October 22, 2026 — Thursday Edition

Happy Thursday, Durham. This is the quiet weekend before the loud one — Halloween is nine days off, the big parties are next week, and what's left is a stretch of clear, cool, honest October days with nothing to do but enjoy them. Friday there's free jazz on the lawn at American Tobacco and two shows next door. Saturday the farmers' market gives way to a few hundred dogs in costume, there's a Senior Night at Koskinen at 5, and at 6:45 you can drink tea under the moon in the Gardens. Sunday, a train ride to a pumpkin patch, one last time. Let's get into it.

Durham Central Park has hosted festivals for makers, for bluegrass, for beer, for tacos. On Saturday afternoon it hosts one for dogs, and if you've spent any time on the Ellerbe Creek trail you know this is the crowd that will actually show up.

Pupalooza is Durham Parks and Recreation's newest festival, presented with Vine Veterinary Hospital, and it runs Saturday, October 24, from 3:30 to 6:30 PM at the park on Foster Street. It is free. It is, in DPR's words, for "all pups and their people," and the schedule is built for both halves of that sentence: live music and food vendors for the people, and a long list of activities that are nominally for the dogs but really for the photos.

The centerpiece is the dog costume contest, with a "best festival fit" category and a dog-and-owner lookalike division that is going to be the most contested title in Durham this weekend. Around it: a tie-dye station where you make your dog a bandana, a flower-crown table, a photo station, and an artist drawing caricatures of your pup on the spot. There's no registration — show up with a leash and a costume you're willing to be seen in.

The timing is generous. The farmers' market wraps at noon in the same park, which leaves a long lunch, a nap, and an afternoon walk back downtown. The light at 5 PM in late October is the best of the year, and the pavilion sits right in it. By 6:30 the sun is down and the temperature is dropping fast toward the low 40s, so plan to be moving by then.

Pro tip: park in the Foster or Morgan Street decks, not on the street — the blocks around the park will be full of people walking dogs who are not interested in your parallel parking. Bring your own water bowl; the vendors will be busy. And if the dog still has energy afterward, Ponysaurus's beer garden, a ten-minute walk away, has String Break playing bluegrass from 8 to 10 and is as dog-friendly as it gets.

📅 Sat, Oct 24 · 3:30–6:30 PM · Durham Central Park, 501 Foster St · Free (Details)

🍺 Oktoberlast at Fullsteam, Saturday 3 to 6. Fullsteam's new American Tobacco taproom opened in late September, and Saturday the brewery closes out Oktoberfest season with something it's calling Oktoberlast. Details on the site are thin — the name tells you the genre, and the site doesn't say which taproom, so check before you go — but a 3-to-6 window on the best-weather Saturday of the month is reason enough to go see the new room. (Fullsteam)

🪕 Ponysaurus goes bluegrass Saturday night. String Break plays the beer garden from 8 to 10, free, which is the right end to a dog-festival day (see above). Before that: the free Pony Run with Fleet Feet leaves tonight and next Thursday, check-in at 6:15, beer waiting at the finish. (Ponysaurus)

🥣 A Durham bowl concept lands in RTP. Bruce Kramer's Little Barrow — build-your-own grain bowls with no seed oils, refined sugar or gluten; Persian rice, sweet-potato noodles, miso salmon bites, a gluten-free mac — has signed a 2,482-square-foot lease in the Horseshoe at Hub RTP, next to Cheeni. Opening is 2027, so file under "things to look forward to," but it's another Durham-grown brand picking the Park over Raleigh for its first real restaurant. (Axios Raleigh)

Football goes on the road Friday night. Duke (4-2) at Virginia, 7 PM (ESPN, per Duke), looking to stop a two-game skid that has cost the Blue Devils a combined seven points and one Victory Bell. Nate Sheppard, who caught 11 passes last Saturday, is the reason to watch. Halloween brings Boston College to Wallace Wade at noon on The CW. NCCU (2-5) opens MEAC play the same night, 5 PM at Delaware State on ESPN2, then comes home to host Howard on the 31st at 2. Duke women's soccer, No. 6 and 8-1-4, plays its Senior Night Saturday at 5 against NC State at Koskinen; it's 4-0-2 at home this year and just put five goals on SMU. Duke volleyball (13-5) hosts No. 15 Stanford Friday at 6:30 and Cal Sunday at 1. And the men's basketball team, ranked No. 2, opened its exhibition slate against Tennessee in Cameron on Tuesday night; the harder test is Sunday at 1 at Kansas, on ESPN, before the real opener November 2 against Army. (Duke · NCCU)

Picture-book October. Thursday: sunny, low 70s. Friday: sunny, upper 60s, clear and lower 40s overnight — bring a layer to the lawn at ATC. Saturday: sunny, mid 60s. That's 3:30 in the park with a dog in a sweater, 5 PM at Koskinen in a real jacket, and about 50 degrees for the tea at 6:45. Saturday night drops back into the lower 40s. Sunday: sunny, around 70, the warmest of the three. No rain, no wind to speak of, no frost advisories as of Tuesday. If anything changes it will be the overnight lows, so cover the basil. (NWS)

3 — hours of Pupalooza · $0 — Pupalooza, the jazz on the lawn, the Duke Players show and the silent disco · $16 — one last ride on the Pumpkin Patch Express · 5 — Duke goals in Dallas last Friday · 4-0-2 — Duke women's soccer at home this year · 9 — days until Halloween · 50 — about the temperature, in degrees, when the moon tea starts

Durham Magazine asks whether the Carolina Theatre is haunted, and takes the question seriously. Sharon Kinsella follows The Ghost Guild, a volunteer paranormal-research nonprofit run by a self-described skeptic, into the theater's centennial-year investigation: a Victrola that starts itself, a typewriter nobody is typing on, and a two-year plan to test every natural explanation first and publish the data. Early findings were presented last weekend at the Museum of Durham History's theaters event, and two seats on an overnight investigation went at auction for $5,000 apiece. Whatever you believe, it's a lovely piece about a hundred-year-old building and the people who can't stop listening to it. (Durham Magazine)

We know the names of about forty dogs in Trinity Park and maybe six of their owners. This is normal. This is, we'd argue, how the neighborhood works.

The dog is the icebreaker nobody has to be brave about. You don't walk up to a stranger on Watts Street and start talking; you walk up to Biscuit, and Biscuit's person is just sort of there, holding the leash, and twenty minutes later you know where they moved from and which contractor to avoid. The dog carries the whole social load and asks only for a scratch behind the ear in return.

So a city festival for dogs is really a festival for the people who'd never go to a festival for people. Saturday, go stand in a park with a few hundred of them. Compliment a costume. Learn a dog's name. The owner's name will come eventually.

Much love, Durham. 🐂

— Michael & Anne · Written from Trinity Park ☕

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