This is a web edition of GBH Daily, a weekday newsletter bringing you local stories you can trust so you can stay informed without feeling overwhelmed.
☀️Sunny and hot, with highs in the 80s. Sunset is at 8:17 p.m.
Today we have a Free Ride to find the local soul of your soles. But first: Now that the smog has cleared and the temperature has dipped below 90, a lot of us (including me) are probably looking forward to spending some time outside this weekend. Our friends at the new podcast In Common: From the Berkshires to the Bay, did a full show about the great outdoors.
Host Jeremy Siegel covered everything from ticks to the Brimfield Flea Market, but my favorite segment was Nancy Eve Cohen’s report on adaptive outdoor activities that help people with disabilities get active outside.
“It profoundly shifts not just the moment — the moment is amazing and fantastic — but it ripples out from there in terms of feeling like I have agency — feeling uplifted and grounded. It changes everything,” adaptive pickleball player Amy Sugihara said.
If you like a long-form storytelling podcast with in-depth interviews and features, you should check it out.
Four Things to Know
1. The number of consumer debt cases in Massachusetts — in which a company, usually one specializing in buying debt, takes a person to court over unpaid bills — was at 145,000 last year, up about 50% from 2019, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts. A growing portion of that debt is what’s known as survival debt — people having to finance the things they need to live, like medical expenses, groceries, transportation costs and rent.
“I think that anyone can go into debt, especially in this economy. Sometimes people have no options. Sometimes it’s ‘go into debt or starve,’” said a 29-year-old named Suze from Quincy, who ended up with $15,000 in debt after illnesses and an abusive marriage. “Sometimes the credit cards are the option. Just to keep you going, just to keep you alive another day.”
2. We’re getting our first accounting of how the World Cup affected Boston’s economy. Hotels made some cash, with average room rates and revenue per available room up about 20% compared to last summer, according to Meet Boston. And the payment platform Square reported that Boston’s bars and restaurants saw the biggest consumer spending increase of any host city.
“Our restaurant partners are just so excited to see new faces every day and to be able to serve people through different times of the day,” said Lauren Johnson, a senior manager at High Street Place food hall in Boston’s financial district. But: some restaurants near Foxborough said business was slower than usual. And Norvia Peña, owner of Fort Hill Bar & Grill in Roxbury, said she didn’t see much change. “Everybody goes to downtown. Everybody goes to the Seaport,” Peña said. “It is what it is. You lose some and you win some.”
3. Republican gubernatorial candidate Mike Minogue said he’s declining to debate his primary opponent, Brian Shortsleeve. Instead, he said, he’s focused on the general election, in which the primary winner will go up against incumbent Gov. Maura Healey.
“I understand that Democrats want us to fight each other for 12 months and then have two months from the primary to the general election,” Minogue said. “This election is the most important tipping point in our lifetime history because we will not survive four more years of overtaxing, overspending and overregulating from Maura Healey.”
4. Old fishing nets from the shores of Massachusetts are being sent to Ukraine, where they’re being used as a way to protect people from exploding drones. People who want to donate their old fishing nets can contact the organization Net Your Problem.
“[Soliders] can carry it on their person because it’s lightweight and it keeps some of the – you know it’s not going to keep a heavy ordnance away – but it’s going to keep the minor stuff blocked off,” said Eric Klose, founder of the Boston-based impact-first investment group Ground Squirrel Ventures.
Free Ride: Heart and Sole
Welcome to Free Ride, your weekly guide to a $0 day trip. Remember: the MBTA Commuter Rail is fare-free every Friday this summer. As each weekend approaches, I’ll invite you to take a break and find some nature, art, science, fashion, music and more — all for $0 (or as close to free as I can get).
Today the Commuter Rail is our ticket to the past — and the future. Haverhill used to be home to a shoe industry so big that the city earned the nickname “Queen Slipper City.” Massachusetts was a hub of shoemaking from the late 18th century to the early 1900s, and there were plenty of shoe factories in Brockton, Lynn and Weymouth, too. Researchers for the Digital Public Public Library of America estimated that in 1913, about 10% of all shoes produced in the US came from Haverhill. The designer Stuart Weitzman was born there and got his start at his father’s shoe factory, Seymour Shoes.
You’ll get a sense of that history as you start walking through Historic New England’s exhibit “Shoe Stories: Past, Present, Future,” located inside a former shoe factory complex at 143 Essex St., a short walk from the Haverhill Commuter Rail stop. I learned about this free exhibit from GBH’s Magdiela Matta (you can walk through the exhibit in her shoes here) and from an interview The Culture Show’s Jared Bowen did with Vin Cipolla, president and CEO of Historic New England, and Michelle Tolini Finamore, a fashion curator and exhibitions and programming consultant.
The first half of the exhibit looks back at the state’s shoemaking past: the invention of vulcanized rubber, factory life and more. There are L.L. Bean duck boots, Stuart Weitzman boots worn by Beyoncé (who often wears his designs on stage) and sneakers like Concepts Nike Dunk Low SB “Orange Lobster,” Matta reports.
The second half shifts the focus to the next generation. High school juniors and seniors from the state’s 26 Gateway Cities crafted shoes inspired by the world around them, using colors and shapes to tell their stories in footwear. It’s cool to see how they use shoes to express their thoughts on justice, the economy and architecture.
Like this Free Ride? Share it with a friend and tell them to subscribe to GBH Daily for more.
And remember: if you take any of these trips or have your own Free Ride ideas to share, I want to hear from you! Send me a note at daily@wgbh.org.
😎More Free Rides:
-Thinking outside the frame in Lowell
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