Once you’ve stuffed yourself sufficiently, you can work off those extra pounds by… shopping!
Shopapalooza
Small business champion Ester Venouziou and her LocalShops1 consortium stage this weekend-long festival in St. Pete’s waterfront Vinoy Park, and it’s a great opportunity to do your Sunshine City holiday shopping in the sunshine. Co-sponsored by the City of St. Petersburg, Shopapalooza calls itself “the BIGGEST Small Business Saturday (and Sunday!) celebration around” and features more than 250 local shops, artists, musicians, food vendors and service providers each day. Admission is free (so you can spend more money shopping). 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Sat.-Sun., Nov. 27-28, Vinoy Park, 701 Bayshore Drive NE, St. Petersburg, shopapaloozafestival.com.
Museum Store Sunday
Speaking of shopping local, Tampa Bay’s museums are prime destinations for unusual gifts. The Museum Store Sunday event on Nov. 28 underscores that fact. More than 1,700 museum stores representing all 50 states, 24 countries, and five continents take part in the promotion, during which many of the participating stores offer deals and discounts. The Dalí, for instance, is offering a variety of onsite specials on Sunday, and patrons that day will receive a complimentary Dalí Museum reusable shopping bag with a purchase of $30 or more. The Dalí, like most museums, does not require you to pay museum admission in order to visit their store. Other local museums listed as participants on the Museum Store Sunday website include the Tampa Museum of Art, the James Museum of Western & Wildlife Art, and the spectacular new Museum of the American Arts & Craft Movement (whose store is just as worthy of a visit as the museum). Find the full list here. Sun. Nov. 28, museumstoresunday.org.
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
ThinkTank Theatre is giving us lots to think about this season, first with its still-ongoing production of The Giver, adapted from Lois Lowry’s best-selling YA novel, and now with Curious Incident…, a co-production with Tampa Rep. Based on the fascinating novel by Mark Haddon and brought to the stage in a Tony-winning adaptation by Simon Stephens, the play follows a teen-aged boy on the autism spectrum who’s determined to find out who caused the death of a neighbor’s dog and sets off on a search for clues in a city full of threat and confusion. Nov. 26-Dec. 19, Fri.-Sat.,7:30 p.m.; Sat.-Sun., 3 p.m., Stageworks Theatre, 1120 E. Kennedy Blvd., Tampa, tamparep.org.
Enchant Christmas
Lights and spectacle of the non-baseball variety return to the Trop, where if you can brave the crowds and the ticket prices ($25 and up), you will find a light maze, an ice skating trail, a Nordic-inspired holiday market, a meet-and-greet with Santa and lots more. Enchantment or enchant-meh? Decide for yourself. Nov. 26-Jan. 2, Tropicana Field, St. Petersburg, enchantmagic.com
Shockheaded Peter
Jobsite audiences were so tickled last spring by this macabre comedy about naughty children and the fates that befall them — winner of two Best of the Bay awards from Creative Loafing, which called it a “marvelous mixtape cabaret of morbid hilarity” — that the company has brought it back for an encore run. Through Dec. 4, Jaeb Theater at the Straz, Tampa, jobsitetheater.org/shockheaded-peter.
Plus, five more things to do to make this Thanksgiving weekend memorable:
- Go for a walk someplace you’ve never been.
- Hug someone you haven’t had the chance to hug for a long time.
- Play a game you’ve never played before.
- Watch something on Netflix you saw once but always wanted to see again.
- And thank everybody — profusely.
