Avery Bleichfeld

In Revere, a mile-and-a-half stretch of the six-lane-wide Squire Road cuts past clusters of shops, a couple of grocery stores, and rows of residential streets.

Hidden behind those six lanes, a shopping center and some broad asphalt parking lots is the Rumney Marsh Reservation, and, beyond it, the ocean. But the roadway, with its dark surfaces and extensive pavement, traps heat and makes it hard for anyone outside of a car to traverse from one end to the other or to get to the natural resources on the other side, said Tom Skwierawski, the city’s chief of planning and community development.

Now, for walkers, bikers and those waiting for buses in Revere and other municipalities across the region, a new metro-area initiative...

Getting a liquor license in Boston is a complicated affair.

Nearly 100-year-old legislation that limits the number in the city, alongside longstanding racial wealth gaps, has meant that many of the city’s licenses to sell wine, beer and other forms of alcohol have ended up in Boston’s whiter neighborhoods.

But legislation at the State House could bring over 200 new licenses to the city, most of them targeted at communities of color.

Royal Smith, who runs the District 7 Tavern in Roxbury and is a part of the Boston Black Hospitality Coalition that has been pushing for the legislation, said the bill would take steps...

Some of Northeastern’s varsity athletes take to the ice, others throw and catch balls, but none of them try to defuse bombs — and for now, it is going to stay that way.

Northeastern’s co-ed esports program currently includes five games as part of its varsity level and 11 games at the club level. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, or CS:GO, a first-person shooter game in which two teams of five compete to defuse bombs, is currently represented as a club sports team, but not as a varsity team.

Zac Allor, coordinator of esports for Northeastern, said the university could eventually include CS:GO as one of its varsity titles, but players should not expect it to be added soon...

As a low-lying coastal city, Boston is at heightened risk for coastal flooding. To examine the challenges and opportunities of coastal resilience efforts, my reporting for the Bay State Banner dug into three sites along the metro-Boston shoreline where flooding could pose high risks and solutions are being crafted to create new models for the future.

Each article took an in-depth dive into the challenges and solutions at a given location, exploring, through each location a new lens on how climate change is impacting the region's coasts and what solutions might exist to address those challenges...

As big chain pharmacies shutter stores in Boston and across the country, local advocates are looking to independent pharmacy stores and community health centers to fill the gaps that are left behind.

In Boston, communities of color have, so far, felt the biggest hit from chain pharmacy store closures, seeing four in the past year and a half — two in Roxbury and one each in Mattapan and Hyde Park. Most recently, the Walgreens at 416 Warren St. shuttered at the end of January.

Supporters view independent pharmacies as a potential good fit to fill the gaps, especially in more diverse communities. The smaller stores often offer an expanded slate of services that chain stores may not...

It was Valentine’s Day when leadership at the Edgar P. Benjamin Healthcare Center announced plans to close the facility by the summer. The almost 100-year-old nursing home, which is one of only a few Black-run long-term care facilities in Massachusetts and primarily serves residents of color from nearby neighborhoods, was facing insurmountable financial difficulties that made continued operations impossible, they said.

But reporting by the Bay State Banner and other local outlets indicated financial mismanagement by the facility’s top brass, including rapidly a rising salary for its CEO, loans made from the top administrator’s personal bank account to the facility — at a 12% interest rate — to cover payroll and a gamble on cryptocurrency that lost the center $100,000...

When City Councilor Lydia Edwards entered Spinelli’s in East Boston, where she held her election night party, it was with tears of joy on her face and her campaign team in tow to announce victory in the Dec. 14 special primary election for the vacant First Suffolk and Middlesex seat in the state Senate.

“We did this,” Edwards told supporters. “Staying focused on the issues, staying positive, talking to people where they are in all the beautiful languages that they speak, we did this.”

The special election was scheduled following the departure of Joseph Boncore, who resigned the Senate seat to take over as CEO of the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council...

Two new gene therapies to treat sickle cell disease were approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Dec. 8.

The treatments, both produced by Boston-area companies, join 32 other approved gene therapies and are approved to treat the disease in the United States.

Experts say the developments are a major move forward in treating the disease, which has an outsized impact on Black patients...

“This is a disease that we all know has been largely ignored, with huge challenges to access to equitable care. Now, really for the first time, there are approaches that are definitive one-time therapies,” said Dr. Bill Hobbs…

When Lonnie Thompson first saw the Quelccaya Ice Cap in the Andes Mountains, he was blown away by the sight. Standing above the Amazon, just shy of the fourteenth parallel south of the equator in the tropics — well outside the polar regions where most scientists had been studying ice cores — the expanse of ice swept from horizon to horizon.

Now, 45 years later, Thompson has watched the glacier melt and retreat, leaving behind lakes, bare ground, and far less ice.

With climate change affecting temperature worldwide, ice caps and glaciers, especially those on mountains and on the coasts of polar landmasses...

This month, Boston Public Library, or BPL, took a step toward embodying the phrase “Free To All,” which is carved above the entrance to the central branch at Copley Square.

On Nov. 1, the library eliminated all fines on overdue books for cardholders 18 years and younger in an attempt to facilitate access to library materials and programs. This comes as another step in a nationwide movement for libraries to go fine-free for some or all of their patrons.

According to an Oct. 25 press release, the Boston Public Library announced fines would be eliminated for youth card holders. It also announced that pending fines...

On a gravelly patch along the sunny shoreline, Christina Williams calls through a megaphone at the scullers rowing by. Their whoops and cheers echo and fly around in the arched shade of the underside of Eliot Bridge.

Williams is here for her eighth or ninth year as a member of the River Control team, a group of volunteers dedicated to making sure traffic is moving and the shells are safe.

“We’re moderating the traffic so that boats don’t collide and we’re noticing behavior,” Williams said. “If they’re going too fast we want to slow them down, because we know what’s ahead, they don’t always know."

Mark Hochman, another volunteer with the...

It was a nondescript doorway, tucked away, with no view in and no name to mark it. In and out of the door crept visitors, with surreptitious glances back and forth. This was not a place at which you wanted to draw attention to yourself. Such was the atmosphere around gay bars until the 1980s according to longtime Boston resident William Cody. Even then, they were the center of an invisible network that connected the LGBTQ+ community in Boston.

“There were no windows and no names because of the closeted aspect, so no one would know what you were doing really,” Cody said. “You would go into this doorway with no markings on it, so if someone saw you they wouldn’t know what it was...

When Allison Perlman, a project manager at the Boston Department of Parks and Recreation, first walked out to Moakley Park in South Boston there were “literally two people” using the space. It was a Tuesday afternoon.

The small number of visitors isn’t strange. The sports fields flood after rainstorms, busy roads isolate the space and rising sea-levels threaten the coastal park.

A city plan aims to renovate the park in order to make it more accessible and more diverse in the activities it offers. The plan also will use the park as a major step in making the shoreline of the city more resilient to the effects of the changing climate...