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FOOD & DRINK FESTIVALS
Ballard Brewed Winter Beer Festival
Look, any time is a good time to drink local craft beer, and now, as temperatures are dropping and the cloud cover is picking up to a deep and fluffy gray, there arenât a whole lot of events where you can try a bunch of seasonal beers by different breweries all in one festive place. Enter the Ballard Brewed Winter Beer Festival, in which Ballard-area breweries (Bad Jimmyâs, Hale's Ales Brewery, Lagunitas Brewing Company, Lucky Envelope Brewing, Maritime Pacific Brewing Company, NW Peaks Brewery, Obec Brewing, Peddler Brewing, Populuxe Brewing, Reubenâs Brews, and Stoup Brewing) offer tastes of two winter beers eachâand one of those will be released for the first time ever at the festival. Proceeds benefit Bellwether Housing, touted as Seattleâs largest private, nonprofit affordable-housing provider. LEILANI POLK
Saturday, Hale's Palladium (Fremont)
Oyster New Year
The apotheosis of the Pacific Northwestâs unofficial regional pastime, slurping oysters, is the eco-friendly Oyster New Year at Elliottâs Oyster House. The all-out briny bash features more than 30 varieties of bivalves shucked to order at a 150-foot oyster bar, a fresh seafood buffet, and local microbrews and wine from more than 60 wineries. Be a little superficial and cast your vote for the Peopleâs Choice âMost Beautiful Oyster,â and donât miss the oyster luge, in which a shucked oyster glides down a frozen slide in an ice sculpture, into your mouth, and down your gullet. JULIANNE BELL
Saturday, Elliott's Oyster House (Downtown)
Sagra di Radicchio
Cheers for chicories! Inspired by the Italian tradition of the sagra (a festival usually celebrating local food), this weeklong event dedicated to the refreshingly bitter radicchio kicks off with a tasting event with experts, farmers, and chefs.
Saturday, Palace Ballroom (Downtown)
Seattle Restaurant Week
Frugal gourmands everywhere rejoice over this twice-yearly event, which lets diners tuck into prix-fixe menus at more than 185 different restaurants hoping to lure new customers with singularly slashed prices. Three courses cost a mere $35, and many restaurants also offer two-course lunches for $20. Itâs an excellent opportunity to feast like a high roller at an accessible price point and cross some otherwise spendy establishments off your food bucket list, including critically acclaimed restaurants like Tilth and Adana.
Sunday, Various locations
The Whisky Extravaganza
This slow-sipping bacchanal promises over 100 whiskies from distilleries around the Northwest, which you can try on their own or mixed into cocktails. Don't worry, there will also be things to eat.
Friday, the Rainier Club (Downtown)
MARKETS
2nd Annual Seattle Women's Show
Over 75 exhibitors will sell fashion and accessories, health and wellness products, cosmetics and skincare and more things geared toward ladies.
Saturday, Women's University Club of Seattle (Downtown)
46th Annual Northwest Artists' Holiday Show
Over 50 artists will sell paintings, prints, pottery, glassware, and more.Â
Saturday-Sunday, Edmonds Unitarian Universalist Church
The Big Flea Pop-Up
"Seattleâs original flea market" will present you with all the flannels your wintry Northwest heart desires, plus antiques and collectibles.Â
Sunday, Fremont Sunday Market
Danish Holiday Bazaar
Eat smĂžrrebrĂžd (dark rye bread that's buttered and smattered with various toppings) while you do some early shopping for holiday gifts sourced straight from Denmark.
Sunday, Seattle Danish Center (North Seattle)
The Great Junk Hunt
Scavenge for vintage and repurposed goods of all kinds at this travelling market.
Friday-Saturday, Evergreen State Fairgrounds (Monroe)
Holiday Bazaar
All you early-bird shoppers can find gifts for your loved ones from over 80 vendors and get in the holiday spirit at a "candy cane cafe."Â
Saturday, SeaTac Highline Botanical Gardens
Kenmore Camera Digital Photo Expo
Photographers of all ilks can take free seminars and find deals on equipment, from lenses and lighting supplies to tripods and camera bags.Â
Saturday-Sunday, Lynnwood Convention Center
Polish Bazaar 2019
At this annual bazaar, learn about Polish culture and customs through food (like pickle soup, borscht, pierogi, and cabbage rolls) and live entertainment. Plus, shop for holiday gifts like Polish crystal and pottery wares.
Saturday-Sunday, Dom Polski (Capitol Hill)
Puyallup Antique & Collectible Show
Find unique wares from the "largest Antique & Collectible Show in the Puget Sound area."Â
Saturday-Sunday, Washington State Fair Events Center (Puyallup)
Scandinavian Holiday Bazaar
Whether you want to buy someone an early holiday gift or just eat Scandinavian treats, you'll find coffee, baked goods, aquavit, sweaters, and other Nordic delights at this bazaar.
Saturday-Sunday, Swedish Cultural Center (Queen Anne)
Used Book Sale
Take up to 40% off on used books.Â
Saturday-Sunday, Third Place Books (Ravenna)
OTHER FESTIVALS & COMMUNITY EVENTS
Bunka no Hi
Celebrate Japanese and Japanese American cultures through performances, demonstrations, games, food, and other activities.
Sunday, Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Washington (Chinatown-International District)
CommandFest Seattle
Nerds of Seattle can play Magic: The Gathering's Commander format, meet special guests, and win free swag.
Friday-Sunday, Seattle Center
DĂa de los Muertos
During the Mexican holiday DĂa de los Muertos, people honor loved ones who have died by bringing them to life with colorful ofrendas (altars) adorned with memorabilia and calaveras (sugar skulls), and taking part in many other traditions. This year in Seattle, there are lots of opportunities to learn more about the holiday through performances, food, music, and more. Find all the options on our DĂa de los Muertos calendar.
Friday-Sunday, Various locations
Earshot Jazz Festival 2019
Earshot Jazz Festival, an annual month-long examination and celebration of the art form, includes over 50 concerts featuring acts both local and (inter)national, old and young. This Sunday, don't miss tenor saxman Gary Hammon.
Friday-Sunday, Various locations
Green Seattle Day!
Help restore the plant life and clean up wildlife habitats at one of 17 Seattle parks.Â
Saturday, Various locations
Handmade Tile & Art Festival
Over 20 Northwest artists will show their handmade tile work, including a large display of garden art. The event also includes a juried art show featuring tiles made using traditional techniques.
Saturday-Sunday, Mount Baker Community Club
NaNoWriMo
For the month of November, ambitious budding authors set out to write 50,000 words of a new novel. Seattle offers some opportunities for social writing, complete with "word sprints" and celebrations. So go ahead and deliver that masterpiece!
Friday-Sunday, Everywhere
Seattle HomeGoods Grand Opening
Celebrate the Seattle opening of the popular discount home furnishing chain HomeGoods with special deals.Â
Sunday, HomeGoods (Interbay)
FINAL HALLOWEEN EVENTS
Fright Fest 2019
Wild Waves will offer a final weekend of thrills this fall for kids and adults alike, including a "parade of ghouls."
Saturday, Wild Waves Theme Park (Federal Way)
Frighthouse Station Haunted House
Tacoma-dwelling ghosts and ghouls will lurk in the shadowy corners of two equally creepy haunts.
Friday-Saturday, Frighthouse Station (Tacoma)
La Fin: Halloween Kink Cabaret
Expect a melding of dance, contortion, and aerial arts as the performers of burlesque revue Valtesse bring out their demons for a night of scary-sexy times.
Friday, the Ruins (Queen Anne)
Mr. Black & Easy Street Music Present: Nightfall Orphanage
Think you can handle the ghosts that lurk in this haunted orphanage crawling with sinister children? If so, you will be rewarded with candy.
Friday-Saturday, Nightfall Orphanage (West Seattle)
Nightmare on Wall Street
Continuing a spooky-season tradition started last year, Belltownâs award-winning tiki bar Navy Strength will temporarily transform into a âfully immersive haunting experience,â with libations inspired by horror films like Friday the 13th, The Babadook, Midsommar, The Ring, Pet Sematary, and more. Theyâll switch out their usual kitschy drinkware for vessels like pumpkins and Jason Voorheesâmasked tiki mugs, and employ ingredients like âcandy corn orgeat.â Frightening horror-film soundtracks will contribute to the spine-chilling milieu. JULIANNE BELL
Friday-Saturday, Navy Strength (Belltown)
Nile Nightmares
This elaborate scare begins at the Curse of the Nile, where a sinister pharaoh awaits his next victim. From there, those who escape the tomb can move on to the Ballinger Asylum, through the Ballinger Cemetery, and into the depths of the Infernum (aka the Gates of Hell) before winding up at the 3D Circus and Clown Town Revival.
Friday-Saturday, Nile Shrine Golf Center (Mountlake Terrace)
Stalker Farms Haunted Attractions
Chuck, Suzie, and Eski are this year's featured slashers at the farm's haunted attraction. They'll scare your pants off while you try to work your way through mazes and puzzles, and you can vote on your favorite at the end.
Friday-Saturday, Stocker Farms (Snohomish)
STAR 101.5's Georgetown Morgue Haunted House
What building is better suited for a haunted house than one that's played host to funeral preparations, cremations, and the processing of animal carcasses? This annual haunted village of doom takes place in a former morgue, where brave souls are invited to explore the facility's "decrepit Catacomb" where toxic chemicals have turned dead bodies into slightly less-dead zombies. If you want VIP access, Bloodworks Northwest will be onsite on Saturday nights offering admission perks to those who volunteer to donate blood.
Friday-Saturday, Georgetown Morgue
Under Pressure: A Bowie/Queen Halloween Dream
Glam it up to the nth degree and pay tribute to two of the sexiest musical legends as BowieVision joins forces with newly minted tribute Queen Mother for an explosive post-Halloween show.
Friday, Nectar (Fremont)
PERFORMANCES
Beware the Terror of Gaylord Manor
The world-famous Seattle-based drag queen BenDeLaCreme has written and performed three acclaimed solo shows, but Beware the Terror of Gaylord Manor, which premiered in 2017, was the artist's first foray into writing, directing, and starring in an original play of her own. It's a spooky, campy twist on the horror-flick genre, featuring ghosts, dancers, music, and special effects. The chemistry between BenDeLaCreme and Scott Shoemaker alone is worth the price of admission. CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE
Friday-Sunday, ACT Theatre (Downtown)
Cinderella
If you think opera is all bombast and tragic onstage death, the music of Gioacchino Rossini will reveal the genre's capacity for outright bubbliness. Seattle Opera's Lindy Hume will take inspiration from English music hall comedy and Victorian decor for this extravagant-sounding production.
Saturday, McCaw Hall (Seattle Center)
Dracula
Dracula will be breathed to life yet again when playwright Steven Dietz's adaptation of the Bram Stoker tale is revived and revised specifically for ACT Theatre. In this Dracula, the focus shifts to Mina Murray Harker. Her character has always been ripe for a reckoning or a refresh, or both. She is the source of endless fascination, because she is an obvious heroine in Stoker's novel, pure of heart and mind, and yet she's just as much a casualty of Dracula's desires as her poor friend Lucy. No matter how many gender norms Stoker challenged, it was still the Victorian era. Mina could be given only so much agency. "But to simply make her a victim was super unsatisfying to all of us," director John Langs explained. "So Steven has done some reworking of the story, and she really comes to the forefront. The hunted becomes the hunter in this particular adaptation." LEILANI POLK
Friday-Sunday, ACT Theatre (Downtown)
The Great Moment
Playwright Anna Ziegler earned a lot of attention in 2015 for Photograph 51, a well-received bio-drama about Rosalind Franklin, the woman who discovered DNA. Nicole Kidman played the starring role, everybody loved it, and Ziegler was praised for her "fair-minded and philosophical" (New York Times) approach to character building. Ziegler will likely bring that same talent for creating multidimensional characters to The Great Moment, which will have its world premiere at the Seattle Rep. According to press materials, the story follows a woman named Sarah, who is watching her grandfather slowly die while she raises her son. Alexandra Tavares plays the lead in this, and I've loved everything I've ever seen her in. RICH SMITH
Friday-Sunday, Seattle Repertory Theatre (Seattle Center)
Miss Saigon
A very young Vietnamese woman and an American GI have a romantic (and ultimately tragic) encounter in this musical theater take on Madama Butterfly, written by Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil, the team behind Les Misérables. While the musical has enjoyed popularity and acclaim, it's also been protested over the years for its depiction of exoticized Vietnamese bar girls, conniving Asian men, and other stereotypes. Notes for this production emphasize the heroine's "transformation from a naive victim of circumstance into a steely conduit of fearless maternal resolve."
Friday-Sunday, Paramount Theatre (Downtown)
On the Boards' 40th Birthday!
Celebrate the innovative theater, which has highlighted cutting-edge local and international performance art, music, theater, and dance for four decades. Make merry with singer/beatboxer/comedian Reggie Watts, musician and artist Dakota Camacho, playwright/actor/singer Sarah Rudinoff, and the band Dude York.
Friday, On the Boards (Queen Anne)
Sandra Bernhard's 'Quick Sand': Comedy, Cabaret, and Commentary
In a wide-ranging interview conducted the same day that Republican congressional douchebags stormed the underground intelligence chamber in the US Capitol with their cell phones out (âTheyâre utter morons,â she said, âItâs just embarrassing!â), Sandra Bernhard and I talked about Donald Trump (a ânational disasterâ), Mark Zuckerberg (âheâs a nightmareâ), Nancy Pelosi (âmasterfulâ), and which three powerful women throughout history Bernhard would invite to a dinner party. As for her show, it will be her usual iconoclastic mix of comedy and music. Bernhard: "Tell them itâs okay itâs a Jewish venue. Tell them not to be nervous about that." CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE
Saturday, Stroum Jewish Community Center (Mercer Island)
Seattle Butoh Festival 2019
Celebrate the art of butoh (a type of modern Japanese dance emphasizing the grotesque) at this performance featuring DAIPAN members, guest artists, and butoh pioneer Natsu Nakajima.
Friday-Sunday, Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Washington (Chinatown-International District)
The Tempest
Accomplished director Annie Lareau (Cornish College of the Arts' Much Ado About Nothing, many Seattle Public Theater productions), will tackle Shakespeare's fantastical final work about an island wizard, his hot daughter, his nonhuman slaves, and his princely prisoner. This staging will take place in an Edwardian castle, "one of the last periods before media started to infiltrate people's lives."
Friday-Sunday, Center Theatre (Seattle Center)
The Thanksgiving Play
In this holiday comedy, Lakota playwright Larissa FastHorse takes aim at a group of white teaching artists who end up reasserting colonial ideology in their attempt to rid their teaching practice of that very same ideology. According to Jesse Green's review in the New York Times, the more cringe-inducing skits in the show are based on actual school lesson plans lifted from social-media posts: "They include potted history and offensive ditties and, in one case, a suggestion to split the pupils into Pilgrims and Indians 'so the Indians can practice sharing.'" Sounds like it'll be another fine entry into the growing canon of plays about white people fucking up something they're trying to fix. I'm unfamiliar with the actors in the show, but I have no doubt they'll flourish in the highly capable hands of director Kelly Kitchens. RICH SMITH
Friday-Sunday, Seattle Public Theatre (Green Lake)
Where is home : birds of passage
You know what's really scary? Concentration camps for asylum seekers at the border, constant ICE raids, border patrol separating children from their parents and not having the administrative infrastructure to unite them, and the state generally doing everything it can to dehumanize people who want to immigrate to this country. In her brand-newâand first-ever (!)âsolo show, Where is home : birds of passage, local Italian American choreographer Alice Gosti aims to push back against the xenophobic narratives that drive these anti-immigrant policies. She'll draw from her own history with immigration as well as the larger history of Italian immigration to the United States in a spectacle that will run about three hours. As always with Gosti's work, you'll get to decide how much attention you want to devote to this performance. And the act of making that decision, of course, is part of the performance. RICH SMITH
Friday-Sunday, ACT Theatre (Downtown)
READINGS & TALKS
Jenny Odell: Reclaiming Our Attention in an Age of Distraction
During public talks, multidisciplinary artist Jenny Odell stresses that How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy isn't a self-help book designed to make you put down your phone so you can be more productive at work later on. It's not a book about becoming a monk who stares at a silver bowl in a cave all day, either. But she does look at how social media and tech have changed our notion of "productivity" and then offers a pretty compelling way out of the crass and alienating life such a notion engenders. Along the way, she presents tons of fascinating found objects, academic research, amateur birding, journalism, and personal stories that make the book feel like a textual cabinet of curiosities. RICH SMITH
Friday, Town Hall (First Hill)
Meghan Daum: The Problem with Everything
Daum's latest book, The Problem with Everything, is, in part, about watching the culture change around her, something she calls "a moment of profound cognitive dissonance." Values that were once solidly the purview of the leftâthe importance of transgressive art and comedy, the need for due process, an almost pathological defense of free speechâhave been abandoned by the very people who once defended them and co-opted by the political right. It's a shift that Daum is concerned about, to put it lightly. "There is no room for nuance right now. Instead, we see a lot of purity-policing and authoritarianism," Daum says. "The similarities between the Christian right and the woke left are pretty striking. Except the Christian right at least has the concept of redemption. The left doesn't have that." The Problem with Everything is about herself, but it's also about culture, politics, society, how we live now, and the ever stretching divide between older generations and younger ones. KATIE HERZOG
Friday, Elliott Bay Book Company (Capitol Hill)
Meghan Daum will appear with Katie Herzog
Nisi Shawl: Talk Like a Man
Local sci-fi icon Nisi Shawl (best-known for the brilliant Everfair) will read from their new collection of short stories, featuring virtual reality high schools, magical mirrors, and sex rites.
Friday, University Book Store (University District)
MAJOR CONCERTS
Frankie Cosmos
At first, I thought the pairing of Frankie Cosmos with the Laser Dome was an interesting but strange choice. That was until I heard their most recent release, Close It Quietly. The bandâs fourth album is just as precious as their previous work, composed of several under-two-minute tracks, but thereâs an urgency, a gusto, that wasn't present before. Lie back and let the bandâs energetic, earnest songs like â41stâ and âActinâ Weirdâ provide a chill soundtrack for pretty lasers to dance to. JASMYNE KEIMIG
Friday & Sunday, Laser Dome at Pacific Science Center (Seattle Center) & Alma Mater Tacoma
Luke Combs, Morgan Wallen, Jameson Rodgers
Multi-platinum, CMA Award-winning country singer-songwriter Luke Combs will return to the Northwest on his Beer Never Broke My Heart Tour with guest artists Morgan Wallen and Jameson Rodgers.
Saturday, Tacoma Dome
Marika Hackman
Striking the territory somewhere amid Lucy Dacus, Charlotte Day Wilson, and Marine Girls, Marika Hackman is sleekly dry without reducing every experience to simple humor, or going so far to the end of the poetry line that you lose the authentic emotion in her work. Each of her tracks plays more like âa day in the lifeâ rather than a diary entry, with the observer being picked up and carried along for the essential moments within each relationship vignette. Hackmanâs 2015 album, We Slept at Last, comes off as much spacier, more ethereally unsure of the realities unfolding before her. In Iâm Not Your Man, released via Sub Pop, Hackman comes into her own, with fewer doubts and a couple more battle scars to prove her worth. KIM SELLING
Friday, Neumos (Capitol Hill)
San Fermin
The composition-project-turned-actual-project from Brooklyn-based composer and songwriter Ellis Ludwig-Leone, San Fermin, is on tour behind their fourth full-length studio outing, The Cormorant I. It is art pop that is bright, airy, symphonic, and cinematic (in the dramatic and more subtle swells of strings and horns and overall instrumental texturing). The album is apparently the first of a two-album story arc following a pair of characters (male and female) from childhood to death. Donât get caught up in the details, though. Just allow yourself to get lost in the lovely, sublime melodies.LEILANI POLK
Saturday, Neumos (Capitol Hill)
(Sandy) Alex G, Tomberlin, Slow Pulp
A prolific young songwriter builds a following on Bandcamp and indie-rock âfameâ swiftly follows. Thatâs more or less the trajectory of (Sandy) Alex G, 26-year-old Domino signee Alex Giannascoli, whoâs put out records at a frightening rate since his teens. His story recalls that of Car Seat Headrest, the local KEXP darling and favorite of rock fans who want to party like itâs 1987. Giannascoliâs music is also a throwback, sureâitâs hard not to be when weâre talking dudes with guitars in 2019âbut his doglegged song structures, offbeat production choices, and reticence to explain the meaning of his often elliptical lyrics make his work come off as a personal document instead of an homage. ANDREW GOSPE
Sunday, Neumos (Capitol Hill)
Sir Mix-a Lot & Tone Loc
You know, there's something special about a man who really loves ass. I think it reveals a lot about his characterâmoral rectitude, family values, unshakable faith. And that's why I'm so thankful that Seattle's patron saint of hip-hop and King of Ass, Sir Mix-A-Lot, is working a bit of his magic in Snoqualmie. Roll through to pay tribute to our own titan of PNW rap. JASMYNE KEIMIG
Friday, Clearwater Casino (Suquamish)
Two Door Cinema Club, Peach Pit
Irish indie-rock group Two Door Cinema Club have achieved international acclaim with their four studio albums. Join them as they perform tracks from their latest effort, False Alarm.
Friday, Showbox Sodo
MUSEUM OPENINGS
Beyond Bollywood: Indian Americans Shape the Nation
The long and varied history of Indian Americans stretches back to the 19th century, and this exhibition explores their contributions to American life from the age of railroads to the Civil Rights movement.
Saturday-Sunday, Museum of History & Industry (South Lake Union)
Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas: Carpe Fin
Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas has been producing "Haida manga," a new style marrying Haida formline with Japanese manga storytelling and other visual influences, for nearly two decades. SAM has commissioned a major new work from Yahgulanaas: a six-by-19-foot watercolor mural based on a Haida story about a hunter "taken underwater to the realm of a powerful spirit." The muralâaccompanied by a 19th-century headdress made by Yahgulanaas's relative Albert Edward Edensaw, a naaxin robe and pattern board, and the artist's sketchesâcomments on environmental issues and humanity's relationship with nature.
Friday-Sunday, Seattle Art Museum (Downtown)
SPORTS & RECREATION
Seattle Seahawks vs. Tampa Bay Buccaneers
The Seattle Seahawks will take on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. It's your only chance to catch the Seattle NFL team on their home turf this month, so don't miss out.Â
Sunday, CenturyLink Field (Pioneer Square)
