STUFF TO DO
THURSDAY:
Concrete and Grass: Lowertown Music Festival
Where: Mears Park, 221 E. 5th St., St. Paul
When: 7 p.m.
Cost: Free
Want to hear a smorgasbord of music — we’re talkin’ everything from folk to jazz to opera — without having to move around too much? Camp out at Mears Park for Concrete and Grass in downtown St. Paul and catch ’em all. The fest, which celebrates the start of the performance season, will go on for three days, but we recommend going over on Thursday because that’s when you’ll be able to catch the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra play Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony the night before its post-lockout season opener at the Ordway Center.
FRIDAY:
Wam-O-Rama
Where: Weisman Art Museum
When: 7:30 p.m.
Cost: Free
The only thing better than food is free food, right? Here at the Daily, we’re committed to sniffing out all the complimentary grub we can, and it’s all for you. This Friday, our campus art museum isn’t just making it with the free nosh; they also have some decent local tunes on tap — Charlie Van Stee and his band will play with William Within and Beasthead. While you’re there, make sure you take a long peek at special exhibit “Reviewing the Real” during its final weekend at the Weisman.
SATURDAY:
“Almost Yesterday”
Where: Gamut Gallery, 1006 Marquette Ave., Minneapolis
When: 7 p.m.
Cost: Free
The first ten wonders of the world hardly hold a candle to the self-proclaimed eleventh, a local street artist who makes his mark comfortably outside the bounds of the law. Keeping his/her/their identity largely under wraps, Eleventh Wundr paints monsters, birds and people that manage to be playful and gloomy at the same time. You can scavenge for his wundrful work all over town on trains, brick walls and hanging on street lights. Make it easy on yourself and head to Wundr’s show of all new works at the Gamut Gallery. Maybe you can figure out who’s behind all of this whacky art while you’re there.
CULTURE TO CONSUME
STREAM THIS: “Orange is the New Black”
A growing family of original series is making Netflix less of a punch line for what you’ll be doing this Friday night and more of a veritable one-stop for cultural currency. Boot up your computer and check out this smart critique of privilege, class and sexuality. It’s based on the true story of one young yuppie who had to go to minimum security prison for a year — along the way, Piper Kerman (fictionalized as Piper Chapman) learned a lot about the ways other people live. And just a reminder: The ol’ use-your-ex’s-password trick is liable to fail you these days — Netflix recently changed the game so that an account can only be streaming to two devices at once.
PLAY THIS: Capture the Flag
Every Friday from 9 p.m. to midnight, the place where you normally doze off becomes a place where it would be impossible to. Toss on your most ninja-like black get-up, dash to Northrop Mall and join a campus-wide game of Capture the Flag. How does it work? There are two teams. Each team hides their flag. The object is to cross into enemy territory, swipe the other team’s flag and bring it back home. Think you can handle it? Sounds like a good way to sweat those first-week nerves out of your system.
EAT THIS: Sushi
While nobody is going to judge you for buying your sushi at Walgreens — nobody here, at least — there’s a roll of alternative options in and around campus, and they’re sprouting up all the time. If you’re in the mood for a fancy night out, hit up Masu Sushi and Robata in Northeast (it’s on the same Fourth Street we all know and love — just keep walking down a few blocks from campus). For a more casual fish ‘n’ ramen ordeal, the newly opened 123 Sushi in Dinkytown is cheaper and more playful — perfect for a special lunch with friends. And while you’re waiting for Haiku to open in Stadium Village, there’s $5 sushi at Lund’s every Wednesday.
