❤️ What's happening this weekend in the 757

Good morning, 757!

Tomorrow is the anniversary of the day in 1781 that the first American gun opened fire on Yorktown. Cornwallis surrendered ten days later, close enough to some of you that you could be standing on the spot before lunch.

Patience of a very different kind is on display this weekend. Tibetan monks have been in Hampton since Wednesday laying down millions of grains of colored sand, one grain at a time, and on Sunday afternoon they will sweep the whole thing into a pile on purpose.

Meanwhile Suffolk is running a demolition derby next to a peanut, Norfolk State has homecoming, and somewhere on a Williamsburg scrapyard 43 presidential heads are quietly falling apart.

Here's what we'd actually do:

If you have a small kid and a free Saturday, Supergirl is playing free and outdoors at Town Center, and on the Peninsula side Port Warwick has a tent where kids under 14 buy their own art. If you moved here this year and still feel like a tourist, the Presidents Heads tour on Saturday is the single strangest thing on this list, and the Every Week section near the bottom is four standing invitations you can walk into alone. And if you work Saturdays, the whole Sunday column is yours: a street festival in Williamsburg, a free day at Back Bay, and a market on the Intracoastal.

Let's get to it.

🥜 Suffolk Peanut Fest turns 48 at Suffolk Executive Airport. Demolition derby Saturday at noon, Jon Langston at 8 p.m. Gates 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday, to 7 p.m. Sunday. Ten dollars, kids 12 and under free, parking free.

🏺 The Mystical Arts of Tibet has monks from Drepung Loseling Monastery building a sand mandala at The American Theatre, 125 E. Mellen St., the same Phoebus street that closes down for Saturday's festival. Free to watch, parking free, noon to 6 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Sunday is the one to plan around: viewing is noon to 2 p.m., the hall breaks, then doors reopen at 3 p.m. for the closing ceremony, when they sweep the whole thing into a pile on purpose. Send that last part to whoever swears nothing ever happens in Hampton.

🎨 The ViBe Mural Festival finishes its tenth day Sunday, which means ten new murals are done instead of half-painted. Start at festival headquarters, 536 Virginia Beach Blvd. Nothing to pay to walk the district, and the 18th Street parking is free.

🎃 Yorktown Market Days Fall Festival runs 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at Riverwalk Landing, 331 Water St. Free, 40-plus vendors, a hay maze, hayrides and a petting zoo.

🖼️ The Port Warwick Art & Sculpture Festival fills Styron Square in Newport News for a 22nd year, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and 10 to 5 Sunday. Free, and there is a Young Collectors' Tent where kids under 14 buy art with their own money.

⚓ Finding "Freedom's Fortress" is a ranger-led half mile at Fort Monroe, 1 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday, telling how enslaved people who reached Union lines in 1861 were declared contraband of war and not sent back. An hour, free. Send this to whoever in your family argues about history at the dinner table, because a ranger tells it better on the ground where it happened.

🍺 Hogtoberfest takes over Ironclad Harley-Davidson, 2211 Frederick Blvd. in Portsmouth, 11 a.m. Saturday through 3 p.m. Sunday. Free bratwurst and pretzels, a Kids Korner, a beer stein challenge. Send this to your Portsmouth people: free lunch, their side of the water, and no tunnel to cross.

🎠 Haunted Horse Rides at the Hampton Carousel dresses the 1920s carousel at 602 Settlers Landing Road for Halloween, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. through November 1. A dollar a ride, cash only, and the candy is free.

West African acrobatics and live Guinean drumming from a troupe founded by a former Cirque du Soleil artist. Bodies go places bodies are not supposed to go.

If you had a radio in the late nineties you know "They Don't Know" whether or not you know you know it. Billed as an R&B comedy experience, with Kelo Soul.

The Monarchs host a top-fifteen side at home on a Friday night. If you have never been to a college soccer match, this is the one to start with.

The audience names a fear and the cast improvises a ghost story out of it on the spot. Nothing is written down, so nobody can spoil it for you.

East Mellen Street closes down for more than 50 craft vendors, live music all day, food trucks, and roving circus performers. Kids' costume contest at 2:30, dog costume contest at 4:15.

The Spartans come in at 3-3 after losing by two to Robert Morris last Saturday, which is the kind of week that makes a homecoming crowd useful. Also the Breast Cancer Awareness game.

The 1984 film on a big screen while the Virginia Symphony and its chorus play Mozart's score live underneath it, Brett Mitchell conducting. The original theatrical cut, not the director's.

Season titles get settled. Late Models, Modifieds, Grand Stocks, Legends and Bandoleros all run, and there is extra weight on it because rain washed out Championship Night #1 on October 3.

Two hours on the water off Great Bridge Lock Park with the light going orange on the Intracoastal. Kayaks come with it, so you need nothing but a change of clothes.

Free movie outside, bring your own chair, free popcorn until it runs out. Parking is free too, which at Town Center is the part worth mentioning.

Forty-three giant presidential busts, salvaged from a failed theme park and now weathering quietly on a Williamsburg recycling yard. Cracked faces, missing noses, Lincoln with a hole in his head. There is nothing else like it anywhere. Send this to the family group chat and make somebody volunteer to book it.

North Boundary Street and the Prince George blocks fill with roughly 200 vendor tents. Willie Williams Band plays the main stage 11 to 1, Jarvis Griffin Band takes it 2 to 4.

About 31 vendors of produce, prepared food and artisan whatever, strung along the Intracoastal Waterway. Three hours, easy pace, a good Sunday-midday move.

It is the first Sunday of National Wildlife Refuge Week, so the usual $5 per car at the gate is waived. One of the dike trails is open until October 31, plus the Raptor, Dune and Seaside trails and three miles of beach.

Alums of Meat Loaf's own Neverland Express, fronted by Andrew Polec, who Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman picked to play Strat in Bat Out of Hell. Paradise by the Dashboard Light at full volume in a concert hall.

Two hours with the sound and the lighting turned down, reserved for guests who do better in a quieter museum, including visitors with mobility, cognitive or physical challenges. Space is limited, so this one is for the families who need it, not the ones who would merely enjoy it. A dollar gets you in.

Four standing invitations instead of one-offs. You can walk into all four alone.

We still have no board game night on this list and nothing on the Peninsula you can show up and run with. If you host either one, hit reply and tell us.

🍎 Williamsburg Farmers Market takes over Merchants Square every Saturday from 8 a.m. to noon, February through December, rain or shine. It is the easiest first Saturday in a new town: walk in, buy a tomato, talk to nobody if you don't feel like it. Next one is Saturday, October 10.

🏐 Drop-in adult volleyball runs Mondays and Thursdays, 6:30 to 8:30 p.m., currently at Chesapeake Church, 1023 Deep Creek Blvd. in Chesapeake. Ten dollars, pay at the door, no team required and no season to sign up for. Next one is Monday, October 12.

✍️ Wednesday Wordsmiths meets every Wednesday from 5 to 7 p.m. at The Muse Writers Center, 2200 Colonial Ave. in Norfolk. Bring whatever you are working on, or bring nothing. The listing's own prerequisite line reads "Open to anyone," which is rarer than it sounds. Next one is Wednesday, October 14.

🪕 Tidewater Bluegrass Society jam lands at Stuft, 24 N. Mallory St. in Hampton, on third Wednesdays from 6 to 9 p.m. Players sit in, everybody else eats tacos and listens, and it is one block off the Mellen Street stretch that closes down for the Phoebus festival Saturday. Next one is Wednesday, October 21.

🎯 Michelle Morgan, a Norfolk firefighter-EMT, was named first guest at the new Wards Corner Target and collected a $500 shopping spree for it. The store at 201 E. Little Creek Road opens to everybody Sunday.

🥪 Gourmet Gang is opening its first Suffolk store at 1701 Bridgeport Way, beside the 7-Eleven, which makes 35 years of sandwiches and one new city.

🏈 Norfolk State lost 33-31 to Robert Morris on Saturday and now walks into homecoming at 3-3, which is a two-point loss away from being a completely different conversation.

⛪ The replica of Williamsburg's first Black church is nearly finished on Nassau Street, 250 years after the congregation formed, on a site where archaeologists found an unmarked cemetery holding at least 62 burials.

🪙 Archaeologists at Colonial National Historical Park turned up a French musket ball, a pipe fragment, flintlocks and buckles near the Victory Monument, which is to say the siege is still coming out of the ground.

Thank you for reading The 757 Current!

Reply and tell me what we missed. I read every one.

— Josh