✦Weekender✦ Drunk crafts | Circus champs | Sunny rave | Roller punx | Organ rock | Ye olde sale | Karate chops 🥷
FROM PEEPSHOW art lust to Hammond-powered jam bands to medieval yard sales, here's what made The List this weekend. Cheers! – Andrew Kiraly 🤍
🧑💼 Friday March 21
- The Red Umbrella Collective is a local network of sex workers dedicated to building labor solidarity, raising awareness, and dispelling myths about the industry. Today through Sunday, they're leveraging humor and performance to spread the word through "Lust and Liberation," a peepshow-style exhibit exploring industry issues such as criminalization, stigma, violence, censorship, and surveillance – as well as the community's resilience through mutual aid and tireless activism. 6p, Recycled Propaganda
- Actually, "open air all-ages parking lot rock show" was on my bingo card for 2025. Rock and Roller Derby #6 features a grip of cool local bands, vendors, food trucks, and an opportunity to dangle your kid in the torrid funnel of anarchy-spiced punk air emanating from the dank, forbidden grotto of the Dive Bar. 7p, Dive Bar
- Yeahhhh, I'm gonna you to come in on Saturday and produce a TPS report on how jeezus I would give my %$#@ing left kidney to live in a world that looks like Office Space instead of Idiocracy. But at least you can yearningly guffaw between chokey tears at corporate comedy improv show Down to Business: Quarterly Review. 7p, Mom's Basement Theatre
- I have recently concluded that the rave format is like the peanut butter of music and pop culture generally in that you can mix it with anything and it will not only effectively adhere but be reasonably palatable. To wit: Blind Boxed 360: A Collectibles Rave. 9p, Swan Dive
👩🚀
She bop: The soundtrack to Women's History Month dials up the volume at these sonic gatherings: Get a zoological earful of famous women in science at Circus of Song March 21 at West Charleston Library as Vegas City Opera belts songs about birds, cats, dogs, and frogs ✦ A trio of canny classical musicians stages a history-spanning Celebration of Women Composers March 22 at Winchester Dondero Cultural Center ✦ Marvel at current music scene mavens with Pure Joy, Gina Coletti, Ella Preslyn, and others at Women Who WOW March 23 at Taverna Costera.
- Park on Fremont turns into a bipolar dance party with Backyard Bangerz, where the front yard bumps hip-hop and Latin fire while the backyard raves to EDM beats. Speaking of wild swings, anyone know if they still have that big-ass teeter totter in the back? 9p, Park on Fremont
- More of an indoor cat? No less contrasty is this double-header dance night just up the street: Club Classics + Darkfloor. '80s-'00s hits in the main room, oozy dark gothy goodness in the lounge. Also, my new thing is when I meet basically anyone between the ages of 21-500 who just moved to Las Vegas, the first place I send them is Oddfellows for proper spiritual calibration. 10p, Oddfellows
- In case you haven't been transmitted the information via patchouli whiff and sage smoke on our orange-cone street winds, Dead & Company is back at The Sphere for another run. If the $17,000 ticket price isn't worth the three home refinancings, consider the much more affordable but no less warm and chill Melvin Seals, veteran Jerry Garcia Band keyman and soulful, gospel-inflected jam-bander in his own right. 11p, Brooklyn Bowl
🧸 Hella more weekend here, which may contain potty-mouthed sock puppets and simian ska bands:
🍺 Lawn beer | Puppet slam | Aerial circus | Hella hippies | Freebies! | Monkey ska | Mental art
The coolest things to do in Las Vegas this week, ever.
Andrew Kiraly
👑 Saturday March 22
- Forsooth! At this Kingdom of Coreathea Garage Sale put on by a historical re-enactment group, it's entirely possible you'll score a sweet paneled dressoir from 1453 or Gothic wooden folding lectern, but you might also just find ye olde The Mighty Ducks DVDs and suspiciously stained gaming chairs. 8a, 1020 E. Rome Blvd.
- Whether you're an amateur dabber or a ol' plein air pro, you're in for a brush with natural beauty at Wetlands Art Day, where artists are invited to paint the park (uh, as in a representation of it, not the park itself). Budding Monets of all ages and skill levels can learn the basic strokes at three watercolor workshops. 10a, Clark County Wetlands Park
- Vegas Valley Winery combines alcoholic amblings with retail therapy at their Spring Sip & Shop, where you can stumble from artisan to artisan with wine glass in hand, all amid classic barrels straight outta Donkey Kong. 11a, Vegas Valley Winery
- It's that time again when The Tuscany Suites & Casino cosmically inverts from blamelessly unremarkable off-Strip hotel into a vortex of hippie commerce known as Shakedown Vegas. If you're looking for a tenable entry point into the fine frothing madness, this afternoon Drum Circle can't be beat. BYOB – bring yr own bongo. 1p, Tuscany
- Meme: Blood of Christ ["no!" Drake]. Blood of Orval Monks ["yes!" Drake]. Get a taste of what divine deliciousness flows through the spigots at Notre Dame d’Orval Monastery on Orval Day 2025. 1p, Silver Stamp
- Personal note: PrideStyle is basically the day of the month when I punch out of reality and become a banshee made of pure hormonal scream plasma. The violence is choreographed, but the flying meat poetry is real. 5p, Swan Dive
▼ Saturday cont'd
- Quick story: I love wine, but have the palate of a chimpanzee. Tried for years to thoughtfully sip, swirl, hurl adjectives, read books, ponder scents, recall varietals. Still a chimpanzee. Finally let go and just started buying wine based on how cool the labels are. Based on this, I'd totally buy a case of Nickel & Nickel (velvety texture) and Far Niente (beautifully balanced) based on their delightfully fussy little artsy pen-drawing labels. 5p, Rio
- Khoury's welcomes HUDL Brewing's Red Headed Step Mother, an Irish red ale brewed with H.A.F. Coffee for a collab that promises to be both boozy and buzzy. Empanadas 702 provides the necessary food cushion for this crimson creation. 5p, Khoury's Fine Wine
- You might know the Sin Sity Sisters for their fabulously fierce and original drag, which looks like a bunch of juggalos joined a convent. But beneath the pancake foundation is, well, an actual charitable foundation: the madcap nunnery originally launched to help AIDS patients get the medicine they need. Tonight they mark the 20th anniversary of their annual Red Dress celebration, a night of contests, costumes, and cackling mischief. Come as you are, no matter your gender identity or expression – just don plenty of red. 7p, The Usual Place
- If I was taking bets on the next band to break out of Vegas (wait, do bands "break out" anymore? Is that a thing? Is music just Spotify slime and cuddle raves now? Is sound even legal anymore?) I might lay my smackers on Radical West, purveyors of smoove, adequately funky, well-sculpted radio pop. I imagine the intimate confines of The Rouge Room might make for some sweaty, melty faces. 7p, Rouge Room
- The Las Vegas Astronomical Society turns Boulder Beach into a cosmic playground where amateur stargazers and hardcore telescope jockeys alike can ogle Mars, Jupiter, and the Orion Nebula. Biologist Ashley Pipkin kicks things off with dark sky talk, followed by a collective gaze at celestial bodies. 7p, Lake Mead National Recreation Area
- Never mind his swaggering command of bedrock American tunes that swings, rocks, and hip-shakes through every possible flavor of midcentury cool. I'd go see Erik Dongil ravin' it up just to witness the tensile vigor of his formidable pompadour. 7p, The Composers Room
🥋 Sunday March 23
- So, cool, there's a semiregular drum circle that beats it up at Sunset Park, and some kindly percussive local soul is offering free West African drum lessons on site. 10a Sunset Park
- Get hi-yaaaa! on a boost of physical self-confidence as Self Defense Solidarity turns Container Park's lawn into a karate-choppin', jiu-jitsu-flippin' training ground where women learn to transform hands into weapons and fear into power. 1030a, Container Park
- Catch the latest local retail buzz at the reliably solid Makers Hive Market. No better time than now, in the fleeting annual 14-hour window between our bitter winter of wind-smeared grey and vengeful oven-heat summer. 11a, The District at Green Valley Ranch
- One imagines that only at this Farmers Market can you buy a sheaf of fresh Tuscan kale and drink a day-glo margarita beneath a throbbing neon tree. 12p, Area 15
- Props to the Las Vegas Sinfonietta for dishing up some diversity in this Mostly Bach show. Sure, you've got your quintessentially Bachian ponderous thunkers such as his "Ich habe genug" cantata, but they'll also leaven things with lighter lyrical selections such as his "Concerto for Two Violins." 3p, Clark County Library
- File the rationale for this listing not under "ooh neato event you might like" but more under "hm, interesting little subcultural node that lends interest and texture to life in Las Vegas": The Las Vegas Burners Town Hall is where Burning Man devotees meet to discuss community issues, spark conversations, and make new fellow-flamer friends. 3p, West Las Vegas Library
- As much a snarky exercise in reverse marketing psychology as an actual comedy event, Just F'in Comedy is an open mic "where anyone can (but nobody should) attempt to tell jokes" that promises you'll "be underwhelmed by the chronically depressed and barely employed as they overshare intrusive thoughts in a desperate plea for validation." *Kicks feet up, lights a stogie* Sometimes the blurbs just write themselves. 830p, The Dive Bar
🙏 Hope you have the raddest weekend. Thanks for your support! – Andrew Kiraly 🤍
