Events on Central

This one is built around the music videos, not just the songs, so expect the visuals to be half the show. Insideout is a small room, which means the dance floor gets warm fast and the energy tends to compound on itself once the crowd commits. Tickets are presale only, so show up without one...

Three DJs, one of them a last-minute-feeling 'special guest' wildcard, spinning a goth night at El Rey on a Friday that runs until 10 p.m. local time. El Rey's floor is genuinely good for dancing, the sound system carries low-end well, and the crowd at these nights tends to dress for the occasion, which raises...

Reklez Entertainment is throwing a late-night rodeo at Gaia's Kava Root, a kava bar on Central that runs closer to a living room than a nightclub. The kava-instead-of-alcohol setup makes this a genuinely different kind of late night, which is either exactly what you want or something to think about before you go.

In the Box Mainstage puts up The Hive, a long-form improv show built around ensemble scenes rather than the quick-hit games that dominate most comedy nights in town. The Box is a genuine black-box theater, which means sightlines are good from almost anywhere and the room stays focused in a way that bar stages rarely...

Albuquerque Roller Derby is taking over Guild Cinema for a screening of The Kansas City Bomber, the 1972 Raquel Welch roller derby film that remains the genre's high-water mark. Guild is a small, single-screen house on Central with good sight lines from nearly every seat, so there's no bad spot in the room. Expect a...

Free Event at Casa San Ysidro

The Lobo Sports Vault pulls the full Saturday NCAA slate across multiple screens, with every New Mexico Lobos game getting the big screen when the room is available for it. This is a sports bar setup inside a 1939 movie palace, which means the bones of the room are genuinely interesting even if your team...

The New Mexico Music Hall of Fame is putting on a four-hour concert at the Route 66 Visitor Center, which means the lineup will skew toward artists with genuine roots in the state rather than passing acts. The Visitor Center's outdoor plaza holds a crowd comfortably but fills up once word gets around, so arriving...

New Mexico United brings Sacramento Republic FC to Isotopes Park for a USL Championship regular-season match on a Saturday evening in late September. The sightlines at this park are genuinely good for soccer, and the United supporter section in the south end generates enough noise to make it feel like a proper home advantage. Parking...

JMSN is a Detroit-rooted R&B singer and producer who writes, records, and releases everything himself, which gives his live sets a rawness that polished label acts rarely manage. Sister is a small room, and that works in everyone's favor here, since his falsetto-heavy sound fills tight spaces better than it would a barn. A ticket...