✦Weekender✦ Cheap laughs | Golf yoga | Big plant sale | Mad bookstore | Boulder jamboree | Smurf this | Global grooves 🥁
FROM WINE-POWERED book store openings to triple-threat tribute shows to mimosa golf yoga, here's what made The List this weekend. Cheers! – Andrew Kiraly 🤍
🌵 Friday July 4
- Spike up your plant collection with this head-turner of a 4th of July plant sale, with a buncha BOGO offers plus big discounts. (Through Sunday) 9a, Cactus Joe's
- Call me naive, but every time a new bookstore opens, I feel an angelic throb of hope that perhaps our culture has not yet entirely been foreclosed upon by the zombie era. Henderson's promising-looking tome-porium Mad Red Books cracks the spine on a grand opening with a ribbon-cutting, wine-tasting, and kiddie-activating. (Through Sunday) 10a, Mad Red Books
- No mere promotional novelty, the 5th Annual Hot Dog Eating Contest at The Silver Stamp is a serious tube-protein affair, with ex-champ Mark Hurst straining at the buns to reclaim the meat crown from reigning champ chomper Jordan Jackson. 3p, The Silver Stamp
Also Friday ➤
Barbecue and bodacious honky-tonk are on the menu at 4th of July Weekend in the Front Yard at Ellis Island ✦ It's literally a global movement: the LV World Folk Fest Dance Competition at the Westgate ✦ Catch brassy rising stars at the Summer Jazz Series at Vic's.
👉 ICYMI, here's an alarmingly short-fused M-80 exploding with Fourth of July fun:
Andrew Kiraly
🧑🎤 Saturday July 5
- Lulu House's Art Yard Sale sports all the nervy fun of a weekend thrift hunt with the buzz of scoring cool work from up-and-coming local artists. They're also pumping up the chill-house-party mojo with live music and activity booths. 6p, Lulu House
- Indeed, there really isn't a better title for this iconic three-fer than American Trilogy, featuring Sinatra, Elvis, and Neil Diamond tributists in a triple-decker musical throwback club sandwich. This is one of those taxonomically flexible events where you can attend in earnest, appreciative rapture or a with a bit of refined, ironic appreciation for Vegas pomp 'n' camp. 730p, Aliante
- Ooh, an evening of dance-floor derring-do spurred by the irresistible pan-Latin grooves of Shangalu has "date night" written all over it in a flourish of Berry Seductive High-Gloss Crimson lipstick. 8p, The Composers Room
- According to my generous cocktail-napkin math, at The Mind Noodler's pay-what-you-want Improv Comedy Show, you can wind up spending as little as .003 cents per laugh – not because you cheaped out, but because it's practically guaranteed to be richly voluminous with hilarity! 8p, Majestic Repertory Theatre
- Strange but true: I sleep better at night knowing that Dive Bar is there, just crustily abiding in its unruly DGAF existential fullness. Tonight they're putting on a grimy li'l rave burlesque show called Riddim Rebels featuring the best-named-dancer ever, The Bitch Down the Block. 10p, The Dive Bar
Also Saturday ➤
Kids feeling blue? They'll be violently weeping periwinkle from their pores after a few hours of Smurfs Day at Discovery ✦ Smooth grooves raise the roof at Taverna Costera's R&B Festival ✦ Browse and buy local on the swing shift at the UnCommons Night Market ✦ Hang ten with instrumental surf slingers The New Waves at The Sand Dollar.
💃 Sunday July 6
- Confession: As a wannabe cinephile, I'm ashamed to admit I've never seen Kurosawa's epic Ran, but if there were ever ideal conditions to finally grind it out, it'd be while slobbering on a Toblerone and gulping Atomic Duck from the Beverly's legit concessions cube. 1p, The Beverly Theater
- Another confession: As a rabid aficionado of unintentional camp, I'm ashamed to admit I've never seen the utterly execrable-looking Baywatch, but there's probably no place better to grind it out than among the poshy poolside cabanas at Fontainebleau. 7p, Fontainebleau
Also Sunday ➤
Bongos and bottomless mimosas set the beat at La Mona Rosa's Cumbia Brunch ✦ Slip on your shades for the colorful, kaleidoscopic rock of Arizona's Naming Our Monsters at Taverna Costera ✦ Chicago's legendary Pegboy hauls out their searching, strenuous post-punk catalog at Dive Bar.
🙏 Hope you have the raddest weekend. Thanks for your support! – Andrew Kiraly 🤍
