6-Pack of Things To Do: Thursday December 3 2020

The holidays can be stressful. There’s the hunt to buy presents, the trials of wrapping those presents, full days cooking family feasts. After all of that, you need a break. That’s where Peaks & Pints 6-Pack of Things To Do comes in. Nothing says ’tis the season like a daily six-event advent calendar of local goodness to jolly up your December. Cheers!

WASHINGTON PINT DAY: Today, and tomorrow, breweries across the state will celebrate Washington Pint Day. All you have to do is go drink beer and bring home a cool new pint glass or two, or more. The glasses are exclusively available at participating breweries with a dollar of every sale donated to the WA Brewers Guild. According to the participant list, Black Feet Brewing is the only Tacoma brewery participating, with Thurston County represent at Headless Mumby, Matchless, Top Rung, Triceratops, and Well 80 Brewhouse.

BEER FLIGHT: Every December — while the bartenders close down our Proctor District craft beer bar, bottle shop and restaurant for the night — Peaks & Pints co-owner Pappi Swarner grabs three holiday beers, heads upstairs to his office, cranks his computer speaks to an 11 and watches holiday Youtube videos. Obviously, he can’t perform his holiday tradition this year … and Peaks & Pints. No, his holiday hell now takes place inside his home, much to the chagrin of his wife and daughter. In the spirit of giving, we offer you the chance to share his joy. Today, he pairs the three Christmas season beers below with Tesla coil tree. Fiber-optic Christmas trees are nice and all, but they’re so boring. Where’s the drama? If your Yule needs a touch of Burning Man, nothing will fix you up faster than a Tesla coil tree. For the uninitiated, a Tesla coil is a radio frequency oscillator that drives an air-core double-tuned resonant transformer to produce high voltages at low currents. Anyway, if you don’t believe Pappi grab our to-go flight, Peaks and Pints To-Go Christmas Beer Flight: O Tesla Coilbaum, then watch the coil in all its glory. 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., 3816 N. 26th St., Basecamp Proctor, Tacoma

ZOOLIGHTS: Light up the cold dark season with a warm and bright holiday show. Jump online and reserve your Zoolights date, because Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium has plenty of lights to go around. The Zoo’s 700,000 light display depicts everything from Santa’s reindeer to walruses and the 23-foot Mount Rainier. There is an infusion of newness in this year’s event, for obvious reasons. A very limited number of timed online tickets are now available at pdza.org/zoolights. Aquariums, goat area and the carousel will be closed during Zoolights to keep everyone safe, but parking is free. 5-9 p.m., 5400 N. Pearl St., Tacoma, online timed tickets required, $5.50-$14, photo courtesy of pdza.org

STAGE: If our stylist spent 10 minutes on our hair, or our favorite chef 10 minutes on our meal, we might be upset. But when we heard about University of Puget Sound Theater Department’s New Human Horizons 10-Minute Play Reading Festival, we were intrigued. It’s a reading of new plays selected from a large pool of submissions by the University of Puget Sound’s Theatre 200 classes. This festival highlights plays that engage in conversation with Sylvia Wynter’s notion of the Human as both bios and logos, magical, words made flesh. They have selected plays that re-imagine and re-present new ways of being, living, caring, and loving in the world. Nice. 6-7 p.m., UPS Stage Streaming, free ticket but registration required, flickr photo by Fredrik Alpstedt

MUSIC: Forest Beutel and Kevin Shintaku have been entertaining the South Sound, frankly the whole world, since the pandemic hit. The longtime bandmates — Beutel plays banjo and harmonica and Shintaku adds mandolin and guitar in The Barleywine Revue and The Rusty Clevers — have collaborated on a live streaming concert, More Ducks More Fun. They’ve entertained with originals and covers, from Bill Monroe to Bill Withers and Tacey Chapman to Janis Joplin to Tom Waits. Tonight, they pay homage to their roots playing music by the Ramones, Crass, the Misfits and others. Pair the show with Wingman Brewers Little Radio Lo-Fi Lager from the Peaks & Pints cooler. 6 p.m., Crawdad Holiday YouTube Channel, photo by Abby Kok

THEATER: You’re traveling through another dimension — a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That’s a signpost up ahead: your next stop: Spacies: Planet of the Doomed. The Spacies space serial follows Commander Rash Blasterbelt and Ensign Jock Junior, members of the Intergalactic Space Guardians, as they travel through the cosmos to defend the innocent. Tonight, they set off for a mysterious planet. What space shenanigans will they get into this time? Tune in to find out! Pair this space theater episode with StormBreaker Brewing Son of Jango from the Peaks & Pints cooler. 8 p.m., Tacoma Little Theatre Zoom