The Top Things to Do After Work This Wednesday, May 9
Plus, how you can get to and from them for free.
The Top Things to Do After Work This Wednesday, May 9
in partnership with
Plus, how you can get to and from them for free.
It's no secret that here at Concrete Playground, we love an event or two (hundred). Every single day, our fair city is buzzing with cool, classy and downright crazy happenings. Sure, the daily grind can often leave you wanting to crawl straight into bed at tools down, but that inner culture vulture of yours needs to be fed. So, we've teamed up with uberPOOL to round up the best things to do in Sydney after work tonight. Rather than heading straight home, check out a taco and tequila fiesta, a late night exhibition or a mini film festival and have something interesting to talk about at work tomorrow. And with Uber's newest service, which allows you to share rides with people heading in the same direction as you, getting to these events has never been easier — or cheaper (see: free).
To celebrate the Australian launch, the ride-sharing service is giving you five free uberPOOL trips in select Sydney suburbs until Friday, May 11 (to be booked between 4pm and 8pm), so you can save your precious dollars for all the excellent events below. The day is still young, so figure out what you'll be doing tonight, order that uberPOOL at the closing bell and pat yourself on the back for not succumbing to the call of your usual mid-week Netflix and binge session.
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On Wednesday nights at beloved cocktail and whisky bar Eau de Vie, you’ll set out on a flight of fancy over a selection of cheeses matched with drams pulled from the bar’s 400-strong whisky collection.
For $40, you’ll get to sample five whiskies during the evening, chosen to match closely with the week’s selection of cheeses from the Eau de Vie deli. The staff of whisky experts will be on hand to talk whisky fans through the pairings. Make sure to book in advance to ensure you nab a seat.
Board the whisky and cheese flight tonight at 6pm.
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You don’t need to be Fred Astaire to get into the dance thing. It’s not about getting it right and it’s not about being Beyoncé. It’s just about having fun. No Lights No Lycra offers the chance to let loose with a wild night of the dancing, and zero chance of having to wonder how you look while you throw shapes. No Lights No Lycra is a light-free dance class started in Melbourne and became a hit around the world even before spawning its NSW incarnation. The no-holds-barred dance sesh now has five locations where you can dance it out around Sydney. Dance novice, dance master or even dance averse — with the lights down, everyone gets to thrash along here as a dance equal.
Find tonight’s dance party at 7.30pm in Darlinghurst at 34 Burton Street.
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It’s been three years since Australia’s cinema scene welcomed the American Essentials Film Festival — and while a fest dedicated to US flicks might seem obvious, this event sets its sights much further than Hollywood’s usual suspects. Given that mainstream, megaplex-friendly movies reach our shores every week, the Palace Cinema-run showcase instead curates a lineup of other American titles, delving into films from the US indie realm. Screening in Sydney until May 20, the 2018 fest has a particular fondness for emerging practitioners, with artistic director Richard Sowada noting “the obvious talent from some of the filmmakers in the early stages of their feature film careers,” as well as “the deep and obvious respect even some of these newer filmmakers have for the traditions of storytelling in American cinema”.
Tonight’s features include a screening of 55 Steps in which Helena Bonham Carter and Hilary Swank recreate a landmark 80s case for patients rights at 6pm, and Nicolas Cage and Selma Blair battling a murderous rage in horror-comedy Mom and Dad, screening at 8.30pm.
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We have a lot to thank Mexico for: tequila, tacos and festive music, for starters. And Mexico’s annual holiday Cinco de Mayo is as good an excuse as any to celebrate the country’s colourful culture. And SoCal, Neutral Bay’s southern-Californian eatery, agrees — this week it’s hosting the inaugural Taco and Tequila Fiesta with seven days of Mexican-themed festivity.
Tonight, SoCal will be filled with food, tequila and blank canvases that four local street artists will transform into colourful artworks. At the end of the night, the artworks will be uploaded to the SoCal website and a silent auction will take place — with the winners announced on Tuesday, May 15. The artist with the highest-selling artwork will then be commissioned by Olmeca Altos tequila to create a mural on SoCal’s back wall. Plus, all proceeds from the artwork will be donated to the artist’s charity of choice.
Charity Live Art Battle will run tonight from 6–9pm.
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Touring outside of France for just the third time since it was designed in Paris circa 1500, medieval masterpiece The Lady and the Unicorn tapestry cycle comes to the Art Gallery of New South Wales this month and everyone’s pretty excited. On special loan from impressively named Musèe de Cluny – Musèe National du Moyen Âge, the six exquisitely beautiful, mind-blowingly intricate wool and silk woven tapestries span over 20 metres in length and are considered to be some of the greatest surviving textiles from the European Middle Ages — the French national treasure has been dubbed the ‘Mona Lisa of the Middle Ages’, after all. (Can you imagine being in charge of packing these things up and getting them to — literally — the other side of the world? No pressure.) Embodying meditations on earthly pleasure and courtly love, they depict a bejewelled lady in richly adorned costume alongside a majestic unicorn set against a luscious millefleur (‘thousand flowers’) background. Five tapestries explore the senses of touch, taste, smell, hearing and sight, with the sixth said to represent an internal sense — usually interpreted as the heart, desire or understanding.
See the tapestries tonight after hours until 10pm.
Image: Sight c1500 (detail), from ‘The lady and the unicorn’ series, Musée de Cluny – Musée national du Moyen Âge, Paris Photo © RMN-GP / M Urtado.
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First, posters popped up around Sydney saying ‘the mormons are coming’ and now, they’re officially here. The hit musical The Book of Mormon has brought its hilariously irreverent self to the Sydney Lyric Theatre after playing most of 2017 down south. Tickets are now on sale for its second Australian stint, and given that all of its 250-plus performances sold out in Melbourne, it’s certainly a hot ticket. Written by South Park and Team America‘s notoriously puerile creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, together with Robert Lopez of genius grown-up muppet show Avenue Q, The Book of Mormon is probably one of the most lauded comedies ever to have centred on the Church of Latter Day Saints, African missions, AIDS, bum jokes and super ironic racism. If it wasn’t so smart and so funny, few would forgive it. But since it is, The Book of Morman has picked up nine Tonys, four Olivier Awards, a Grammy and two Helpmanns since it debuted in 2011, and has been called “one of the most joyously acidic bundles Broadway has unwrapped in years“. If you’ve been envious of the throngs seeing the musical in New York, Chicago or London, then you’ll be plenty excited that you’ll now get the chance to go learn all the idiosyncratic details of Mormonism and know the true meaning of the hakuna matata-like saying ‘Hasa Diga Eebowai’.
Try your luck at snagging $40 lottery tickets to tonight’s performance, or splash out on the limited last minute tickets still available.
Image: Ryan Bondy, Zahra Newman, Nyk Bielak and company in The Book of Mormon, AUS 1411. (c) Jeff Busby.
Figured out what you want to do tonight? Now plan to get there and back (for free until Friday, May 11) by booking an uberPOOL in select suburbs between 4pm and 8pm.
