Weekend Preview: Festival Fun

The sun will be out just in time for a double dose of festivals in T-Town.

Tops on the list of gigs of fun is the 13th Annual Art on the Ave festival will run along Tacoma’s Sixth Avenue bar district between Cedar and Trafton Street. The street party will have more than 100 arts, crafts and product vendors as well as four musical stages during the day-long stint on Sunday. The music and family event will have everything from rock acts to doggie fashion shows.

The second festival occurs along the waterfront on Saturday. Tacoma’s Old Town Blues Festival will bring a full menu of musical delights by providing more than 15 hours of live entertainment performed by the best known local and regional blues acts. Proceeds will go to the the Breast Cancer Resource Center, which provides assistance through education and support to many of the area’s families effected by breast cancer.

For more gritty activities, The Toxic 253 will have a Biohazard Brawl Roller Derby Bout at Wheelz Skate Arena on Saturday. The start-up team will take on Port Scandalous.

For a more mellow night of entertainment, Tacoma Musical Playhouse is staging “Cats.” This musical phenomenon telling of T.S. Eliot’s “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats” by Andrew Lloyd Webber runs Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays through the end of the month. Cats tells the story, in song and dance, of the annual gathering of Jellicle cats, when one special feline is selected to ascend to the Heaviside layer.

Music, music, muscles and meows will end the weekend with more memories of another great time in Tacoma.