✦Weekender✦ Starry jazz | Wurst time | Midnight mimes | Implosion rock | Furry fun | Graffiti sesh | Tequila street 🌵

FROM OPEN-AIR jazz lawn parties to dog gymnasium raves to 3D floral brunches, here's what made The List this weekend. Cheers! – Andrew Kiraly 🤍

🥨 Friday May 9

• The improbably quaint and also just-plain-improbable German-American Social club – an island of volksy Euroquirk on Lake Mead Boulevard – is hosting its two-day Maifest. Come for the metric ton of bratwurst, schnitzel, pretzels; stay for the Kunsthandwerkermarkt selling twinkily becharmed handmade crafts. (Through Saturday.) 4p, German-American Social Club
• Not reflected in this weekend's weather report is a 90 percent chance of an amorphous canine cuddle puddle off Tenaya and Alexander, courtesy of the Electric Corgi Carnival. Note: Only corgis can win the costume contest, but any dog can kit up with day-glo kandi and possibly redundant chartreuse fur chaps. 730p, Barkin' Basin Dog Park
• Unlikely story: I fell in love with Chappell Roan at my gym of all places, the stale-smelling, fluorescence-raked, blearily blepharitic Las Vegas Athletic Club off Karen and Maryland. (I love it.) See, the compulsory-viewing video jumbotron in the treadmill area plays "Hot To Go!" at least four times an hour, so yeah: familiarity > contempt > affinity > fandom. Point is the Pink Pony Club frames itself as a queer-pop dance night, but my feeling is the Roan spirit counsels an embrace of everyone in a pansexual, mascara-smudged cheerleader love-grip. 8p, The Usual Place
• Fresh off a tour of Japan, Las Vegas' most Las Vegas garage-rock band The Implosions – anchored by husband-and-wife duo Clay and Denise Heximer – celebrate their new album with a night of snarling, snarky, rattlesnap punk. – 9p, Red Dwarf

Also Friday ➤

Fremont Street gets lit with Friday fireworks during Welcome to the Weekend ✦ A Night Of ... Burlesque spins pinup pulchritude into marvelous motion at Vegas Theatre Company ✦ Pink Talking Fish Are Dead concocts a mystic mashup of jam-band giants at Brooklyn Bowl ✦ Your tingling spidey sense is telling you it's your last weekend to catch I'm Gonna Marry You Tobey Maguire at Majestic Repertory Theatre.

🎨 Saturday May 10

• The dream of Graffiti Park is to have a free-for-all creation zone in the Arts District where urban scrawlers can spray to their heart's content. They're raising money and awareness for that dream at the Graffiti Park Foundation Fest, where they'll transform a Hendo basketball gym into a mini-festival with live music, a vendor market, and, of course, lots of eye-grabbing artwork. 10a, 401 Drake Street
• Shoes aren't just shoes – they're style statements, social signifiers, and often necessary tools to excel at sports. Kick over to the Your Perfect Footwear Festival to support the work of this nonprofit that provides athletic footwear to underserved kids. (If you're feelin' footloose yourself, try your toes on the rock climbing wall.) 11a, Desert Breeze
• In other canine capers, daytime doggie fest The Biggest Dog Meetup in Las Vegas promises to flip your fur-baby-obsession into yippity overdrive with a talent show, vendors, and even lol a dog caricature artist. 1p, Barx Parx
• Honestly, the seedily glamorous down-ticket deshabille of Champagne's Cafe is reason enough to visit on its own, but tonight there's a free Mixed Games Poker Night? Some of the zany variants sound like the closest you can come to real-life Balatro. (Please, don't click that link, you'll be addicted forever, okay, I warned you.) 6p, Champagne's Cafe
• Somehow I sleep better at night knowing there's a troupe of grease-painted jesters called 1230 Clowns dedicated to performing late-night underground improv shows. 1159p, Vegas Theatre Company

Also Saturday ➤

The Desert Shred Festival is a variety snack-pack of the valley's punkier musical stylings at The Space ✦ Roll up to Cars, Cigars & Tequila on 3rd street for a night of sights, smokes, and sips ✦ Sip some lunar love at Yoga Sanctuary's Full Moon Sound Bath and Blue Lotus Tea Ceremony ✦ Whip up some sweet shopping magic at The Makers Hive Market at The District at Green Valley and keep up the spell with a lawn-sprawl free screening of Wicked ✦ The hips don't lie: Cumbiatron promises a riotous rhythm rave at the House of Blues.

🏵️ Sunday May 11

• Your mom deserves more than the standard flowers-and-card combo for Mother's Day. Enrobe yr august matriarch in classic wraparound Vegas spectacle at this Mother's Day Immersive Brunch, which supplements the food with the visual flair of Georgia O'Keeffe's flowers ramped up with Illuminarium's techno-splendor. 10a, Illuminarium
• If you missed out on Friday and Saturday's dog-a-riffic fun because [sniff] you don't have a pooch to call your own, remedy that paucity of pup at Bark at Park, where you can adopt a furry friend while supporting the work of the Vegas Pet Rescue Project. 11a, Park on Fremont
• Well, well, well, here's a peanut-butter-and-chocolate mashup I did not see coming: wrestling at a library. The all-ages East Side Showdown features some of the valley's most beloved grap personalities flinging in the ring, including one of my favorites, the resiliently cheerful Kid Isaac aka Mayor of Funtown. Love it: Get the kids in with wrestling then, wham, hit 'em with the tornado of civilizing services our rad library system supplies! 1p, East Las Vegas Library
• Admittedly, my impulse in listing Charo lies somewhere between an appreciation for camp, anthropological curiosity, and a dutiful remembrance that the entertainer known for her stylized aura of ditzy fizz is in fact a bad-ass flamenco guitarist. 730p, South Point

Also Sunday ➤

Freshen up your seasonal style in free fashion at Spring Thrift & Thrive at Taverna Costera ✦ Get punch-drunk on the gutsy, gusty, arena emo of Lobby Boxer at The Griffin ✦ Turn stanzas into stacks of green at the Poetry After Dark contest at Moonlight Karaoke Lounge.

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