This new Boston bar only serves … cereal?

It’s Tuesday, Boston.

🤔 If you’ve been watching the Olympics, you might’ve wondered about this year’s mascot. Is it a triangle? A bell? A red tortilla chip? Turns out, it’s none of the above. And we never would’ve guessed the right answer.

👀What’s on tap today:

• Folks, we have a state budget
• Boston’s nightlife boost
• A dragonfly deluge

Up first…

B-SIDE CERTIFIED

A new kind of bar in Boston

Video: Emily Schario. Gif: Gia Orsino.

There’s no shortage of fast casual bowls around Boston. Be it salads, poké, burritos, even pasta bars. But what about … cereal? 

For this month’s B-Side Certified, we tried Day & Night Cereal Bar in Brighton, Boston’s first build-your-own cereal bar that’s serving up a dose of Saturday morning nostalgia.

Here’s what we thought: 

FIRST IMPRESSION

✨ Picture this: It’s a Saturday morning in the early 2000s. You crack into a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Several hours of your favorite rotation of cartoons are queued up. Well, that’s exactly the set up at Day & Night (except we visited on a Thursday afternoon). The walls were splashed with novelty cereal boxes, neon signs, and sprinkles, and a loop of iconic cartoons, including “Dragon Tales” played on TV. 

FOOD

🥣 Imagine your favorite forbidden cereal … then add ice cream. Bowls and milkshakes take center stage at Day & Night. Both start with picking from a list of over 15 cereals your mom only saved for special occasions (think: Reese’s Puffs, Cookie Crisp, and Lucky Charms). Then double down on the “off-limits” energy with scoops of ice cream and toppings. Lactose intolerant? Don’t sweat. They offer plenty of non-dairy milk options.

🐶 We opted for the “Roooby Snacks” signature bowl. This bowl was loaded with Cinnamon Toast Crunch, graham crackers, Oreos, chocolate sauce, cookies and cream ice cream, and topped with a cinnamony Scooby Snack cookie. While fun in theory, we anticipated this cereal fudge sundae would be a sickly sugar bomb that ended in a stomach ache. 

🐄 The bowl’s secret sauce? Milk. Duh! The milk’s mild flavor surprisingly softened the sweeter elements, making it easy to come back for a second bite … then another … then another. 

🦄 Next up: The Unicorn Breath milkshake. Swinging from chocolatey to the fruity end of the flavor spectrum, this treat blends together Lucky Charms, Fruity Pebbles, strawberry sauce, and vanilla ice cream. The milk came to the rescue again, making the shake taste more like a concentrated Fruity Pebbles cereal milk with a little crunch from the cereal morsels.

🧇 And you technically don’t need the waffle fries, but you don’t not need them. Waffle batter gets thrown into a hot iron, then sliced into fries and drizzled with chocolate sauce — a foolproof idea that only improves when dipped into the shake. 

VALUE

💰 It’s more than your typical ice cream order, but you also get more. The bowl, which could easily feed two, ran us $10, the shake was $12, and the waffle fries were $5. Perhaps the only drawback is that, unless you live in Brighton, it’s a bit of a schlep.

✅ The verdict? B-Side Certified. These ice cream treats are a thoughtful spin on a childhood classic that we would gladly get again. 

CITY

Quick & dirty headlines

Image: Naomi Baker/Getty

🏅 New Englanders have been putting in WORK at the Olympics. Mass. natives Frederick Richard and Stephen Nedoroscik led the USA men’s gymnastics team to their first medal since 2008(!) — earning bronze in the all-around finals Monday. Meanwhile, 21-year-old Harvard grad Lauren Scruggs surprised many by nabbing a silver medal in fencing’s individual foil event the same day. The only one not getting in on the action? Jayson Tatum, who notably didn’t leave the bench for Team USA’s first game (and W) against Serbia.

💸 Folks, we (finally) have a state budget. And not a moment too soon. On Monday, Gov. Maura Healey officially signed Mass.’ $58 billion annual budget, nearly a month after the initial deadline — once again cementing Beacon Hill’s always-late reputation. What’s inside? Well, while most big-ticket items from the legislature’s proposed budget (like making community college free for all, free regional transit, and online lottery sales) made the final product, Healey made about $317 million in cuts to line items, including substance addiction treatment services and after-school programs, citing future financial uncertainty.

🍸 Boston nightlife could get a big boost. The state Senate just passed a bill that would bring a whopping 264 new liquor licenses to the city. The bill (which the House passed its own version of in May) is meant to fuel economic development in underserved neighborhoods, since Boston’s liquor licenses are notoriously hard to get — not to mention expensive — which typically lands them in mostly whiter, wealthier neighborhoods. Now, the legislature has until Wednesday at midnight to hammer out a compromise.

🌊 Dreaming of a dip in a Boston pool? Keep dreaming. Boston’s city-run pools aren’t exactly known for their reliability, and this year is no exception: Nearly one-third of the city’s 19 public pools are closed this summer, largely due to maintenance issues, a problem that’s made worse by the onslaught of beach closures across the state mostly due to excessive bacteria. The good news is that more pools are expected to open in August, and Mayor Michelle Wu says her admin is investing over $54 million into the pools in the coming years. But in the meantime, we know a few places you can try out.

MEDIA PARTNERSHIP

MEDIA SPONSORSHIP

Calling all young Scorseses! 

B-Side is a proud sponsor of the first-ever ‘Emerging Filmmaker Contest’ as part of the 10th Annual GlobeDocs Film Festival! Through Aug. 15, filmmakers between the ages of 18 and 25 are invited to submit their short film for the chance to be featured in the “Local Shorts” program during the festival and receive a $1,000 prize. On top of all that, the winner’s film will be included in the FULL festival lineup and they will join in conversation with other local filmmakers and a Globe reporter. Enter here today! 

ONE LAST THING

A dragonfly deluge

Illustration: Gia Orsino

On the list of things that could ruin your beach day, “dragonfly invasion” usually isn’t near the top. But for a bunch of Rhode Island beachgoers, it is now.

This weekend, Misquamicut Beach visitors found themselves in a truly once-in-a-lifetime position when thousands of dragonflies descended upon them in a way that felt reminiscent of the iconic crow scene from horror film The Birds. Seriously, this clip is giving apocalypse energy.

And while it’s unclear what exactly caused the mass descent (it’s not their typical migration season), what was clear is the two camps of reactions: pure delight (“it was a miracle”) and pure terror (“what the f— is going on!?”). 

— Written by Gia Orsino and Emily Schario

🏖️ Thanks for reading! Seriously, the screams in that video clip sent us to the moon.

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