Lite + Brite: 36 Dashing Austin Events 10/3

Hello, what’s up, and welcome to the Lite + Brite newsletter.

Happy new Taylor Swift album release day to all who celebrate! (If you were wondering which of us is writing this week’s intro, perhaps you’ll be unsurprised to learn that it’s Leila.) There are plenty of ways to observe The Life of a Showgirl: by listening to the album on the highest quality hifi, by watching Taylor Swift drag, by walking the greenbelt alone with nothing but your headphones and your feelings… So many possibilities!

Elsewhere in Austin, the beloved county fair gets a gender-expansive glow-up, another indie bookshop celebrates a birthday, dogs both run fast and attend Hogwarts, PowerPoint presentations finally answer all the Backstreet Boys’ questions, and we all travel to Stars Hollow just for one night. 

On that note, a friend recently tried to make the case that the concept of autumn didn’t exist prior to Gilmore Girls. More specifically, she claimed that Texans did not yearn for autumn until Gilmore Girls told them they should. This sounds made-up to me, but I grew up picking apples in New England, so I guess I wouldn’t know. Anyway, if you yearn for autumn, your first stop should be our annual Austin Halloween spreadsheet! We debuted it earlier this week with well over 100 seasonal events, and we’re adding to it every few hours. Look at it today! Look at it again tomorrow! For yet more autumnal vibes, give a listen to our Halloween playlist. (Brian made this playlist. So there’s no Taylor Swift on it.)

If you’re not already a subscriber to this newsletter and you want to be, click here. We do one newsletter a week, usually on Fridays, plus a bonus edition around the start of each month. If you enjoy this newsletter, please support us by contributing to our Patreon and by forwarding this email to your friends who enjoy things like listening to music and leaving the house sometimes.

Let’s do fun stuff!

—Leila + Brian
liteandbriteatx.com

EVENTS WE’RE EYEING

Friday 10/3

Saturday 10/4

  • Total Badass 15th Anniversary at Hyperreal Film Club
    Screening of hard-to-find film about a local Austinite singer from weirder eras
  • Dachshund Dash at Suds Monkey
    If watching dogs with tiny legs race is wrong, we don’t want to be right
  • Cimarrón Commons: Memory Collage at 902 E 22nd St
    Live music, vendors, interactive art activities + neighborhood exhibit
  • 2nd Birthday Party at Alienated Majesty
    Celebrate local bookstore w/vinyl DJ, free bevs, flash tats, + zine
  • 33 Falls at the Sparkle Circus
    Burlesque performers doing burlesque + also poetry readings
  • 20th Century Goth at Elysium
    DJs spinning pre-2000 goth, industrial, + dark dance music
  • Dark Ritual at Capt. Quack’s
    DJs spinning Goth / Post-punk + Darkwave w/accompanying visuals
  • Karaoke Underground at Knomad
    Sing karaoke to your favorite punk, indie + alt classics
  • Routing / My Body, Your Choice at Crashbox
    Two plays, one about the life of a migrant, the other a “femme-punk manifesto”
  • Thee Cuntry Fair at the Museum of Human Achievement
    “Variety show + expo hall featuring all trans and gender-expansive artists”
  • Manifest Minifest at Ground Floor Theater
    Shortform plays inspired by Gil Scott-Heron’s revolutionary anthem
  • The Life of a Showgirl Listening Party at Terry’s Kissa
    Hear the new Taylor Swift album in a space designed for hi-fi hangs
  • Welcome to Dogwarts at the Watering Bowl
    Local dog park reimagines itself as a Harry Potter locale w/vendors, costume contest, + raffle
  • Jon Stetson: America’s Master Mind Reader at the Vortex
    “Master mind reader” w/support from local wizards
  • Jane of the Dead at Fallout
    Local Jane Austen-themed improv troupe throws zombies + cryptids into the 19th century
  • (weekly thru 11/29) Goat Yoga at Jester King
    “We call out to the beasts of the land to come forth and JOIN US!”

Sunday 10/5

  • Sunday Sessions at Waterloo Park
    Live music, POC owned vendors, sound healing, breathwork, + painting workshop
  • Film + Friends Showcase at Hyperreal Film Club
    Screen short films + music videos shot by students at Austin Film Schoolz
  • Routing / My Body, Your Choice at Crashbox
    Two plays, one about the life of a migrant, the other a “femme-punk manifesto”
  • Tim Burton Drag Tribute at Ani’s Day + Night
    Tim Burton inspires the “best of the best alt drag in tejas has to offer” w/vendors + DJ
  • Jane of the Dead at Fallout
    Local Jane Austen-themed improv troupe throws zombies + cryptids into the 19th century

Monday 10/6

Tuesday 10/7

  • A Night in Stars Hollow at the Hotel Vegas
    Local bands perform the Gilmore Girls soundtrack w/trivia, karaoke, photo ops
  • Vibe Check at Umlauf
    “Immersive music experience,” wine sampling, board games, + clay workshop

Wednesday 10/8

Thursday 10/9

No Humans Allowed 252
Home Computing 3.0

On the cusp of spooky season, we decided to get cozy once again with a show full of bedroom synthpop recordings. This time we focused on the late 90s / early 00s boom in home electronic recordings.

Stream Home Computing 3.0

Tracklist
Casiotone for the Painfully Alone – Casiotone for the Painfully Alone Joins the Foreign Legion
Analog Heart Digital Brain – Bombastic Party
Berghiem 34 – Random Access Memory
My Favorite – 1986
Freezepop – Tenisu no Boifurendo
The Magnetic Fields – In My Car
De-Regulator – Log Out (of My Life)
Ms. John Soda – Elusive
Chapter13 – Crisco Disco
Brittle Stars – Four Words
Lali Puna – Bi-Pet
The Pastels – One Wild Moment (Stereolab Remix)
Creeping Jenny – Second Hand

No Humans Allowed is Brian Blackout’s award-winning, dodgy European news coverage receiving, weekly robots-themed radio show on internet station KPISS.fm. Machine vibes 4 machines. Songs for robots, androids, mandroids, cyborgs, AIs, cylons, skinjobs, roombas, wifi routers, smart devices, anything colored Bondi blue, and virtual assistants. Humans not required. Broadcasts live every Wednesday at 6pm CT on kpiss.fm, with over 200 episodes now streamable in the archives on topics like and Beach Simulations, Roomba dance parties, undersea adventures + Cyber Texas.

PATREON THANKS

A huge thank-you to our Patreon subscribers James Gray, Emily Heddleson, Andrew Creswell, Robert B., Roman Gonzalez, Nick Ivons, Molly Fonseca, Lilly Ettinger, Michael Sales, Zach, Gino Scaramuzza, Erica Speegle, Jarrett Holtz, Thomas Refferson, Bones Malones, Amy Hayes, Katie Green, Christina Jue, Colleen MB, Alexander Freed, Kristen Backor, Timon A., and Amy Wilde. We’re deeply grateful for your support, which allows us to do things like “pay our Mailchimp fee” and “spend hours researching Austin events when technically we should be working.”

If you’d like to support us on Patreon and get access to exclusive member-only benefits, you may do so here.

SOCIALS

Recent weeks found us celebrating the fifth anniversary of No Humans Allowed, attending a Blue Lapis Light aerial dance performance on the side of a building, and readying our annual spreadsheet of Halloween events. Follow Lite + Brite on Instagram to keep up with our adventures. We’re now on Bluesky too. Yay federation! And come chat with us and the rest of the L+B community on our Discord server (where we sometimes post stuff early too).

ABOUT US

How do we choose which events to feature?

Honestly, it’s pretty random. We might include anything in Austin that we, personally, would conceivably want to go to, generally excluding normal concerts, comedy shows, and movie showtimes because there are many other good resources for finding those. (We especially recommend Showlist for live music, The Darker Side of Austin for goth and metal stuff, Concept Animals’ ATX Art for You for gallery openings + artist talks, and the 60+ Weirdest Things in Austin for exactly what it sounds like). This list is by no means exhaustive; it’s just stuff that caught our eye this week. If you have an event that you want us to consider including, send it over.

Who are we?

We are Leila + Brian. We make this newsletter. We do our own events, most often No Lights No Lycra, + also BYOT, a party where we share very good YouTubes (here’s a playlist from the last one). We go very hard seeing bands at SxSW (here are playlists of our favorites from 2025). We once got called “local Austin couple” by KXAN. We do some other stuff here and there. We love going out to creative events in Austin, and we want you to join us. Visit us at liteandbriteatx.com, and support us on Patreon if you like what we do.

SEE YOU NEXT WEEK, CHAMPIONS

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