INDY Selects: What to Do in the Triangle This Week

Believe it or not, the days really are getting longer; we’re approaching the Lunar New Year and the specter of spring. What better way to welcome 2025, along with billions of people around the world who observe the lunar calendar, than to do some arts and crafts with your family at downtown Raleigh’s Artspace?

Practice Taiwanese knotting and calligraphy, enjoy cultural performances and refreshments, take part in artist demos, and explore exhibitions and artists’ studios, all for free, at the perennial nonprofit visual arts center. When the first new moon of the year arrives on January 29, you’ll be more than ready to greet the Year of the Snake. —Jane Porter

One way to beat the winter blues: spend time with Charles Latham & the Borrowed Band, whose witty, rollicking country-rock will transport you to a world where “Love Hurts (If You Do it Right)” and you might be “Left on Red” (not a typo), but at least there’s No Landlords (as in his 2020 release).

The good news, too, is that there are plenty of ways to catch Latham: There’s his January 18 show at the Cave with country crooners Ramona & the Holy Smokes, a Charlottesville act that performs in both Spanish and English, and then there’s his month-long residency at Rubies on Five Points, where he’ll play every Wednesday in February from “8-til-late” and where you can toss back a whiskey, among Rubies’ signature ruddy lamplight, and forget wintertime ever existed. —Sarah Edwards

Maybe you’re not looking to fight winter and instead wish to lean further into the season’s mystical qualities—brews, brooding, poems, porridge, etc. If so, you’ll not want to miss Duke Coffeehouse’s first concert of the season.

Anne Malin, a Durham poet and songwriter, works a vocal thread tremulous and resounding in equal measure, spinning ballads into gold. Alli Blois, also of Durham and the audio engineer behind many of the Triangle’s best albums, is a talented musician to boot with an inspired baroque pop sound (and look) that could give Kate Bush a run for her money. Duke students get in free and townsfolk can gain admission with a $10 door fee. Prepare to be spellbound. —Sarah Edwards

The poster for Raleigh’s annual Vintage Bazaar resembles a stacked Coachella of indie bands you’ve never heard of (vendor names like Expired Rags and Days of Old are absolutely passable as band names).

But with 500+ vendors, North Carolina’s largest vintage convention has just about as much to offer as a music festival: you’ll find “retro video game setups, photo booths, music, [and] food trucks,” per the festival’s website, across two days, making it a destination for both vintage seekers and those tagging along. With higher-end items as well as piles of $5-$10 goods to dig through, the bazaar is an opportunity to bypass fast fashion, support small businesses, and find a look that’s totally singular. Entry prices vary by day; check the website for more information. —Sarah Edwards

As the Poetry Fox, Chris Vitiello has written tens of thousands of poems on the spot at events around the Triangle. Now Vitiello, who is also Durham’s poet laureate, brings this spirit of spontaneous creation to his “I See in Words” series at Shadowbox Studio, where attendees gather in the darkness to pen poems during film screenings.

This time, they’ll watch Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1964 psychological drama Red Desert (Antonioni’s first venture into color filmmaking) and share verses inspired by the film afterward. It’s a fitting event for Shadowbox, which has spent the last decade fostering inventive artistic endeavors from its unexpected home in a storage unit complex. —Lena Geller

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