End of August Events
Yes, Edmonton, summer is winding down. But, don’t worry, there’s still plenty of great stuff going on to lift your spirits. (And pretty good weather recently too.)
On the festival circuit this weekend, there’s DEDfest, In/stall/ed, East Meets West, and Open Sky.
DEDfest is Edmonton’s annual horror film fest. In/stall/ed is is a unique performance and visual art display, happening in the McCauley neighbourhoods in parking spaces. Yeah, public art baby! Latitude 53 is running this, and there will be 17 performances and installations on Saturday. East Meets West continues up in Little Italy and the McCauley neighbourhood, and there’s Mercury Opera performing Madame Butterfly in Giovanni Caboto Park. The Open Sky Music Festival is packing Hawrelak Park with bands and bands and musicians and more musicians.
If you’re into walking, the Highlands neighbourhood is kicking off their walking map this weekend. These maps are great ways to get to know an Edmonton neighbourhood.
I haven’t heard a whole lot about MEAET but it sounds like a cool idea. A bunch of people get together, have some food, enjoy themselves, then vote on who to give some money to for a project.
You can also Show What You Grow, at Fort Edmonton Park.
In music, there’s the earlier mentioned Open Sky Music Festival, with plenty of bands and artists down in Hawrelak Park…Wunderbar’s got Fire Next Time tonight and The Joe and Doug Hoyer triumphantly returning to Edmonton (after a national tour) on Saturday night. Also on Saturday, Hale Hale, Southroot, and Zero Something play the Starlite Room. Back to Friday night, Warped Tourers Inner City Elegance are at Expressionz Cafe. Now back to Saturday (surely I should have done this in chronological order) there’s live music at Ricky’s in Mill Woods (with Consilience and Tyson Skakun).
Oh, and if you walk by CKUA on Jasper Avenue tonight and it seems like something cool is going on it’s because they’re celebrating their amazing record library and have a live performance from 100 Mile House.
Down in the river valley, the Edmonton Capitals host the Calgary Vipers through the weekend.
And over at Clarke Stadium (beside Commonwealth) the Edmonton Huskies are home to Saskatoon Hilltops in Prairie Football.
Live Music Weekend
It looks like a dandy weekend for live music in Edmonton, so let’s start there.
Tonight you’ve got a Christan Hansen & The Autistics all ages show at The ARTery with Paperplanes and Dragonboats, so that’ll be good. The Blame-Its, The Afterbeat, and Wildrose Orchestra, are at New City Legion…Over at Wunderbar you can hear Teen Daze with Oh No Yoko and Sugarglider…Craig Cardiff is at the Haven Social Club with David Blair and Erica Viegas… The Open Sky Music Festival isn’t until the end of August, but Souljah Fyah and Jeff Morris are getting things going this weekend
Saturday night is no less good, with The Weber Brothers, Chris Carmichael, and Lyra Brown at the Haven Social Club…Xplosionation, The Party Martyrs, and All The King’s Men, at Brixx… The Weekend Kids, Old Wives, and Freshman Years at Wunderbar…and The Consonance, Noisy Colours, whiskey wagon, all over at New City Legion.
Sunday (yeah, we’re still going on just music) there’s the Whyte Avenue Street Sale (which means the street will be closed to traffic between 105 and 103 Streets) and SOS Fest playing music on two stages all day long…Sunday night ends the weekend with a giant kick to the face of awesome with The Joe and Doug Hoyer kicking off their national tour at Wunderbar, with Mikey Maybe.
Whew.
We also have a bunch of festivals and the such.
Down in Hawrelak Park you can catch two of Shakespeare’s finest plays during the Freewill Shakespeare Festival. Heading into the Indy we’ve got Race Week Edmonton (which lasts longer than a week). The Edmonton International Street Performers Festival is on at Churchill Square. The Edmonton & Northern Alberta Historic Festival also begins this weekend (which can get you into some cool old buildings).
For the dogs, and dog lovers, you can head up to 118 Avenue on Sunday for Avenue Goes to the Dogs, put on by the Eastwood Community League.
If all of that great Edmonton music and festivals isn’t enough…
Cirque du Soleil’s “Dralion” is at Rexall Place. There’s a Campus Community Garden Open House, Saturday 11-2, at the U of A’s campus community garden. The Edmonton Eskimos will fight, fight, fight on at home to the Hamilton Tiger-Cats
Oh, and if you’re not doing anything at about 9pm on Sunday you can watch the last episode of our ShawTV series, the edmontonian presents, on Shaw cable channel 10. (It’ll be on YoutTube, Livestream, and iTunes shortly after.)
Edmonton Events
Boring headline aside, this weekend has the potential to blow your mind.
Sometimes all you need is a good beer, a place to be, and a phone. The phone is in case you need to find a better party.
East meets West is this weekend, which is where you get the best of Edmonton’s Chinatown and Little Italy. And this year kicks off with Karibuni Afrikafest (happening now!). Three days, three cultures, three times the fun.
Good thing I check ShareEdmonton for events. I’d have never heard about the Outdoor Nite Market otherwise. That’s tonight (Friday), on 107 Avenue, and it’s got a little of everything. The best item it has is a reason for people to be out on the street at night, which encourages good things.
This weekend, Hawrelak Park has the first-ever Open Sky Music Festival. It’s all about surf rock, island rock and reggae. The weather may not say summer, but that music sure does. (If the festival’s website isn’t working for you, there are details at ShareEdmonton’s event page.)
Telus Field will be hosting a music event Saturday too. Rock The River hits our city.
Saturday night I’ll likely be checking out Bohemia for the first time. N.N., Touch it and you will say ow, and The Mystery Ponies are playing.
Eamon McGrath is at New City. That’s Saturday too.
Lady Gaga is still here. If she’s still in Edmonton this weekend I’m going to start getting worried we won’t be able to get rid of her. And I’m going to borrow her wardrobe.
Since it looks like we might have already tapped out the good weather you can always head inside to see a movie.
FC Edmonton gets its final kicks at its warm-up season Saturday. The team is hosting Miami FC. I wonder if they’re playing for the right to have FC in their name? There can be only one!
The Eskimos are home to the Saskatchewan Roughriders. Shouldn’t we be going to the games this season, so as to not appear as bandwagon jumpers if they get good again?
Over at the River Cree Casino there’s also the All-In for Diabetes Poker Tournament. Buy-in is $250 and you can claim $100 for knocking out bounties, such as CTV’s Daryl McIntyre. If you bring a bag of clothing as a donation you can get extra chips too.
