THE CEREMONY

Summer Solstice

Tacomans don’t have a Stonehenge-like monument with which they can determine the points of midsummer and midwinter, but we do have a few advantages over our ancestors. Paper calendars, clocks, computers and PDAs, to name a few. Put it this way: No one will miss the summer solstice this year. But just in case, the Mandolin Cafe celebrates tonight with a Summer Solstice party. Revelers can welcome the beginning of summer immersed in friendship and community with Chiara Wood leading the midsummer night’s ceremony, then hang out, listen to jazz, and eat, drink, and, well, you know. But in a spiritual way. Which means don’t get wasted and grope any strangers, dig? — Suzy Stump

[Mandolin Café, Thursday, June 21, 6-10 p.m., $20 advance tickets required, 3923 S. 12th St., Tacoma, 253.761.3482]

THE ROCK

Nothing but rock

Glass Ceiling Music hosts Nothing But ROCK every Thursday on the same dance floor where cowboys and cowgirls twirl about smartly on the weekends — McCabe’s American Music Café.

Set to kick off the music series tonight are Society Says, Big Fat Alice, Ideophone and Crackpot Junkies. These band runs tighter than a dry county. 

KGRG 89.9FM will do live remotes.

Take your “young country” and stick it. —Brad Allen

[McCabe’s American Music Café, Thursday, June 21, 8 p.m., $5, 2611 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, 253.272. 5403]

THE BENEFIT

Child’s play

How you decorate your kids’ playhouse provides a window into your personality: Do you choose over-the-top gaudiness or classic, tasteful accoutrements?  Bars or no bars on the windows?  If you’re undecided and looking for inspiration, head to the Children’s Museum of Tacoma’s Place to Play: Dinner & Playhouses Under the Stars. Guests may stroll down Play Lane (read: Broadway street) and bid on whimsical playhouses specially designed and built for a child’s imaginative play.

Though it’s not illegal to pilfer ideas from this benefit auction, you can save yourself the trouble by bidding on the pieces you’d most like to take home with you.

El Gaucho, Sea Grill and Il Fiasco proved dinner, so everyone wins. — SS

[Pierce Transit Park, Saturday, June 23, 6-10:30 p.m., $120 per person, 936 Broadway, Tacoma, 253.627.6031]

THE STAGE

“Dames At Sea”

Paradise Theatre is staging the musical production “Dames At Sea,” a family musical that is a tongue-in-cheek nod to the golden age of Hollywood musicals as it tells the story of a girl from the sticks who goes to New York to make a splash on Broadway and soon bumps into a sailor from her hometown with ambitions of being a songwriter. — Steve Dunkelberger

[Paradise Cabaret Theatre, June 22-23 7:30 p.m., June 24 4 p.m., $15-$20, 9911 Burnham Drive N.W. Gig Harbor, 253.851.7529, www.para  disetheatre.org]

THE GATHERING

Throwing things

The closest I came to an authentic Highland experience when visiting Scotland was a trip to the Talisker distillery on the Isle of Skye. It’s unclear to me whether Skye, technically speaking, is part of the Highlands, but I certainly passed through them on my bus trip from Edinburgh to Skye (and single malt Scotch seems like a pretty Highlander type of thing to drink).

It was a sad journey, though I had a good time at the end of it. Part of the sadness came from the landscape, which was beautiful but in a desolate, lunar, melancholy sort of way, and the rest of it was the absence of people. A living highland culture is long gone, a casualty of modernity and the English, and what’s left is mostly nostalgia. But what nostalgia! Clan chiefs, bagpipes, fairy flags, caber tosses, tartans, dances, lots and lots of sheep.

The quality of the nostalgia is why we still today, across the ocean, celebrate the Highland way, why we have events like the Tacoma Highlands Games, where there will be, among other things, competitions in Highland dance, bagpiping, and traditional heavy athletic Highland games, falconry, harpestry, folk singing, latter-day clan activity, horses, Highland cattle, and, of course, sheep. — BA

[Frontier Park, Saturday, June 23, 8 a.m., $5-$8, 21800 Meridian E., Graham, www.tacomagames.org]

THE RIDES

Wild waves!

Have you ever wanted to feel fast and unstoppable, like Mighty Mouse? Get thee to Wild Waves Theme Park in Federal Way. The park just off Interstate 5 in Federal Way offers 32 rides and attractions, a 24,000-square-foot wave pool and the TimberHawk, the state’s biggest roller coaster, standing 75 feet tall and reaching speeds of 50 miles per hour. Now that’s mighty. You are not required to wear a mouse costume or a red cape, but the Weekly Volcano thinks it’s a good idea. Otherwise, people might not know you’re a superhero. — SS

[Wild Waves Theme Park, open daily at 10 a.m., $29.99, Enchanted Parkway off Exit 142B from I-5, Federal Way, 253.343.1543, www.wildwaves.com]

THE BIKES

Build off

The only thing outnumbering the bikes will be the tattoos on the bikers at the Northwest Custom Bike Build off Saturday. All manner of Easy Rider culture will be on display, from custom bikes, to leather fashions, accessories and jewelry. Biker babes will parade their attributes as well in the Bikewash (benefiting Journey for Freedom) and Bikini Contest, while men and women battle their bellies in the Belly Flop Contest. The fight for bragging rights will conclude with the $1 Coors drafts off, I mean custom bike build off. — BA

[Cedarwood Sports Bar and Grill at the Dome, music all day and night, Saturday, June 23, 2 p.m., 7404 Pacific Hwy. E., Milton, 253.922.5727]