[🌞 #H!L] Two Pro Teams One Parking Lot, Popcorn Frights Closes, and Deerfield Just Won Its Fifth Straight

38 Things To Do, Including Two Pro Teams Kicking Off at the Exact Same Minute.

Aug 13, 2026

Thursday, August 13th, 2026 - Plus: a map of every castle on Earth, and an entire auction of nothing but pianos.👇👇👇

Stuff You Won’t Want To Miss This Week:

★ TOP PICK THIS WEEK: Saturday Night - 7:30pm | USA Men’s Eagles v Argentina XV at Chase Stadium. The US national rugby team is playing a full international in Fort Lauderdale on Saturday night, which is not a sentence anyone expected to write. Argentina’s XV is the sparring partner, tickets start around $40, and the whole thing is over in 80 minutes plus a halftime. You do not need to know the rules. Go for the noise, the hits, and the novelty of a test match happening 15 minutes from your house. Insider Tip: Fort Lauderdale United’s home opener kicks off at the exact same time on the field next door, so the complex will be busy. Park once, pick your sport, and give yourself the extra twenty minutes.
TONIGHT - 7–9pm | Live Music at Hollywood Beach Theatre. Free live music in an open-air beachside theater with room to dance, right on the Broadwalk. No ticket, no cover, no reason not to. Insider Tip: It runs Thursday, Friday AND Saturday this week, so if tonight does not work you have two more shots.
TONIGHT | A Taste of Jazz at Bailey Contemporary Arts, Pompano. Live jazz inside a small arts center on Pompano’s old downtown strip, which is a very different room than a big theater. The kind of night where you end up talking to the musicians.
Ends TODAY at noon | Pianos, online and absentee bidding only. An entire auction of nothing but pianos, closing at lunchtime today. If you have been telling yourself you will learn one day, this is the cheapest that day will ever be.
TODAY through Saturday - 10am–4pm | Antiques and Art Plus estate sale, Fort Lauderdale. Three days of antiques with an Erté bronze on the listing at $1,500, which tells you what kind of house this was. Go today for the pick, Saturday for the markdowns.
TODAY and Friday - 8am–1pm | Moving Sale, Great Items, Wilton Manors. Somebody is leaving town and the whole house is priced to go. Two mornings only.
TONIGHT | Dine Out Lauderdale Downtown Dinner & Drinks Tour. A guided walk through downtown’s food and drink scene with a local telling you the Prohibition-era backstory between stops. Dine Out ends this month, so the tour calendar thins out fast after this.
TONIGHT | Oldies Music Singo at the Herb Skolnick Center, Pompano. Bingo, except you win by recognizing the song. Exactly as silly as it sounds and the regulars take it seriously.
TONIGHT - 6–9pm | Food Truck Night at TY Park, Hollywood. A dozen trucks parked in a county park with a lake in front of them, no cover, bring a blanket.
TONIGHT - 6–9pm | Food Truck Night at Tree Tops Park, Davie. Same idea, west side, under the oaks. Tree Tops is one of the few genuinely shady parks in the county.
Ends Sunday | Popcorn Frights Film Festival at Savor Cinema. Florida’s biggest horror festival is in its final four days. If you skipped it last week, the closing weekend is when the crowd is loudest and the programmers stop being polite. Insider Tip: Screenings split between Savor Cinema and the Classic Gateway Theater, so check the venue before you drive.
Friday Night - 7–10pm | Starlight Musicals at Holiday Park. The last one. Forty-six summers of free Friday concerts on the football field and this is the final night until next June, with the Shane Duncan Band closing it out. Bring a lawn chair, a cooler and a picnic, and go be a person who has done this once. Insider Tip: Canopies and umbrellas are only allowed along the back and sides of the field, so if you want shade, get there early and go wide. Weather line is 954-828-5363.
Friday Night - 8–10pm | ArtsPark Movie Night: Field of Dreams at Young Circle, Hollywood. A free outdoor screening of the baseball one, in an amphitheater in the middle of a traffic circle, which is a very Hollywood thing to do. Get there before eight for a decent patch of grass.
Friday Night - 5–10pm | Night Market at Dania Pointe. Vendors, food and music strung along the open-air promenade on a Friday evening. Free to walk through, which makes it an easy default when nobody can decide.
Friday through Sunday - 10am–5pm | Obon Weekend at the Morikami, Delray Beach. The Japanese festival for honoring ancestors, done properly: taiko, dance, lanterns, and sixteen acres of garden. Worth the drive north, and genuinely unlike anything happening in Broward this weekend.
Friday through Sunday - 9am–4pm | Garage, Craftsman Tools, Quality Furnishings, Home Treasures, Fort Lauderdale. A full garage of Craftsman tools going at once. If you moved into a house here and own one screwdriver, this is your Friday morning.
Friday and Saturday - 8am–2pm | Man Cave Meets Mom, Coral Springs. Best-named estate sale of the week and probably the most honest description of a garage in Broward County.
Friday Night - 6:30pm | Plunge into the Arts at Plunge Beach Resort, Lauderdale-by-the-Sea. Five local artists rotate through the lobby gallery every thirty days and the unveiling nights are open to anyone who walks in. Free, oceanfront, and you get to talk to the person who made the thing.
Saturday Night - 7:30pm | Fort Lauderdale United FC home opener v Sporting JAX. South Florida’s only professional women’s soccer club opens its season at home, and the season runs all the way to May, so this is the one where you find out whether it becomes your thing. Insider Tip: Kickoff is the same 7:30 as the rugby next door. If you want a quieter parking lot, get there early.
Saturday Night - from 5pm | National Rum Day Festival at The Wharf. More than a hundred rums, six bars built for the occasion and a menu cooked with the stuff, on the river downtown. Fort Lauderdale spent the 1920s being called Fort Liquordale, so consider it a heritage event.
Saturday Night - 6–10pm | Downtown Hollywood ArtWalk. Galleries and studios open late along Harrison Street with live music between them. Free, walkable, and one of the few genuine art nights in the county that is not tied to a museum.
Saturday | After Work Players: Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at the Broward Center. Adults who take classes at the Broward Center put on a full show once a year. It is the opposite of a touring production, which is exactly why it is worth a ticket.
Saturday | Doris Italian Market Wine Night. A wine tasting in a grocery store, which sounds wrong and is in fact excellent. Doris is a South Florida institution and the pours are not stingy.
Saturday | Ceramic Workshop: Pottery & Propagations. Make a planter, leave with a cutting to put in it. Two hobbies for the price of one afternoon.
Saturday | Saturday Morning Legos and Estate Finds, Hollywood. Somebody’s Lego collection is going to a stranger this weekend and it might as well be you.
Saturday Morning - 9–10am | FTL Free Workout Saturdays, Huizenga Park. Free group workout in the rebuilt downtown park. Show up, no signup.
Sunday - 11:30am–4pm | India Independence Day Festival at the Broward Center. Food, dance and music for India’s Independence Day, put on by the Association of Indians in America, in the middle of downtown. One of the bigger cultural festivals of the Broward summer and almost nobody outside the community knows it happens.
Saturday and Sunday - 12–8pm | Smorgasburg South Florida, Flagler Village. Forty-plus food vendors in an open lot, every Saturday and Sunday. The default answer to “we cannot decide where to eat.”
Saturdays and Sundays - 1-4pm | Build & Talk Legos at MODS. Children and caregivers together for hands-on building challenges and fun conversations about digital gaming.
Tuesday and Wednesday | The Invite and I Want Your Sex at Savor Cinema. Popcorn Frights clears out and the art-house calendar restarts, with both films running the rest of the week. Savor is a 200-seat independent house downtown, which is the whole point of going.
Wednesday Night - 6:30–8pm | Think and Drink Trivia, Huizenga Park. Outdoor trivia downtown. Low stakes, easy to bring a stranger to.
Wednesday | Lyrics Lab Open Mic at The Hive, Pompano. An open mic run inside a real black box theater rather than the back of a bar, which changes the whole room.
Did you see the Fort Lauderdale Parks & Rec Playbook is out? This is the annual program to all activities, including aquatics, athletics, classes, and more.
SAVE THE DATES for Next Week
1. Saturday, Aug 22 and Sunday, Aug 23 | Monster Jam at Amerant Bank Arena. Trucks the size of a garage, indoors, very loud. Tickets move for this one and the good seats go first.
2. Saturday, Aug 22 | Pompano Beach Fire Rescue 100 Year Anniversary at the Sample-McDougald House. A century of the city’s fire department, marked at Pompano’s 1916 house museum. The kind of local anniversary that only happens once and that nobody outside city hall hears about.
3. Friday, Aug 21 | Old Town’s Backyard Jam, Pompano. The monthly outdoor concert series in Pompano’s old downtown.
4. Saturday, Aug 22 · 7pm | STILL ALIVE, a Pearl Jam tribute at Revolution Live, with a Foo Fighters tribute opening.
5. Saturday, Aug 22 · 4–9pm | Ukrainian Cultural Fest, West Palm Beach. Food, music and dance on the Great Lawn downtown. Out of county, but there is nothing else like it in South Florida this month.
6. Wednesday and Thursday, Aug 19–20 | New City Hall and Parking Garage Job Fair, Pompano Beach. Two days of hiring and info sessions tied to the new civic build.

Friday is the last Starlight Musicals until next June. What’s the one free thing in Broward you tell every new arrival about? Reply with it and I’ll credit you when I run the list.

Featured Fort Lauderdale

Mangos Isn’t Coming Back. Something Else Is Taking That Corner.

If you moved here in the last few years, you have probably heard someone say Las Olas used to be different. Here is the specific thing most of them mean.

Mangos opened in December 1992 at 904 East Las Olas, on the corner of Southeast 9th Avenue. Restaurant during the day, live music at night, bands playing most nights, the kind of bar people walked into on a Tuesday for no particular reason. It ran like that for 25 years. In January 2017 the owner sold the business and the liquor license, and it closed.

Then for most of this year, people said it was coming back. Back in January, Miami New Times listed a Mangos revival among the year’s most anticipated openings, with a late-summer date on it. That is the version still going around town. It is also the version I nearly printed here.

It is not happening. In May, The Restaurant People confirmed they are opening something new on that corner instead. It is called NAIA, it lands in October, and it is Mediterranean food with Asian influences and a big indoor-outdoor bar. Their CEO Tim Petrillo called it “the next evolution of how we think about dining on Las Olas,” which is a polite way of saying the old thing is not returning.

The building is gone too, by the way. That corner was rebuilt from scratch: about 5,700 square feet of restaurant on the west end, retail on the east, new live oaks along 9th Avenue.

And it is not one restaurant. As of last week the Greater Fort Lauderdale Alliance counts 11 new restaurants opening on or near Las Olas over the coming months. Foot traffic on the boulevard is up 19% since 2021 and now runs past five million visits a year. The city is planning wider sidewalks and more than 90 new trees.

So when somebody tells you Las Olas used to be different, they are right. It also happens to be changing again, right now, while you live here. That part you get to watch.

So... You Think You Know South Florida

You probably already know... Fort Lauderdale is home to some of the world’s longest stretches of sandy beaches. People come from all over the world to stick their toes in the sand.

What you might not know is... this past week, Fort Lauderdale also played host to the 2026 National Lifeguard Championships. From high-intensity surfboat races and paddleboard rescues to lightning-fast beach flag sprints, the nation’s most skilled first responders went head-to-head right here on Fort Lauderdale Beach.

And our own Deerfield Beach Ocean Rescue Team from right here in the Greater Fort Lauderdale region captured their fifth straight National Championship!

While the talent gathering from coast to coast is world-class, the biggest story of the championship hits right in our own backyard.

Dominating the competition year after year takes far more than luck. It demands endless early-morning training sessions, flawless teamwork in rough surf, and an unrelenting commitment to athletic excellence. Seeing our local squad cement their dynasty on home turf makes this victory even sweeter.

Beyond the medals and bragging rights, these championships showcase the razor-sharp skills, stamina, and quick thinking these men and women use every day to keep beachgoers safe.

So next time you’re soaking up the sun in South Florida, give a tip of your hat to our local heroes. Not only do they keep our shorelines secure year-round, they also happen to be the undisputed best in the nation!

More Treats To Try

We don’t let just anyone sponsor this newsletter. Here’s who “made the cut” this week:

👉 Buy YOUR OWN Classified Ad Here 👈

The new school year is starting up. Lots of excitement for the first days of school. But if it is not feeling right for your family, you might want to look at something very different and totally worth it.
Make your morning feel like a getaway with Fort Lauderdale’s Hollywood Early-Bird Cruise. Fort Lauderdale's Hollywood Early-Bird Cruise departs daily at 9 AM from Stop F4 – Hilton Marina & Convention Center, and is $20 roundtrip. Lot’s to do in Hollywood.
The Jury Experience: The Deadly Boat Ride. An immersive courtroom drama where you're the jury, staged at Savor Cinema. A boat crime, in this town — on the nose and kind of perfect. From $48.50.
🎶 Music lessons for your child. Start building confidence on day one. See our special promotion for an extra 15-minute personalized onboarding session. Voice. Piano. And combo lessons. Text Shontel at 516-945-9742.
SAVE THE DATE. Founding Families Fall Festival. Stranahan House. September 25th. Email director@stranahanhouse.org for sponsorship opportunities.

Just hit reply to this email to get started. Work with us to reach over 1500+ Greater Fort Lauderdale families.

Quote Of The Week

Mary Kay Ash on the power of listening:
“Many of the problems I hear don’t require me to offer solutions. I solve most of them by just listening and letting the involved party do the talking.”

Mary Kay Ash was an American businesswoman and founder of direct sales company Mary Kay Cosmetics, Inc. At the time of her death, she had a fortune of $98 million, and her company had more than $1.2 billion in sales with a sales force of more than 800,000 in at least three dozen countries.

Flotsam & Jetsam

This one will definitely fit the “cool thing found on the web and definitely not local to Florida” - which is kind of the definition we gave to this Flotsam and Jetsam section.

This week families are returning from summer explorations for the start of the new school year. And one of the things several families reported was they saw castles!

Now to be clear… the word “Coral Castle” shows up several places (Homestead being the most well known) in Florida (we even have a tiny one here in Fort Lauderdale). But what we do have… is a bunch of historical Forts that will rival any of the European castles. Like Forts Jefferson or Zachary Taylor down in the Keys, or Castillo de San Marcos up in Saint Augustine.

But if you really want to see castles (lots of them), look at this map! It’s cool to see the clusters, as you can zoom in on Europe or even the many locations in Japan.

Which one is most surprising to you? Fort Conger (furthest north) up in Canada? There is even a fun “Surprise Me” or a “CastleGuesser” for those who want to test their knowledge.

Word Play Of The Week

“Groggy.”

In 1740 Admiral Edward Vernon ordered the Royal Navy’s daily rum ration watered down. Vernon wore a coat of grogram cloth, so sailors called him Old Grog, and the watered rum became “grog.” Feeling rough the next morning was feeling groggy. The word for your hangover is named after the man who tried to prevent it. ~ Source

‘Under-The-Radar’ Openings Job Board

Lot’s of folks offering cool positions here locally. Maybe there’s one for you or a friend?

Shoe Cobbler / Repairman in Margate. Somebody in Broward is still resoling shoes by hand and needs help doing it. If you have ever wondered where that skill goes when the last shop closes, here is the answer. Listing
Marine Gelcoat Technician at a Dania Beach boat manufacturer. Gelcoat is the finish that makes a hull look like glass, and it is a genuine craft. A job that only exists because of where we live. Listing
Aircraft Detailing Technician in Dania Beach. Cleaning private jets at the executive airport, which is a real industry here and completely invisible unless you work in it. Listing
Bird Care and Bug Zoo Department Management at Butterfly World, Coconut Creek. Running the breeding programs and habitats for the birds and the insects. Outdoors, weekends included. Listing
New City Hall and Parking Garage Job Fair, Pompano Beach, Wed-Thu Aug 19-20. Two days of hiring and info sessions tied to the new civic build. This one is dated, so it can run in the roundup instead (std11). Listing
Director of Business Development at the Museum of Discovery and Science. The person who goes and gets the sponsors and partnerships that keep a downtown science museum running. Listing
Do you have a listing you would like to place here for next week? Hit reply and let us know.

Lastly… One Big Idea For Your Week

Are you moving towards what you want, or away from what you are hoping to avoid? Your answer matters more than what you might think.

Tell Us How We Are Doing

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