Want to feel like a kid again? Recess, a festival for adults to play recess games while drinking beer, dancing to DJs, and eating from food trucks is coming to Cal Anderson Park.
In case you prefer your events free and/or happening in non-cordoned-off public space: There is free top-notch theatre, as we wrote last week. Also: Umoja fest (see below), a free concert of the Low Hums at Cha Cha Lounge, plus free poetry from the Youth Speaks Seattle team and Seattle Poetry Slam team at Hugo House and an equally free two-day arts festival (see below). Head over to the CHS Calendar for more events.
THURSDAY, Aug. 1 – SUNDAY, Aug. 18: OK, this play is not free, but we’d gladly pony up $24.00 (but check out the discounts) to see Salty. And after we’ve told you the play is set in one of the last remaining zoos in the by-then-climate-change-ravaged world, that it’s Mother Nature who “be SALTY” and that it features gay penguins, you will too. 12th Avenue Arts, 8 PM
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FRIDAY, Aug 2 – SUNDAY, Aug. 4: The annual three-day Umoja Fest bills itself as “The Soul of Seafair,” and that almost says it all. We’ll add just this: The festival, which celebrates “the best of the African American community and African Diaspora culture in northwest” will bring dance troops and drill teams, a Children’s Day & Family Fun Village, afrobeat and soul music, basketball tournament and Ice Dream Ice Cream, South African, Jamaican plus other food vendors and much more to Judkins Park. Also don’t miss the Umojafest Parade starting at 1 PM Saturday at 23rd and Union. Judkins Park
FRIDAY, Aug 2 – SATURDAY, Aug. 3: The fact that festival:festival, an arts … festival, is free and open to the public is an essential part of what the organizers’ mission: To “foster inclusivity and accessibility within the arts” by removing barriers to art and between art genres. The line-up includes performances by Alice Gosti, Michele Dooley, and others, films by J Mase III and Clyde Petersen, music by local performers JusMoni, CarLarans, Dakota Camacho and visual art work by Aramis O. Hamer, Barry Johnson, Jessica Ry’cheal, and Ryna Frankel. Find the art at Northwest Film Forum, DJ’s, music, booths, and space for dancing on East Denny Way between Broadway and 10th Avenue (closed to traffic) plus at an art market at Amplifier’s new Art Lab in the Central District. Various locations
SATURDAY, Aug. 3: Good fun or out of hand bro-ism? Go see for yourself at the $25 ticketed “Adult Recess,” coming to Cal Anderson Park this Saturday. The park’s Bobby Morris Playfield, skate, bike polo, and tennis courts, basketball court, and grassy meadow bowl near the Shelterhouse will be put to use making space for every extracurricular grade school activity from organized games of kickball, foursquare, tetherball, and hopscotch to tagging. There will also be live music and DJs “playing your favorite old school hits” and food trucks “featuring all of your favorite foods from childhood.” The event is 21+. Cal Anderson
SATURDAY, Aug. 3: Artists usually go to great lengths for their work, but film director Jeff Frost went the extra mile and trained as a firefighter to gain access to more than 70 wildfires. He shot more than 350,000 photos over five years to create his video and sound artwork California On Fire. Each of the film’s five chapters mirrors the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, sadness, and acceptance. Northwest Film Forum, 5 – 7 PM
SATURDAY, Aug. 3: The boozy party bookending the 23rd edition of the Dead Baby Downhill is technically not on Capitol Hill, but the punk, DIY, very-few-rules bike race-meets-bacchanal (which includes a lot of drinking and bike-jousting) does start at Captain Black’s. It’ll all go downhill from there. (Check out CHS’ photos from 2016 here.) Captain Black’s, 6 PM
