The Weekend Has Landed - May 29th

This marks the first of our new weekly series, "The Weekend Has Landed," where we will chronicle what events are going down in Durham for the upcoming weekend. We'll do our best to get this post out on Fridays before that magical 5:00 hour.

And here. We. Go.

*Friday night*

The Pin Projekt @ The Pinhook - This is the annual fund raising event that supports the Troika Music Festival. Local artists use old bowling pins as the endoskeleton for the application of their creative wiles. The pins are then auctioned off to the highest bidder. There will be a viewing session, along with cocktails and hors d'oeuvres, starting at 6:30 PM at the Pinhook. The auction will begin at 8:00 PM, and then at 10:00 PM Cool Jonh Ferguson will heat up the joint with his special blend of blues, funk and R&B.

Poetry Reading @ Sound Pure - Cockeyed Press and Carolina Wren Press are presenting a poetry reading at Sound Pure, featuring four poets: Shirlette Ammons, Chris Tonelli, Andrea Selch and Karen Leona Anderson. The event starts at 7:00 PM, and admission is free. Hat tip to New Raleigh, which has more details here.

Durham Bulls vs. Buffalo Bisons - It's Friday Night Fireworks at the DBAP. The game is scheduled to start at 7:05 PM.

Live Music @ The Broad Street Cafe - Andrew Martin goes on at 8:00 PM, and is followed by P.M. Bulldozer. BSC's event site has more details.

*Saturday*

Thanks goes out to Bull City Rising for pointing out the next two events:

Downtown Durham Resource Fair & Picnic - A picnic with free food and live music, where a multitude of local community organizations will be present, looking to recruit some new volunteers. Here's your chance to help the community! The event runs from 10:00 AM - 3:00 PM at 403 E. Main St.

Five Points Palooza - The Blue Tailed Skinks will be setting up shop at Five Points to play some music and enjoy the weather, and encourage folks to come out and join them. They will be downtown from 7:00 PM - 'til. (craigslist events)

7th Annual Bull City Chili Challenge - The fine writers at Carpe Durham uncovered this gem, a CASI sanctioned chili cook-off. Show up at Durham Central Park at 11:00 AM to taste some salsa, or at 12:00 PM to taste the chili.

See No Weevil @ The Hat Lounge - Head over to the Hat Lounge in Northgate between 2:00 PM to listen to a trio performing an eclectic mix of blues and R&B. They will also be serving Pizza and Chips!

Durham Bulls vs. Buffalo Bisons - The second game of a back-to-back. Starts at 7:05 PM.

Live Music @ The Broad Street Cafe - Love N A Box at 8:00 PM, and Pagan Hellcats at 10:00 PM.

Black Bull: A Durham Cabaret @ The Pinhook - A first of its kind cabaret featuring a number of different local performers, starting at 10:00 PM. The Herald-Sun wrote an article on it, and here is another blogger's take.

*Sunday*

A Stuff Swap for SWOOP @ Traction HQ - Bring stuff you don't want, and trade it for stuff you do! Any stuff left at the end of the day is donated to Strong Women Organizing Outrageous Projects (SWOOP). It runs from 2:00 PM - 5:00 PM at 1018 Broad St. (traction)

Durham Bulls vs. Buffalo Bisons - It's Pepsi Kids Run the Bases night, and Lance Family Sunday (bring 3 Lance wrappers and get 2 tickets for the price of 1).

Whew. That's all for now, if you can make it to all of those events, color me impressed.

Trivia-ing!

UPDATE: 2010 Edition! adds Beyú Caffe to the mix Tuesdays @ 9:00pm

Durham is a town filled with graduate students and over-educated workers of every ilk. You'd think that in a city like this, you'd be able to find a bar trivia night at every corner. Well, perhaps the bars realized it was a losing battle, because there are strikingly few throughout the "City of Medicine." My crack investigative journalism (calling about a dozen bars) was able to uncover the following trivia nights hosted in Durham bars:

1) James Joyce Irish Pub - Tuesdays @ 9:30pm
2) Bull McCabes Irish Pub - Wednesdays @ 9:00pm
3) Dain's Place - Wednesdays @ 8:15pm

Evidently, City Beverage and Alivia's used to have pretty great trivia nights, but both have discontinued that tradition.

I plan on testing out my knowledge of useless things next week. Anybody know of any other places that have trivia nights in Durham?

Drinking Liberally (Liberally Drinking?)

If you like beer and arguing about politics, you might check out the Durham chapter of Drinking Liberally. Get together with a bunch of "left thinking" individuals (whatever that means) and argue about the advantages and disadvantages of a regressive tax structure on the economic impacts of neoliberal policies with regard to socially just community education initiatives. Or you could just use it as an opportunity to meet new people.

Thursday, May 28 (tonight) at 9:00pm

Bull McCabe's ~ 427 W Main St

Local Yogurt Now Open!

If you find yourself in the Rockwood Park area, Local Yogurt has now opened their doors for business. They're open relatively late, open until 9, 10 or 11 PM depending on the day of the week.

I walked over today and had the coffee flavored yogurt, with fresh bananas on top, which was delicious. I will definitely be back to sample the plethora of different flavor and topping combinations.



View The Durham Socialite Map in a larger map

Scenes from the Weekend

Friday's show at the Local 506 was everything I had hoped for, an enjoying evening of local music. Lemming Malloy had stepped up their game since I had last seen them, and I walked out with a copy of their new album. They are true showmen (and woman), and they had the crowd captivated from the first note.


The surprise of the evening was I Was Totally Destroying It, who opened up for Lemming. Aside from faint name recognition, I had no expectations going in. What they did was put on a high energy show, with the band members smiling throughout the entire show. Socialite contributor D.Mann put it best when he stated that "their album is good, their live show is even better."

Saturday was A Taste of Durham, which I wasn't particularly impressed with. It was definitely more of a family minded event, and a number of the food vendors were from across the Triangle instead of being limited to Durham City/County, so it was a bit closer to A Taste of RTP. However, it was still a beautiful day, and trying out different foods and spirits was a pretty good way to spend an afternoon.