Urban Hike - Harvard undergrads in Davis Square

[erin-cambridge.livejournal.com]

I'm a resident tutor (basically a grad student R.A.) at one of the Harvard undergraduate houses on the Quad, near Porter Square.  I'd like to host an "urban hike" to Davis Square to show the students about this awesome area nearby - somehow, many of the undergrads manage to graduate without ever having visited it!  I'm planning a series of stops at locales like Somerville Theatre, Sacco's Bowl Haven, Artifaktori, Spike's, Diesel, Poor Little Rich Girl, Boston Burger Company, JP Licks, etc., and I'd like each business to have the opportunity to advertise itself to the students, maybe by handing out coupons or little treats.  Please let me know if you'd like to do something like this, so I can include it in my own advertising to the students about this event and make sure we'll stop at your place.  Thanks!

-Erin

Comments

[clevernonsense.livejournal.com]

I think one of your best bets might be to start off by buying a brown school card, which was commented on a little while ago:

http://community.livejournal.com/davis_square/1918122.html

I'm not 100% sure if they are still available.

Brown School cards

[erin-cambridge.livejournal.com]

I saw that thread, but (a) not sure if they're still on sale, and where they'd be; (b) wouldn't really be feasible to buy $10 cards for all of the undergrads on the hike, who may or may not use them in the future; (c) looking for things that'll make a more immediate impact to get at least one return visit to Davis (and hopefully get them hooked), like little samples of the bread at When Pigs Fly or coupons for one free ice cream cone from JP Licks.

Re: Brown School cards

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

When Pigs Fly already offers free samples to anyone who comes in.

If they go to JP Licks and get one of their cash cow cards, they'll get a free cone on it when they register the card.

Re: Brown School cards

[aquaflame16.livejournal.com]

The Brown School cards are available at Mr. Crepe (as the post above mentioned) for $10 cash. While it clearly doesn't make sense for you to buy them for all your students, perhaps you could tell them about it in advance and suggest they bring $10 cash with them if they think they might be interested, and then stop off at Mr. Crepe towards the end of your tour (so that they'll have had a chance to check out some of the places the discounts are for) and give whoever wants to buy one a chance to.

[ron_newman]

I like your idea.

If you want to deal with the Davis Square business community, I recommend that you get in touch with the folks at DARBI.

By the way, some Extension School students might also be interested in your hike, especially those newly arrived from other parts of the US. Consider publicizing it at ExtensionStudent.com, for instance.

[josephineave.livejournal.com]

The Davis Square merchants just did something like this for the Tufts freshmen. I got a chance to see some of the freebies they got for coming in over the next couple of days:

Chipotle - free burrito or salad or tacos
Spikes - free hot dog
Kick*ss Cupcakes - free mini cupcake
Spun - free frozen yogurt (once they open on Tuesday)
Dave's Fresh Pasta - free sandwich

Someone said something about coffee, so it's possible Diesel or Starbucks was involved. Today the Square was overrun with Tufts students cashing in their spoils.

I would expect you could negotiate some similar freebies for your urban hike.

History Lesson

[tt02144.livejournal.com]

Hopefully you'll do a mini history lesson along with your tour. Do some research particularly on the Somerville Theater, which was originally a Vaudeville Theater. Many famous people performed there in its' heydey. I believe Bette Davis may have been one of them. The theater is well-renowned for its' amazing acoustics. The theater is in the Hobbs Building which previously housed, among other things, a dance studio.