✦Weekender✦ Beer & beef | Balkan jokes | Night market | Moon creatures | Tattoo party | Vinyl punx | Mob art 🕵️‍♂️

FROM SUN-SOAKED music festivals to gorgeous criminal art to something called a "Dubrovnik shrimp burger," here's what made The List this weekend. Cheers! – Andrew Kiraly 🤍

🤠 Friday April 11

• Yee that haw at two-day country music festival Boots in the Park. More than a mash zone of mainstream pop-country giants, it's a ten-gallon partypalooza with games, arts, tastings, and lessons in the arcane art of that mystifying practice known as line dancing. 2p, Desert Breeze Events Center
• Here's a happy hour that offers something more than discounts on well drinks: stimulating lit to supplement the cocktail buzz. At the BMI PhD Fellows Reading & Happy Hour, you'll catch witty words from up-and-coming talents such as Tanya Shirazi Galvez, Arpita Roy, and Krista Diamond (keep an eye out for her upcoming Vegas novel). Reading starts at 5, but pop in early for catered happy hour noshes. 4p, Taverna Costera
• Getting in touch with nature doesn't get any more literal than this – planting seeds in the soil under the placid glow of a full moon while a tasty-ass food-truck burrito awaits at Twilight Planting. 6p, Pumpkin Park
• Don't snort at this new age lunar celebration. Actually, yes – you'll be snorting toots of a trendy spiritual snuff at this Full Moon Hapé Ceremony with Live Medicine Music. 630p, The Zen Place

• When not performing comedy, Ric Diez spends time at the gym, working on getting his resting heart rate to zero. The short king of dark one-liners quips it up in DTLV. 730p, Wiseguys Arts District
• Fight me: All poetry nights should be as fun as Hip Hop and Poetry Night. 8p, Renowned Events
• The edgy alt-party crew behind Liquid Red is firing off some nighttime emissions at the Spring Nocturnal Market, merging the adult arcade fun of The Nerd with quirky and kinky vendors. 8p, The Nerd
• Techno Nintendo promises to level up your Super Mario memories by activating more than just your thumbs. This dance party takes those classic 8-bit tunes and turns them into rave-ready ragers. Plus I love this clip of guest DJ Max Mega laying tracks in the kitchen of a chicken 'n' pizza shop. 10p, Hola Habibi

🪮 Hella more weekend here, which may contain bagpipe fights, death yoga, and hair-raising ooze-rock

👜 Vintage days | Celt fest | Sunny bluegrass | Cowboy fair | Sludge metal | Bubbly puppies | Twilight garden

The coolest things to do in Las Vegas this week, ever.

The ListAndrew Kiraly

🍛 Saturday April 12

• LeRoy Neiman's splashy, dashy, kinetic paintings of football games, jazz bands, sailboats, and café scenes captured the world of leisure with iconic verve. His paintings don't just feel energetically fun, but they fizz with a kind of effortless sophistication and worldly dignity. But other dynamic subjects attracted Neiman's zealous brush – including criminals. The story goes that when Neiman learned that The Mob Museum was being built, he started on a series of portraits of infamous organized crime figures – Al Capone, Meyer Lansky, John Gotti, Bugsy Siegel, to name a few – and the museum's got a hold of them for a temporary exhibit titled Art of the Mob. 9a, The Mob Museum
• Punk's not dead, it just went out for mimosas and will be back around 4 with streaked mascara and a sweat-damp mohawk. Punk Rock Brunch fights the system with bottomless eggs benedict and more Blink 182 than any human pancreas can handle. 10a, The Composers Room
• The Historic Westside tucks into a literary feast as Obodo Collective's Our Mothers' Gardens Book Festival assembles a lineup of authors and panels in a garden party of cerebral proportions. 10a, Obodo Urban Farm
• Today marks National Grilled Cheese Day, that hallowed American holiday when dairy meets carbs in a melty, heart-clogging embrace. Blue Ox Tavern is celebrating this momentous occasion by offering a free cup of tomato soup with the purchase of a gourmet grilled cheese sandwich when you show them this post. 1030a, Blue Ox Tavern
• Spice up your life with a bangin' bhangra of a time at the Las Vegas Indian Food Festival. (Speaking of, there's also a limited-entry bhangra dance workshop on Sunday. Your knees can thank me later.) 12p, Clark County Government Center Amphitheater
• I'm totally overdue for a backup copy of I Against I, which is my Bible but for my ears, and whoa, it looks like the newly opened Vinyl Threat will be the spot to score spinnable punk classics. 12p, The Punk Rock Museum
• Here's a sunny Saturday market two-fer that'll double your opportunities to support local businesses: First, with downtown mainstay Holoholo Market serving up art, crafts, and food from AAPI brands (11a). Stick around, though, to catch the next generation of hustlers at Kid Starter, featuring young entrepreneurs who've graduated from the lemonade stand to hawk their own creations. 1p, Fergusons Downtown

▼ Saturday cont'd

• Seafood spot Crab Corner is turning its courtyard and patio into a whale of a party that would even have Ahab doing the Toosie slide on his peg leg. Its Bull & Oyster Food & Beer Festival reels in a picnic-style buffet, with unlimited pit beef, shrimp, chicken tenders, pasta alfredo, and all the sides, plus suds from 15 breweries. All mouths on deck! 1p, Crab Corner
• If your larynx is toast after your 1,719th sing-along speedrun of Wicked, give your poor pipes a break and hear from some real pros defying vocal gravity at An Afternoon with The Phantom. Performers from Broadway and the Metropolitan Opera will bust out excerpts from Phantom of the Opera, Cats, Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, Sunset Boulevard, and other Andrew Lloyd Weber classics. 2p, Windmill Library
• I'm no marketing whiz, but maaaaybe they coulda named this pasta dinner pet adoption fundraiser something besides Spay-Ghetti. Warning: may contain unappetizing AI pic of cat batting at a plate of noodles. 5p, Omelet House '50s Diner
• When things go bump in the night at The Wetlands Park, it could simply be a frog leaping into the reeds ... or it could be the dreaded Triple-Fanged Night Beaver. Okay, I just made that up. Still, this moonlit meander through the park – led by a pro naturalist who'll happily hold your hand if you get a case of the scaredies – sounds like it offers a perfect balance of chilling and thrilling for nature lovers who want to literally walk on the dark side. 7p, Clark County Wetlands Park
• Balkan Comedy Night is worth checking out if only to witness Lulu Jovovich's extended riff on the yes-it-is-a-thing "Slav uniform" that is the Adidas track suit. Bonus: the menu at Top Bar – mazalica, Adriatic pizzas, Dubrovnik shrimp burgers – looks like an experimental European cruise for your mouth, too. 8p, Top Bar Restaurant
• Crying 4 Kafka is hardly the only band in the world putting out punchy, pummeling prog punk addressing social issues, but they're probably the only one formed by a UCLA professor of psychology to spread mental health awareness. 11p, Double Down Saloon

🎸 Sunday April 13

• This blurb is a lovey shout to Dirk Vermin, self-titled "fucker in charge" at Pussykat Tattoo, longtime music scene mayhem-maker, OG tat purveyor, and bad ink repairman. The parlor is hosting a market day with indie vendors, food trucks, raffles, and, of course, flash tattoo specials. 3p, Pussykat Tattoo Parlor
• Bollywood's greatest hits get a Sin City showcase with "The Vintage Show," a musical time machine transporting audiences through 100 Hindi and Marathi classics from the days before auto-tune and Instagram reels. Renowned vocalist Manasi Joshi Bedekar leads an all-star lineup including Sa Re Ga Ma Pa singing show standout Satyajit Prabhu, turning CSN into Mumbai's most nostalgic nightclub for one night only. 5p, CSN West Charleston
• The hottest blues band playing in Vegas this week is actually from Korea: Richiman and Groove Nice bring their scorching licks and dapper styles right to the heart of the scene. 10p, Sand Dollar Lounge
• It's time to pour a second helping of Peaches and Cream, with three DJs spinning up a time machine spanning four decades of urban beats, meaning you can simultaneously cry to Aaliyah, grind to Ginuwine, and raise your glass to late legends 2Pac and Biggie in one emotionally whiplashy evening. 10p, We All Scream

🙏 Hope you have the raddest weekend. Thanks for your support! – Andrew Kiraly 🤍