We’ve got your weekend: Drinks, parties, art, and dancing!

After Death by James Barbee, an artist in Memento Mori (Photo provided by: Second Story Gallery)

Thursday, June 6/Wrong Iron on the Greenway (3532 Toulouse Street): Whether you like your margarita with salt or not, it won’t matter when you are at the final mix-off this Thursday. This is the final party for The Margarita Mix-Off presented by Tres Agaves Tequila and Cointreau. Attendees will get to enjoy complimentary cocktail samples and drink specials, and you get to see who makes the best margarita in New Orleans. The finalists are: Craig Soniat of Wrong Iron on the Greenway, Sean Hutchins of May Baily’s Place, Victoria Parrish of The Penthouse Club – New Orleans, Alex Vines of Fulton Alley and Rudy Uy of Galatoire’s 33 Bar & Steak. The mix-off begins at 6:00 PM and goes until 8:00 PM. 

Thursday, June 6/The Building (1427 Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard): We love rebirth in New Orleans (and we don’t just mean the brass band; although, we love them too). TriPod, which is a production of WWNO in collaboration with The Historic New Orleans Collection and the Midlo Center for New Orleans Studies and is hosted and produced by Laine Kaplan-Levenson, works with the assistance of a forty-member international advisory group of historians and archivists. And, it’s having a wrap/rebirth party on Thursday. There will be music by  Jose Fermin Ceballos & Friends, food from Café Reconcile, and drinks from The Building’s bar. This event is free, open to the public, and you can find out full details here. 

Friday, June 7/One Eyed Jacks (615 Toulouse): Friday is Prince Day, so what better way to celebrate Prince than with his music and some serious dance moves. Soul Sister will be putting on the 4th Annual Purple Takeover: A Prince Celebration. You can party up to  all Prince and Prince-related jams and B-sides all night with DJ Soul Sister + special guest DJ Lenka Paris. The night begins at 10:00 PM, tickets are $20 in advance and $25 at the door. You can find out all the details here. 

Saturday, June 8/One Eyed Jacks (615 Toulouse): It’s PRIDE weekend, ya’ll, and there are dance parties all over the city, as well as parades and all-around revelry. NO LAW and Take ‘Em Down NOLA is having a  Pride weekend lady, queer, non binary dance party with DJs, drag queens, dance teams, performers, and more.  It’ll cost you $10 at the door to take care of their DJ’s and fund long term projects for NO LAW and Take ‘Em Down. The dancing begins at 9:00 PM, and you can find out full details here. 

Saturday, June 8/Second Story Gallery (2372 St. Claude Avenue): The Second Story Gallery is hosting a reception on Saturday for the public to meet the New Orleans-area artists whose works are on view in the exhibition Memento Mori. In the exhibit, more than 30 New Orleans-area artists explore the fragility of human life, reminding viewers of their mortality through two-dimensional artworks in various media, including painting, drawing, photography, mixed media and collage. The reception on Saturday is part of the St. Claude Arts District’s Second Saturday arts celebration.  The show opening begins at 6:00 PM, and admission is free.

Saturday, June 8/Staple Goods (1340 St. Roch Avenue): As the sea level rises and the natural world goes out of order, New Orleans continues its elegant decay far below sea level. And artists are there to create works based off these shifts and changes. Artist Kaori Maeyama’s urban landscape paintings examine human vision, allure of the ordinary, and sense of movement in static images, and she has an exhibit up from June 8-July 7. Inspired by the already subaquatic qualities of nocturnal urban landscape and diminishing affordable housing, the series of paintings explores ordinary street scenes distorted in atmosphere and layers of glass. Darkness denies the illusion of depth, and visual noise accentuates obscured vision and shortsightedness. The opening begins at 6:00 PM. 

Saturday, June 8/Bogue Falaya Park (Covington): You know we love a festival with a good pun, so we’re sending you to the Northshore for Bluesberry Festival, a new full-day celebration of the arts, will make its debut. In the peak of blueberry season, music and food will be set up along the riverside Bogue Falaya Park in Covington – an arts community approximately one hour from New Orleans. There will be blues music and art from Southeast Louisiana’s beautiful natural landscape. The festival begins at 10:00 AM and goes until 7:00 PM; early bird tickets are $10 or you can get the VIP Experience tickets for $65.