weekend event planner

Here are the top 12 things to do in Houston this weekend

Rock out, shop, and check out some vibrant art at Saturday's Hot August Night.

Photo illustration courtesy of Emily Jaschke/Mid Main

Heads up, breakdancing fans: Red Bull BC One (aka the world's largest breaking competition), will be in town on Saturday. Watch the best b-boys and b-girls of Houston go head-to-head on the battle floor, with only one winner to be crowned.

Meanwhile, the weekend offers plenty of fun, including plenty of cool concerts, beer olympics (if you still need that Olympic fix), massive dinosaurs, Indian-meets-Spanish dance, and a punk rock garage sale. Here are your best bets for the weekend.

Thursday, August 12

Positivity Popup Benefiting Kids Meals and Animeals
Houston Heights realtor Caroline Schlemmer will partner with Generation Serve to host her latest Positivity Popup at A 2nd Cup this weekend. The free event is designed to promote volunteerism and will include fun DIY projects for kids that will benefit Kids Meals and Animeals. Examples include preparing lunch bags and making pet toys. Recent Positivity Popups have seen over 300 attendees. This event is ideal for kids and families preparing for back-to-school. 3 pm.

Holocaust Museum Houston presents Dr. Alan Schlesinger
Holocaust Museum Houston and its Boniuk Library will host Dr. Alan Schlesinger for a free author talk. Dr. Schlesinger will discuss his new book, Resilience: The Story of How My Father Survived the Holocaust. Dr. Schlesinger will tell the story of his father Joe’s three-year journey of survival that included 17 months of forced laborer on the eastern front followed by deportation to Auschwitz, where he survived for six months before spending an additional four months in five other concentration camps. 6 pm.

Friday, August 13

Kem in concert with Babyface and Musiq Soulchild
Get ready for a primo-soul experience at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion this weekend. First off, we've got smooth-as-hell, adult-contemporary R & B star Kem, who'll be here promoting his 2020 album Love Always Wins. Then, we have R &B legend Babyface, who has written and performed hit songs for such artists as Whitney Houston, Madonna, Ariana Grande, Usher and himself. Finally, we have Musiq Soulchild, who practically made it cool to listen to neo-soul in the early 2000s. Oh, this is gonna be sweet! 7 pm.

Zach Person in concert
Before he takes off on his first European tour, new Texas artist Zach Person will have his Houston LP release show at House of Blues this weekend. The Austin-based, 24-year-old guitar-playing phenom has a brand-new, self-titled record, produced by Will Loconto (Information Society/T-4-2), that dropped in April. Person got his start playing music in Houston (at the House of Blues, specifically), so this show is very much a homecoming for him. 7 pm.

Silambam Houston presents Sharing Stories
With cross-cultural conversation and collaborative storytelling, Sharing Stories incorporates Indian classical dance, flamenco and theater arts into a unique, family-friendly experience for diverse audiences. Act One is a Kathak-Flamenco curtain-raiser featuring two dynamic dance ensembles, accompanied by live musicians from Indian classical and Spanish folk tradition. Act Two is the feature presentation, which tells the story of a 16-year old warrior who fought fearlessly in the epic Kurukshetra war of Indian mythology. 8:30 pm.

Saturday, August 14

Revelry Summer Beer Olympics
Revelry on Richmond will be hosting this "Olympic" event — so grab your family, friends or fellow coworkers. (All you need is a team of 4 and $20.) There will be fun events such as giant beer pong, cornhole, golden tee closest to the pin, b-ball shootout, flip cup tic-tac-toe, and speed connect-4. Plus, there will be bonus points if your team dresses alike. The first-place winner will receive $400 in cash, $100 dollars in cash & a $100 gift card for second place, and a $100 Revelry on Richmond gift card for third place. 1 pm.

Community Artists' Collective presents "Third Ward Special" opening reception
For its August exhibit, Community Artists' Collective will highlight Houston’s iconic Third Ward neighborhood through the lenses of six photographers with deep roots in the area. This will feature the works of Marc Furi, Flash Gordon Parks, Rabéa Ballin, Risky Cereal, Brian Ellison, and Derrell Boson. The art is inspired by the many facets of the cultural, historic epicenter and is curated by Miles Payne and Marc Newsome. On display through Saturday, September 25. 5 pm.

Mid Main's Hot August Night
Mid Main lofts will host a "hot" night of entertainment, starting with music by Shakin’ All Over at Double Trouble along with drink specials at the Brass Tap — for those who mention Hot August Night.

Stop, shop and sip at the Mid Main Lofts Gallery for the FULL METAL JASCHKE art show (by frequent CultureMap contributor, Emily Jaschke), as well as My Flaming Heart, and grab the perfect disco outfit at the Fashion Time Machine. Both stores and the gallery will be open late.

Later, event headliners Disco Expressions will perform “A touch of Neil Diamond” at the Continental Club starting at 9 pm. The fun kicks off with Mid Main Lofts Gallery Open House featuring the FULL METAL JASCHKE Art Show from 6 pm-8 pm.

Road to River Revival Music Fest
Downtown District will close out its Road to River Revival Music Fest, a free monthly concert series at Market Square Park, this weekend. Presented in collaboration with Houston record label Splice Records and Saint Arnold Brewing Company, these concerts presented regional performers that showcased the genres represented at Splice Records’ River Revival Music Festival, taking place this September in New Braunfels. This month’s concert features Money Chicha with Mia Borders. 7:30 pm.

Sunday, August 15

Jurassic Quest at NRG Center
Sunday will be the last day to check out this dinosaur-full spectacle, which will be happening this weekend at NRG Center. Jurassic Quest features over 100 realistic life-size dinosaurs, including Apatosaurus, Spinosaurus, T-Rex, and a 50-foot-long Megalodon. Guests can interact with walking dinosaurs and baby dinos, ride enormous dinosaurs, experience a giant fossil dig, face painting, bounce house, games, and more. Let's hope a lot of folks show up dressed as Laura Dern or Jeff Goldblum. 9 am.

Punk Rock Garage Sale at Brash Brewing
You know, it's been a hot minute since we last checked in on our favorite garage sale devoted to anything punk-related. More than 24 individual vendors (both inside and outside) will be offering up music equipment, toys, zines, DVDs and VHS, albums and cassettes, clothing, art, and all kinds of weird stuff. Vendors will be spaced out to allow for proper social distancing, and masks are required to enter venue and when approaching vendors. Kids and dogs are always welcome. 1 pm.

Mutiny Wine Room's St. Roch Day "Yappy Hour" benefiting PupSquad Animal Rescue
Celebrate St. Roch, the Patron Saint of Dogs, for a "Yappy Hour" benefiting PupSquad Animal Rescue. Guests will receive a complimentary glass of sparkling wine and light bites at the event honoring PupSquad and the people who work so hard to save Houston's homeless animals. 4 pm-6 pm.

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welcome home, wes

Wes Anderson's Houston homecoming supports historic theater restoration

A fancy, eccentric-looking crowd showed up for the Wes Anderson Homecoming Soirée, held on Friday, July 17, at the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts’s Zilkha Hall.

Fans of the Houston-born, Oscar-winning auteur paid hundreds of dollars to attend this benefit event. Guys dressed up like characters from The Royal Tenenbaums. Others wore red skull caps and low-top Adidas, like the characters from The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Some people working the event even wore “Lobby Boy” hats, looking like the bellboy character from The Grand Budapest Hotel.

The people gathered for two reasons: 1) to get a chance to see Anderson in person; and 2) to raise money to renovate and restore the Garden Oaks Theater, a project spearheaded by local nonprofit Arthouse Houston. Top-tier “Founders Experience” ticketholders got a chance to meet Anderson onstage for pics. The St. John's School alum also received a proclamation from Mayor John Whitmire declaring it “Wes Anderson Day.”

After that, he and actor/fellow SJS alum Michael Maggart (who has appeared in several Anderson films) held a half-hour discussion where they reminisced about making Rushmore here in Houston, Anderson’s days working at the Bookstop on W. Alabama (now a Trader Joe’s), and how he and frequent collaborator Owen Wilson used to sneak into the River Oaks Theatre. (It involved pretending to lose a pair of glasses.)

Of course, the conversation shifted to Anderson coming back home to support the Garden Oaks project. “I always say you can't build an old building,” Anderson said. “First of all, I mean, a beautiful old place has history, and has people's experiences tied into it, and it has stories involved in it. And I think an old cinema — these things are kind of endangered all over the world, and it's not just an architectural thing. It's not even just a community thing. It's a sort of delivery system for something that’s, to me, deeply important to our country.

“It’s one thing we can access these things on all these devices,” he continued. “It's a different thing when you go to a place that's designed to help you share the experience of a movie together. It's such a powerful art form. And, anyway, for me, it's worth making a bit of an effort to try to save a place like the Garden Oaks.”

After the convo, he introduced the quintet of films he curated for the event. (Unfortunately the DCP file for his 2007 short Hotel Chevalier had some technical difficulties and was cut short.) “We wanted to do a screening here, and I don't have a new movie to show,” he said. “I don't have something hot off the presses. So, I thought I'd put together a little something that just was different from what anybody else will see. So it's a sort of mixture… This is just for Texas, this little collection.”

He eventually left the stage, leaving Arthouse Houston co-founder/director Maureen McNamara and Houston Public Media host Ernie Manouse to auction off perks & gifts and encourage the audience in helping revive another legendary, local movie palace. Among other items, attendees bid for treasures such as a special John Waters backstage VIP experience at his upcoming Christmas Show, dinner with John Cameron Mitchell, and a rare set of photo portraits of a young Anderson and friends, circa Bottle Rocket. Others paid $5,000 for select seats in the future theater and $5,000 to restore one foot of the venue's neon sign.

Photo by Alan Nguyen

Mayor John Whitmire declared Friday as Wes Anderson day in the director's honor.

So far, the effort has raised approximately $1.3 million of the $4 million required to begin the renovation project. The organization needs to raise $4 million by July 30 for the project to move forward. Those interested in securing naming rights will find more information here.

“River Oaks has 245 seats,” McNamara informed the crowd. “The Garden has over 700, and that is a place that we don't have in Houston. We have a need for that, for premieres, for performances in your life, for music, for a dynamic learning & exhibition space… So, we're building new on the shoulders of our history. I hope you guys will join us, and we need people to join us in a big way today.”

wes anderson garden oaks rushmore houston fundraisers

weekend event planner

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