On the first Thursday of every month, pigtailed fans of Japanese and Korean pop music pack the dance floor at Barboza to bounce until their calves explode. The scene is surreal: Glow sticks flash and people sweat the stickers from their cheeks, as DJ Bishie (whose name means “a young man whose beauty and sex appeal transcend gender or sexual orientation”) and DJ Hojo (yep, FFVII) spin their sets and JK music videos play on screens before the crowd. As if this night couldn’t get any weirdly better, tonight stars the K-pop lip-synching of Seattle drag-queen-of-queens Atasha Manila! (Barboza, 925 E Pike St, thebarboza.com, 9 pm, $3, 21+)

Former Stranger news writer Cienna Madrid has been a writer in residence for Richard Hugo House, a local literary nonprofit. There, she taught fiction classes and wrote 4/5 of a book about a death-row...