Your best of 2025: Best show, best read, best … whatever

Enough of anything crappy left over from 2025: What was your best thing this year? Plus, last-minute ideas for ringing in New Year’s Eve. And a note about a local icon lost this week.

Dec 31, 2025

Thanks to Stuart & Branigin for continued support of the Based in Lafayette reporting project.

Oops, this was supposed to go out earlier today. A few notes to round out the Old Year …

A person's hand holding the number twenty twenty twenty twenty twenty twenty twenty twenty — (Photo: Unsplash)

YOUR BEST OF 2025: Enough of anything crappy left over from 2025. How about this: What was your best thing in 2025? We’re talking best read/best concert/best binge show/best local meal/best … whatever.

We’re here for it. Click the comment button below to add your best thing.

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3D numbers 2026 on black background — (Photo: Unsplash)

LOOKING FOR LAST MINUTE NEW YEAR’S EVE PLANS? Here’s what BiL’s Tim Brouk offered in the latest edition of Tim’s Picks …

New Year’s Eve, Wednesday, Dec. 31 — Lafayette will be popping off as we say goodbye to the mostly wretched 2025 and say hello to a hopefully less wretched 2026.

Ebony and the Ruckus, 9 p.m., Digby’s, 133 N. Fourth St., Lafayette — Lafayette funk, R&B and soul from Ebony and the Ruckus will enrich this New Year’s Eve party.

Ebony and the Ruckus (Photo: Jimmy Ramos)

Creekside Saints, 8 p.m., Aces Pub, 3215 S. 18^th St., Lafayette.
Von, Getcomff and DJ Lilo, 9 p.m., The Spot Tavern, 409 S. Fourth St., Lafayette — A trio of DJs from Chicago’s Tiger Room collective will be spinning house, techno, hip-hop and more into 2026. Free champagne at midnight. $10 in advance, $15 at the door.

The Electric Martinis, 10 p.m., 648 Bourbon Lounge, 648 Main St., Lafayette — The Indianapolis duo of Jayne Bond and Chris Stone will bring their guitars and a hefty setlist full of pop, R&B and rock tunes to celebrate the new year.

DJ DSTNT, 10 p.m., The Black Sparrow, 223 Main St., Lafayette — Chicago dubstep DJ DSTNT will return to downtown Lafayette to get the party people moving for 2026. DSTNT recently performed at The Spot and even the short-lived DJ night at the Lafayette Brewing Company (RIP). There will be a champagne toast at midnight and tamales after the toast until 1 a.m.

Tim Brouk is a longtime arts and entertainment reporter. He writes here (almost) weekly, tracking things to do for Based in Lafayette.

FAREWELL TO A LOCAL ICON: Sad to get word this weekend that Wayne Applegate, former owner of Zoolegers and Sylvia’s Brick Oven in downtown Lafayette, died. Even as details were still coming about his death in South Bend, the tributes were swift across social media for Applegate, a dance instructor and local icon among the LGBTQ community. He was 70.

This is just a snippet from Pride Lafayette: “In the early years when the Pride Community Center decided it needed a dedicated space, Wayne donated his dance studio as a meeting spot for us to hold some of the first board meetings. He was there and lead the drag show for the first OUTfest, and many that followed. He walked with us when we decided to do a float in the Christmas parade when some of us were too afraid to walk because it was not our typical event. … He and his husband opened Zoolegers and it became a place many of us grew up in and found ourselves. It was a place that was our place where we could just be us, no judgment, no worry and a place where you truly knew everyone’s name.”

There was the time when happening upon Applegate on the brick steps leading out of DT Kirby’s, a Main Street establishment that had been the site of Zoolegers, as a crowd marched toward the Tippecanoe County Courthouse the day after 49 people were killed and another 58 were injured in the shootings at Pulse, a gay nightclub targeted in Orlando, in 2016.

Applegate hadn’t known about the march, but he was swept up by a crowd that certainly knew him and insisted he come along to help circle the courthouse and launch floating lanterns.

I wrote this column in the J&C about that moment: “Former Lafayette gay bar owner on Pulse: ‘Did I think about it back then? ... I’m not sure how you can’t think about it.’”