The new year is finally here, and it would be easy to fall in with the mopes and misanthropes. “I have measured out my life with unused gym memberships,” my drinking buddy Al Prufrock said at the Shuck N Dive the other day. He says the same thing every year.
This one, 2025, seems particularly ripe with, let’s call it potential. As The Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia, a fiercely optimistic cultural renegade, once sang: “Once in a while, you get shown the light, in the strangest of places, if you look at it right.”
THURSDAY
Bring out your Deadheads: Continuing a remarkable stretch of calendar-flipping performances in Fort Lauderdale , Grateful Dead co-founder Bobby Weir and the Wolf Bros Trio (bassist Don Was and drummer Jay Lane) set up at downtown concert hall The Parker for shows at 7:30 p.m. Thursday and Friday. Some tickets are available, starting at $149.50+. Visit ParkerPlayhouse.com .
Disco inferno: The free every-Thursday Clematis by Night concert series in downtown West Palm Beach will host one of South Florida’s most popular tribute acts, the Original Studio 54 Band , who will deliver all the earworm-y boogie-oogie-oogie hits of the disco era from 6 to 9 p.m. The family-friendly concert will take place on the stage on the Great Lawn (100 N. Clematis St.), and visitors are encouraged to bring blankets, chairs and coolers (but no outside alcohol permitted). Visit WPB.org/events .