All week long, we've been posting lists of Seattle events to keep you busy (including the best arts & culture events, quirky things to do, and the best music shows to see), but we realize there's a lot to sort through. So, if you only have time to read one list, make it this one: We've plucked the biggest events you need to know about in every genre, from the HUMP! Film Festival to an evening with David Sedaris to the Short Run Comix & Arts Festival. See them all below, and find even more things to do this weekend on our complete EverOut Things To Do calendar.
Jump to: Food & Drink Festivals | Comedy & Performances | Holiday Markets & Festivals | Other Festivals & Community Events | Film Festivals | Major Concerts Major Concerts | Readings & Talks | Sports & Recreation | Arts & Music Festivals

HOLIDAY MARKETS & FESTIVALS

Best of the Northwest Art & Fine Craft Show
See and shop work by over 100 local artists and artisans at the 31st edition of this annual market, which will also have food trucks.
Friday-Sunday, Magnuson Park Hangar 30 (Sand Point)

The Farewell Glitter Sale 2019
Seattle Goodwill will add some pizzazz to the winter of your discontent with their annual sale of all things sparkly: shoes, evening wear, purses and accessories, and more. This is the final year of this event, so make it count.
Saturday-Sunday, Seattle Goodwill (Downtown)

Finnish Christmas Market
Get a taste of Finland at this annual Joulumarkkinat featuring crafts, gifts, music and dancing, and traditional treats (like pea soup, sandwiches, and pulla sweet bread). The coffee will be free!
Saturday, Swedish Cultural Center (Queen Anne)

Newport Ski Swap
Winter sports season is fast approaching, so now's a good time to swap gear you don't want for gear you do want. At this 34th annual event, you'll find over 10,000 new and used snow sports items. 
Friday-Saturday, Newport High School (Bellevue) 

Oddmall: Emporium of the Weird
Shop for goods from over 85 indie artisans to sate all your kitschy needs and desires.
Saturday-Sunday, Evergreen State Fairgrounds (Edmonds)

One-Day Better Book Sale
Find gifts for your bookwormy loved ones starting at just three bucks. 
Saturday, North Seattle College

Swanson's Reindeer Festival
Shop a variety of seasonal plants, bulbs, arrangements, and Christmas trees, as well as other gifts like books, jewelry, and home decor, at the decked-out nursery. Plus, visit with Santa and his real-life reindeer, check out model trains, and enjoy live music throughout the season.
Saturday-Sunday, Swanson's Nursery (Ballard)

FOOD & DRINK FESTIVALS

AAJA Seattle Chef Showcase 2019
Bid on auction items and sample food from celebrated local eateries like Adana, Hood Famous, and Nirmal's, all for the good cause of supporting the Asian American Journalists Association.
Friday, Wing Luke Museum (Chinatown-International District)

America's Test Kitchen Seattle Eats Festival
It’s the return of public TV’s favorite cooking show, America’s Test Kitchen, for the Seattle Eats Festival, which is definitely cause for culinary celebration. The two-day event kicks off at Block 41 with ATK’s Cheers to 20 Years anniversary celebration, a party to benefit local nonprofit FareStart (which helps people experiencing homelessness or poverty with training and jobs in the service industry), and celebrate the release of ATK’s new How to Cocktail cookbook. ATK hosts and test cooks will be on hand (including mains Bridget Lancaster and Julia Collin Davison), with well-regarded local mixologists (like Amanda Reed of Heartwood Provisions) and chefs (Adana’s Shota Nakajima among them) serving bites and cocktails. The main event occurs the following day, with a bevy of local restaurants, cafes, eateries, and the chefs behind them offering food and drink alongside an afternoon of ATK-led cooking demos (like a how-to on Torta Caprese Italian chocolate almond cake, which is gluten-free and all for me), cookbook signings, photo ops, and more. This year’s featured guest chef is venerable Iron Chef-famed Masaharu Morimoto, who just opened a restaurant in Chinatown/ID. LEILANI POLK
Friday-Saturday, Bell Harbor International Conference Center (Downtown)

K’URB Street Food Market Pop-Up
Enjoy a curbside feast with "hyperlocal, globally inspired" cuisine from local vendors like T'Juana Tacos, Piroshky Piroshky, BeanFish Taiyaki, Kismet Turkish Cafe and Bakery, and more.
Sunday, Fremont Sunday Market

Northwest Chocolate Festival 2019
Now in its 10th year, this gathering of artisan chocolate makers actually extends beyond the Northwest to more than 20 countries around the globe, with exhibitors like beloved Seattle staples Fran’s and Bakery Nouveau, and Portland’s Moonstruck Chocolate and Bees and Beans joining names like Theo and Philo Artisan Chocolates (from the Philippines), Hogarth Craft Chocolates (New Zealand), Al Nassma Chocolate (Dubai), and FuWan Chocolate (Taiwan), among so many others. You’ll find milk and dark chocolate, truffles, bonbons, caramels, molten cakes, decadent desserts, and plenty more, in addition to enjoying demos, educational workshops and seminars, cooking classes, and tastings. Look, it’s a shit-ton of chocolate, okay? How can you argue with that? You can’t. Go get blissed. LEILANI POLK
Saturday, Smith Cove Cruise Terminal (Interbay)

Snohomish BrewFest
Choose from 75 beers from over 30 local craft brewers and feast on chicken sliders, brats, mac and cheese, brownies, bacon, and more comfort food. (According to the organizers, some attendees like to adorn themselves with a homemade pretzel necklace, so do with that information what you will.)
Friday, Thomas Family Farm (Snohomish)

South Sound Winter Beer Festival
This craft beer festival promises seasonal staples like "dark imperial stouts, roasty porters, strong beers, Scottish ales, barrel-aged surprises, spiced ales, piney IPAs" and much more from over 30 Washington breweries.
Saturday, Washington State Fair Events Center (Puyallup)

OTHER FESTIVALS & COMMUNITY EVENTS

Adult Swim
Meet a gigantic Pacific octopus, snap selfies with a diver, snack on hors d’oeuvres, sip drinks, and groove to music by KEXP DJ Troy Nelson at this "after-hours aquarium experience."
Friday, Seattle Aquarium (Downtown)

Auburn Veterans Day Parade
This 54th annual parade and observance in Auburn—named Washington's Regional Site for celebrating the holiday by the Veterans Day National Committee and the US Department of Veterans Affairs—features high school marching bands, military vehicles, honor guards, and other such fanfare.
Saturday, Auburn Main Street

Hmong New Year Celebration
Celebrate the Hmong cultural traditions of China, Laos, and Thailand with a New Year celebration replete with a ball-tossing ritual, flower cloth sessions, live performances, and food.
Saturday, Seattle Center

Short Run Comix & Arts Festival
In 2018, Stranger lit critic Rich Smith wrote of Short Run: "You’re going. You’re bringing at LEAST $50 cash. You’re picking up new art books, zines, buttons, and little strips of beautiful screen-printed ephemera from more than 270 internationally/nationally/locally-renowned comics creators." All this applies for the ninth edition of Short Run, only it'll be even bigger. This year's artists will include Jasjyot Singh Hans, Glynnis Fawkes, Marc Bell, Malaka Gharib, and Jul Gordon. (Mexican artist Abraham Diaz will unfortunately not be present, having been denied a visa.) There will also be a screening of a collection of the late, lamented Bruce Bickford's animation, courtesy of Clyde Petersen and friends. Head to the afterparty at the Vera Project once you're done shopping.
Saturday, Fisher Pavilion (Seattle Center)

PERFORMANCES

Beautiful
The dancers of Can Can and powerhouse singer Renee Holiday (formerly Shaprece, who "ranks among the Northwest’s most radiant, soulful vocalists and producers of torch-song-centric electronic music," per Dave Segal) collaborate on this sensuous coming-of-age story, featuring a leading performance by Holiday and new choreography.
Friday-Sunday, Can Can (Downtown)

Dracula
Dracula will be breathed to life yet again when playwright Steven Dietz's adaptation of the Bram Stoker tale is revived and revised specifically for ACT Theatre. In this Dracula, the focus shifts to Mina Murray Harker. Her character has always been ripe for a reckoning or a refresh, or both. She is the source of endless fascination, because she is an obvious heroine in Stoker's novel, pure of heart and mind, and yet she's just as much a casualty of Dracula's desires as her poor friend Lucy. No matter how many gender norms Stoker challenged, it was still the Victorian era. Mina could be given only so much agency. "But to simply make her a victim was super unsatisfying to all of us," director John Langs explained. "So Steven has done some reworking of the story, and she really comes to the forefront. The hunted becomes the hunter in this particular adaptation." LEILANI POLK
Friday-Sunday, ACT Theatre (Downtown)

The Great Moment
Playwright Anna Ziegler earned a lot of attention in 2015 for Photograph 51, a well-received bio-drama about Rosalind Franklin, the woman who discovered DNA. Nicole Kidman played the starring role, everybody loved it, and Ziegler was praised for her "fair-minded and philosophical" (New York Times) approach to character building. Ziegler will likely bring that same talent for creating multidimensional characters to The Great Moment, which will have its world premiere at the Seattle Rep. According to press materials, the story follows a woman named Sarah, who is watching her grandfather slowly die while she raises her son. Alexandra Tavares plays the lead in this, and I've loved everything I've ever seen her in. RICH SMITH
Friday-Sunday, Seattle Repertory Theatre (Seattle Center)

Locally Sourced
Three local choreographers will present three brand-new works for Pacific Northwest Ballet, all of which pique my curiosity for different reasons. Tony-nominated choreographer Donald Byrd often uses dance to examine acts of violence levied against minorities, so it'll be interesting to see how music by Emmanuel Witzthum, who creates warm, morning-light compositions, works into his vision. Bellevue-based choreographer Eva Stone, who produces the CHOP SHOP: Bodies of Work festival, will have a new piece called F O I L. She often challenges assumptions about gender in her work, and her recent collaboration with Au Collective at PNB & SAM’s Sculptured Dance ruled. And PNB corps member Miles Pertl makes his choreographic debut with music from Stranger Genius Award finalist Jherek Bischoff, whose soaring indie compositions always make me feel better about life. RICH SMITH
Friday-Saturday, McCaw Hall (Seattle Center)

Moscow Ballet's Great Russian Nutcracker
A cast of touring ballet dancers from Moscow will take their 27th tour across the United States to perform the Great Russian Nutcracker, which promises puppets and amazing costumes.
Friday, Paramount Theatre (Downtown)

Seattle International Comedy Competition 2019
For nearly all of November, a lengthy last-comic-standing battle rages. Thirty-two comedians (split into two batches, each of which performs every night for one week) start the contest, and one will finish a champion. Celebrity judges and audience reactions determine who passes the preliminaries and who becomes a finalist. See the first week's schedule here.
Friday–Sunday, Various locations

Shout, Sister, Shout!
Rejoice in the music and power of the "Godmother of Rock 'n' Roll," Rosetta Tharpe, the amazing singer and guitarist who transformed American music.
Friday-Sunday, Seattle Repertory Theatre (Seattle Center)

SuicideGirls: Blackheart Burlesque
SuicideGirls Blackheart Burlesque promises geek-friendly burlesque performance, with references to Star Wars, Rick and Morty, Stranger Things, Sailor Moon, and other pop culture favorites.
Friday, Benaroya Hall (Downtown)

The Tempest
Accomplished director Annie Lareau (Cornish College of the Arts' Much Ado About Nothing, many Seattle Public Theater productions), will tackle Shakespeare's fantastical final work about an island wizard, his hot daughter, his nonhuman slaves, and his princely prisoner. This staging will take place in an Edwardian castle, "one of the last periods before media started to infiltrate people's lives."
Friday-Sunday, Center Theatre (Seattle Center)

The Thanksgiving Play
In this holiday comedy, Lakota playwright Larissa FastHorse takes aim at a group of white teaching artists who end up reasserting colonial ideology in their attempt to rid their teaching practice of that very same ideology. According to Jesse Green's review in the New York Times, the more cringe-inducing skits in the show are based on actual school lesson plans lifted from social-media posts: "They include potted history and offensive ditties and, in one case, a suggestion to split the pupils into Pilgrims and Indians 'so the Indians can practice sharing.'" Sounds like it'll be another fine entry into the growing canon of plays about white people fucking up something they're trying to fix. I'm unfamiliar with the actors in the show, but I have no doubt they'll flourish in the highly capable hands of director Kelly Kitchens. RICH SMITH
Friday-Sunday, Seattle Public Theater (Green Lake)

Where is home : birds of passage
You know what's really scary? Concentration camps for asylum seekers at the border, constant ICE raids, border patrol separating children from their parents and not having the administrative infrastructure to unite them, and the state generally doing everything it can to dehumanize people who want to immigrate to this country. In her brand-new—and first-ever (!)—solo show, Where is home : birds of passage, local Italian American choreographer Alice Gosti aims to push back against the xenophobic narratives that drive these anti-immigrant policies. She'll draw from her own history with immigration as well as the larger history of Italian immigration to the United States in a spectacle that will run about three hours. As always with Gosti's work, you'll get to decide how much attention you want to devote to this performance. And the act of making that decision, of course, is part of the performance. RICH SMITH
Friday-Sunday, ACT Theatre (Downtown)

FILM FESTIVALS & OPENINGS

Cinema Italian Style
The Cinema Italian Style is a weeklong SIFF mini-festival featuring the best in contemporary Italian cinema.
Friday-Sunday, SIFF Cinema Uptown (Queen Anne)

'Doctor Sleep' Opening
Danny Torrance, the psychic kid from The Shining, is all grown up—and messed up, understandably. When he meets a girl with the "shining," the same ability as his own, the two allies must fight a cult that tries to exploit their power.

HUMP! Film Festival
The HUMP! Film Festival has been bringing audiences a new kind of porn since 2005. The 15th Annual HUMP! Film Festival festival features 21 short dirty movies—each less than five minutes—all created by people who aren't porn stars but want to be one for a weekend. The filmmakers and stars show us what they think is hot and sexy, creative and kinky, their ultimate turn-ons and their craziest fantasies. Our carefully curated program is a cornucopia of body types, shapes, ages, colors, sexualities, genders, kinks, and fetishes—all united by a shared spirit of sex-positivity. HUMP! is a celebration of creative sexual expression. You will see films at HUMP! that shock you. You will see films at HUMP! that make you laugh. And you will see films at HUMP! that turn you on. You will also be touched by the sincerity and vulnerability with which these films are lovingly made. HUMP!'s main mission is to change the way America sees—and makes and shares—porn. DAN SAVAGE
Friday-Sunday, On the Boards (Queen Anne)

MAJOR CONCERTS & MUSIC EVENTS

CATHEDRALS XXVIII: Jesca Hoop, Ken Stringfellow, Chloe Foy
My first encounter with Jesca Hoop was on a little EP called Kismet I found in a stack of ignored CDs at my college radio station. It was short and intense, with enough winding moonlit passion to power a whole album (which, incidentally, it would do later in 2007). From that moment 12 years ago to 2016's Sub Pop release of her latest, Memories Are Now, Hoop has toured with Shearwater and Andrew Bird, among many other artists, released double digits’ worth of EPs and LPs, and grown in her abilities to maintain a level of sister-wife-survival-guide in a wading pool of folkloric intensities. This album holds promise for continued growth in the mythic forest realm her music inhabits, with a sense of matured centering, an innate feeling that her work has finally found a stronghold from which to blossom. KIM SELLING
Friday, Saint Mark's Cathedral (Capitol Hill)

Emerald City Soul Club 14th Annual Rare Soul Weekender
A residency that’s been active for 14 years is an impressive feat of longevity in a town that can be pretty fickle. So it’s fitting that the anniversary celebration of Emerald City Soul Club—both a monthly event that gets hips shakin’ and asses quakin’, and the DJs who spin those righteously soulful sounds—stretches over several days. The festivities kick off with a meet and greet featuring weekender guest DJs and selectors at the Triple Door. Next, two nights (Friday and Saturday) of main events, Soul Nite #1 and #2, at the usual digs, Lo-Fi; expect rare R&B, soul, Latin, funk, crossover, and modern 45s played by top collectors/DJs from the US and Europe. ECSC DJ and Stranger staffer Mike Nipper gave me a sneak preview of songs that’ll likely be played sometime this weekend: Curtis Lee, “Is She in Your Town”; Joanie Sommers, “Don’t Pity Me”; Bernadette Bascom, “I Don’t Wanna Lose Your Love”; Arnold Blair, “Trying to Get Next to You”; and the Incredibles, "Miss Treatment.” There’s also a Saturday daytime Big Dig Record Swap at Vermillion, and on Sunday, the All-Dayer Soul Survivor Party (actually, 4 p.m. to close) at Screwdriver. In sum, plenty of opportunities to gtf down. LEILANI POLK
Friday-Sunday, Various locations

Fisher, Claptone, Idris Elba, Weiss, Taiki Nulight, Little Fritter, Sean Majors
The All My Friends Seattle crew is back to throw a third major bash after their explosive summer, which will feature sets by Fisher, Claptone, Idris Elba, Weiss, Taiki Nulight, Little Fritter, and Sean Majors on the You Little Beauty Tour.
Saturday, WaMu Theatre (Sodo)

Infected Mushroom
Psychedelic trance innovators Infected Mushroom are a rare duo, combining live performance as a concert band with new explorations in electronica and dance music.
Saturday, the Showbox (Downtown)

Ladies & Gentleman, An Evening with Jason Mraz & Raining Jane
Someone's got to be the less-douchey John Mayer, and there's no better contender than Jason Mraz, a perfectly good guy making perfectly nice music that will not make you cover your ears in horror should you happen to hear it on the radio or in the supermarket. He's funny, humble, pro-gay, and he wears hats. He'll be joined by '90s-bred folk-rock artist Raining Jane. DAVE SEGAL
Saturday-Sunday, Paramount Theatre (Downtown)

The Movie Music of John Williams
If you do not know who John Williams is, do not bother reading what I have to say about him in this blurb. John Williams' greatest achievement as a film composer is his love theme “Han Solo and the Princess” for Han and Leia in The Empire Strikes Back. (You, the pop-culture ignoramus, are still reading! Yes, Williams composed the music for the Star Wars series, and also Jaws, Indiana Jones, and so on, and so on.) This love theme has all of the sensitivity and cheap beauty that made “Spartacus: Love Theme” a jazz standard. If the great jazz pianist Bill Evans were alive today (why don’t some people live forever?), he would have made pure magic out of Williams’s “Love Theme.” CHARLES MUDEDE
Friday-Sunday, Benaroya Hall (Downtown)

Seefeel, Dr. Troy
You could say this is my most anticipated show of 2019; I've been waiting 26 years to catch Seefeel live. Led by guitarist/producer Mark Clifford and vocalist/guitarist Sarah Peacock, the group arose from the UK’s potent shoegaze/post-rock scene, but immediately established themselves as outliers, embracing dubby bass lines and Aphex Twin–like ambience on releases such as More Like Space and Quique. (It made sense that Richard D. James remixed the early Seefeel classic “Time to Find Me.”) Even more blissed-out and ethereal than My Bloody Valentine circa Loveless, Seefeel generated impossibly sensuous whirlpools of sound up through 1994's Starethrough EP. Their aesthetic gradually morphed into an alien strain of IDM while still retaining Seefeel's mesmerizing guitar daubs and disembodied dub vibrations. For this gig, I'm betting on a stunning career retrospective involving radical interpretations of old faves, with possibly some new tracks scattered throughout. DAVE SEGAL
Friday, Neumos (Capitol Hill)

Snails
Bass music heavyweight and general eardrum-crusher Snails will return to Tacoma on his World Of Slime Tour.
Saturday, Tacoma Dome

Young Thug, Machine Gun Kelly, Polo G, Strick
Since catching the ears of the rap cognoscenti with his 1017 Thug mixtape in 2013, Thugger has carved out his own path in popular rap through repetition and oddball yelps, scoring a steady string of singles like smashes “Stoner” and “Danny Glover” to his 2016 Jeffery mixtape, all recorded alongside a cadre of scene-defining producers, including London On Da Trak and Metro Boomin. NICK ZURKO
Sunday, WaMu Theater (Sodo)

READINGS & TALKS

Adrienne Brodeur: Wild Game
Brodeur writes about her very complicated adolescence in this memoir, subtitled My Mother, Her Lover, and Me. At 14, she became her mother's confidante during the latter's affair with her husband's best friend. Entertainment predicts that this tale of terrible parenting, its impacts, and the possibility of reconciliation may be the "next big memoir." Brodeur will read with Danya Kukafka.
Friday, Elliott Bay Book Company (Capitol Hill)

An Evening with David Sedaris
He’s back. One of America’s most beloved writers and humorists returns to Seattle for his annual performance. It’s almost a tradition by now, the yearly visit from David Sedaris, as though your favorite uncle or the best friend you wish you had pops in for a night to read from whatever he’s working through. We’re lucky that way. No word yet on whether his material will be old or new (maybe both?) but, like always, he is sure to amuse. KATIE HERZOG
Sunday, Benaroya Hall (Downtown)

Novel Nights
Raise money for Seattle's most beloved writing center, Hugo House, at this book club series featuring special guests (including the authors, if they're still alive!). The books you'll discuss this weekend are The Lord of the Rings on Friday and The Boys in the Boat (with author Daniel James Brown) on Saturday.
Friday–Saturday, Hugo House (First Hill)

SPORTS & RECREATION

Sounders FC vs. Toronto FC Playoffs
For the third time in four seasons, the Seattle Sounders will take on Toronto FC in the MLS Cup, the post-season championship game of Major League Soccer. If you can't make it to CenturyLink Field to catch the action, watch the game at one of the many local bars and restaurants that will host viewing parties.
Sunday, CenturyLink Field (Pioneer Square)