A 150-table card con hits downtown, Elmwood after dark, and a triple on-sale morning

Hey Memphis 👋 It's Friday — the weekend we planned yesterday starts tonight (missed the guide? it's here). Sunny and 92, feels like 103: shade is a strategy. And it's already moving — a 150-table card con just landed downtown, Spamalot goes on sale this morning, and Collierville's balloon show sold clean out. Here's tonight, in five minutes.

☀️ Today in Memphis

• Memphis TCG Con — Renasant Convention Center, 4–11 PM, $15 day / $25 weekend, kids 12 & under free. Pokémon, Magic, Lorcana, One Piece, Yu-Gi-Oh! — 150 vendor tables of cards and collectibles roll into downtown through Sunday, and tonight is the first crack at them. Details

• Tomb Talks — Elmwood Cemetery, 6 PM, $22. The gates stay open late for an evening on Victorian grave symbols and the yellow-fever summer of 1878 — Memphis history, told where it happened. First of three Fridays, already marked "going fast." Details

• Friday Food Truck Frenzies — 1069 Dr. M.L.K. Jr. Ave, 3–9 PM, free. A free, all-ages food-truck round-up in Annesdale — swing through after work and graze your way to nine. Details

• Happy Friday at The Grove — GPAC, Germantown, 5–8 PM, free. Worth repeating from yesterday's guide, because it's still the easiest free plan in town: Josh Threlkeld's "Let's JAM" is a join-in show — your voice, your name-that-tune guesses, any instrument you can carry. Details

• Cordovas — Hernando's Hide-A-Way, 8 PM (doors 7), $10–15. Nashville's Cordovas bring three-part cosmic-country harmonies to a dance floor that's been swaying since the 1950s. Details

• Two rooms at the Hi Tone — Crosstown, 8 & 9 PM, $13.50 a room. Anna Rose Baker and Abigail & The Starlings play the all-ages room upstairs at 8; Sex Mex gets loud downstairs at 9 (21+). Details

• Memphis Redbirds vs. Iowa Cubs — AutoZone Park, 7:05 PM. Fiesta Friday at the ballpark — $5 margaritas and 2-for-$5 street tacos — and if you're plotting ahead, Joey Chestnut and fireworks land there tomorrow night. Details

• A Taste of India — Raleigh Library, 2 PM, free. The Raleigh branch lays out a free tasting tour of Indian flavors, toddlers through grandparents welcome. No passport, no signup. Details

Those are our eight — the full running list, tonight through weeks out, lives at heymemphis.co/events.

📰 The Rundown

Ida B. Wells Plaza is back open. The downtown plaza at Beale and Fourth honoring the pioneering Memphis journalist reopened Thursday morning. (via Action News 5)

Memphis FC's first season is in the books. The new USL League Two club wrapped its debut summer at Mike Rose Soccer Complex with a roster about 75 percent Memphis-local — including three 17-year-olds — and says it'll be back in 2027. (via Action News 5)

Collierville is making a run at America's best scoop. Levee Coffee & Creamery is one of just two Tennessee shops in a 64-creamery national ice-cream bracket, and public voting runs through August 2 — cast yours here. (via Action News 5)

Stax has a new earworm. Memphis-born kids' artist Snooknuk filmed his new "Do Re Mi" video at the Stax Museum, with Stax Music Academy students singing and running the boards. (via Memphis Flyer)

🍽️ Food & Drink

Downtown is getting a seafood destination. Walt & Ricky's Seafood Kitchen is moving into the old Fancy's Fish House space at 1 Dr. MLK Jr. Ave — raw bar, oyster towers, lobster rolls and river views — aiming for September (via WhatNow Memphis). And in DeSoto County, Italia Pizza Cafe — home of the 28-inch "Big Mama" — grand-opens its Olive Branch location next Friday, July 24.

🎟️ Looking Ahead

• Spamalot & the Stray Cats — the double on-sale is this morning at the Orpheum: Spamalot for Oct 27–Nov 1, the Stray Cats for Nov 15. Coconuts optional. Details

• SummerWeen — tomorrow night at the Cadre Building. Halloween in July: a costume party under the marble columns, 9 PM–2 AM, $15–20 presale, 18+. A late add your weekend guide didn't have. Details

• "Weird Al" Yankovic — Saturday, September 26 at the Landers Center in Southaven. On sale now. Details

🏡 Community Corner

Card con, vintage fest, SummerWeen — it's a costumes-and-collections kind of weekend. If you score something great, snap a photo and hit reply; the best finds run Monday.

And if you know about something we missed, there's no gatekeeping here — send it to hey@heymemphis.co and it might make Monday's issue.

That's the week. The planning's done — all that's left is the fun part. See you Monday at 6.

— Josh