✦Weekender✦ Tropical dance | Monster improv | '80s prom | Demon carnival | Tower climb | Beer b-day | Alien rap 🛸

FROM TRIPLE-THREAT shopfests to sensual samba magic to Black history block parties, here's what made The List this weekend. Cheers! – Andrew Kiraly 🤍

💳 Friday Feb 21

• Living in the past: sooo underrated. Once a month inside Fantastic Indoor Swap Meet, Fantastic Vintage Market offers three days of treasure-hunting thrills. Whether you're into Mid Mod furniture, Victorian oddities, pop-culture archeology, or creepily unblinking Hummel figurines stealing your vital ectoplasm with their spectral gazes, these small-biz curators have done the digging for you. 10a, Fantastic Indoor Swap Meet
• The Mother's Roots exhibition closes with a bang as 30 artists from the Afrodiaspora weave narratives of resistance, heritage, and liberation through their work. Juried by dystopian lit professor, writer, curator, and all-around cultural dynamo Erica Vital-Lazare, this reception features live music, poetry, and an awards ceremony that proves art knows no borders, only shared legacies. 5p, Clark County Government Center
• Meet the New Bossa, definitely not the same as the old Bossa. 🤷‍♀️ Brazilian songstress Téka returns to Vic's with her "New Bossa" style that marries samba sophistication, jazz-club cool, and virtuoso guitar technique. 7p, Vic's Las Vegas
• Meanwhile over in Commercial Center, Zonya de Laguardia breaks out some jumbo mambo as she brings Cha Cha Cha! back by popular demand, unleashing a tropical heat wave on The Composers Room. Dancing not mandatory but damn near irresistible. 7p, The Composers Room
• In a tabloid twist, Opera Las Vegas is giving The Barber of Seville the TMZ treatment, turning Rossini's classic into a modern Hollywood satire where our heroine's just out of rehab, her manager's giving serious casting-couch vibes, and Figaro's been upgraded to celebrity stylist. The whole thing's still sung in Italian because even pop princesses need street cred – but don't worry, subtitles will help you keep a tight bead on all the drama. Note the Sunday show as well. 730p, Nicholas Horn Theatre
• Improv monster hunters turn tabletop terror into live comedy in Nerds Never Die, where Buffy meets Whose Line in an unscripted spookfest. Come for the camp, stay for the jump scares. Technically recommended for adults, but your kids have surely seen worse on TikTok. 8p, Vegas Theatre Company
• Positively Arts gets tubular in Totally Rad '80s Prom, where your Aqua Net addiction finally pays off. Pilita Simpson and the Pop Rebels Band provide the soundtrack to your John Hughes fantasy. No poseurs here: Your ticket supports youth arts education charities. 6p, Notoriety
• It's a match made in filth: Snotpunk provocateurs Guttermouth bring their infamous stage antics and deliberately offensive lyrics to the Dive Bar. 7p, Dive Bar
• Remember shoegaze? That warm, expansive, woolly blanket o' sound perfect for aimless reverie and mopey introspection? Phoenix's Glixen bring their modern brand of slow-burn noise-rock to DTLV. 8p, Backstage Bar & Billiards
• You've gotta break with grammar conventions when talking about rule-breaking rap god Kool Keith. He's not a legend. He's legends – a manifold, protean rhyme entity spanning multiple personas, from alien gynecologist Dr. Octagon to cannibal anti-hero Dr. Dooom (yes, three os). Whoever shows up on stage tonight, it's bound to shake the cosmos. 8p, Swan Dive

👟 Hella more weekend here, which may contain screamo grapple mayhem and fast Elvi wearing Hokas:

🤣 Improv madness | Art auction | Runner party | Tiki dad | Corporate clowns | Trivia laughs | Killer barber

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

The ListAndrew Kiraly

🏍️ Saturday Feb 22

• Get yr walk on Saturday morning – but with a historic twist. The Nevada Preservation Foundation leads a deep dive into Vegas' past at this Historic Westside School Walking Tour, focused on Vegas' oldest standing classroom and a cornerstone of the local civil rights movement. Get schooled on how this architectural survivor went from segregation-era sanctuary to preserved community hub – which now also serves as Nevada Preservation's HQ. 10a, Historic Westside School
• DTLV's dad-basement beer church The Silver Stamp marks four years of craft beer evangelism with special pours, a cask engine for the real ale heads, and – because why not – a curated menu of pickled eggs. Yukon Pizza handles dough-based carb loading while you work your way through that beer list. 11a, The Silver Stamp
• The roots-rockin' Down South Jukers bring a spicy soundtrack to Henderson Harley-Davidson's Chili Cookoff, where custom choppers meet competitive cooking. Because nothing says "Born to be Wild" like arguing over bean content in your chili. 11a, Henderson Harley-Davidson
• As if you needed an extra nudge to check out the creators, makers, nom-purveyors, and puppy-pushers at Market in the Alley, the first 20 shoppers get a token for discount pizza at cheesy dough cartel Settebello. 11a, The District at Green Valley Ranch
• My wife's functional addiction to their watermelon sour with a Tajin rim is what keeps us returning to CraftHaus (that and the bartender's cheerful willingness to let me commandeer the remote control and play the 1987 RoboCop for the 9,345th time) but the cute array of booky goodies spread out at the sporadic Book Fair Pop-Up is always a plus. 12p, CraftHaus Brewery
• The Historic Westside will be poppin' with heart emoji during the Love on Jackson Block Party, a community throw-down featuring live entertainment, free snacks, community resources, and enough bounce houses to give the kids a proper sugar-fueled sendoff. 12p, Jackson Avenue

• Damn, Oakey and Decatur is gonna be stacked with shopaholic radness this weekend. The 702 Market hits Fantastic Indoor Swap Meet parking lot with 75+ local vendors slinging their finest goods, plus food trucks to fuel your spree. Free makeup bags for the first 50 attendees. (And don't forget to dig into the distant past at Fantastic Vintage Market inside.) 1p, Fantastic Indoor Swap Meet
• Analog Dope celebrates Black excellence past, present and future with Roses, where live music meets community art, vinyl-hunting meets storytime, and paint-and-chill meets high vibes. Give flowers to the living at this free community lovefest. 1p, Analog Dope
• This Family Craft Day had me at "Slime Bar," but awesome boba and vegan Girl Scout cookies are definite pluses. 2p, Afterlife Tea and Boba Room

▼ Saturday cont'd

• Slight but relevant digression related to Silent Yoga at Sunset. Just finished the excellent The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk and, wow, what a richly fascinating book that drastically reframes the concept of trauma as an enduring, living, splinter in the brain. Equally fascinating, though, is van der Kolk's focus on therapeutic modalities that favor somatic treatments aiming to literally re-embody trauma survivors (most of us, tbh) in a sense of safe physicality, highlighting practices such as breathing, singing, and, of course, yoga. 430p, Fergusons Downtown
• Catch a moshy sonic wave at this free surf 'n' punk three-fer, featuring cinematic instru-jams from the UK's The Silhouettes and the bompin' "middle class thrash" of TOB. 8p, Red Dwarf
• If your idea of an electronic dance music event is a champagne-spraying Strip bacchanal dominated by simplistically unrelenting oonsta beats, consider a trip down The Rabbit Hole. The philosophically driven local beat collective whose events are marked by organic experimentation, joyous improvisation, and a superchill, super-friendly vibe are celebrating 10 years of freeform beatmaking. 9p, Swan Dive
• Peering horror-struck into infernally flaming striped tent: "It's a circus ... FROM HELL!" Knobby, clawed demon hand emerges from tent flaps to pull me face-first into The Devil's Carnival. 10p, The Bonfire

🗼 Sunday Feb 23

• This certainly gives new meaning to "take the stairs" – 1,455 new meanings, to be exact. It's not too late to register for Scale the Strat (or sponsor an intrepid huffer), the annual high-stepping fundraiser for the American Lung Association. If you wanna lend your feet to the cause but don't think you can hit the tower's top, never fear: there's an onsite climb team to give you a boost. 7a, The Strat
• The Best of the West Craft & Gift Show packs Santa Fe Station's ballroom with 65+ makers hawking everything from cottage foods to vintage finds. Bonus points for the wildly rare unicorn known as free parking. 10a, Santa Fe Station
• Park on Fremont turns into a floral fantasyland for the all-ages Flowertines, where Mylo Lopez teaches you the art of not killing plants (for once). Create your own bouquet, snap some pics at the photo booth, and maybe grab a drink because arranging flowers is hella thirsty work. 11a, Park on Fremont
• Terry Mahoney brings her healing bowls back to the art museum for this heart chakra sound bath that promises to vibrate away any lingering Valentine's hangover. BYO yoga mat and prepare to get cosmically aligned (or at least catch a solid nap in public). 1230p, Rita Deanin Abbey Art Museum
• The Las Vegas Sinfonietta brings chamber music out of the crusty old-timey mansion and into the library with works by Price, Coleridge-Taylor, and Dvořák. Get cozy with the strings section at this up-close-and-personal matinee of classical mainstays. 3p, Clark County Library

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