ARTS & CRAFTS
Free Community Day
The amazing Tacoma Art Place invites the community to try its knitting, spinning, sewing, drawing, painting and fire pottery classes for free today. The Hilltop Tacoma art studio is becoming a true cultural center, a place where a community can grow together and share the creative spirit. Try it for free. â€" Suzy Stump
[Tacoma Art Place, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., free, 1116 S. 11th, Tacoma, 253.238.1006]

EVENT
Taste of Tacoma
More than 30 vendors â€" including Asado, Masa, Southern Kitchen, Katie Downs and Federal Way’s Pac Island Grill â€" along with live entertainment will plant roots at Point Defiance Park this weekend. â€" SS
[Point Defiance Park, June 28 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., June 29 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., $7 and less an entrée, 5400 N. Pearl St., Tacoma, www.tasteoftacoma.com]

ART
Forty Part Motet
Today the Tacoma Art Museum opens Canadian artist Janet Cardiff's Forty Part Motet. Cardiff combines sound, movement and environment in her work. The TAM visitor will proactively move through the space activating sounds and unfolding narratives.

Forty Part Motet is a 40-track audio installation that allows listeners to experience sound from the viewpoint of a choir, physically involving them in a piece of music by the 16th-century English composer Thomas Tallis. Each speaker unit becomes a mouth, and the audience unravels the composition by moving amongst the speakers and hearing harmonies change as if singers were standing next to them. It allows sound to be heard as a changing construct, to be interpreted quite differently, and to be carefully considered in a sculptural way. â€" SS
[Tacoma Art Museum, June 28-Sept. 7, $6.50-$7.50, 1701 Pacific Ave., Tacoma, 253.272.4258]

EVENT
Mushroom Festival
No, no, no. It's not celebrating that kind of 'shroom. However, the festival will teach you to identify wild mushrooms so you don't try tripping on the wrong ones again. There will be seminars on collecting them, growing them, cooking them, making tea out of them â€" basically anything you'd want to do with a mushroom except smoke it. The two-day festival will also feature a Kidz Zone, mushroom recipe tastings, antiques, arts and crafts and Ciscoe Morris. â€" SS
[Nisqually Middle School, June 28-29, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., $5, 8100 Steilacoom Road at Marvin Road, Lacey, 360.701.0994]

MUSIC
Olympia Experimental Music Festival
It seems, judging by the lineup at least, this year’s festival â€" which stretches through Sunday, June 29 and utilizes downtown Olympia venues the Eagles Hall Basement, the Capitol Theater and the Midnight Sun â€" will be just as intriguing. Perhaps looking to quell last year’s cries from Olympia’s music scene, many bands and artists from the 360 will be represented. Highlights will likely include: Foque Mopus, Hobby Hobby, Departed Dog, KnotPineBox, and Beat Box Fred â€" who’s known around Oly for his remarkable beat boxing skills. Tacoma band L.A. Lungs is also scheduled to perform. â€" Bobble Tiki
[Downtown Olympia, June 26-29, www.myspace.com/olystrangemusic]

INDIE ROCK
The Drug Purse
A sunglasses inside dose of dilated eyes ’60s psychedelia, glazed with world class Tacoma Grit and enough substance to carry them above pure novelty, the Drug Purse is far and away one of T-town’s best bands. If you have yet to experience this fact, you’re foolish, and I suggest you do so as fast as humanly possible. Luckily for you, they’ll play Bob’s Java Jive tonight with Waves and Radiation, Sons of Ivan, and Trip the Light Fantastic. Barring any freak catastrophes â€" like the Java Jive running out of beer â€" this Team Unicorn-heavy lineup should deliver the hippest (and best) show of the week. â€" Matt Driscoll
[Bob’s Java Jive, 8 p.m., $5, 2102 S. Tacoma Way, Tacoma, 253.475.9843]

ROCK
Flipper
In Tacoma, one show and one show only is what everyone will be talking about â€" and it’s a doozy. Flipper, with Kris Novoselic on bass, will play Hell’s Kitchen tonight. It simply doesn’t get much bigger.

When Steve DePace, Bruce Loose and Ted Falconi â€" better known as three-fourths of Flipper â€" recently flew up from California to join former Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic at his Washington home, it was with two intentions: do a little recording, and play a couple of shows. For those who haven’t heard, after reuniting in 2005 for two CBGB benefit gigs and eventually recruiting Novoselic on bass in ’06 for the All Tomorrow’s Parties Festival in England, Flipper has been back in action â€" with a bassist of giant stature and a newfound vigor. â€" MD
[Hell’s Kitchen, with Helms Alee, Mico De Noche, Silver, 9 p.m., $10, 3829 Sixth Ave., Tacoma, 253.759.6003]

LINK: Fear The Day and others in the club s tonight
LINK: If you need to cool off in a movie theater
LINK: Let's eat outdoors today