October 29, 2026 — Thursday Edition

Happy Thursday, Durham. Halloween weekend is here, and it comes with an 80-degree Friday, a free festival spread across seven venues, two free scary movies at Duke, a noon kickoff on the 31st, and, early Sunday morning, an hour handed back to every one of us. We've already told you about the big-ticket stuff this week, so today's guide leans on the smaller rooms: a rooftop full of witches, a new pocha downtown, and a 34-seat wine bar on Driver Street that deserves a lot more people knowing about it. Let's get into it.

Some wine bars want you to feel like you've arrived somewhere. Pinheiro wants you to feel like you've been coming for years.

Pinheiro opened on March 20 at 304 S. Driver St., in Old East Durham, a short walk from Ideal's, Sofia's Pizza and Dame's Chicken and Waffles. It belongs to Sergio Ramos, who Durham drinkers may know from behind the bar at the original Bar Brunello and later Brunello Wine Bar in CCB Plaza. He grew up on Long Island, his parents are from Brazil and Portugal, and he has the paperwork to back up the passion: a Certified Specialist of Wine credential (2017) and a Certification of Portuguese Wines from Wines of Portugal (2020). He told INDY Week it was the "neighborhood community feel" that pulled him east of downtown.

The list is Portuguese and Spanish, with a deliberate lean toward the underdogs: unfamiliar regions, and winemakers who are women, LGBTQ+ or Indigenous. Ramos planned for about ten wines by the glass, rotating often, plus retail shelves so you can drink a bottle there or take one home. Food is snacky and very Iberian: tinned fish, olives, crackers and chips, with cheese and charcuterie in the plan. This is not dinner. It's the hour before dinner, or the hour that replaces it.

The room seats 34, and eight of those seats are a communal table in the middle, there on purpose so strangers end up talking. The name means "pine tree," a nod to Ramos' own story and to North Carolina's longleaf pine. Discover Durham sums the place up as somewhere "education meets exploration," which is the polite way of saying: tell Sergio what you usually drink, and let him talk you out of it.

Pro tip: Saturday it opens at noon, which makes it the most civilized pre-trick-or-treat stop in the city. A glass of something Portuguese at 3, home by 5 to hand out candy. And Sunday afternoon, with the clocks back and the rain not due until evening, is made for the communal table.

📅 304 S Driver St, Unit 103 (Old East Durham) · Wed–Thu 2–9 PM · Fri 2–10 PM · Sat noon–10 PM · Sun noon–6 PM · closed Mon–Tue · Instagram @pinheirowinenc (INDY Week · Discover Durham · pinheironc.com)

🍣 M Nikkei opens tonight. The rebuilt Five Points spot at 101 E. Chapel Hill St. — the old M Pocha — starts regular service today at 5, after a week of invite-only soft opening. The concept is a Korean pocha with Japanese-Peruvian Nikkei touches: small shareable plates, sushi handrolls and robatayaki. The early menu reads like a dare: Chili Crisp Garlic Fries, Fried Kimchi Onigiri, Spicy Pork Buns, Baby Octopus Karaage. Walk-ins are welcome; reservations at (919) 294-9177. Hours are Tue–Thu 5–9:30, Fri–Sat 5–10. (M Nikkei · Triangle Food Blog)

🧙 Witches on the roof. Tonight from 6 to 10, The Roof at The Durham hosts Witches Night Out: free admission, no reservations, DJ Gemynii, tarot from Magick Makers, aura readings and mini photo sessions, and flash ink work from TinyFire. The witchy menu runs from a Mythic Spritz ($16) and Potion No. 9 ($15) to a $5 mini pumpkin cheesecake. Dress the part; the view does the rest. (Triangle on the Cheap)

☕ Taste the whole Counter Culture menu, free. The first Monday of the month is Catalog Cupping at Counter Culture's headquarters and training center, 812 Mallard Ave.: an hour tasting through the current lineup, limited releases and single-origins next to the blends. Next one is Monday, November 2, 1 to 2 PM. It's free, but you need a reservation on Eventbrite. (Triangle on the Cheap)

Halloween at Wallace Wade. Duke (5-2) comes home off that 19-16 grind at Virginia to host Boston College at noon Saturday on The CW. Noon kickoff, 71 degrees, home by trick-or-treat time: the schedule makers did us a favor. Across town, NCCU (3-5, 1-0 MEAC) follows its 31-12 win at Delaware State with a home date against Howard at 2 PM at O'Kelly-Riddick on ESPN+. It's Youth Sports Day and Breast Cancer Awareness day, so bring the kids and wear pink. Then the Eagles hit the road, at Norfolk State on November 7. And the exhibitions are over: Duke men's basketball plays for real Monday at 6:30 against Army (ESPNU), hosts Coastal Carolina Thursday, November 5, at 8 (ACCN), then heads to Chicago for the Champions Classic against Michigan State on Tuesday, November 10 (7 PM, ESPN). After beating Tennessee and Kansas in practice games, expectations are not exactly modest. (FBSchedules · NCCU · Duke)

Summer makes one last cameo, then autumn takes the weekend back. Thursday: cloudy through mid-morning, then clearing, high near 75; down to about 49 tonight, so the concert band crowd will want a sweater by 8. Friday: sunny and near 80, the warmest day of the stretch and a perfect night to hop venues for All Onyx World; low around 53. Saturday, Halloween: mostly cloudy, high near 71, dropping to about 50 overnight. That's a light-jacket-over-the-costume kind of evening, which is honestly fine. Sunday: mostly cloudy, near 71, with a 50 percent chance of showers Sunday night and 40 percent Monday. Get the porch decorations in before bed. And remember: clocks fall back early Sunday morning. (NWS)

80 — Friday's forecast high · 7 — venues for All Onyx World · $0 — All Onyx World, both Duke movies, Witches Night Out admission and the Day of the Dead run · 34 — seats at Pinheiro, eight of them at one table · 5 PM — when M Nikkei opens its doors tonight · 1977 — the year Elizabeth Murray painted "Bob," now in the Nasher's Great Hall · 1 — hour we all get back Sunday

INDY Week on the painting that fell off a wall in RTP and landed at the Nasher. Bridgette Nally tells the story of "Bob," Elizabeth Murray's roughly 11-by-11-foot 1977 painting, which spent decades on an auditorium wall in Paul Rudolph's Elion-Hitchings building. When the building was stripped for demolition in 2020, the painting fell and cracked. A United Therapeutics executive, Avi Halpert, found it outside, spotted Murray's signature, and called the artist's estate, which had lost track of it. It turned out to be her second-largest known work. The Nasher took on the rescue, with curator Marshall Price, a $100,000 Bank of America conservation grant and more than a year of work by conservators in New York, who replaced the frame entirely. Now it hangs in the Nasher's Great Hall, free to see. As the estate's former director put it, "it's like it always belonged there." Go look at it this weekend. (INDY Week)

Sometime around 2 AM Sunday, Durham gets an hour it didn't earn.

Nobody plans for it. That's what makes it good. It's the hour you sleep in after Halloween without the alarm knowing. It's the extra cup of coffee on the porch, still in last night's face paint. It's a second breakfast nobody scheduled, or a walk down to the Eno before anyone else is up, or the time to actually call your mother back. The city's whole rhythm loosens by sixty minutes, and for one morning everybody's a little early to everything.

So spend it on purpose. Don't scroll it away. Take it outside, take it to a neighbor, take it to that communal table on Driver Street. You'll have to give it back in March.

Much love, Durham. 🐂

— Michael & Anne · Written from Trinity Park ☕

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