Ten Reasons to Leave the House This Weekend

Winter weekends haven't looked this wonderfully packed for many a cold, cold week. There's plenty of cheese to be eaten, films to be snuggled into and live music to warm your hands on. With Bastille Day giving you all the reasons to load up on tasty, expensive wine, freshly baked bread and All The Camembert, doonas have never looked so unappealing. Get out there, put a dumb-looking animal beanie on and lap up that wintry goodness — there's plenty of time to worry about prepping for bikini season later.

Bleu Blanc Rouge Festival

In the spirit of the festivities that fill every town in France from Brittany to Bordeaux, the Bleu Blanc Rouge Festival held at Customs House square from July 11-13 is completely free. Expect all manner of live entertainment, including ten young artists performing over the three days, as well as DJs, a cabaret show and open-air cinema. Cooking demonstrations will give you the opportunity to channel your inner Manu Feildel, but if eating rather than cooking is your thing, you can take advantage of someone else's culinary skills by picking up a range of authentic French goodies at the market stalls.

For more cheese, wine and Frenchness, check out our roundup of the seven best ways to celebrate Bastille Day in Sydney.

When: Friday, 11 July - Sunday, 13 July
Where: Customs House , 31 Alfred Street, Circular Quay
How much: FREE

Caitlin Park

Electronic whiz kids don't come more stylin' than Sydney's multitalented Caitlin Park. With her 2011 debut album Milk Annual applauded Australia-wide and the 2012 Qantas Spirit Of The Youth Award under her belt, Park inked a deal with Create/Control in February this year (home to fellow Aussies Oliver Tank, Feelings, Go Violets and internationals Parquet Courts and Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros). Marking the team-up with the release of her second album The Sleeper, the smoky-voiced Sydneysider will bring her brand new tunes to The Vanguard on Friday, July 11. Disarmingly catchy singles like 'Lemonade' are sure to get table-sitters out of their cabaret seats.

When: Friday, 11 July - 7:00pm
Where: The Vanguard , 42 King St Newtown
How much: 12 +BF

Friday Night Fish & Chips

Fish and chips used to be a frequent Friday night special in our house. Now, Surry Hills has introduced us to a new world of experiencing brain food with the Crown Street Fish Shop, which has taken the place of the dear departed Rainford Street Social. They've taken your basic fish and chips and turned them into a rather sophisticated night out, with the added bonus of keeping things fairly simple. Don't fear that all you'll be able to order in the jewel of Sydney's trendy crown that is Surry Hills will be some sort of deconstructed version of your Friday night favourite. You can still get a simple fish and chips; however, this time knowing what sort of sea creature went into the light and crisp batter when you order from the daily specials.

Read our full review here.

When: Seven days, noon - late
Where: Crown Street Fish Shop, 500 Crown Street, Surry Hills
How much: Up to $50, depending how hungry you are

Scandinavian Film Festival

Step into your local arthouse theatre these days and you'd be hard pressed not to find a regional film festival going on. In 2014, the line-up is getting that little bit more crowded, with the inaugural edition of a brand new festival highlighting the films from Europe's frozen north. Covering Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, the first annual Scandinavian Film Festival is set to put the kvikmynd in kvikmyndahátíð. For more information about the Scandinavian Film Festival, visit their website.

When: Wednesday, 9 July - Sunday, 27 July
Where: Palace Cinemas , 17 Oxford Street Paddington
How much: TBC

Reko Rennie: No Sleep Till Dreamtime

If Taylor Square is involved in your daily commute, you’re probably familiar with the work of Reko Rennie. Now part of the urban texture of Darlinghurst, Always has been, always will be is the unmissable Flinders Street mural. In association with blackartsprojects, No Sleep Till Dreamtime is Rennie’s latest solo exhibition. Spread across Chalk Horse and the Art Gallery of New South Wales, it continues to interrogate how Aboriginality is framed in an urban context. Unlike the flat colours and neon lettering of his public projects, this exhibition shares a bigger vocabulary of symbols and explores more complex processes of art-making.

When: Thursday, 26 June - Saturday, 12 July
Where: Chalk Horse , 94 Cooper St Surry Hills
How much: FREE

The Jeans for Genes Denim Exhibition

Suckers for good selvage will dig this one. Denim fans and jeans enthusiasts should squeeze into their skinnes and get to The Grounds of Alexandria on Saturday, July 12 for a one-off exhibition of jeans owned by famous peeps. Check out Anthony Kiedis' painted pants, the baggy straight-legs of Adam Sandler and the unfathomably tight pants of the now presumably pantsless James Franco. Strutting into The Grounds as part of Jeans for Genes Day (Friday, August 1), the exhibition will also include the denim favourites of Eric Bana, Gene Simmons, Maroon 5 and the previously paraded pants of those wonderfully abominable Kardashians.Keeping on the yearly tradition of donating a dollar and donning your denim, the Jeans for Genes Denim Exhibition is raising some sweet moolah for Children’s Medical Research Institute (CMRI).

When: Saturday, 12 July - 9:00am
Where: The Grounds of Alexandria , Building 7A 2 Huntley Street Alexandria 2015
How much: FREE

Hedda Gabler at Belvoir

Enticed into the part by Green Room Award-winning director Adena Jacobs, superlative drag performer and Sisters Grimm co-founder Ash Flanders is Hedda Gabler, one of the (let's face it, few) great female characters in 'the classics'. A creation of Norwegian drawing-room dramatist Henrik Ibsen, Hedda is a mass of contradictions: bored and bursting with energy, vindictive and victim, capricious and calculating, desirable and defective, feminine and masculine. The daughter of an esteemed military general, she's admired for her beauty and status, but she bristles against the social expectations of her sex. Reuniting with her Persona designer Dayna Morrissey, director Adena Jacobs has again gone for a set full of interesting spaces that frame the characters as playfully and meaningfully as a camera lens. In fact, the whole aesthetic here calls to mind one of the most stylistically influential films of the last few years, Drive.

Read our full review here.

When: Monday, 28 July - Sunday, 3 August
Where: Belvoir St Theatre Upstairs , 25 Belvoir St, Surry Hills
How much: $35 - $68

The Winery Fashion Markets

The Winery Fashion Markets are a bit like having several incredibly stylish friends who allow you to raid their wardrobes (which are enviably full of international and Australian designer labels) behind a Surry Hills wine bar. The Winery has taken to transforming the laneway behind their bar into that market place once a month. Some of Sydney's leading fashion identities — bloggers, stylists and fashion publicists — will be selling their own pre-loved clothes. Confirmed for the July 12 iteration of the markets are fashion blogger Carmen Hamilton from Chronicles of Her along with fashion publicists and stylists from top fashion publications. If you happen to get cold or hungry in between shopping, they've got you covered. You can pop inside and keep warm with coffee and veal and chorizo sausage rolls. A flower market put on by Wildes Lane completes the damn near picture perfect day.

When: Saturday, 14 June - 10:00am; Saturday, 12 July - 10:00am
Where: The Winery , 285A Crown Street, Surry Hills 2010
How much: FREE

Olympic Ayres

It may be freezing outside, but Olympic Ayres are pretty firmly committed to the sounds of warmer days. The Sydney producer/DJ duo make the kind of super synthy beats that will transport you to palm-tree'd beach parties of summers past. Rejecting the seasonal chill, they're playing a toasty live showcase of their upcoming EP Leisureplex at Goodgod next week. Leisureplex isn't actually due for release until September 18, so this gig is the first chance to hear what the band have been working on — perfect escapism for those in denial about the less-than-balmy weather conditions.

When: Saturday, 12 July - 8:00pm
Where: Good God Small Club , 53 - 55 Liverpool St Sydney
How much: 10 +bf

All This Mayhem

A thrilling sports film, heartbreaking drama and eye-opening cautionary tale all rolled in to one, All This Mayhem will transcend your expectations of its subject matter. Ostensibly a documentary about the rise and fall of two former skateboarding champions, in execution the Australian-made production bears closer resemblance to (in the words of its director) a modern-day Greek tragedy, full of hubris, temptation and a reckless disregard for long-term consequences. In what is shaping up to be a banner year for Australian cinema, this wild and powerful doco has officially stolen the lead.

When: Thursday, 10 July - Wednesday, 6 August
Where: Dendy Newtown , 261-263 King Street, Newtown
How much: $14 - $19