[00:00:00] Speaker A: Almost right on cue. Mother Nature is providing us with beach weather this week for the Friends of Wollaston Beach. And the beach ladies are here today to tell us more about this year's season. President Maureen Mazarimus and our good friend, Maya Smith. Ladies, welcome.
[00:00:16] Speaker B: Thank you for having us.
[00:00:17] Speaker A: It's a pleasure as always, Maureen, to see you. And Maya, to see you again. You survived the Shamrock splash.
[00:00:23] Speaker C: Yes, I'm just now getting warm.
[00:00:26] Speaker B: Just recovery.
She actually does splash.
[00:00:31] Speaker A: I know. We saw pictures, so we know for sure.
Maureen, a very exciting year for the Friends this year, right?
[00:00:37] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. We're celebrating our 20th anniversary.
[00:00:39] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:00:40] Speaker B: Yeah. Very exciting.
[00:00:41] Speaker A: Yeah. When you told me that earlier, I just. I couldn't believe it went by so quickly. I'm sure for you, even faster. Right.
[00:00:46] Speaker B: And, I mean, it's hard to believe. I think I've been president almost 10 years now.
[00:00:50] Speaker A: Is that right?
[00:00:50] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:00:51] Speaker A: Wow. Okay, so any special events planned for the 20th?
[00:00:54] Speaker B: We're working on it.
[00:00:55] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:00:56] Speaker B: We've formulated a committee, but we haven't finalized it.
[00:00:59] Speaker A: Oh, okay. All right. We'll have you back when those plans are finalized.
[00:01:01] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:01:02] Speaker A: For sure.
[00:01:02] Speaker B: Absolutely.
And she's celebrating 40.
[00:01:05] Speaker A: Save the harbor. Save the Bay. Right, Maya?
[00:01:07] Speaker C: Yes, we are. It's our 40th year of working on Boston harbor, making sure that the water remains clean and the beaches remain active.
[00:01:15] Speaker A: Yeah. So you're representing both groups today, right?
[00:01:17] Speaker C: It's true.
[00:01:18] Speaker A: Save the harbor and Friends.
[00:01:19] Speaker C: Exactly. As soon as I moved to Quincy, Maureen snatched me up.
And I have been an avid fan of the Friends of Wollaston beach ever since.
[00:01:28] Speaker A: Yeah. And an excellent ambassador, too, I must say. Oh, thank you very much for both agencies.
[00:01:32] Speaker C: I learned from the best.
[00:01:36] Speaker A: Maureen, you have a calendar jam packed full of events.
[00:01:39] Speaker B: Right. You know, as with any year, the biggest thing that we like to promote is the cleanup.
[00:01:46] Speaker A: Of course.
Can't do anything until you clean the beach.
[00:01:49] Speaker B: No.
[00:01:49] Speaker A: And this winter, I'm sure there's going to be a lot of cleanup.
[00:01:52] Speaker B: Yeah. And so our first cleanup is always done in concert with Park Serve Day, which is what DCR does, is their volunteer day.
And our cleanups are typically from 10 to 12. But this year, it also coincides with Earth Week.
So the date that they have picked is April 25th.
And because of the tides, we have gone with one to three.
[00:02:20] Speaker A: Oh, okay.
[00:02:21] Speaker B: The north end of the beach. But because the plovers have just made their reappearance.
[00:02:27] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:02:29] Speaker B: We're not exactly sure where we're gonna be able to clean this year. Oh, all right. But we Will it will be the north end of the beach somewhere south of the plover nesting area before the second nesting area.
[00:02:41] Speaker A: Okay. And those are typically kind of cordoned off, Right. With strings.
[00:02:45] Speaker B: You can see the blue flags and the strings and things like that.
[00:02:48] Speaker A: Okay. And for folks who are wondering, this is a plover.
[00:02:53] Speaker B: Some people call it a plover, I call it a plover.
[00:02:57] Speaker A: And they're protected, right? They're endangered.
[00:02:58] Speaker B: They are. They're endangered. And I think last year, I think there were at least two pair, but I think it was still underestimated. I mean, they had hoped to have more because they are endangered and they want to bring them back. But the other thing that's been pretty interesting is, you know, it was only a few years ago that they came back to Wollaston in the first place.
[00:03:21] Speaker A: It was a surprise to find them there at first.
[00:03:22] Speaker B: It was, it was. And now they're in a lot of beaches.
[00:03:25] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:03:25] Speaker B: So that's good.
[00:03:26] Speaker A: Yeah. Typically it was just down the Cape for the most part. So they've made their way north.
[00:03:30] Speaker B: Yeah. So that will be April 25th. And another reason we chose 1 to 3 is because a number of our members are also involved in the Stop the stigma Road Race 5K that starts at the Kennedy center that morning in support of interfaith social services.
Again, stop the stigma. With mental illness and things like that,
[00:03:59] Speaker A: you're expecting at least 1,000 people to participate.
[00:04:01] Speaker B: Wow, that's exciting. That's very exciting.
[00:04:04] Speaker A: And a lot of them, I'm sure, are friends at Wollaston beach as well.
[00:04:06] Speaker B: Yeah. And you know, I know that if you go to the website, the interfaith social services website, there's an opportunity to both race or donate or both.
[00:04:17] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:04:18] Speaker B: So that.
[00:04:19] Speaker A: Yes. And they have some great raffle prizes you can bid on right now too, actually. Yeah.
[00:04:23] Speaker B: April 25th will be a busy day
[00:04:24] Speaker A: to be a busy day in the city. Yes, absolutely.
[00:04:26] Speaker B: And then two weeks later, or it may only be one week this year, Saturday, May 2nd, from 10 to noon, we do Caddy park, which is opposite the south end of the beach.
[00:04:40] Speaker A: Part of cleaner, greener Quincy.
[00:04:42] Speaker B: Absolutely. And that's always an interesting place. And fortunately, that's one of the places that is not tide dependent to clean up.
[00:04:51] Speaker A: Oh, okay.
[00:04:52] Speaker B: So we can do that whenever we please.
[00:04:54] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:04:55] Speaker B: And then the last cleanup that we do each year is coast sweep, and that happens in the fall. And that's a really, really good cleanup. It's different from other cleanups to the extent that you catalog everything you pick up and Then you report back to coastal zone management, and then they try and determine where it came from and how to mitigate it in the future.
And there has been one culprit year after year after year, which is cigarette butts.
[00:05:29] Speaker A: I think there was 2000 last year.
[00:05:31] Speaker B: Last year, there was almost 5000.
[00:05:32] Speaker A: 5000.
[00:05:33] Speaker B: 5000.
[00:05:34] Speaker A: My goodness.
[00:05:35] Speaker B: And, you know, people say it's 5000 people sitting on the beach smoking. No, they're not smoking.
They're either in their car, and they throw it out the window, and it goes into the storm drain and goes out to the beach, and it gets washed back in again. I'm sure there are people who are smoking on the beach, but a vast majority probably come from just discarded things that wind up in the gutter upstream, essentially.
[00:05:57] Speaker A: Right.
Kind of Wallacen hill downhill.
[00:05:59] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:05:59] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:06:00] Speaker B: So that'll be sometime in September, and that's always terrific.
[00:06:05] Speaker A: Yes, we'll have you back for that before then, of course, to talk about. So those are kind of the highlights.
[00:06:09] Speaker B: Those are the highlights, yes.
[00:06:11] Speaker A: But there's lots of other things happening, too, and I wanted to bring Maya in. First of all, talk a little.
We mentioned the Shamrock Splash. That's held for a reason, Right? To raise funds for programs that the friends put on.
[00:06:24] Speaker C: Yes, exactly. So we raised about $50,000 at the Shamrock Splash this year, thanks to our friends at JetBlue and the Department of Conservation and Recreation. And so we are putting about $30,000 back into Quincy this year.
[00:06:39] Speaker A: Really?
[00:06:39] Speaker C: Yes. So we have so many new events, so many of our classic features, favorite events, all coming back to Wollaston Beach. Those will all be on savetheharbor.org andavethe harbor on all platforms. We haven't quite announced the full schedule yet. We're having the Better beaches awards breakfast in early May, and everything will be out for folks to view before Memorial Day.
[00:07:01] Speaker A: Fantastic. Yeah.
[00:07:02] Speaker C: Very soon you can plan your summers. And thanks to all of these cleanups that the Friends of Wallace and beach are doing, they clean up literal tons of trash from the beach. And thanks to the Department of Conservation and Recreation on that as well, because really help to make sure that Wollaston beach continues to be clean.
According to our annual water quality report card, on 88% of days, Wollaston beach is clean and good and all set for folks to swim in. And on those other days, it is things like Maureen was saying of throwing your trash out the car window, throwing your trash out in the street. It's really important for folks to remember that it all ends up back into the Water.
If your dog is going to the bathroom and you don't pick it up, even if you're not right on the beach, guess what? It's going in the water.
[00:07:49] Speaker A: Maureen likes to say, there's no poop fairy.
[00:07:51] Speaker B: There is no poop fairy, no ferry.
[00:07:54] Speaker A: Pick it up and dispose of it.
[00:07:56] Speaker C: Exactly.
[00:07:56] Speaker B: And again, along those same lines about the poop ferry and such, Mass Water Resources puts out a book called Dwayne the Storm Drain, which we've talked about a million times before.
It is published in English, but it is now available in many other different languages, including Vietnamese and Chinese. For the folks in Quincy.
They do not have hardcover versions of that, but you can go on their website and pull it up and print off pages of it or whatever.
It's really good because a lot of people don't throw things down the storm drain maliciously.
[00:08:37] Speaker A: They just don't realize they find their way there.
[00:08:40] Speaker B: Right, yeah. They just don't realize that it doesn't belong there.
And, you know, years ago, people used to think, oh, that's a sewer. No, it's not a sewer. It's a storm drain. It's only supposed to take water.
[00:08:52] Speaker A: The sewers are closed. They're the manhole covers. The storm drains are the open grates.
[00:08:56] Speaker B: Right.
[00:08:56] Speaker A: And that just runs out into the ocean, into the land.
[00:08:59] Speaker B: And most of the storm drains, and the reason it's not all of the storm drains is most of the storm drains have a decal on them saying, this storm drain goes to beach Boston harbor or whatever.
And there have been different efforts over the years to make sure that every storm drain is labeled. Yeah, labeled accordingly.
[00:09:24] Speaker A: Absolutely. It's why the general rule always was wait 24 hours after a heavy rainfall before you go swimming because of the runoff that contains all those pollutants.
[00:09:35] Speaker B: And Maya said, you know, all of the events will be available after the 1st of May, but of course, Friends of Walliston beach has a couple of events already.
[00:09:44] Speaker A: Yes, yes, yes. Do tell, Maureen, do tell.
[00:09:47] Speaker B: We have. We've been partnering with Aaron Raul from the Kite Crusaders for the past couple of years. She's a hoot and a half.
[00:09:57] Speaker A: And you brought her here.
Yes, we had a lot of fun talking with her.
[00:10:01] Speaker B: I brought all my friends.
But Erin is absolutely great. And her kite caravan is going to be on July 12th from 1 to 4pm and she's partnering this year with Special Olympics, so that should be interesting.
We have storytime on the beach, of course, with Miss Dorothy.
[00:10:20] Speaker A: Very popular.
[00:10:20] Speaker B: She's amazing.
[00:10:21] Speaker A: Right. At the tot lot.
[00:10:22] Speaker B: And July 13th and August 10th and she entertains two to six year olds. And you know, we give out.
[00:10:31] Speaker A: Dwayne, of course.
[00:10:32] Speaker B: And we also give out an age appropriate book for each child that has something to do with the beach.
[00:10:40] Speaker A: True.
[00:10:41] Speaker B: So those are fun events.
I know that the Quincy Chamber of Commerce is doing concerts on the beach. I'm not sure what their dates are yet. But then there's our signature event, kids fest on August 9th from 1 to 4pm and we will. We typically for Kids Fest, we're typically south of the Wollaston Yacht Club.
[00:11:03] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:11:04] Speaker B: And that's where we'll be.
[00:11:05] Speaker A: All right.
[00:11:06] Speaker C: So that's a little teaser for folks of what's to come. We're also really excited that we have some new grantees this year.
We have the Boston Cantonese Club is doing a Canto pop event, which is really exciting.
And then last year we partnered with the Guangzhou association for the first time and they did an incredible day of programming which will be back for this year as well.
[00:11:27] Speaker A: Fantastic.
[00:11:28] Speaker C: And then there will be Bomba by the Sea again this year. So dancing and music. So there are a lot of fun experiences coming. You have kites, you have things for kids. You've got all different cultural events and it's all happening in the neighborhood right down the street on Wollaston Beach. The Quincy Art association and the Quincy Art association as well. If you are looking to create, there's something for you.
[00:11:50] Speaker A: There's Bomba on the beach right there that we're seeing on your screen. So that's from last year and looks like they're having an awful lot of fun.
[00:11:58] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. It's a beautiful event and I believe this will be their second or third year in Quincy. So we're excited to bring them back.
And we love to have music on the beach, which is why it's great to have the Chamber of Commerce's series as well.
[00:12:14] Speaker A: You mentioned Art Association. A couple of photos from last year. Look at, I mean, plein air painting
[00:12:21] Speaker C: and look at the quality of those paintings as well. I get blown away every time I see the pictures, but they are open to everyone. You don't have to be an expert. As beautiful as these photos are, even if you're just someone who likes to pick up a watercolor here and there at home. There's something for you for these art
[00:12:39] Speaker A: classes or just to enjoy watching it being created right in front of you. Exactly as well. I think that's something special. You mentioned the kites, Maureen. There's a youngster trying his hand oh, there you go.
[00:12:51] Speaker B: You know, it's absolutely amazing because I had purchased some kites to give away the year before last.
And a couple of my friends were trying them out, you know, to see how difficult it was.
Not one of them could make it work.
And I brought them over to Erin. Oh, this is easy. She put everything together so my kites did not go to waste.
[00:13:16] Speaker A: Oh, good. Thank goodness for that.
[00:13:18] Speaker B: You hate when you waste a kite.
[00:13:20] Speaker A: There's the youngster enjoying. Looks like a little limbo.
[00:13:23] Speaker B: Yeah. At the Kids Fest.
[00:13:24] Speaker A: At the Kids Fest. Yeah. So I mean, you have a full schedule again planned this year.
Maya, I'm curious about the $30,000. Is that, do you know, is that as much as it's ever been for the friends?
[00:13:36] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. So it's great. Every year we've been able to get a little bit more into Quincy. We had about 250 applications for better Beaches grand program this year. It's incredible. I know that we include all the way from Lynn down to Hull, but a good portion of those were for Wallace and Beach. So it's always exciting to see how many community members really are curious and excited about Wallace. Which is why folks of all ages and all backgrounds anywhere in Quincy should consider becoming a friend of Wallace and Beach.
Of course, they are an incredible volunteer run organization. And more hands are always better. We want to make sure that for a long time, Wollaston beach can be enjoyed by future generations, current generations. And I think that between the Department of Conservation and Recreation, Friends of Wallacen beach and Save the harbor, if we all work together with the help of the community, we can make sure that happens for a really long time.
[00:14:34] Speaker A: Yeah. And the events that you mentioned are so representative of the community. You know, all different backgrounds.
[00:14:40] Speaker C: Exactly.
[00:14:40] Speaker A: Yeah. And all different age groups as well.
[00:14:42] Speaker C: The beach is for all of us, so we got to make sure there's something for everyone.
[00:14:46] Speaker B: And she is, she is one of the biggest Wollaston beach cheerleaders because we had, you know, we had these online meetings a couple of years ago to, you know, determine who's doing what where. And it's like nobody wants to go to Wallace to Beach.
The next thing you know, she get
[00:15:04] Speaker C: out there with her pom poms.
Well, once you actually give Wollaston Beach a chance, it's hard not to fall in love with it. It's the best place to walk there. It's beautiful year round. You've got that gorgeous skyline behind you.
[00:15:18] Speaker A: Well, it's so accessible. You know, it's in an urban Setting. It's very easy to get to.
[00:15:22] Speaker C: Yeah. Great parking.
[00:15:23] Speaker A: Great parking as well. That's an issue in some places. It absolutely. State run beaches.
Lifeguards, do you know what the situation is this year? Do we need lifeguards?
[00:15:32] Speaker C: Yeah. So there shall be lifeguards on Wallaceon beach since it's open for swimming so many days of the year. And we're hoping to see even more folks out and swimming on Walliston Beach.
[00:15:41] Speaker A: Absolutely. Maureen, how does one become a friend of Wollaston Beach?
[00:15:46] Speaker B: How does one become a friend of Walliston Beach? You can go to friendsofwallaston.com Brand new
[00:15:51] Speaker A: website, by the way. It looks great.
[00:15:53] Speaker B: Oh, it's not Brandy new, but yeah, she helped us get it going.
But yes. Or you can essentially go to Friends of Wallace to meet friends of Wallace. Friendsofwalliston.com and there's all the information there.
[00:16:08] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:16:09] Speaker B: And all my contact information is there also, if you need to reach out to me.
[00:16:14] Speaker A: Okay. And you meet in the place right behind you, the Walliston Yacht Club.
[00:16:19] Speaker B: Yes, we do. We do. Unfortunately, because the Wollaston Yacht Club is only open from May to November.
[00:16:26] Speaker A: Right.
[00:16:28] Speaker B: Our meetings there have to be done in the summer.
We have also met at the Kennedy center, which is where I think we want to have our next meeting.
And we're working on details of when and what that's going to be.
[00:16:45] Speaker A: All right. All right, stay tuned, Stay tuned for more social media as well.
[00:16:49] Speaker B: Yeah.
Instagram, Facebook, the usual suspects. The usual suspects.
[00:16:55] Speaker A: Okay.
But the most immediate event's going to be April 25th for Park Serve day.
[00:17:01] Speaker B: Absolutely, absolutely. And. Or Stop the stigma.
[00:17:05] Speaker A: Walk, run or both. Right, Exactly. You could do both because that's in the morning, yours is in the afternoon.
[00:17:09] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:17:09] Speaker C: Right. To the beach.
[00:17:10] Speaker A: There you go. Just keep on going. Right, absolutely.
Savetheharbor.org, also.
[00:17:15] Speaker C: Right, yeah. Savetheharbor.org and the harbor on social media. Not only will you find all of these incredible events, we also have our free cruises and the signups for those are up on the website. So we provide free field trips for any youth and community guests who would like to take a trip out to one of the Boston harbor islands for a fun free day of marine education out there. We also have public cruises for folks who maybe are not available at 10am on a Tuesday.
So we have public cruises on the weekends and evenings that feed are free for folks to join. Some of them are going to have additional music and entertainment on the cruises. And all of Those
[email protected] that's also where you could donate so that we can continue doing programming like this.
[00:18:01] Speaker A: Very good.
[00:18:03] Speaker B: And one more thing real quick.
In the Plover article, it says that dogs are not allowed on the beach where there's a Plover nesting area.
Dogs are not allowed on DCR beaches between April 1 and September 15. And it's not that DCR doesn't love pets. It's just that there are some irresponsible pet owners who do.
[00:18:28] Speaker A: Not the dog's fault.
[00:18:29] Speaker B: It's not the dog's fault. It's the people fault.
