Ten Awesome Things To Do This Summer That Aren’t Going To The Beach
Getting sunburnt is for rubes.
Rip, Bite & Win your way to Summer’s hottest events with
We’re teaming up with the ultimate Summer ritual (DRUMSTICK) to bring you a list of some essential and some more niche Summer rituals for 2015.
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While it can be terribly tempting, come summer, to spend your entire holiday break sitting in a refrigerated beanbag while watching reruns of Frozen Planet, the truth is there are far better ways to utilise your spare time. If, despite that, you’re still eyeing off the beanbag and the ice-pack, we’ve done the thinking for you: here are ten must-see events to head to this summer.
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Sydney Festival
Trying to work out which highlights to attend at any festival is a bit like walking into a Virgin Megastore back in 1993 with a gift voucher (no? Just me then?), so to save you the trouble, consider these Sydney Festival stunners: Omar Souleyman, How To Dress Well, Tex Perkins channelling Johnny Cash in Far From Folsom at Parramatta Gaol, and Quebec’s Cirque Alfonse bringing you all the sexy acrobatic lumberjacks you can handle in Timber! That’s Timber!’s own exclamation mark, but come on: sexy lumberjacks doing acrobatics to bluegrass music!
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Red Hot Summer Tour
Yeah, yeah, it’s not very cool – in fact, with a lineup that includes The Hoodoo Gurus, James Reyne, Daryl Braithwaite and more, it’s positively Dad Rock. But if you expect me to believe that you wouldn’t go completely sick when the Gurus drop Bittersweet on a sunny afternoon, or that you don’t still know all the lyrics to Dazza’s Horses in sign language (or perhaps that was just my primary school), you’ve got another thing coming.
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SJ Crushing Australian Sprintcar Championship
Rev yourself up for the post-apocalyptic petrolhead excitement of next year’s Mad Max: Fury Road with a trip to WA’s Quit Bunbury Speedway to revel in the deranged beauty of the 53rd Australian Sprintcar Championship. One of the most down-and-dirty of all the motorsports, there’s nothing quite like seeing a brace of sprintcars tear up the dust on a hot summer night. If you’re lucky, someone will play Metallica’s Fuel and the planets will align.
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Dirty Dancing
Carry your watermelon all the way to Sydney’s Lyric Theatre for the triumphant return of Dirty Dancing in its stage musical incarnation, which had its international premiere in that very city back in 2004. Your Johnny and “Baby” this time around are the offensively talented Kurt Phelan and Kirby Burgess (the latter very much a star on the rise). Just do us a favour and don’t be one of “those people” who wear their jeans to the theatre; go ahead and make a fancy night of it, won’t you?
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Monster Truck Rumble
If you’ve never been to a monster truck event, run, don’t walk, to the Adelaide Showground on Valentine’s Day: it is, quite simply, one of the most sublimely ridiculous spectacles you’ll ever witness. If the names Raptor’s Rampage, The Convict, Revenge, Extreme or Wicked don’t mean anything to you, don’t worry, the sonic overload of these high octane, well, monsters is worth the price of admission alone. Plus there’s nothing quite so heartwarming as a bunch of little kids clapping as a giant ridiculous truck squashes a whole bunch of wrecked cars.
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So Frenchy So Chic
How do you say “It’s baaaaaack” en Français? Oui, with an outrageously, well, chic lineup including Emilie Simon, The Dø, La Femme and Francois & The Atlas Mountains, So Frenchy So Chic (in its “In The Park” incarnation in 2015) will also be cutting chic sick with French-inspired picnic food (including gourmet picnic hampers) and games on the lawn. Oh yes, and there’ll be champagne – real champagne.
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Darts Invitational Challenge
Don’t let the memory of the last half-cut game of darts you played at your local pub or on your uncle’s verandah cloud your mind: professional darts is a hell of a game. At the conclusion of last year’s Darts Invitational Challenge, thousands of fans crammed into Etihad Stadium in fancy dress, from Where’s Wally? to The Flintstones, for reasons presumably only known to the darts faithful. No word on whether there’ll be a costume dress code for this year’s event, but you’ll be assured of a ripper showdown either way.
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Nelly, Lupe Fiasco & B.O.B
Lupe Fiasco remains one of rap’s more compelling presences (so much so that we’ll forgive him that whole Guy Sebastian collaboration), but the real deal with this lineup is the chance to see Nelly, who many feared had disappeared beneath his presumably immense stockpile of face Band-Aids. Because let’s face it, imagine seeing Hot In Herre happen, live, in the middle of summer?
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Once
Did You Know: a really efficient way to cool down in summer is to cry buckets at a beautiful musical and then let the air from your rapturous applause evaporate the tears in a rudimentary sort of air-conditioning? You can make it happen at Once, the Grammy, Tony and Olivier award-winning show, currently making its Australian debut at Melbourne’s venerable Princess Theatre. This is no hoary old pit-orchestra affair, either; the stars all play their own instruments live on stage.
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Moonlight Cinema
Yes, yes, it’s technically just “going to see a movie”, but I think we all know a trip to Moonlight Cinema is more than just another night at the flicks. That’s primarily because I can’t think of a time at a ‘normal’ cinema where I saw a possum ricochet out of a tree and onto a dude’s chest so fast he sat up in a manner not unlike OJ Simpson’s wheelchair hitting the edge of the stadium in The Naked Gun.
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Rip, Bite & Win your way to summer’s hottest events by purchasing specially marked DRUMSTICK packs and redeeming the entry codes online for a choice of either 2-for-1 movie tickets from participating cinemas* (2 promotional packs), or $25 Ticketmaster vouchers (5 promotional packs).
Terms & conditions apply. Ends March 13. Australian residents with email only.
*Participating cinemas include Village, Events, Greater Union, Birch, Carroll & Coyle and Moonlight Cinema.
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Clem Bastow is an award-winning writer and critic with a focus on popular culture, gender politics, mental health, and weird internet humour. She has sat in each of the Back To The Future trilogy Deloreans, but can’t drive. She’s on Twitter at@clembastow
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Feature image via Moonlight Cinema.