Must List: Five Fun Things to Do This Week
Fairs, funnymen, and Jubilee Love Fest
By Seattle Mag August 21, 2025
Seattle’s been humming lately—long evenings and packed patios. Whether you’re in the mood for comedy, art, music, or funnel cake, there’s no shortage of things to do before summer slips away.
Here’s what’s going on this week:
Evergreen State Fair
Aug. 21-26 & Aug. 28-Sept. 1
Evergreen State Fair Park, Monroe
$15+
Rides, animals, and funnel cake—the Monroe fairgrounds are back for two weekends of classic summer fun. This year’s grandstand lineup includes Men at Work and TOTO on Aug. 29. Fair food and Ferris wheels await!
Steve Martin & Martin Short: The Dukes of Funnytown!
Aug. 22-23
Paramount Theatre, Seattle
$101+
The comedy legends we all grew up with are coming to town. Expect rapid-fire banter, musical bits, and the kind of ridiculousness only decades of friendship can produce. Comedy royalty doing what they do best—making you laugh so hard your face hurts.
Jubilee Love Festival
Aug. 23, 3 p.m.
Shy Acre, Port Townsend
$110
Singer songwriter Grace Love’s all-day gathering at Shy Acre in Port Townsend is pure heart, with live music and soul food. It’s a space where BIPOC and queer artists take center stage. And it’s the kind of day where you wander between sets with a plate in hand and know that you’ve stumbled into something rare and good.
Black Arts Fest
Aug. 23-24
Seattle Center
Free
Celebrate Black arts and culture with live music, dance, and really good food. Presented by the Sundiata African American Cultural Association, this Seattle Center Festál has been going strong since 1980, making it the longest-running African American festival in the Pacific Northwest. Named for Sundiata Keita, the legendary ruler of the Mali Empire, it’s a joyful gathering that blends tradition and community.
Kameelah Janan Rasheed: we leak, we exceed
Aug. 23-April 26, 2026
Henry Art Gallery, Seattle
Free
New York-based artist Kameelah Janan Rasheed’s immersive installation blends text, images, and sound to explore how memory and knowledge shift over time, and how meaning can be lost when ideas are compressed. The work fills the museum’s double-height gallery, drawing from physics, Black critical thought, and information theory to question the ways data and identities are reduced.
Visit our events calendar for more ideas.
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