THURSDAY, APRIL 9 2015 >>>

1. Charles Cross captained The Rocket, Seattle's monthly rock newspaper, during the era when Nirvana played Seattle Vogue club before a handful of people and you could eat breakfast next to Eddie Vedder at the original Cyclopes Café up the street from the Seattle Art Institute. Overnight, Seattle and the Northwest had gone from being a backwoods that turned out national stars roughly once a decade (in the '60s, the Kingsmen and Jimi Hendrix, in the '70s, Heart) to a music hub like New York or Los Angeles. The Rocket gave way to The Stranger, and Cross went on to pen articles in hundreds of magazines, as well as author of seven books, including Heavier Than Heaven: The Biography of Kurt Cobain (Hyperion/Hodder, 2001). Universal Pictures has acquired the rights to Heavier Than Heaven, which is the first film to be made from Cross' work. His Hendrix book has also been optioned. The University of Puget Sound hosts Cross and his thousand stories at 7:30 p.m. in Kilworth Chapel.

2. Every second Thursday LeMay - America's Car Museum drive their classic cars onto their plaza to mix and mingle with other car enthusiasts, eat some barbecue, listen to music, vote on the People's Choice Award and enter to win the raffle. The first Cruise-In of the year goes down tonight from 5-8 p.m.

3. The public is invited to attend an informative, entertaining and free presentation by special guest Peter Altmann of Tacoma as he discusses his family ties to the painting "The Woman in Gold", at 5:30 p.m. at the Gig Harbor Civic Center. Altmann is the great nephew of Adele Bloch-Bauer, who was immortalized in a painting by the world-renowned artist Gustav Klimt.

4. Forget light and low-carb beers. The Tacoma Runners have a better method for fighting fat: They run then drink beer. They're the classic drinking group with a running problem. They meet at 6:30 p.m. every Thursday at a Pierce County alcohol-slinging joint, run 3 miles and then return to the starting line to celebrate. Tonight, the group will meet at Two Town Pub and Cafe along Ruston Way.

5. Cody Raymond, an Oregon native born in Corvallis and raised in Albany, has attended Berklee College of Music as a Music Production and Technology Major, and is currently at the Seattle Art Institute as an Audio Production Major, recording all his own music to include drums, bass, guitar, piano, and all vocals and harmonies. Raymond is as much a guitar player as he is a musical visionary, capable of composing and performing anything heard in his own head. Catch him at 9 p.m. in The Swiss.