The weekend’s most unavoidable event (for better or worse) is the massive Lawrence Busker Festival. Readers, if you’re downtown this weekend, you WILL have a busker in your face at some point. Add Final Friday events and the Art Tougeau parade to the mix and you’ve got the makings for an extremely busy weekend in LFK. Allow extra time for parking and get the scoop below on all these and other events.

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Lawrence Busker Festival, Friday-Sunday, EVERYWHERE

Do you love buskers? Or do you loathe buskers? You’ll hear both responses pretty quickly if you quiz local residents about this popular street-performer festival. Normally a late-August event, this year’s festival is arriving early, timed to coincide with the Art Tougeau art-car parade, ensuring that downtown streets will be clogged not only with weird people but also with weird cars.

Crowds have been large in the past, so allow yourself plenty of time to get around downtown this weekend and stop to ogle the unicyclists, contortionists, breakdancers, strongwomen, jugglers and other assorted oddities that are blocking your path.

Find a full schedule of events at the official website here and visit the Facebook page here. For more on this year’s festival and the Art Tougeau parade, check out this Lawrence.com story.

http://www.lawrence.com/users/photos/2015/may/23/292003/

Free State Festival Under the Stars, 9 p.m. Friday, Lawrence Arts Center

The massive Free State Festival is still a few weeks away but you can get a jump-start on things with this outdoor film series that kicks off Friday with a screening of George Lucas’ 1976 “American Graffiti.” This car-centric classic is a perfect precursor to Saturday’s Art Tougeau art-car parade. Keep an eye out for a pre-“Star Wars” Harrison Ford cruising through the film.

Later films in this weekly series are, in order, “The Breakfast Club,” “One Crazy Summer,” and “The Dark Crystal.” The (flier-less) Facebook event page is here. Note: In case of inclement weather, movies will be screened inside the Lawrence Arts Center.

Heads up: It’s going to be a great summer all around for screenings of old films. Liberty Hall is showing Brad Bird’s animated classic “The Iron Giant” this [at 4 p.m. Sunday, and Downtown Lawrence Inc. and Lawrence Public Library kick off their outdoor Dinner and a Movie series on June 4 with “Jurassic Park.”]

http://www.lawrence.com/users/photos/2015/may/23/292004/

“More Than Meets The Eye” art opening (Jeromy Morris/John Sebelius), 5 p.m. Friday, Cider Gallery

A more traditional gallery-centered Final Friday option is this sure-to-be-intriguing new collaborative show by Jeromy Morris and John Sebelius. The Facebook event page describes their collaborative process as “a visual telephone where paintings were passed back and forth, allowing for works to change, develop and be destroyed.” Hopefully they weren’t all “destroyed” and are still intact enough for you to peek at and purchase them.

You can also read a full profile of the Morris/Sebelius collaborative process in this cool LJ-World article.

http://www.lawrence.com/users/photos/2015/may/23/292002/

The Bad Ideas cassette release party, Love Garden, 6:30 p.m. Friday

Need a break from the buskers and the art-cars? You won’t find peace and quiet at Love Garden, but you WILL find a raucous rock and roll show with Arc Flash, The Bad ideas, and Stiff Middle Fingers. The show flier and Bad Ideas cassette design is from Matty Dragg, who will also be showing his work at the event.

Cassettes are so hot again! We wish we had an art-car with a cassette deck.

The Facebook event page is here.

http://www.lawrence.com/users/photos/2015/may/23/292000/

Art Tougeau Parade, starts outside Lawrence Arts Center, noon Saturday

Our favorite “unofficial” local parade is the Mardi Gras sidewalk march led by Truckstop Honeymoon’s Mike and Katie. But our favorite official street parade is Art Tougeau, a short procession of “art-cars” (and bikes and trucks and other wheeled contraptions).

The parade embarks at noon from in front of the Arts Center, heads up New Hampshire to South Park, then ambles north along Mass. Street. If you miss the parade itself, you can check out the cars parked in front of the LAC during a Final Friday block party the night before and also parked outside the Replay from 2-5 p.m. for the after-party on Saturday.

The website is here and the Facebook page is here.

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Advance Warning: Celebrate Cicada Events, various locations, June

Perhaps you’ve heard that the LOUDEST batch of cicadas in 17 years will be invading LFK this summer. Prairie Park Nature Center is hosting a “Festival of the Cicadas” from 1-4 p.m. Saturday, and our friends at the KU Natural History Museum are also planning a cool series of cicada-related events over the next few weeks.

We’ll have a preview blurb next week focusing particularly on an intriguing collaborative event involving the KU History Museum and Hank Charcuterie and Free State Brewery but — since that column won’t arrive until the day of the event — you might want to get a jump on the proceedings by checking out this Lawrence.com blog post about the event and the KU Natural History website here. You can also read this recent LJ-World piece about the cicadas’ emergence.

Mark your calendars accordingly and consider making reservations if you want to attend the food and beer event, which is a limited, ticketed affair to be held in South Park on June 4.

Tweet us at @LarryvilleLife with tips for next week.