logo
Weekend events: Panda Fest, Run Like Hell, Millennium Tour

Weekend events: Panda Fest, Run Like Hell, Millennium Tour

Axios04-04-2025

From plants to pandas, there's a lot happening this weekend. Here are some ideas on how to spend your free time.
🥟 Panda Fest, one of the largest outdoor Asian food festivals in the country, offers a variety of cuisines you can sample and traditions you can learn about. (Fri.-Sun.)
🪴 The first Atlanta Plant Fest sets up shop at Pittsburgh Yards, bringing together everyone from horticulture newbies to avid collectors. (Sat.)
🌱 Trees Atlanta will host its in-person native plant sale at the Carter Center. (Sat.)
🎤 The Ying Yang Twins, Bow Wow, Trey Songz, Omarion and others will make a stop at State Farm Arena as part of The Millennium Tour 2025. (Fri.)
🎠 Town Center at Cobb isn't just a mall. For the next week, it will be home to a carnival. (through April 13)
🏠 The Duluth Spring Home Expo is perfect for anyone looking for inspiration for their next DIY project. (Fri.-Sun.)
👟 Log those steps at the 18th annual Run Like Hell 5K at Oakland Cemetery. (Sat.)

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Meet the Asian-Blasian Winemaking Duo Shaking Up Tradition in Wine Country's Backyard
Meet the Asian-Blasian Winemaking Duo Shaking Up Tradition in Wine Country's Backyard

Eater

time2 hours ago

  • Eater

Meet the Asian-Blasian Winemaking Duo Shaking Up Tradition in Wine Country's Backyard

It's fall 2020. Shoes still dusty from a morning hike in Redwood Regional Park, Tiffani Patton and Jonathan Yang — strangers just hours earlier — ducked into EM Deli, a cozy Korean grocery store in Montclair, to refuel. The blast of cold air was a welcome break from the sun and sweat. They stocked up on soondae, pajeon, and gimbap, then headed to a mutual friend's backyard for an afternoon of wine sipping, snacking, and swapping stories. Somewhere between the belly laughs and second pours, something clicked between them. 'We bonded over the highs and lows of having Asian moms, and the shared chaos of both being Geminis,' Patton says. 'We were constantly talking over each other. One of our friends joked, 'You gems are always laughing over there!'' That joke is the origin story of Patton and Yang's natural wine label, Laughing Gems. Patton, who is half-Korean and half-Black, and Yang, who is Chinese American, began as two friends chasing the kind of wine culture they wished existed: one that nodded to the bold flavors they grew up loving. And after one too many nights staring down sparse wine lists at no-frills Asian restaurants — and growing weary of Euro-centric wine pairing norms everywhere else — Patton and Yang decided to redefine what counts as 'pairing-worthy.' The duo has now bottled three different wines, each created and marketed to shine alongside Asian dishes. There's fizzy Muscat Pet-Nat Super Fresh, which recalls golden summer afternoons and pairs best with white fish. Florascent — an aromatic and acidic orange muscat sourced from family-run Hartwick Vineyards in Lodi, California — is made from juice that flows naturally from the grapes and spends two days on the skins. It cuts cleanly through rich, fatty dishes like Beijing duck and Korean barbecue (and even received a sound bath by sound healer Jade Barrett before aging for six months in barrel). The third wine, Lunisolar, is a fruity French Colombard pet-nat with just enough residual sugar to tame spice, whether it's the numbing heat of Chongqing noodles or the fiery kick of Korean stews. Like a few emerging winemakers in the Bay Area, Patton and Yang began their journey tinkering at Richmond's Purity Wine, where they got to know owners Noel Diaz and Barrie Quan, who nudged them from sipping to making. Pep talks and hands-on training from Diaz turned into 4 a.m. U-Haul runs, delicately transporting grapes that were harvested before sunrise to shield farmworkers from the heat. What followed were 20-hour days of de-stemming, juicing, fermenting, and nursing new flavors to life. Friends eagerly jumped in to stomp on grapes that Patton described as 'walking in a giant vat of boba.' Blending cultural homage with creativity and play, the duo also tapped emerging local artists, bringing them into the fold: from Jill Wong's grounded logo design inspired by oracle bone script, China's earliest form of writing, to Aaron Gonzalez's cheeky bottle label featuring a Buddha by the beach, printed next to Laughing Gems' irreverent tagline: ' please, chill .' Patton and Yang are no strangers to scrutiny. They often find themselves among just a handful of winemakers of color in the room, and have encountered remarks that leaning into their cultural identities is just a branding tactic, something to be boxed and sold. At one of their first events, a seasoned winemaker raised an eyebrow watching them unload more than a few crates. But after selling 12 cases that day, Yang remembers the guarded energy shifting towards something more like, ' Oh, maybe we should partner up .' The tight shoulders and imposter syndrome still linger after these events, but Patton and Yang see being invited to them as a win. 'A rising tide lifts all boats, and part of lifting that tide is making sure people of color are truly seen in the winemaking space,' Patton says. 'Our parents had to assimilate to survive, but they paved the way so that we can show up more fully as ourselves.' They're not alone in reclaiming space. Winemakers like Coral Wang of Maison des Plaisances — a Chinese American winemaker based in Sonoma — have been shining a spotlight on the long-overlooked histories behind wine country's origins. 'Chinese laborers made up 80 percent of the workforce who built Napa and Sonoma wine country into what it is today, but their contributions were minimized because of the historical backlash against the Chinese,' Patton says. 'Asians aren't new to the wine space at all. We helped create it in the first place.' Still, Patton and Yang are clear about what they're not here to do: they're not interested in being anyone's token Asian. 'I don't want to be this beacon of Asian-ness or Asian American-ness, or tell people how to be,' Yang says. 'I'm American and this is what America looks like for me.' Today, the Laughing Gems pair is hard at work on their next round of wines, which are dropping this summer. One of them is an almost fluorescent orange, health tonic-style, lower-ABV piquette they teased as 'a wine your moms and aunties would actually drink.' With more people leaning into low-alcohol drinking, they're happy to create options for folks who want to day drink without getting wrecked by mid-afternoon. Yang's earliest memories often pull him back to the sensory world of his family's former Chinese restaurants in Chicago — fragrant steam swirling off the lazy Susan, the clinking of chopsticks and porcelain, and an unspoken rhythm of eating at a communal table. 'Coming from a restaurateur family, my parents are really proud of me,' Yang says, smiling. 'My mom keeps a bottle of our wine in her fridge and sips a little every night before bed. Yeah, we ultimately want our wine to be sold everywhere, but we love that Asians and other people of color are really vibing with what we're doing. That's why we do it.' Laughing Gems will pour at the Big West Wine Fest on June 14 and 15, 2025 in Guerneville, California. Follow @laughing_gems_wine for updates. Sign up for our newsletter.

A Michelin-Starred Brewpub From Chicago Is Popping Up in Beverly Hills
A Michelin-Starred Brewpub From Chicago Is Popping Up in Beverly Hills

Eater

time2 hours ago

  • Eater

A Michelin-Starred Brewpub From Chicago Is Popping Up in Beverly Hills

Moody Tongue, a brewery and restaurant group in Chicago that boasts a Michelin star for its tasting menu counter, is popping up inside the Four Seasons Los Angeles at Beverly Hills from June 13 to September 14. During the pop-up, Moody Tongue will take over the Four Seasons' lounge to offer its high-end sushi with Tokyo-meets-LA beer pairings from chef Hiromi Iwakiri. Founded by Jared Rouben, Moody Tongue debuted a 14-seat counter in 2020 that eventually earned two Michelin stars (it's been demoted to one since) under the direction of chef Jared Wentworth (previously of Michelin-starred gastropub Longman & Eagle). In February 2023, Moody Tongue opened a sushi restaurant in New York City and expanded to West Palm Beach earlier this year. Inventive sushi dishes include Ora King salmon with black truffle and mushroom duxelle, and a scallop hand roll with snap peas and corn. Moody Tongue will serve its Asian-influenced beers, such as juiced lychee IPA and pressed Asian pear saison aged in Sangiovese wine barrels. Creative sushi preparations with non-traditional ingredients have been commonplace in Los Angeles for decades; the California roll was allegedly invented here in the 1960s, while more recently, Encino's Sushi by Scratch has taken the Americanized omakase format to new heights. Reservations for Moody Tongue Sushi in Beverly Hills can be made here. No more cream tops at these cafes The Los Angeles Times has a story on how cafes in the city are tiring of serving cream tops over their carefully crafted coffee drinks. Places like Maru in Arts District and Mandarin in Pasadena are removing the add cream top option as a resistance against the dominance of the sweet, creamy float. Mariah in LA for Pride Month Just in case you happened to catch social media videos of Mariah Carey in LA this past week, the singer was indeed at the Eagle in Virgil Village, though allegedly the appearance was for a private party. More doughnuts in the Valley Beloved Woodland Hills doughnut shop Blinkies has taken over a strip mall spot in Encino, moving closer to the heart of LA, according to Reddit. Almost a billion for Dave's Hot Chicken Armenian-founded chicken shop Dave's Hot Chicken, which Eater first featured in 2017 as a 'mindblowing' take on Nashville-style hot chicken, has been sold to an investment group for somewhere in the neighborhood of $1 billion, according to LAist. Investors like Drake and Samuel L. Jackson came on board over the years, and the chain now has over 300 locations across the country, plus outlets in the Middle East and Europe. Sign up for our newsletter.

LA's First Women's Sports Bar Is Opening in Silver Lake
LA's First Women's Sports Bar Is Opening in Silver Lake

Eater

time3 days ago

  • Eater

LA's First Women's Sports Bar Is Opening in Silver Lake

A new bar showing all of the best women's sports games is opening in Silver Lake. Untamed Spirits debuts along Hyperion Avenue in the former second-story Trophy Wife space on June 7, coinciding with Pride month. Although bars across the country, like Portland's Sports Bra and Long Beach's Watch Me, focus on showcasing women's sports, this is the first of its kind in Los Angeles. The bar is owned by wives Stephanie and Janie Ellingwood, with a menu from chef Jude Shin. The bar will serve Asian-influenced bites like kimchi bokkeumbap alongside cocktails inspired by the Ellingwoods' Vietnamese American heritage and Shin's Korean American heritage. To celebrate the bar's debut, Untamed Spirits is hosting an opening party starting at 10 a.m. on Saturday, June 7, and running until midnight. A new chicken Caesar wrap comes to town Glendale's Mini Kabob has announced a summer special — a chicken thigh Caesar wrap available starting June 18. Rolled in a Mejorado tortilla, the wrap comes with chicken thigh kebab, romaine lettuce, and falafel croutons. The wrap will only be available on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Margheritas and margaritas in Playa Vista Superfine Playa will hold a special book event for Eater LA contributor Caroline Pardilla's new cocktail book, Margarita Time , on Thursday, June 12. From 6:30 to 8 p.m., Pardilla will host a book signing and Q&A that will include a Margarita, a slice of Margherita pizza, and a copy of the book for $25. Pick up tickets here. Brunch at Birdie G's Santa Monica restaurant Birdie G's is kicking off brunch just in time for summer on June 21. Look forward to a menu featuring matzo ball soup, Hangtown Brei, bruleed brioche, and the Birdie G's burger with fries. A limited-edition doughnut at Helms Helms Bakery is partnering with See's Candy this weekend to serve a limited-edition toffee cream-filled doughnut topped with See's Toffee-ettes. The doughnut will be available from June 6 to June 8. Sign up for our newsletter.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store