Four beaches are still closed to swimming with no all clear posted, the dog beach is getting a pavilion with a bowl filling station, and the mahjong club downtown now sells memberships with the wine included.

Let's get into it.

The Florida Department of Health tested the water on Monday, found elevated bacteria, and the city posted a no swim advisory on Tuesday afternoon covering Spanish River, Red Reef, South Beach and South Inlet.

The city said full use might resume within 24 to 48 hours. That window closed Thursday afternoon and nothing has been posted since.

The parks themselves stay open. It is the swimming that is prohibited, and South Inlet is run by the county, not the city.

Walk it, photograph it, do not get in it.

Source: City of Boca Raton

The city is moving ahead with a new pavilion and entrance at the guarded beach that carves out an area for the city dog beach, and a city board endorsed it unanimously Thursday night.

The plan adds shower and foot wash faucets, a water bottle refilling station and a device for filling dog bowls.

Renderings do not exist yet. It still needs a variance because it sits east of the coastal construction control line, then the land use boards, then council.

Years in the works and still nobody has drawn it.

Source: Boca Daily News

Four Sparrows Mahjong is the club four sisters opened downtown in September, with American and Hong Kong style sets, a shop and an open play room, and Boca Magazine put it in a roundup of six new stores on Thursday.

Memberships run $49.95, $89.95 and $199.95 a month, and the top tier is unlimited open play with a glass of wine per visit.

Open play runs Sunday from 11 to 5 and Monday through Saturday from 10 to noon, at 328 E. Plaza Real.

Sunday is the long session. Clear the afternoon.

Source: Boca Magazine

Barrel of Monks runs Halloween at the Monastery 🍺 on Saturday, costume registration at 5:00pm and judging at 6:00pm. Entry is free, the winner takes a gift card and a crowler, and there are pumpkins hidden around the taproom with free pours attached. 🎃 An all-day scavenger hunt runs alongside it.

True Rumours plays the whole Fleetwood Mac catalog 🎸 at The Funky Biscuit on Saturday at 7:00pm, and the night is built around a Stevie Nicks look-alike contest. 🌙 Doors open at 5:00pm so you can eat there first. Tickets run $25 to $40 and there were around 35 left yesterday.

The party pick is Dance of the Dead at One11 on Mizner, the 10th annual, from 9:00pm, 21+. 💀 Live sets from Itz Ironic, Ciao Its Gia and DJ Marcus, a costume contest, drink deals for women before 11:00pm and a late-night food menu. Cosmo's 🪩 throws Halloween Eve at 9:00pm, 21+, with DJ Nick Block, its own costume contest and bottle service. A Halloween Monster Bash 🧟 at The Funky Biscuit starts at 9:00pm, $25 to $35, with Rainbow Full of Sound and Dead Zep playing Dead and Zeppelin in costume. And Strike 10 🎳 in Mizner Park runs a DJ and a costume contest all night, takes 20% off bowling if you show up dressed, and names the winner at midnight: bowling for four and a bottle of Don Julio Reposado. Quieter: a guided nocturnal hike 🦉 at Gumbo Limbo at 7:00pm for $12, and Young Frankenstein at The Wick at 7:30pm.

It is the whole reason the weekend exists, so here is the night in order. Rino's 🔮 downtown opens its Halloween party at 5:00pm with a DJ, a costume contest with prizes and a tarot card reader, and you need a reservation. The Rocky Patel Halloween Bash at Room 109 starts at 7:00pm and $39 covers the music, the food and the dessert. At 8:00pm it splits two ways: A Horror Story on the Hill 🩸 at Meat Market, dinner and drinks with a live DJ, or Messin' With Movies 🎬, comedians roasting House on Haunted Hill live for $10, 21+. UD and Friends play a Grateful Dead Halloween at Crazy Uncle Mike's at 8:30pm. Then Calaveras Cantina in Mizner Park starts its Dia de los Muertos party at 9:30pm, and Strike 10 runs night two of its costume contest, winner called at midnight. 💀

Sunday, ease out of it. ☀️ The farmers market at the innovation campus runs 9:00am to 1:00pm, free, with free parking. 🥬 A guided Random Acts of Kindness walk leaves Tin Muffin Cafe at 11:00am, $27.08. Gumbo Limbo repeats the free wildlife talk at 11:30am. Young Frankenstein closes at The Wick at 2:00pm and the Lynn Philharmonia repeats at 3:00pm. Early voting 🗳️ runs 7:00am to 7:00pm all three days and Sunday is the last of it.

Ciro Dapagio Films, the studio behind Mob King, is holding an open casting call for actors and aspiring actors, and you do not need a monologue to walk in. Meet the team and get considered for current and upcoming projects.

Some people get picked for a video audition on the spot, so show up camera ready.

Bring a headshot and a résumé if you have them.

Ciro Dapagio Films Open Casting Call, Crazy Uncle Mike's, 6450 N Federal Hwy, Boca Raton, FL 33487. Saturday, Oct 31, 12pm to 4pm.

It is Halloween, but this is the one place to leave the costume at home. ✨

There is one small plaza up north where the whole evening is already planned for you. Third Place Coffee Lounge does the tea: a sweetened matcha latte, a London Fog or a chai, each $4.75 for a small. Owner Elijah Gourgue opened it in June 2022 straight out of an FAU business degree, painted the walls himself, and failed his plumbing inspection thirteen times getting the doors open. It is 4.9 from 438 on Google, which is the highest rating on this whole walk.

Seabra Bakery is the Portuguese counter in the same stretch, 4.4 from 266 on Google, and the thing reviewers keep naming is the dulce de leche doughnut. Get a pastel de nata while you are there. Open 7:30am to 6:00pm Friday and Saturday. Then walk down to Black Pelican Tattoo, 4.8 from 96 on Google, run by Jason Holley and Shane Woodward, both formerly of Big Kahuna. They are the ones still open when everything else on the walk has shut, and they take walk-ins off the flash wall.

Third Place Coffee Lounge, 325 NE Spanish River Blvd. Seabra Bakery, 465 NE Spanish River Blvd. Black Pelican Tattoo, 499 NE Spanish River Blvd, Ste 6, Boca Raton, FL 33431

Three doors, one short walk, and you need nothing booked.

Cielito Artisan Pops makes everything in house, fillings and jams included, and the flavor list is the reason to go: a Dubai bar pop, Cookie Monster, a pavlova pop, pistachio with white chocolate. Google has it at 4.7 from 289.

They make a Doggy Pop too, fresh fruit and honey, so the dog gets one of its own.

Cielito Artisan Pops, 430 E Plaza Real, Mizner Park, Boca Raton, FL 33432. 305-676-2665.

Walk Mizner with one in your hand. That is the whole plan.

Himeko Beauty Studio books a Japanese gel manicure as its own service, separate from the regular gel polish everywhere else in town puts on your hands. They do detailed nail designs and eyelash extensions in the same room, and they are open 9:30am to 6:30pm every day of the week, Friday and the weekend included.

Nails and lashes come off the same chair, so one appointment covers the whole look instead of two.

Worth booking: the Japanese gel manicure, a Gel X extension in short or medium, builder gel if you are growing your own out, or the Himeko gel pedicure. They are 5.0 from 14 on Groupon, which is a small count but every one of them is five stars. Call 561-980-6106 to get in.

2499 Glades Rd #210, Boca Raton, FL 33431

Book the nails and the lashes together. Saturday is Halloween.

PADL runs a self-serve rack of kayaks and paddleboards at James A. Rutherford Park. You book in the PADL app, the lock pops open, and you launch straight off the boardwalk into the Intracoastal and the mangrove estuary behind it. No desk, no line, no one handing you a waiver on a clipboard.

It opens at 6:00am, so you can be on flat water before the town wakes up and still make every Halloween plan on the list.

Rentals run about $25 an hour, and Google has it at 4.7 from 88. Load the app at home so you are not doing it on the dock.

PADL, James A. Rutherford Park, 600 NE 24th St, Boca Raton, FL 33431. 786-749-6730.

One hour on the water counts as your workout. Nobody needs to know it felt like a nap.

Ania Boutique is run by Estefania Ortiz, who started it in 2020 packing orders at her own kitchen table and still hand-picks everything on the rail. Nothing goes up until she has styled it herself, which is why the whole floor looks like one person's taste rather than a buying spreadsheet.

The showroom is open for walk-ins Friday afternoon and Saturday morning, so you can try the thing on instead of guessing your size online.

Worth asking for: the Olivia fringe skirt at $135, the Isabella halter dress at $98, the Tinsley tweed blazer at $89 and the Cara skirt set at $89. Open Fri 12:00 to 5:00pm and Sat 10:00am to 3:00pm. The online arrivals sell out fast, so the showroom is the better bet this weekend.

3200 N Federal Hwy #128, Boca Raton, FL 33431

One woman's eye, one rail. That is the whole appeal.

Infinity Ladies Boutique has been dressing women out of the same shopping plaza since 1978, first under the Spiegelman family who founded it, then for years under Lori Kaplan and Mindy Grey, and since 2025 under Aaron and Carolina Schifman. They carry over a hundred designer lines, which is more labels than anything of its size between here and the coast.

Somebody on that floor has been fitting the same customers for forty years, so ask for help and actually take it.

Open Fri and Sat 10:00am to 5:00pm. Call ahead on 561-865-2779 if you want a fitting room held. It is the one stop in this issue outside the city, and it earns the petrol.

16850 Jog Road, Suite 103, Delray Beach, FL 33446

Forty-seven years in, they still know what suits you better than you do.

Susan Lachance started her design studio in 1974 and has since taken fourteen Best of Houzz awards, including Design in 2026. She is 5.0 from 37 on Houzz. Her rooms are not the beige you are picturing: hot pink bouclé, a chartreuse curved sofa, a black and white geometric rug, all in one Boca living room.

She will take one room rather than the whole house, so you can hand over the living room and see what she does with it.

The studio works by appointment and does full-home design, single-room redesigns, and a long run of private residences inside the country clubs out west. Call 561-241-3800 to get on the book.

1001 Clint Moore Road, Suite 100, Boca Raton, FL 33487

Gold Minds Tattoo Gallery is open noon to midnight on Friday and Saturday, which makes it the one place in the city where a Saturday night decision can still be acted on at eleven. Walk in, pick something off the flash wall, or text 561-672-7134 ahead to book the chair. They stock Sniper Gang apparel too, so there is something to take home if you lose your nerve.

136 NW 20th St, Boca Raton, FL 33431

One number for the sofa, one for the thing you will explain to your mother.

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Tonight is the warm-up and it is a good one. Mizner has a costume contest on every block from nine, One11 and Cosmo's on the club side, two tribute bands in costume at the blues room, and a bowling alley that hands out tequila at midnight. The Fleetwood Mac night with the look-alike contest is tomorrow.

And if you want something quieter, there is a plaza up north where you can drink a matcha, eat a dulce de leche doughnut four doors down and get tattooed at the end of the row. Saturday is Halloween proper, Sunday is the market and the last day to vote, and the costume contest at the brewery costs nothing at all.

The Good in Boca Team