There is a new 11-acre preserve open on Hidden Valley Boulevard, it costs nothing, and the residents it was built for are gopher tortoises. Eight years from the first request to an open gate for a quarter mile of walking path, which is about the most Boca timeline imaginable. Free, daily, 8am to sunset, at 10 W Hidden Valley Blvd, and there are six parking spaces, so go early and have the place to yourself. (Boca Post)

The green market is back downtown in eleven days, the beach shuttle stops running south of the inlet at the end of the month, and your fire fee goes up sixty-nine dollars on October 1.

Let's get into it.

Boca Green Market opens its 2026/27 season on Sunday, September 27 at the 5th Ave Shops, 1954 NE Fifth Avenue, and then it runs every Sunday from there.

Nine to one, free to walk in, and they are bringing 65 or more local vendors. Produce, artisan bread, craft drinks, specialty food, candles and soap, flowers, live music.

That is eleven days out. Put it in your phone now, because the first Sunday of the season is always the busy one.

Source: Boca Green Market

BocaConnect spent the summer running a pilot that pushed the shuttle onto the barrier island south of the Boca Raton Inlet, and that piece of the map comes off on September 30.

You have two weeks left to get dropped at that end of the beach for $2. First rider is $2, every extra rider is $1, and a one way trip caps at $5. Anything that starts and ends inside the downtown zone stays free.

The rest of the beach service is not going anywhere. Gumbo Limbo down to the inlet stays on the map year round. You book all of it in the Circuit app.

Source: City of Boca Raton

The residential fire assessment moves from $155 to $224 on October 1. That is the first change since 2022 and a jump of about 44 percent.

It buys 21 new Fire Rescue positions. Sixteen of them staff Station 8, twelve firefighters and four lieutenants. Four EMS captains stand up a second advanced life support division, and one vehicle technician keeps the trucks running.

Businesses mostly go the other way. The city says 90 percent of commercial properties and 96 percent of industrial and warehouse properties will pay less, because the fee is now figured on square footage instead of per parcel.

Source: Boca Post

Saiko-i runs happy hour every single day, which makes it easy to miss the one day that actually matters.

Every wine and sake bottle in the house is 30% off on Wednesdays. Not a featured shelf. The whole list.

The regular happy hour runs 11:30am to 6, and then it starts over again at 9pm at the bar until close, which almost nobody seems to know about.

5970 SW 18th Street, Suite E4. 561.393.5888.

Order the bottle you'd normally talk yourself out of.

Source: Saiko-i Sushi Lounge & Hibachi

Meat Market is the steakhouse inside the Renaissance Boca Raton, which sounds like somewhere you'd get taken on a business trip, and on a Wednesday it's the opposite of that.

They call it After Dark Wednesdays. A live DJ starts at 8 and the dining room stops being a dining room.

Come early and happy hour runs 3 to 6 inside and 4 to 7 out on the pool deck, with the house mojito at $10. Wednesday is also the first night of the week the kitchen stays open until 11 instead of 10, so nobody's rushing you out.

2000 NW 19th Street. 561.245.6777. Reservations are on their site and you want one.

Dress like you meant it.

Source: Meat Market

Prosperity Brewers has been in a warehouse bay behind the water tower since January 2017, and Dominick Peri and Ken Gross have spent nine years deliberately staying small.

A 3.5-barrel system, about 110 gallons a batch. They'll tell you they're brewing for a family, not an army.

Ask for the Intra-KOLSCH-tal or the Jack Talk Thai guava sour. Trivia is Tuesday at 7:30 with a two-drink minimum, so $18 buys you a seat in a room full of regulars who'll tell you what to drink next. Live music Friday 7 to 10 and Saturday 6 to 9, and a different food truck parks out front every day they're open.

It's also dog friendly, and the one already there is Tank, an English bulldog who has claimed a patch of the floor and has no plans to move. There's covered outdoor seating as well as indoor, so your dog gets shade and you get a roof. 🐶

4160 NW 1st Avenue, Unit 21. 561.961.0573. Open Tuesday to Friday 4 to 11, Saturday noon to 11, Sunday noon to 8.

Bring yours. Tank won't get up, but he won't mind either.

Source: Prosperity Brewers, The Palm Beaches

Wafa Brows is a permanent makeup studio up on North Federal that Wafa Alsaid runs with her daughter Luna. You get the owner every time, which is the entire point.

Powder brows and microblading run $950, and what you're buying is two years of not drawing them on.

Appointment only, four short days a week: Wednesday and Friday noon to 4, Thursday and Saturday 10 to 2. That's the opposite of the volume brow bar, and it's exactly why people drive up there.

7400 North Federal Highway, Suite A11.

Book ahead. Four days isn't many.

Source: Wafa Brows

The thing worth knowing about Patch Reef isn't the court count. It's the group tennis clinic.

Ninety minutes with a real coach is $30 if you live in the city, and they cap it at six players to a court.

So you spend the time hitting balls instead of standing in a line waiting your turn. If ninety minutes is more than you want, the one-hour clinic is $22 for residents. Non-residents pay $27.50 and $37.50. Tennis 101 is built for people who have genuinely never played, Wednesday 7 to 8pm or Friday and Saturday 9 to 10am, and you need an ID to get the resident rate.

Same park has the covered pickleball complex, an actual roof with fans and lights under it, which in September is the whole difference between playing and not playing.

2000 NW 51st Street. 561.367.7090.

Nobody good started good.

Source: Greater Boca Raton Beach & Park District

Everyone walks into Raymond Lee Jewelers for the engagement rings, and they're there: Gabriel & Co., Tacori, Verragio.

The better half is the pre-owned case. Rolex and Swiss watches, estate pieces, consignment jewelry out of somebody else's good story.

They buy as well as sell, so the gold sitting in your drawer that you're never wearing again has a number on it, and they'll appraise it while you wait. Family business since 1983, and Jeff Josephson still runs it, which around here basically makes it a landmark.

22191 Powerline Road, Unit 12B. 561.750.7808.

Go look, even if you're not buying.

Source: Raymond Lee Jewelers

Everyone knows Uptown Boca as the plaza out on Glades with Life Time and Lynora's in it. Fewer people have clocked that there's a whole apartment community built into the back of it.

Uptown Boca Villas has a heated saltwater pool, three leash-free bark parks and a dog grooming spa, one parking lot away from your gym.

One to four bedrooms, up to 1,737 square feet, smart-home wiring and soaking tubs. There's indoor and outdoor fitness space with group classes thrown in, which is a funny thing to advertise when Life Time is across the plaza, and a soccer field and playgrounds so it isn't only built for people without kids. They're running four weeks free and waived app fees on some three-bedrooms for move-ins by September 30.

20940 Uptown Ave. 561.277.0510.

Dinner, the gym and your couch, without moving the car once.

Source: Uptown Boca Villas

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Good in Boca lands in local inboxes five mornings a week. We work with a limited number of local businesses that want to be part of what people here are reading, doing, eating and talking about.

If Boca is your customer, you should probably be here.

There's a new preserve on Hidden Valley that cost you nothing and belongs mostly to tortoises, and tonight every bottle at Saiko-i is 30% off. This town holds both of those without blinking.

If you do one thing: the $30 tennis clinic. Nobody there is watching you.

Something we missed? Hit reply, we read everything.

The Good in Boca Team

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