Events

Boston’s Donna Summer Disco Party rolls back into City Hall Plaza

The free, family-friendly, four-hour party kicks off at 5 p.m. this Friday, June 27 — you can bring your skates.

Members of the Boston Impact Initiative Alumni Fund posed in front of the Donna Summer mural in Roxbury last year. Boston Impact Initiative

By Peter Chianca

1 minute to read

SUMMER LOVIN':

There are people who think there are better Boston events than the Donna Summer Disco Party. Those people are wrong and need to get in the disco spirit, stat.

After all, what could be better than a free, four-hour party on City Hall Plaza, complete with glow sticks, bubbles, colorful lights, a disco ball, and roller skating. Roller skating!

The big draw, of course, is a soundtrack of hits by Mission Hill’s own Donna Summer, the uncontested disco queen of the 1970s. Boston.com readers agree that she’s tops: They chose Summer over 15 other comers in the Boston.com Boston Music Bracket last fall, including a decisive win over the second-place finisher, Aerosmith.

Summer, born Mary Gaines, died of lung cancer at her home in Naples, Florida, in 2012 at age 63, but lives on in the larger-than-life mural in Nubian Square, along with the disco party that bears her name and “celebrates her music and legacy in Boston.”

For those who may be too young to remember, Donna Summer sold 100 million records and had 32 chart singles in her lifetime, with 14 hitting the top 10 and four going all the way to number one. You’ll likely hear all of those when DJ Vince1 plays “all of Donna Summer’s greatest hits and more classics,” at the event this Friday.