Tim’s Picks: A Star City sort of weekend
5 ideas – and then some – to help get your weekend in shape.
Support for this edition comes from Brokerage Brewing Co., presenting Broktoberfest 2025. Join West Lafayette’s first brewery for four days of food, entertainment and beer, Thursday through Sunday, Sept. 25-28, at Brokerage, 2516 Covington St. Get the band and entertainment lineup and all the day-by-day Broktoberfest details here or click the Broktoberfest sign below.
Support also comes from Visit Lafayette-West Lafayette, offering a guide to local festivals, excursions, pumpkin patches, foliage tours, special events and everything else fall has to offer. For all the things to do in Greater Lafayette this fall, check here with Visit Lafayette-West Lafayette.
And now, it’s time for …
By Tim Brouk / For Based in Lafayette
Star City Nights, 6 p.m. Friday, Sept. 26, downtown Lafayette — West Lafayette’s loss is downtown Lafayette’s gain. After 20 years, the popular early fall festival Starry Night received its sunset, but event organizers on the other side of the Wabash River unofficially scooped it up and slightly rebranded it to Star City Nights, a live music festival centered on Main Street. The event is free and will feature similar vibes as Starry Night — jangly, dreamy indie rock and pop bands from near and far with some added flavor from Lafayette’s own The Velocity District and others. Headliners include Virginia duo Vacation Manor and Indianapolis acts Feverdream and Kristen Bales. Along with the tunes, this new festival will feature interactive art displays, local makers’ booths and a smattering of food trucks — all under those city stars.
“Queens of the Patio,” 10 p.m. Friday, Sept. 26, Digby’s Pub, 133 N. Fourth St., Lafayette — Summer is officially over but downtown Lafayette can still get hot for drag at Digby’s. This free outdoor show will feature the talents of queens Lala, Sinacian Moni from Indianapolis and Little White Liza, and it will be hosted by Anitta Schwanz and Veronica Fox, two drag performers who have booked lively shows around downtown for the last few years. Expect bodacious beats, bawdy humor, dynamite dancing and death drops galore. Bring those dollars to tip these fabulous and athletic queens.
Art on the Wabash, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 28, Tapawingo Park, 100 Tapawingo Drive, West Lafayette — Organized by the Art Museum of Greater Lafayette, the annual Art on the Wabash is like an outdoor art gallery, except most pieces on display are affordable. Four of the pieces will be deemed “award-winning” because Art on the Wabash is a juried event, handing out cash prizes to the artists of the top three works. Attendees can select the fourth Art on the Wabash artist awardee by voting for their favorite work for the People’s Choice Award. As usual, a plethora of media will be represented by these local and regional artists — ceramics, glass, wood, jewelry, metal, fiber, photography, pastel, acrylic, oil, watercolor and mixed media. Art on the Wabash will also feature live music, food trucks and children’s activities to make it a well-rounded family event for art lovers of all ages.
Harlem Quartet, 3 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 28, Loeb Playhouse, Stewart Center, Purdue University — Grammy Award-winning Harlem Quartet will display its classical music prowess this weekend at Purdue. Featuring violinists Melissa White and Ingmar Gavilán, cellist Felix Umansky and violist Jaime Amador, the string Quartet picked up the coveted Grammy statue in 2013 for its collaboration with jazz pianist Chick Correa and vibraphonist Gary Burtin on “Mozart Goes Dancing.” Before the classical/jazz mashup, Harlem Quartet performed for the Obamas at The White House and toured South Africa. More recently, the group released its album “Cross Pollination,” which also walks the line between jazz and classical music. The release featured jazz compositions by the likes of Dizzy Gillespie in a classical treatment, and it jazzified pieces by Claude Debussy and other classical composers. $22-$40. Tickets.
“Indiana’s False Hauntings” book release party, 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 30, Second Flight Books, 2122 Scott St., Lafayette — “There’s no such thing as ghosts.” Whether you like to believe it or not, the fascination with the supernatural is high in Indiana, even if these “hauntings” are easily explained away. In that spirit, Lafayette author Ashley Watson’s book, “Indiana’s False Hauntings,” digs through 19th century and early 20th century supernatural accounts in Indiana newspapers. The articles are entertaining and range from the ridiculous to the (almost) believable. Yes, most of these stories can be debunked with our 2025 brains, but 100-plus years ago, people either didn’t understand or just assumed those bumps in the night were made by ghosts as opposed to tree branches hitting the side of the house or old water pipes clanking at midnight. Some of the more dramatic, silly and easily solved stories Watson touches on includes a fraternity pledge portraying a ghost in a cemetery that terrified the night crew and a “talking corpse” that happened to be a box of bullfrogs. Watson will bust these ghost tales and more at this reading, book signing and paranormal discussion event.
COMING FRIDAY: Catch Tim’s Q&A with Lita Ford, who will be on the bill 7:30 p.m. Saturday with Warrant and Firehouse at Lafayette’s Loeb Stadium. Details and tickets for the show, part of the summer series at Loeb Stadium, are available here.
Tim Brouk is a longtime arts and entertainment reporter. He writes here (almost) weekly, tracking things to do for Based in Lafayette.
Thanks, again, for support for this edition from Visit Lafayette-West Lafayette, offering a guide to all there is to do this fall.
Thanks, also, to Brokerage Brewing Co., presenting Broktoberfest 2025, Sept. 25-28. Get all the Broktoberfest details here.
Thank you for supporting Based in Lafayette, an independent, local reporting project. Free and full-ride subscription options are ready for you here.
Tips, story ideas? I’m at davebangert1@gmail.com.