6-Pack of Things To Do in Tacoma Jan. 19-25, 2026
This is a week that refuses to choose between reverence and revelry — where chapels hum with blues, museums breathe history, cider remembers dirt and weather, guitars argue with gravity, scaled creatures rewrite beauty standards, and a globe-trotting orchestra reminds Tacoma that the world is always hiding inside a good room, waiting for you to show up and listen.
The Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Commemoration | Monday, Jan. 19
The annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Commemoration at the Washington State History Museum unfolds not as a ceremonial checkbox but as a full day of shared presence — reflection, art, listening, and civic memory offered freely, the way public history should be. From 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., the museum opens wide, inviting all ages to engage Dr. King’s legacy not as a finished chapter but as a living practice. At the heart of the day, Tacoma Arts Live presents 11 Days in the Life of Dr. King, a vignette-based performance that favors connection over quotation, movement over monument, asking audiences not simply to remember but to continue the work — quietly, persistently, together. Free admission and thoughtful accessibility turn the museum into less a venue than a civic inhale, a reminder that progress often moves at the speed of care. MLK Day commemoration, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., performances at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m., Washington State History Museum, downtown Tacoma, free and open to the public.
Grit & Grain Podcast Live: Kristine Sherred and Casey Sobol | Wednesday, Jan. 21
Wednesday afternoon at Peaks & Pints becomes a neatly paired study in how cities eat and how breweries endure, with the Grit & Grain Podcast hosting two voices who understand the stakes from opposite sides of the bar. At 3:30 p.m., Kristine Sherred, food and drink critic at the Tacoma News Tribune, brings the clear-eyed perspective of a reporter who treats restaurants not as lifestyle accessories but as civic infrastructure, tracing how labor law, policy, rent, and supply chains quietly decide which kitchens survive and which disappear. Her work has become Tacoma’s running record of how a mid-sized city actually feeds itself, told with rigor and empathy rather than hype. At 4:30 p.m., the mic passes to Casey Sobol, owner of Top Rung Brewing Company, whose path from career firefighter to brewery operator reveals the unromantic realities of keeping an independent brewery upright in a shifting market — discipline, patience, financial triage, and community-first thinking carried over from the firehouse. Together, the afternoon becomes a conversation about resilience from both sides of the system: the person documenting it and the person living inside it, each translating hard-earned experience into something useful. Live podcast recording and discussion, 3:30 p.m. Kristine Sherred and 4:30 p.m. Casey Sobol, Peaks & Pints Events Room, 3816 N. 26th St., Basecamp Proctor, free to attend
Double Mountain Cidery Night | Thursday, Jan. 22
Some nights are about novelty; this one is about origins — the kind that start with dirt under fingernails and two snow-capped mountains quietly judging your fermentation choices. Double Mountain Brewery’s cider story begins in a Hood River Valley orchard planted by founder Matt Swihart near Odell, long before the brewery’s St. Patrick’s Day 2007 doors ever opened, and that orchard-first philosophy still shows up in every glass: pressed and fermented in-house, never back-sweetened, never polished into candy, just fruit allowed to speak in full sentences — acidity, tannin, aroma, that clean, dry finish that feels like a winter inhale. Peaks & Pints has been in on the love since December 2016, when we hosted the official Western Washington release party for their Dry Cider, and this return leans into the pleasure of range without redundancy: Perry’s pear-bright snap, Maybelline’s gently off-dry bridge-building charm, Zora’s thoughtful old-world structure, Foxwhelp’s sharp heritage bite, Irene Rose’s floral glide. Running the show is Tacoman Donovan “Donnyllama” Stewart — musician, former Engine House No. 9 assistant brewer, former E9 sales director, now Double Mountain’s Washington State rep — bringing local roots and real enthusiasm to what is decidedly not a drop-and-run. Cider night, 5–8 p.m., Peaks & Pints, Proctor District
Pink Martini 30th Anniversary Tour with Storm Large | Friday, Jan. 23
Pink Martini’s 30th anniversary arrives less like a victory lap and more like a well-traveled passport thumping onto the table, stamped with three decades of curiosity, elegance, and refusal to stay in one musical country. The globe-roaming “little orchestra” brings its cosmopolitan swirl to the Tacoma Armory with Storm Large supplying the voltage — fearless, funny, and disarmingly human — turning the Parade Floor into a roaming salon where jazz flirts with classical, protest songs brush against cabaret, and pop melodies wander freely across languages and borders. Fresh off rooms like Royal Albert Hall and Carnegie Hall, the band sounds energized rather than embalmed by prestige, threading fan favorites with new material and a stirring take on Bella ciao that reminds you this music has always known where it stands. The open, danceable floor invites you to move, linger, and drift like you would at a great party that accidentally turned historic — a night that insists joy, when shared generously, doesn’t age so much as deepen. Jazz, classical and international pop concert, 7:30 p.m., Tacoma Armory Parade Floor, tickets $97.50 through Tacoma Arts Live
PNW Reptile & Exotic Animal Show | Saturday–Sunday, Jan. 24–25
Winter slips out of its wool coat and into something scaled as the Pacific Northwest Reptile & Exotic Animal Show coils into the Mattress Firm ShowPlex, a riot of color, texture, and quiet astonishment in the middle of January. Since 1995, this long-running creature carnival has been part science fair, part traveling cabinet of wonders — thousands of animals blinking, slithering, climbing, and refusing to be ignored, alongside the gear, knowledge, and human storytellers that make responsible fascination possible. It’s the rare family outing where wow and wait, should I share the same breath, where curiosity is rewarded with facts and awe nudged gently toward stewardship. You don’t come just to look; you come to recalibrate your sense of what lives among us, and how much beauty hides in forms that refuse to be cute. Exotic animal expo, Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Mattress Firm ShowPlex, Washington State Fairgrounds, admission $7–$40
Blues Vespers 2026: Harmonica Showcase | Sunday, Feb. 1
DATE CHANGE DUE TO SEAHAWKS GAME: Blues finds a special kind of honesty when you invite it into a chapel, where notes don’t echo so much as confess. Blues Vespers returns to Kilworth Chapel with a Harmonica Showcase that treats the humble harp like a truth-telling instrument — small in the hand, enormous in feeling. Stacey Jones, Joe Cook, and Jonathan Pittman take turns bending air into testimony, laughter, ache, and release, backed by a band built for patience and pulse: Tim Sherman’s guitar holding the line, Mark Dalton’s bass steady beneath, Conrad Ormsby’s drums letting the room breathe. Hosted by the University of Puget Sound Chaplaincy and Pastor Dave Brown, this isn’t a sermon and it’s not a show in the usual sense — it’s a gathering where blues does what it has always done best, stitching community together with sound, silence, and the occasional perfectly placed wail. Harmonica-forward blues vespers, 5 p.m., Kilworth Chapel, University of Puget Sound, free and open to the community
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