Ice Skating Rink

If it were summer, what I would be doing in this outdoor space would involve oysters and Bard’s Tale beers. But it’s 11 Fahrenheit degrees – not so summery. What better way to put this space to wintry use than to set up an ice skating rink, right in Harvard Square?
Kalun L. and I arrived at 5:45 PM on MLK day, just fifteen minutes before closing-​time (Normal M-​F hours are 4 – 7 PM; weekend/​holiday hours are 10 AM-​6 PM). Skate rental was $ 5 per pair; rink time was $ 5 per person (for pricing for children, «families,» and multiple-​day passes, see:
). The friendly lads in the skate shack hooked us up with skates and when we took to the ice, no one else was there although we were soon joined by a kid and her parents. It was nice that we weren’t surrounded by pint-​sized pros zooming around because that could have ended with an ER-​worthy incident. (I hadn’t skated in over a decade; Kalun had never skated.)
It is not an Olympic-​sized slick-​and-​shiny zambonied-​every-​half-​hour sort of facility. It is a place to go to get a fun half-​hour of skating in before hobbling the twenty feet to Noir to defrost and drink away any bruises. If you’re hankering to skate in Harvard Square and happen to have your own skates on hand, you can also head over to the outdoor rink at Harkness Commons (Harvard Law campus) – free and open to the public, but with no rentable skates. Although there will be no Noir, you will be surrounded by one of Walter Gropius’ grand residential design projects which is at least as heart-​warming as Noir’s «Body Heat Cider.»