Do This! Little D Markets is back with another shopping experience packed with unique, artisan and local goods. The Commerce Street Night Market will bring over 20 vendors selling jewelry, paper, custom growlers and more to the Alta West Commerce Pavilion, 444 West Commerce St., from 6 to 10 p.m…
So you took out student loans for a liberal arts degree and ended up selling life insurance. You could let your sharp writing skills and instinct for a good story atrophy, but why don’t you keep them in tip-top shape writing for the Dallas Observer’s arts and culture section in your…
Do This! For a free and fun Friday night, hit up the Dallas Arts District’s Summer Block Party, which will close off Pearl and Flora streets from 6 p.m. to midnight. The Dallas Museum of Art, Nasher Sculpture Center, Klyde Warren Park and Crow Collection of Asian Art will all open their…
Do This! Houston resident Justin Cronin is the author of the mega-succesful trilogy The Passage. Stephen King is a fan, and you will be too once you read the story about a post-apocalyptic world where humans are forced to battle other vampire-like superhumans. The final installment, City of Mirrors, came…
Do This! Fort Worth-based artist Christopher Blay thinks art prizes are meaningless, so naturally he has created his own. Friday at 7 p.m. Blay will adopt his character Frank Artsmarter for a satirical exhibition, auction and presentation at Cris Worley Fine Arts (1845 E. Levee St., No. 110), where 18…
Do This! The National Polka Festival has been around for 50 freakin’ years and this year it’s expected to attract 50,000 people to downtown Ennis for its parade, 5K and 10K Polka Runs, musical performances and kolache-eating contest. Recent polka hall of fame inductees Brave Combo are among musical guests,…
Do This! If you’re looking to pamper the cute little dependents in your life, this is a good weekend to do it. At 9:30 a.m. Saturday at The Wild Detectives (314 W. 8th St.), local actress Katherine Bourne will regale your kiddos with a selection of storybooks illustrated by Garth…
Eight figures wearing hooded terra cotta-colored robes could be made out through a thick fog on the stage as patrons trickled into a nearly sold-out Winspear Opera House Tuesday night for the kick-off event to the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s second Soluna Festival. They were clearly the dancers who would be…
Do This!Isolated thunderstorms are forecast for Saturday, but if the weather cooperates long enough, you should venture to the Asian Festival at Fair Park (1121 1st Ave) between 11 a.m.-6 p.m. May is Asian Heritage Month, and for the last 26 years the Greater Dallas Asian American Chamber of Commerce has…
U.S. Poet Laureate Felipe Herrera could be frustrated. As the first Latino appointed to America’s highest honor in poetry, and a writer who often delves into his experiences as a Mexican-American, he could use the platform to express his disillusionment with the hostility being directed toward immigrants in the United…
Since it was founded by artistic director and conductor Richard McKay in 2011, the Dallas Chamber Symphony has enlivened Dallas’ classical music scene with innovative programming. Now that work has been recognized by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), which announced yesterday that the Dallas Chamber Symphony will receive…
Do This! Former Observer arts and culture editor Lauren Smart has collaborated with The Wild Detectives (314 8th St.) to throw a month-long festival, Women Galore, that celebrates the work of women in the arts. At 7:30 p.m. Saturday you can catch everyone’s favorite 10-year-old comedian, Saffy Herndon, as she…
If PEZ Dispensers never struck you as works of art, pay a visit to the Perot Museum of Nature and Science and you’ll see them differently. One of the most visually enticing displays in its new exhibit, Eye of the Collector, shows hundreds of Kermit and Princess Jasmine sugar-delivery mechanisms…
Do This! Join 200,000 other people from all over Texas at the 36th Denton Arts & Jazz Festival this weekend, where seven stages of music from acts such as UNT One O’Clock Lab Band, the Flatlanders and Brave Combo, tons of local art exhibits and a juried art show are just the beginning of…
Do This!Obsessed with the HGTV show Tiny House Hunters? You’ve got at least one good reason to join the free Earth Day Texas celebrations at Fair Park this weekend, which will educate visitors about the environment and how us rotten humans can co-exist more peacefully with it. During festival hours, 10 a.m.-6…
Yesterday we learned that attendance for the Dallas Art Fair last weekend broke the record, with 12,500 people passing through the halls of the Fashion Industry Gallery on Ross Avenue. In its eighth year, the fair seemed more vital than ever. As we mentioned in our coverage of the fair…
It’s 10 a.m. on a weekday and Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele are cuddling kittens on the stage of a fancy strip club off Northwest Highway. The small felines have been brought to The Lodge by no-kill shelter Operation Kindness as a surprise for the comedians, who are in Dallas…
Randi Silverman didn’t know if her son Tim would make it to adulthood. At just 9 years old, he was so anxious that he said he didn’t want to live and resisted leaving their house in Westchester, New York. Without any known trauma to explain his behavior, Silverman turned to…
In some ways, Wanda Means is the typical Highland Park mom. She has the youthful yet conservative clothes, four kids in the school system, a successful home-building business with her ex-husband, and a blog, Jesus, Divorce and Over 40, that sounds like something a more pious Elizabeth Gilbert might write…
All types of people showed up for the three-day Texas Pinball Festival this month. The young and old, male and female, pierced and khaki-ed all came to Frisco to play more than 350 tables. The games spanned the history of pinball, starting with the first flipper games of the ’50s. Kids…
Terri Doty is a morose teenager trying to assassinate her teacher. She plays one at work, anyway, where today she’s in the sound booth giving life to Kirara in Assassination Classroom. Her teacher/foe is a smiley face with tentacles who blew up the moon and is on a mission to…
Somewhere in our apartments, we’ve all got one — a box filled with written mementos, whether they’re old diaries, letters from sleep-away camp or lyrics for that career as an acoustic singer-songwriter that never took off. But the difference between most of us and the cast of Mortified, a confessional…
