruesome than its Norwegian inspiration, though “Dead Body” somehow manages to make whimsy from the severing of fingers, ears and noses. Turns out romantic separation is always messier than it has to be.
It was a typical bustling day at the Porter Square shopping mall made more so by the beautiful spring day, a gift from Mother Nature after a week of overcast skies and two torrential rain storms that caused drain basins to back up and overflow. Chaz Perkins, his sciatica acting up, gingerly baby stepped his way out of the CVS, skirted his way around one of the many lingering puddles that dotted the parking lot and a his way towards old Betsy, his trusted Honda CRV with more than 15 years of reliable service. He had parked Betsy near the pharmacy with strategic intent to minimize the taxation of his hip. As he had envisioned it, he would first hit up Ace Hardware for his spring planting needs (a new trowel to replace the rusty, ineffective relic that had been in the condo’s basement since before the Boston Tea Party, and nasturtium and magnolias seeds for the planters that abutted the sidewalk in front of the three story walkup) and then the liquor store for a half case of Vino Verde to go with the Portuguese fisherman’s stew he had made for his book club which would be arriving at his Huron Village abode within the next three hours. Everything was going according to plan, the trowel, seeds and wine had been deposited in Betsy’s boot, what Chaz didn’t bargain for was the demanding woman insisting that the pharmacist check and recheck his records as he stood by on achy joint waiting to claim his ‘scipts and pay for the much needed vial of Advil and coveted Reeses Peanut Cups. When it was revealed that the woman’s prescription order had been placed at another CVS some two miles away, the woman, who Chaz felt possessed the melodramatic air of Blanche DuBois, launched into an indignant tirade shaming the pharmacist for her mistake and adding another five minutes of hip grinding discomfort to his day.
Outside in the cloudless blue Chaz examined the space between the blue Tesla and Betsy. It was sideways sliding tight, but every space in the parking lot was ridiculously small. It was as if some over zealous planner decided to take normal sized spots and reduce them all to compact size so they could squeeze in an extra fifteen or twenty cars, but for what gain? Anyone with a minivan or plus size SUV took up two spaces and the rear of the monstrosity often jutted out, adding to the lot’s chaotic traffic flow woes. Chaz imagined that the number of insurance claims filed at Porter Square had to be substantially higher than those at the suburban shopping expanses like Burlington or Natick where you could park an apatosaurus-sized family truckster without fear of losing a sideview and still have ample room to swing your door open without dinging your neighbor.
A historic wall in Harvard Square may be up against it, as business owners and city officials are banging their heads against the problem of how to fix it.
The stone wall was built more than 200 years ago, mostly hidden behind Charlie’s Beer Garden, was erected in the late 1700s and early 1800s to channel the spring-fed Town Creek to the Charles River. The project made Winthrop Square — then a knoll and the heart of Harvard Square — a more stable and level gathering spot by protecting it from a creek winding toward the Charles River.
The wall might also have been intended for a more ambitious project: a wharf on Eliot Street, said Charles Sullivan, executive director of the Cambridge Historical Commission. Like the West End in Boston, some parts of Cambridge near the Charles River were previously underwater and later filled in.
The wall partially collapsed in 2020 and was never repaired. Scarce funding and complicated jurisdiction left it crumbling, and rats — lots of rats — moved in. Last year, Denise Jillson, the Harvard Square Business Association’s executive director, asked public health experts in Cambridge and at Harvard University for help analyzing the problem.
“That site is akin to a prairie dog village … but with rats,” said Richard J. Pollack, Harvard’s senior environmental public health officer.
In March, Jillson issued a release calling on the community and stakeholders to “together to find a solution to the complex challenge of preserving this historical relic that sits on private property.” The release included an illustrated comic about the wall and its history created by Caro Taylor, a Cambridge resident and a junior at the Commonwealth School in Boston who was an intern at the HSBA last summer.
The “Old Stone Wall” runs from Winthrop Street, through Charlie’s Beer Garden, and out to Eliot Street. The better-preserved section, which divides Charlie’s and the former Red House restaurant (soon to be relaunched as the Cox Hicks Club), is an impressive 8- to 10-foot high structure, still intact. The collapsed section of the wall — adjacent to Eliot Street, tucked behind the IHOP — is not publicly visible except through a small alley. Here the wall is 4 or 5 feet tall.
A combination of factors likely contributed to its deterioration, according to the city and the Harvard Square Business Association: age, erosion, weather, ongoing disturbances from area construction, and rats.
A relatively intact section of a historic wall in the Harvard Square alleyway between the former Red House and Charlie’s Kitchen.
The wall was built with large fieldstones laid in a battered profile that lean inward — a technique used in early retaining walls to release pressure. The rocks were dry-laid to allow water to pass through the wall rather than build up behind it. The stones are local: Roxbury Puddingstone from that neighborhood’s Parker Hill and granite from quarries on the Boston Harbor Islands.
“It’s not the only stone wall in Harvard Square, but it is by far the largest and most significant,” Sullivan said.
The wall is located within the Harvard Square Conservation District, which means work requiring a building permit generally requires review by the historical commission. However, the commission’s jurisdiction applies only to features visible from a public way. Portions of the wall are located behind buildings on private property and cannot be seen from the street, limiting the commission’s authority over those sections.
Given the wall’s historic value, the city appropriated $200,000 in Community Preservation Act (CPA) funds in 2021 to shore up the Eliot Street section of the wall. The estimated cost was about $400,000, however, and since it is on private property Sullivan asked commercial property owners to contribute the additional $200,000.
Of the property owners, only Paul Overgaag, who owns 98 Winthrop Street (previously home to The Red House) and also Charlie’s Kitchen at 10 Eliot Street, agreed to contribute. Raj Dhanda, owner of the Crimson Galeria building and the property at 96 Winthrop Street (formerly the House of Blues, now The Boiling Crab), expressed concerns about the scope of the project and the financial burden. The project stalled, and in 2024, the city reallocated the CPA funds.
In a recent phone interview, Dhanda said he believed the city should have paid more of the project’s cost. He also disputed the $400,000 price tag. At the time, his own contractor estimated that the work would cost less than $200,000.
Rat traps line a dilapidated segment of a historic wall in the Harvard Square alleyway between the former Red House and the IHOP, parallel to Eliot Street.
One of the primary concerns has been the growing rat population in the alley near the wall. As the wall continues to deteriorate, it might create even more hiding and nesting pockets for rats, Jillson said. The imminent public health risks from rats — and their recent surge in Cambridge — have been well documented. At a public meeting last year, Cambridge City Manager Yi-An Huang said, “These rodents are, as I understand it, reproducing faster than we can possibly catch up.”
Jillson also fears that the burrowing rats might also be destabilizing the soil and thus contributing to the wall’s deterioration. “That wall is basically infested with rodents, and it’s compromising the integrity of the soil,” she said.
The alleyway behind the Too Hot Sichuan restaurant and IHOP is a hotbed of rat activity in the square, Pollack said. Had the restoration moved ahead, it would have included implementing a cement backing to the wall. That would have helped secure the stones and abate erosion. It would also have effectively blocked the rats from burrowing.
Jillson hopes her press release spurs action. The economic climate, however, is significantly different.
Cantabrigian teacher and poet Charles Coe died Friday Nov. 21.
The spirit of creativity in Cambridge dimmed last week when longtime resident, teacher and poet Charles Coe died Monday from complications related to prostate cancer surgery. His death was sudden and stunned many. In addition to touching people with his words, often delivered in a deep, mellifluous baritone, Coe offered mentorship, leadership and a sense of community. He was 73.
He was an omnipresent figure in local literary circles: the Mass Poetry Festival, long-running literary salons across Cambridge and Somerville, the Writers’ Room, Black Writers Reading series, arts advocacy boards. If there was a gathering where people were wrestling with words or art or community, chances were good Coe had either helped organize it or slipped quietly into a seat to listen.
Films crafted around hermits are often peppered with idyllic framings of their lush surroundings and driven by strong, intense performances by the lead, who must, for the most part, connote much of their character’s inner turmoil via facial expressions and the glance of the eye. That was the case with Ben Foster in Debra Granik’s “Leave No Trace” (2018) as well as Daniel Day-Lewis in his recent comeback, “Anemone.” This film, gorgeously shot by Adolpho Veloso, has the trippy, hypnotic aura of a Terrence Malick fever dream, and we get Joel Edgerton in his richest and most robust performance to date. His Robert Grainier, we’re told, never spoke into a phone during a life that ends serenely in 1968. Based on the novella by Denis Johnson and adapted by Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar – the Oscar-nominated tandem behind “Sing Sing” – “Train Dreams” is pretty much the telling of Grainier’s life in full; orphaned young, unknowing what befell his parents, and, as a quiet young man when we catch up with him, working as a logger and railway hand in the remote reaches of Idaho. His life as a loner and drifter pretty much has him moving from one lumber camp to the next until he meets Gladys (Felicity Jones) at a church in Fry. It’s love at first pleasantry, and with Gladys game for the woods, the two wed, build a bungalow atop the crest of a dell and have a daughter. It’s an enchanting “Little House on the Prairie” existence until a wildfire sweeps through the valley while Grainier happens to be off on one of his logging missions. When he returns, Gladys and his daughter are nowhere to be found. For a good part of the film, Grainier, propelled by guilt and grief, searches nearby towns looking for them or any news of their fate. Ultimately he returns to the woods, where he registers a small degree of comfort taking in an abandoned litter of dogs and rebuilding the cabin on the same perch. The power of guilt and grief creeps in and begins to bend reality, and Grainier struggles to make sense of his existence and the world in large. The acting is top tier, reserved and quietly affecting. Others adding heart and humanity in small, meaty parts are William H. Macy as Arn Peeples, a grumpy coot who likes to use explosives to fell his trees, and Kerry Condon as the first woman to work at a U.S. National Forestry outpost.
