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Firefighters battled and extinguished a two-alarm blaze that broke out at the Border Café in Harvard Square during the Sunday lunchtime rush, authorities said.

The Head of the Charles Regatta, an annual crew pilgrimage to Harvard Square, brought more than 250,000 spectators and 11,000 rowers to Cambridge this weekend to take in the sights and sample local businesses’ offerings.

Out of Town News officially shut its doors for good on October 31, according to multiple reports. “We are like family,” Mohammed Rahman, who has worked at Out of Town for 22 years, said of his coworkers on the newsstand’s last day in operation.

The longtime owner of Harvard Square’s Curious George store is selling the highly visible brick-and-mortar business as the store moves to another Cambridge neighborhood.

The first solo artist gallery of Harvard Square has arrived. On Sept. 18, Cambridge painter Susan Miller-Havens opened her collection to the public, titling the event “Now You See It Now You Don’t” as tribute to the ever-changing landscape of the Square and the power of art.  Located at 9 JFK Street, between The Curious George Store and Urban Outfitters, this space has historically housed pop-up shops and short-lived shoe stores, like Mudo and Karhu. But now, the one-room gallery displays upwards of 30 Miller-Havens’ paintings, spanning her career from early surrealist abstracts to her more recent works, which are intimate portraits of two or three people. Painting prices range from around $1,000 to $11,000.

Some kids have Manhattan.  Others have Hollywood.   As a kid growing up west of Boston in the 1980s and 1990s, I had Harvard Square.  I remember driving into Cambridge along Alewife Brook Parkway with my parents as a 1980s elementary schoolers, peering out the window past the Fresh Pond Mall sign and Faces nightclub, en route to Joyce Chen’s Chinese restaurant – the pinnacle of authentic dining back then. 

A little over a year after the flame of Les Sablons’ kitchen brought the historic 1912 Conductor’s Building “to life,” the upscale French restaurant cooled off its stove tops for the last time Thursday.  A message on Les Sablons’ website gave no reason for the restaurant’s closure, instead thanking its staff and patrons.  “We look forward to seeing all your familiar faces at our sister restaurants throughout New England,” the statement reads.

More than a month after nearly 200 tenants had their leases terminated at Cambridge’s EMF building, a few of them are continuing to fight to preserve – in some way or another – their former art spaces.  Last month, several former tenants submitted a “Protected Land Petition” to the Cambridge Historical Commission. In it, they ask the city to designate the EMF building as a historic landmark.  “There is historical value to that building,” said Steve Onderick, one of the former tenants who has been working to save the former EMF building since his lease was terminated.

Les Sablons in Harvard Square closed Thursday, according to  a statement on behalf of partners Jeremy Sewall,, Garrett Harker, Shore Gregory, and Skip Bennett.

The deserted and dilapidated Harvard Square Theater may soon house office space, several stores, and a new, two-screen theater — all concealed behind an LED-embedded facade capable of displaying art or photography.  Gerald Chan, the developer seeking to revive the Harvard Square Theater announced plans last month to tear down the deserted building to make way for storefronts, a new theater, and a four story-tall, LED-embedded edifice.