This Friday is a busy one—not only is the seasonal Bend Fall Festival starting off Friday at 5pm for the weekend, it’s also First Friday Art Walk downtown, and of course other First Friday-esque events help to kick off the rest of the weekend.

The Fall Festival of course takes over downtown Bend, closing off Wall Street along with Minnesota and Oregon Avenues, and brings all the usual seasonal downtown festival accouterments: free music, the artists promenade (all of the booths along Wall with arts and crafts for sale), food, beer and wine, and naturally autumn-themed activities like a pumpkin carving contest, pumpkin pie baking contest, pumpkin painting, and so on. And the best part is, it’s free!

The monthly First Friday Art Walk takes place from 5 to 9pm downtown, concurrently with the Fall Fest this year—honestly I’m not entirely sure how that’s going to work, just because it seems like there will be so much going on downtown it’s going to be crazy. With First Friday, many of the downtown businesses stay open late, showcasing special art exhibits, and many offer free refreshments and alcohol along with music. It’s always a great time—and again, free (the best price!).

In conjunction with Art Walk, Deschutes Brewery’s Pub has their First Friday party kicking off with a firkin keg, and is partnering up with the Deschutes Land Trust to help celebrate their 20th anniversary. They will also photography from Jason Brownlee and music from the Moon Mountain Ramblers.

Over at Broken Top Bottle Shop, their fundraising First Firkin Friday this month is benefiting Grandma’s House (a non-profit shelter for homeless and/or abused pregnant and parenting teen mothers) with 100% of firkin beer proceeds going to the organization. The keg will be tapped at 4:30pm, and they’ll host free live music with Soul Reprieve from 7 to 9. Always good beer going on at Broken Top…

Shifting to another type of alcohol, McMenamins Old St. Francis School has a special Bourbon Dinner taking place from 7 to 10pm: “We welcome the evening’s host, Author and Spirits Expert Hoke Harden, to guide us through a spirited gathering of bourbon. We’ll be serving: I.W. Harper, Knob Creek Single Barrel, Maker’s 46, Old Forester 1870, Woodford Reserve Double Oaked and McMenamins’ exclusive Woodford Reserve Cosmic Selection.” The menu looks great, but it’s going to cost you a bit: $80 for tickets (buy them here), but really, that’s an outstanding bourbon list, so it’s worth the splurge.

And at 9pm you can catch ¡Chiringa! playing free over at Silver Moon Brewing—actually their second show of the night as they’ll have also played down at Fall Fest.

Now to figure out something to do for Saturday and Sunday… 😉