It's October! It’s our first full month of autumn, and our second top-tier month in a row. Looking ahead, we're detecting a few opportunities to show off some prime leaf-season fits, since there are still no shortage of outdoor amblings. We're talking at least three food festivals — including both vegetarian and veg-absent varieties. It's also prime museum season, whether you choose to have an existential crisis of youth at the ICA/Boston or consider some very old photographs of 19th century China.

Boston Veg Food Fest

Oct. 1-2
Reggie Lewis Athletic Center
Free admission

Open the month of October with a trip to Roxbury for a vegetarian festival featuring samples and a number of speakers and panelists talking about sustainable agriculture, the futures of plant-based business, and recipes you should definitely be trying at home.

this is an image of a vegetarian food dest. Outside of the venue, which is a brick building with a glass atrium, is a huge inflatable cow, around it's neck hangs that reads "Don't have a cow! go veggie."
Boston Veg Food Fest, 2021
Boston Vegetarian Society

Quincy's Food Truck & Music Festival

Oct. 1
12-6 p.m.
Coddington Street from Quincy High School to Thomas Crane Library
Free admission

The directive is simple. Go to Qunicy. Find a find a food truck. Eat. Listen to a band. Repeat.

There's dozens of food trucks to be represented, so you can make good use of the day. Bring the kids, too. There's music for the whole family, as well as magician and mentalist George Saterial.

Smoke This Rib Fest 2022

Oct. 2
12-4 p.m.
Cambridge Street in East Cambridge, between Fulkerson Street and Fifth Street
$27.50

When a bunch of pitmasters get into a fight about who makes the best food, the only losers are whoever's food doesn't take top prize. Literally, everyone else there (e.g., you) is a winner. Go to East Cambridge and win, sampling ribs from 17 delegates, and casting your vote for the best in (smoke) show.

Sunday Celebration featuring The GroovaLottos & Abilities Dance Boston

Oct. 2
4-6 p.m.
New Rep Theatre, Watertown
$25

Morgan James Peters and his son, Morgan James Peters II — better known by their respective stage names, Mwalim DaPhunkee Professor and The ZYG 808 — head up the GroovaLottos, a funky jam band out of New England. This month, they're headed to Watertown's New Rep Theatre, where they'll share Bronx Jazz — an excursion into Black Music History. They're joined by the performers of Abilities Dance Boston, a company that challenges the ableist notions of what a dance company should be.

This is a photo of the Grammy-nominated soul-funk-blues band The GroovaLottos. In this image three of the band members are standing outdoors, against a brick wall. They are wearing brightly colored dashiki shirts. They are looking at the camera and smiling--big smiles.
The GroovaLottos
Courtesy of New Repertory Theatre

'To Begin Again: Artists and Childhood'

Oct. 6 through Feb. 26
ICA/Boston
General admission $20, seniors $17, students $15, youth 18 and under free

Forty artists — from Nigeria to Lebanon to Belgium to Boston and beyond — share their own takes on youth and the way childhood inspires their artistic practice. "To Begin Again" invites us to consider that society begins with childhood. After all, you were once a kid, too.

This is an image of an oil painting titled "Twins (Subway)" . Young twins, dressed in winter clothing--parkas, boots and matching striped hats with a pompom on the top--are napping on the subway. The twin closest to their parent is resting her head on their lap, her brother is resting against her as they doze. It could be the end of the school day as one of the twins has a backpack resting between his legs.
Jordan Casteel, Twins (Subway), 2018. Oil on canvas. Collection of Kimberly and Elliot Perry, Memphis,Tennessee
Courtesy the artist and Casey Kaplan Gallery, New York. © Jordan Casteel ICA Boston

Boston Got Sole

Oct. 8
12-6 p.m.
DCU Center, Worcester
Tickets start at $25

Sneakerheads are invited to descend to this traveling sneaker convention to geek out with fellow footwear lovers, get ahead of retail drops, and maybe cop that one pair that you missed out on like seven years ago.

This is an illustrated poster for the Boston Got Sole sneaker convention, 2022. Multiple scenarios are taking place in a small space, which appears to be a boardwalk as they are surrounded by water, with the Boston skyline in the background. A lobster is in the mix, freed from a trap he has a red sneaker tied to his left claw. A man driving a Boston duck tour boat approaches the event, a passenger raises his arms above his head, a sneaker is in each hand.
Boston Got Sole
Got Sole Jonathan DiModica

Boston Palestine Film Festival

Oct. 14-23
Various locations

The Boston Palestine Film Festival returns for its 16th year, screening feature films, shorts and new films by emerging artists and youth from directors around the globe. Showings are both virtual and in person at the Museum of Fine Arts, Emerson Paramount Theatre and Coolidge Corner. Documentary film is well represented with entries like "Little Palestine, Diary of a Siege" and "The Devil’s Drivers." Drama abounds too, with film exploring tensions of both international and intimate scale.

This is a scene from the film Salma's Home. Three women, who are in a kitchen , gather around a cell phone, which the woman in the middle of the trio is holding. To the left of the woman holding the cell phone is an older woman--she's wearing glasses and her hair is in curlers. The the right is a much younger woman, probably in her late 20's . All three of them have intense expressions on their faces, as though they are reading something surprising on the phone.
A scene from the flm "Salma's Home"
Film still courtesy of Boston Palestine Film Festival

Lucas Hnath's 'The Thin Place'

Wednesdays-Sundays through Oct. 23
Gloucester Stage
Tickets start at $18

Tony Award-winning playwright Lucas Hnath's "The Thin Place" — a tale of the afterlife, communication and challenged beliefs — is coming to the Gloucester Stage under the direction of Dee Dee Batteast, her debut at the venue.

Bar trivia at Eugene O’Neills

Tuesdays at 8 p.m.
3700 Washington St., Jamaica Plain

After five years of closure, the Jamaica Plain pub/sports bar was resurrected this summer under the auspices of new management. There, you can do all sorts of stuff you can do at a neighborhood bar, like watch the game while chopping it up with locals. But they recently launched their own edition of weekly bar trivia, and now you can add it to your map of Boston pub quizzing.

This is an exterior shot of the Eugene O'Neill's pub. It's a sunny day. It must be warm as the front door to the pub is propped open. The exterior is painted black and red. Four flowering hanging baskets decorate the outside of the pub. A few people are seated at the bar, reading a menu.
Eugene O'Neill's pub in Jamaica Plain
courtesy of Eugene O'Neill's Pub

'Ada and the Engine'

Through Oct. 23
Central Square Theater
Tickets start at $19

Lauren Gunderson's "Ada and the Engine" is a journey into the past with computer science pioneer Ada Byron Lovelace and her collaboration with fellow computer person Charles Babbage. A number of performances are buttressed by preshow demonstrations and post-show talkbacks with computer scientists.

'Power and Perspective: Early Photography in China'

On view through April 2
Peabody Essex Museum, Salem
Adults $20, seniors $18, students $12, youth 16 and under and Salem residents free

Cameras change how we imagine places some of us have previously rarely considered. This exhibit presents 130 photographs of 19th century China and how the technology altered its relationship with the world.

This is a photograph taken around 1871 of a pagoda in he city of Fuzhou (Foochow) in Fujian province on the River Min. The photo is in sepia tone. A pagoda appears to be floating on a still river. It's reflected in the river. There are a couple of fishing boats in the background.
John Thomson (British, 1837-1921) Island Pagoda, about 1871, from the album, Foochow and the River Min, Published in London, 1873, Gift of the Estate of Mrs. Anthony Rives, 1973
Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusett

Centre Food Hub Call for Volunteer

3702 Washington St.
Volunteer opportunites during month vary
Check here for current listings

Jamaica Plain's Centre Food Hub (located directly across the street from the Forest Hills T station) is tackling nutritional inequality with their pop-up neighborhood pantry and grocery bundles for folks that need something fresh to eat. It relies heavily on volunteer labor, though, ranging from front of house operations, to grocery packing and meal prep.