Great news: After hours of reviewing, researching and weighing more than 3,000 submissions, the 130 finalists for The Boston Calendar 2014 Best Of Awards are in.
Not so great news: You probably didn’t get nominated. Which should have been expected, because you’re just one person, and the awards recognize the best events and things to do in the city. So what good is this list to you, anyways?
There can be only one winner for each of our 25 awards, but you can’t go wrong with any of these finalists. It was truly an honor just to nominate them. You can look at the finalists as a bucket list of sorts for necessary Boston experiences, and our hope is you’ll refer to our picks whenever you want to show some out-of-town friends a good time, plan an unforgettable date, or just score some late-night eats.
You might be asking why there are 130 finalists when there are supposed to be five each for 25 awards. For once, the answer isn’t “math is hard.” There were so many options for the Best Boston Attraction/Thing To Do award that we expanded it to ten nominees. Blame the Oscars for setting the precedent.
We’ll announce the winners for each award on Tuesday, November 4th, along with details regarding our exclusive winners event on November 19th. Follow @TheBostonCal and @BDCwire on Twitter for updates. Winners will be determined by a panel of The Boston Calendar, BDCWire, and our esteemed guest judges, who have been assigned to specific categories based on their expertise:
Food: Rachel L. Blumenthal, Editor, Eater Boston; Kate from Boston On Budget
Drinks/Nightlife: @OnlyInBOS and Juliana Casale, Correspondent for American Craft Beer
Culture: David Day, Founder of Together Boston; and Chloe Ryan, Manager, ONEin3 Boston
Music: Allston Pudding Boston-based music blog; and Paul Driscoll, Director of Programming & Operations, RadioBDC
City Living: Tom O’Keefe, @BostonTweet and founder of Download Boston; and Sorboni Banerjee, FOX25 News Anchor
Check out the complete list of finalists, with web and Twitter links (if available — turns out the best dive bars aren’t really into social media). Judges will take Twitter support from the public into consideration, so tweet us your picks along with the hashtag #BestInBoston.
Or, fine, just use the hashtag to tell us how wrong all our finalist choices are. As if we could stop you.
