Bethany "the Girl Wonder" F.'s Profile

After recently moving to Allston, I was ecstatic to find a nearby library in the Minuteman Library Network. Ever since I was old enough to get a library card, I've been going to the massive Newton Free Library, which has served me well all these years... however, now that I live in Allston, picking up my requests in Coolidge Corner is way more convenient.

The library is modest in size and selection, however, you can make requests from a huge selection in the Minuteman Library Network [note: they have a great graphic novels selection and a ton of Twilight Zone episodes on DVD. Yes. Please.]. There are rarely any long lines to check out your books. Unfortunately, the library closes pretty early on most nights, but I've made it a routine to go to the library after work on Tuesday and/or Thursday nights [when it's open till 9]. The staff are really friendly - one of the workers usually brings me my pile of requested books before the librarian can even scan my library card n_n

All in all, the Coolidge Corner Library is pretty chill. Yeah.

My parents first introduced me to Color a couple years ago, and it has been my favorite Korean restaurant since! In fact, I went there yesterday for a belated birthday dinner with my family, and I was wondering why I don't go there as often as I really should.

The restaurant is small [they have about six 4-person tables], but really cute - as the name implies, the restaurant is color-coordinated in soft orange, green and yellow hues that match the cute plates as well.

The wait staff has always been wonderful - they always complement my hair-bows, so that almost always guarantees a higher tip [note: restaurants, take note...]. Plus, they have cute aprons with puppies and kittens on them, which is a super-plus!

Each order of food comes with chilled brown-rice tea and several mini side-dishes [each plate is about the size of a saucer] - a light soup, kim chi, macaroni salad, an egg dish with green onions and peppers in it, marinated beansprouts, tofu skins in kim chi sauce, and zucchini in kim chi sauce. So tasty and just the right size for appetizers!

However, if you do want appetizers, the Kim Chi pancakes are fantastic - they're more doughy than Thai coconut pancakes or scallion pancakes, and they're served with a tangy ginger soy sauce. I just tried the chicken wings for the first time yesterday, and they were really tasty - the sauce on them was full of flavor. The fried dumplings are yummy too.

Entree-wise, almost everyone I bring to Color orders the Eel Bibimbap served in the hot stone bowl [which cooks the over-easy egg in the dish and slowly heats up the rice into tasty crunchy bits. For seafood fans, the Seafood Rice is wonderful and more of a soupy-rice dish with a nice array of seafood [shrimp, calamari, scallops]. The deep-fried squid is also impeccably tender and more addictive than a catch-phrase from Project Runway. The pork katsu dishes here are good too, however, a bit small when you compare them to the other dishes.

You also get Dum Dum lollipops with your check, which I highly prefer over fortune cookies and after-dinner mints.

Furthermore, your entire dining experience will be accompanied by a Korean pop soundtrack! Could you really ask for more?

The only bummer about this place is that it's not open on Sundays ["because it is the Lord's Day!" - Color's take-out menu].

Lanes & Games has been my favorite bowling joint since high school. I just had my birthday party there this past weekend [SRY IF U DIDNT GET THE INVITE, BITCHEZ], and it was just as awesome as I remembered! This time around however, I also got to enjoy the surprisingly cheap prices of not only the food, but the drinks as well - I got two drinks, which ended up costing me about $6, including tip. Plus, if you're bowling, you need to drink some White Russians for Big Lebowski cred. The selection of appetizers and food was better [and also cheaper!] than I remembered too - fried mushrooms, mozzarella sticks, seasoned curly fries... the perfect menu for my Super Sweet 16! Kanye West showed up to my SS16 at Lanes & Games this weekend and totally dug the sweet menu too.

The upstairs has ten-pin lanes [yay!], while the downstairs has candlepin [boo]. I've only played candlepin once here, many many years ago - it was a fluke, since by the time we got to the alley, all of the ten-pin lanes were taken. With that said, the place gets incredibly busy in the evenings [even on weekday nights], so if you're going with a crowd of more than 5 bowlers, you may want to head out a little bit earlier [before 5 or 6 pm], to get neighboring lanes [all the easier to heckle your friends with...].

Each ten-pin lane has a monitor that not only displays the scores, but awesome pixelated animations of demons taunting and abusing the bowler when you get a split or gutter ball. Furthermore, there is a large selection of bowling balls to choose from, varying in both color and size [6lb - 10 lb, I believe] - as long as I have my hot pink 8-lb ball, all is right in the world.

Plus: Maybe it's just me, but Lanes & Games has always had the cutest bowling shoes...

I was lured by the Pop Rocks martini [hey, I'm a sucker for a shot of nostalgia with my alcohol], but alas, the martini ended up being a bit too expensive to my liking... the burgers, however, were wonderful!

I ordered two mini-burgers -the Spicy Lamb burger and the Tuna Steak burger- and they were both delicious. The lamb was cooked to a perfect medium rare and was well-complemented by the yogurt relish, however, it was greatly overshadowed by the tuna steak burger. I ordered the tuna steak rare, and it was probably the best decision that I had made all weekend - it was like a grilled tuna sashimi burger! I kind of wish that I had ordered two Tuna Steak burgers instead! NOM NOM NOM.

We also ordered the fries and onion rings, both of which were incredibly mediocre, considering how tasty the mini-burgers were...

If your [or your kid's] nickname is "Bean", this place is for you!

There are 80 or so different little beans to collect - they sell them individually, and NOT in blindboxes, so you can just cut to the chase and get the ones that you want. Each individual bean is about $2-3.50 [depending on the bean]. They have tons of t-shirts and plushies too [and combo packages of a bean toy with a packet of bean candies]. Perfect for tourists who want to bring home tiny cute souvenirs for their friends or families - they even have respective beans repping the Celtics and the Sox! The glow-in-the-dark skull one is my favorite though... basically, there's a bean for everyone!

So back in high school when Kam Man first opened up, it was filled with tons of little gift shops, which won over my teenage heart. Kam Man is a one-level "mall" with lots of glass rooms, in which USED to be many gift shops, clothing/accessories shops, music/entertainment shops, and even an arcade. Now there are many empty glass cubicles; the few occupied ones have some clothing, entertainment goods, food/drinks, and gift items [à la typical Chinatown gift shop in Boston, meh ].

However, I feel that the large bookend stores of Kam Man end up salvaging a reason to make a trip out to Quincy - on one end, there is a large gift shop; on the other, a large Asian supermarket. The Asian super market is one of the larger Asian super markets in Massachusetts, however, I personally look forward to the giant gift shop on the other end of the mall.

The gift shop is more or less a dollar store, with most of the small items averaging $1-2 each, ranging up to a whopping $4 or so. The store is filled with tons of stuff - housewares, bath, beauty, office supplies, toys, furniture, lingerie [haha], accessories, luggage, shoes, Sanrio goods [of course], and more. This place has also been my number one stop for cheap bento supplies, as they have a fair variety of bento box designs [all of them are plastic and come in an assortment of colors], and lots of bags, utensils, and cooking supplies for preparing bento boxes, all for about $2 each max. These cheap cooking supplies distinguish Kam Man from other gift shops, mainly because other stores will easily charge at least five times as much for these items.

Additionally, this place is an Engrish motherload. While you're eating your lunch from your brand new bento box, you can thank the "Lube Sheep" corporation who made your bento box with little bears and bunnies on it. Likewise, a lot of the pricing labels are charmingly lacking in spell check - beware of the Flying Pans!

I always end up filling my shopping basket with tons of little gifts for my friends and myself. This place was also really great when I had to shop for things for my dorm and my old apartment - there are tons of cute and useful household items for mad cheap.

Naming your store "Lovely Shop" [and/or "Cute Shop" - depending on which sign you see] will undoubtedly set rather high expectations for the cute-goods-consuming customer. While the store is tiny, in true Chinatown shop style, it is filled with lots of miscellaneous goods. What lured me into this store initially were the promises of Sanrio items, however, I was kind of disappointed by their selection. They have cell phone charms, home goods, stickers, etc, however, nothing that I haven't seen before; and if it was something I hadn't seen yet, it was usually a counterfeit item [like those weird neon/hologram wonky-looking Hello Kitty stickers].

I did however score a sweet Astro Boy tote bag from this store a few years ago, and I really love it. While I can't vouch for the full authenticity of this product, it has served me well throughout the years. Regardless, I rarely stop by this shop unless I find myself extremely bored in Chinatown. In which case, I usually leave Chinatown, but yeah.

Recommendation: If you're a legit thrifter who is looking to find some gems, I suggest avoiding this place the entire month of October. Since this is the only major thrift store in the 5-college area, you'll have to deal with a bunch of bro-dudes looking for Halloween costumes. Gross. Oh wow, you're a guy in a dress? THAT'S SO FUNNY - I'VE NEVER SEEN THAT BEFORE.

I made this mistake of entering Salvi's one October afternoon, and some dude came up to me and asked me if his purple sports jacket was "fly" for a costume party. I challenged him to a fight for the jacket [for it was indeed, FLY], but I guess he thought that I was joking. Personally, I just don't see what's so costume-y about wearing a purple jacket, but maybe that's why I was never invited to the Halloween parties on fraternity row [boo].

So basically, during the month of October, the patronage to Salvation Army will increase three-fold, thus less likely to find something awesome, especially since "retro" is a popular costume. However, during the rest of the year, this Salvi's isn't a location where I've had a significant amount of finds - it's about average on the general thrift store scale [i.e. prices and selection]. It's worth checking every once and a while, but I'd rather hold my breath for the longer journey to Savers.

Of the vintage stores in the Pioneer Valley area, Roz's Place is the most aesthetically interesting location. A top shelf runs through the perimeter of the tiny store, displaying antique radios, electronics, 3D glasses displays, petticoats, and various other kitschy findings. The store itself contains both new and vintage items. Amongst the new items lie jewelry, 1" pins, bandannas, sunglasses, petticoats, legwear, and a couple four-way racks of women's clothing.

The vintage items include rollerskates, a small selection of toys, women's dresses/skirts/jackets/blouses, men's shirts/pants/blazers/jackets, leather jackets, formal hats, fur stoles, stickers, and other novelty items. They even have puffy Duran Duran stickers for a couple of dollars! Totes awes.

They usually have a clothing rack of vintage items on sale, along with a $1 bin, outside of the store, which is fun to rifle through.

They usually have a few pairs of vintage rollerskates on sale, so I always check out Roz's Place whenever I'm in NoHo, to see if they have my dream pair of white rollerskates [size 7.5]. Although I end up leaving rollerskates-less, I'm quite content with whatever gems I find in the store, from a pin of Siouxsie to a pair of little gold heart-shaped studs with the initials "B" in each tiny heart. Also, one of my best friends got me a stellar teddy bear sweater from there, so now I can rock out, 80's starlet style.

I heard about Magpie because the creator of http://Craftster.org [one of my favorite websites] is one of the co-owners of the store, so naturally, I expected the store to be filled with lots of cute, homemade items. Back when it was at its old location, it took me forever to find the store, but when I finally did, I was quite pleased to find that the store met my expectations! The store was small, but filled with lots of homemade jewelry, accessories, home goods, etc. The store's new location [right in the center of Davis Square] is a delight to those who lack any directional sense.

As a craftster myself, I really treasure this store as a source of inspiration and a means for me to support other craftsters. They have some great gift items here - I usually get earrings or pins for my friends. I have a really cute pair of tiny bible earrings here, which were amongst a bowl of other kitschy plastic charm earrings. Because these items are handmade and probably on consignment, the prices are understandably pricier than mass-produced stuff you could find at Claire's or Girlprops.

Magpie is always a delight to check out whenever I'm in the area. The last time I stopped by the store, I spotted a series of plastic acrylic pendants that were stylized to look like pixelated images of Super Mario, Donkey Kong, and Space Invaders. They were cheaper than similar necklaces designed by other jewelry designers who work with acrylic plastic, such as Alex + Chloe. Definitely one of the coolest things that I've seen lately.