If you’ve not completely blown out your synapses from the hilarity and revelry of St. Patrick’s Day, or if you decided something different is your pace, here are five suggestions to make your weekend full of maximum fun.
Saturday: Game Night At Offworld Arcade
Admit it. There’s something about those old-school games, the ones in the cabinets and have the low-res graphics that feels familiar, and often times, those games are the most fun. Get nostalgic and have a great time at Offworld Arcade night at the Checker Bar. New games include The Main Event, Joust and Satan’s Hollow as well as Burgertime, Video Pinball and Forgotten Worlds make their return as they have been fixed since last month. Oh, that’s right. This is monthly – so take advantage of the retro fun while you can. There will be a DJ as well.
Admission is $8 for adults, $5.00 for those under 18 (but the younger folk are only until 9 p.m.). Also, there’s a $5 raffle ticket to win a SEGA GENESIS and games, which will be a perfect in your new pad. Altered Beast, anyone? Fun starts at 6 p.m. and runs ’til close.
Checker Bar is at 124 Cadillac Square in Detroit.
Saturday: Dance! Opening Party
Okay art lovers, art supporters, and those who just want to be seen near art to impress somebody, here we go. Celebrate the opening of “Dance! American Art 1830-1960” at a casual and fun community party. Enjoy performances by the Detroit Square Dance Society and Hardcore Detroit, along with appetizers, a cash bar and the opportunity to see the exhibition before it opens to the public. The Detroit Square Dance Society and Anne McCallum’s set dancers will perform southern-style square dances and Irish set dancing.
Tickets are $20 (a little more with annoying processing fees but that’s the world today) and can be found here – the event starts at 7:00 p.m. and will be at the Detroit Institute of Arts at 5200 Woodward in Detroit.
Saturday: Social Sushi At Our/Detroit
This and now every Saturday from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m., Social Sushi has, well, sushi for you to enjoy and pair with locally-crafted vodka at the Our/Detroit tasting room tucked behind Michigan Central Station. Social Sushi will eventually have a permanent location, but as far as solid sushi options greater downtown doesn’t have that many compared to other styles of food, so it’s worth checking out. It’s all ages for the sushi, but obviously, if you want to try the vodka, you’re going to need to be over 21.
Get the fun at 2545 Bagley in Detroit.
Sunday: Marche du Nain Rouge
Of course you have to go to this. More than 6,000 revelers will be marching through the Cass Corridor. As they say on their page, “From Stardust to Star Wars to OnStar, Detroit has seen it all. Come on out with all your glittery, gaudy, glorious (and goofy) Star Power on Sunday, March 20th, as we meet the Nain Rouge once again on the streets of the Cass Corridor. It will be an intergalactic good time!”
The blastoff to intergalactic-ness is when the Marche starts at 1 p.m. at the corner of Second and Canfield in Detroit. There are specials at stores and more, we wrote a whole post about it. There’s also more than one afterparty.
Sunday: Core City Stories, A Photo Essay Series
It seems like every week there’s some story about a neighborhood changing or changing names. We have a sneaking suspicion South Park is just tracking Detroit’s development and mocking the new four-letter names as they go. But Detroit is no blank canvas, and there’s a lot to learn from long-time residents. After all, the city’s stories go far beyond what you’ll find catalogued in a library archive and no one person knows them all. Here’s a chance to hear some.
Core City Stories is a project that aims to preserve the historical identity of Core City neighborhood through the art of telling stories. That neighborhood is (approximately) just north and west of North Corktown and west of Woodbridge, dips a little south of Michigan Avenue in a part, and then to the west bounded by Grand Boulevard and north Warren avenue. This project features real people who share true, personal narratives about life in the once thriving Core City.
Each story builds upon a collective memory of the 1967 Detroit Riot and the construction of Interstate I-96 that ultimately led to the degradation of the neighborhood. In the new era of Detroit’s resurgence, residents are hopeful that Core City will be restored.
The event is at 2701 Bagley Avenue in Detroit. More info here.