6-Pack of Things To Do in Tacoma: Oct. 20-26 2025
Because Tacoma this week isn’t merely busy — it’s incandescent, delirious, half-drunk on inspiration. The air hums with ink and electricity: playwrights raising the dead, scientists splicing art with code, brewers chasing transcendence through foam, and the Dome already jingling like a caffeinated snow globe. The city feels feverish and fully alive, teetering on the brink of revelation — as if every conversation might turn into a poem, every pint into a sermon, every note into a pulse. It’s one of those glorious, rain-slicked weeks when Tacoma doesn’t wait for magic — it brews it, builds it, and lets it wander the streets glowing softly through the drizzle.
Undercover: New Play Readings — The Unshored by Maggie Lee | Monday, Oct. 20
The Roosevelt Room turns spectral as Tacoma Arts Live and Northwest Playwrights Alliance unmoor Maggie Lee’s The Unshored — a meditation on love and loyalty that lingers long past the tide, which is part of Tacoma Arts Month 2025. In a fog-swept harbor where lost souls choose their shipmates for eternity, language itself becomes a lantern on dark water. No set, no safety net, just the tremor of words catching light. Undercover: New Play Readings, doors 5:30 p.m., reading 6:30 p.m., Tacoma Armory Roosevelt Room, free (donations encouraged), tacomaartslive.org, photo courtesy of Tacoma Arts Live/Eric Gillet Photography
Peaks & Pints Cooler Prefunk: Urban Family Strataphere Fresh Hop IPA
Before drifting into Lee’s fog-lit realm, steady yourself with Urban Family Brewing‘s Strataphere — a celestial surge of citrus lift and passion-fruit haze, crackling with just-picked hop energy. It’s harvest in orbit, bright enough to slice through the mist, the perfect prelude to a night where art sails between worlds.
Tacoma Holiday Festival | Oct. 23–26 | Tacoma Dome
The Tacoma Holiday Festival storms the Dome in a glitter-clad blizzard: four days of twinkle, sugar, and retail delirium potent enough to bend time. Picture a North Pole bazaar on espresso: 500 vendors slinging artisan truffles and laser-cut reindeer, Hallmark’s Tyler Hynes beaming like he invented Christmas, and the hum of a thousand shoppers realizing it’s still October. Add live music, a holiday workshop stage, a book drive, and a Ladies Night that treats wine and wrapping as Olympic events, and you’ve got pre-Halloween cheer in full blinding bloom. Festival, 10 a.m.–7 p.m. Thu–Sat, 10 a.m.–6 p.m. Sun, Tacoma Dome, 2727 E D St., Tickets at tacomaholidayfestival.com
Peaks & Pints Cooler Postfunk: Pelican Brewing Bad Santa 2025
When the tinsel dust settles, seek redemption in Pelican‘s Bad Santa — a Cascadian dark ale prowling between naughty and divine. Roasted malt, piney hops, and chocolate undercurrents whisper, “Be bad, it’s festive.” It drinks like winter’s first secret — bold, warming, and just wicked enough to deserve your halo.
pFriem + Georgetown Tao Collab Party @ Peaks & Pints | Thursday, Oct. 23
Sometimes the beer gods serve philosophy instead of foam. The Tao of Josh and The Tao of Manny — twin West Coast IPAs from pFriem Family Brewers and Georgetown Brewing — share ingredients yet diverge in soul: one a model of West Coast clarity, the other a laid-back grin in liquid form. At Peaks & Pints, we’ll pour side by side, inviting you to taste the line between order and abandon, logic and joy. Call it enlightenment via lupulin. We’ll call it a tap takeover. Tap takeover collab, 5–7 p.m., Peaks & Pints, 3816 N. 26th St., Basecamp Proctor, no cover
Art + Sci Salon: BioArt | Thursday, Oct. 23 | University of Puget Sound
Microscopes meet metaphors at UPS’s Art + Sci Salon: BioArt, where DNA flirts with design and science sheds its lab coat for something far stranger. Four alchemists — Drs. Aisen Caro Chacin, Adam Zaretsky, Dann Disciglio, and artist Angelina Almukhametova — unpack the messy beauty of human-machine intimacy, sensory prosthetics, and transgenic ethics. It’s less lecture than vivisection of the future, performed live. Salon, 5–8 p.m., Wyatt 109, University of Puget Sound, 1500 N. Warner, free, pugetsound.edu
Peaks & Pints Cooler Postfunk: Societe Bulbous Flowers Hazy IPA
When your neurons are still buzzing from talk of bio-art and synthetic souls, recalibrate with Societe Brewing Bulbous Flowers — a lush bloom of peach, tangerine, and tropical haze so vivid it could photosynthesize. Soft, aromatic, and smart enough to keep the conversation glowing.
The Da Vinci Code @ Tacoma Little Theatre | Oct. 24 – Nov. 9
Symbols and scandal spill across the stage as The Da Vinci Code transforms Dan Brown’s page-turner into a live decoding ritual. Under Trina Williamson’s direction, Robert Langdon and Sophie Neveu sprint from Paris to London through candlelit cathedrals, chased by zealots and heresy. It’s part thriller, part theological fan-fiction — a labyrinth of faith, reason, and the quiet thrill of forbidden knowledge.
Theater, 7:30 p.m. Thu–Sat, 2 p.m. Sun, Tacoma Little Theatre, 210 N. I St., $23-$30, tickets at tacomalittletheatre.com
Peaks & Pints Cooler Prefunk: Urban Family Forgotten Lore
Before curtain and conspiracy collide, sip Urban Family‘s Forgotten Lore — a dark saison that unfurls like an illuminated manuscript in a thunderstorm. Blackcurrant, plum, and midnight spice whisper secrets between sips, reminding you the real Grail might just be a glass well-worn by wonder.
Winds5: Live at The Eleanor | Friday, Oct. 24
Step into the Tacoma Arts Live’s Roosevelt Room, where air itself exhales melody. Winds5 — Seattle’s genre-defying quintet — summons Woods, a program where Bon Iver’s ghost hums beside forest-themed video-game scores and brand-new compositions by rising star Molly Turner. It’s chamber music re-enchanted: cinematic, untamed, and alive with cedar breath. Live at the Eleanor, 8 p.m. (doors 7, Tacoma Armory Roosevelt Room, $23.75 at tacomaartslive.org
Peaks & Pints Cooler Prefunk: Maritime Pacific Windfest
Anchor yourself before the storm of sound with Maritime Pacific Brewing‘s Windfest — an amber Marzen lager carrying toasted malt, caramel hush, and a salt-tinged breeze. It’s equilibrium in a glass: sturdy, aromatic, quietly transcendent. Take a sip, feel the sails fill, and let the night carry you into the woodwind wild.
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