|
What's On Pittsburgh · Weekend
|
|
Good morning, Pittsburgh! October opens with molten iron, and I mean that literally. Saturday afternoon artists pour the real thing inside the Carrie Blast Furnaces, and the Festival of Combustion turns ten. Downtown, the dachshund races go at 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. From there: free glassblowing, telescopes, an oddity market and Farm Olympics. Elsewhere: the Penguins home opener Saturday, Wiz Khalifa Friday and Foster the People Sunday at the new Wylie room. Highlander Happening at Hartwood is the 10th, but tickets close Sunday. Grab a jacket. It finally feels like October. Let's get to it! - Madison
|
A quick word from Guardian Financial Publishing, one of the sponsors that keep What's On Pittsburgh free.
Elon's Cooking Up Something Big
Love him or hate him, Musk moves markets. His next launch hits July 22, and the smart money is already positioning. Our analyst found 3 stocks set to ride it — with entry points and a buy/sell playbook.
|
★ WEEKEND PICK
🔥 Festival of Combustion
Carrie Blast Furnaces · Rankin · Sat 3 to 9 p.m. · $25 advance, $30 at the gate, under 18 free
Rivers of Steel pours molten iron inside the last standing furnaces of the Homestead Works, and the festival turns ten this year. Carve a scratch block and it comes back to you as cast iron. Blacksmiths, glassblowing, flame performance, a makers' market, fireworks after dark. Why go: Nothing else looks like this. Liquid metal poured by people who do it for a living, inside a National Historic Landmark, in the city that used to do it at scale. Under 18s are free, so a family of four gets in for fifty dollars.
|
|
|
|
|
🐕 Prostburgh Oktoberfest: Family Day and Pup Day
Market Square · Downtown · Fri and Sat noon to 10 p.m., Sun noon to 8 p.m. · Free entry
The wiener dogs race at 4 p.m. Saturday and again Sunday. Six dogs a heat, two humans per dog, one at the line and one at the far end to catch it. Saturday adds a mass chicken dance and Children's Museum games; Sunday brings a puppy costume parade. Why go: Free to walk in, right in the middle of Downtown, and a dachshund race is exactly as good as it sounds. There is a rematch on the 10th and 11th if Saturday gets away from you.
|
|
🎭 In Clay
City Theatre Mainstage · South Side · Fri 7:30 p.m., Sat 1 and 5:30 p.m., Sun 2 p.m. · From about $38, or $24 if you are under 30
City Theatre's mainstage show comes down on 11 October, so this is one of its last two weekends. It is a one woman musical about Marie-Berthe Cazin, a French ceramicist almost nobody bothered to write down. Why go: City Theatre is where the new work in this city gets programmed, and a solo musical about a forgotten potter is exactly the swing they take well. Seats start around $38. The $24 under-30 seat is real, but you have to phone the box office for it.
|
|
|
|
|
|
FRIDAY, OCT 2
🎨 HOT Jam and Walk In + Make-It-Now
Pittsburgh Glass Center · Friendship · Fri, drop-in 1 to 5 p.m., HOT Jam 6 to 9 p.m. · Free open house
The Glass Center's free first Friday open house: live glassblowing in the hot shop, the studios open, and this month it doubles as the opening of Forged in Flames, a 25 year retrospective. Walk in between 1 and 5 earlier in the day and make a glass object yourself, no reservation. Why go: Free, and you can stand ten feet from someone working a gather of molten glass at 2000 degrees. The make-it-yourself session has a per piece cost the Center does not publish, so bring a card.
|
|
FRIDAY, OCT 2
🔭 Public Star Party at Wagman Observatory
Wagman Observatory · Tarentum · Fri and Sat, from about 90 minutes before sunset · Free
The Amateur Astronomers Association opens its hilltop observatory and points everything it has at the sky: two permanent telescopes, a meadow full of members with their own, and an invitation to look through any of them. Bring binoculars, or bring nothing. Why go: It is free, and genuinely dark up there in a way nowhere in the city is. Two things. It is about forty minutes north of town, and it is weather dependent, so call 724-224-2510 before you drive out. If Friday clouds over, they run it again Saturday.
|
|
FRIDAY, OCT 2
🎸 The Toxhards
The Funhouse at Mr. Smalls · Millvale · Fri 8 p.m. · $5, all ages
The Get Destructive Tour lands in the Funhouse, the small room attached to Mr. Smalls. The band has a debut album on Hopeless Records and a second life online where the sketches pull as many views as the songs. Why go: Five dollars. All ages. A band with an actual following in a room that holds a couple of hundred people, ten minutes up the river in Millvale. If it is bad you have lost five dollars and gained a story.
|
|
|
|
Partner With Us
Get Your Business Featured
Get your business, service, event, or announcement promoted in front of thousands of engaged Pittsburgh readers.
|
|
|
|
|
SATURDAY, OCT 3
🎃 Steel City Spooky Market
Allegheny Commons Park West · North Side · Sat 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. · Free entry
An oddity market on the Park West lawn by the Aviary: spooky art, tarot readings, taxidermy, crystals, flash tattoos and a rotating cast of food trucks, from a bench of local and LGBTQIA+ makers. Only two dates are left after this one, 17 and 31 October. Why go: This is the browse where you come home with something nobody else has, which is not true of most markets. Free, an hour is plenty, and it fits before or after anything else on the North Side.
|
|
SATURDAY, OCT 3
🌽 Braddock Farms Fall Fest
Braddock Farms · Braddock · Sat 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. · Free, lunch included
Grow Pittsburgh's urban farm throws its ninth fall festival: paper making, line dancing, bicycle powered ice cream, a gourd decorating contest with prizes, and Farm Olympics. Lunch is free. The county Conservation District will screen your soil for lead if you bring a prepared sample. Why go: Farm Olympics next to a free heavy metals clinic is about as Pittsburgh as a Saturday morning gets. It costs nothing, it feeds you, and Braddock is fifteen minutes out the parkway.
|
|
SATURDAY, OCT 3
🏡 Brighton Heights House Tour
Starts at Legion Memorial Park · Brighton Heights · Sat 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. · $25
Eight houses open up, from a textbook foursquare to a once condemned farmhouse somebody dragged back from the dead. It is self guided, a trolley runs between three stops, and it ends with a party in the park and a Brighton Heights Ale brewed for the occasion by Allegheny City Brewing. Why go: Nosing around other people's houses is a legitimate hobby and this is the sanctioned version. Twenty five dollars gets you inside eight front doors in a North Side neighborhood most of the city drives past.
|
|
|
A quick word from Angelinos Coffee, one of the sponsors that keep What's On Pittsburgh free.
I Threw Out My Grocery Store K-Cups After One Sip
|
|
|
SUNDAY, OCT 4
🛍️ Neighborhood Flea at Schenley Plaza
Schenley Plaza · Oakland · Sun 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. · Free entry
Vintage, collections, small batch food, handmade goods, food trucks and live music out on the lawn, run in partnership with the Parks Conservancy. First Sundays, June through October. Why go: This is the final Oakland date of the 2026 season, so it is now or next June. Free to walk in, and Schenley Plaza on an October Sunday is one of the better places in the city to spend an afternoon doing not very much.
|
|
SUNDAY, OCT 4
🎢 Phantom Fall Fest at Kennywood
Kennywood · West Mifflin · Sun from noon, haunts after dark
Kennywood runs two festivals on top of each other. Daytime is rides, autumn food and decorations pitched at kids. After dark the Phantom takes over with haunted houses and scare zones, and it stops being a children's event fairly abruptly. Why go: Kennywood does one trick better than anyone, which is being two completely different parks in the same day. Take small kids early and leave before dark, or go at dusk and stay. First of five weekends, through 1 November. Check the Sunday hours on kennywood.com before you drive out.
|
|
SUNDAY, OCT 4
🏺 Clay Pumpkin Patch
Union Project · Highland Park · Sun 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. · $35
A teaching artist has already thrown the pumpkins. You pick one while it is still leather hard, firm but soft enough to cut, and carve it exactly like the real thing. It fires to almost 2000 degrees and you collect a permanent jack-o'-lantern two weeks later. Why go: The take home object is the whole point. Every October pumpkin you have ever carved was compost by November, and this one is not. All ages, all levels, three hours in Highland Park, and the building is wheelchair accessible through the Stanton Avenue side door.
|
|
SUNDAY, OCT 4
🧬 Center for PostNatural History
Center for PostNatural History · Garfield · Sun noon to 4 p.m. · $10 adults, $5 students and kids under 8, free for 15224 residents
One room on Penn Avenue, Suite 101, given over entirely to organisms people deliberately altered: lab animals, transgenic specimens, the physical leftovers of a century of biotech. Why go: Ten dollars, and free if you live in 15224. It is a storefront in a row rather than a building, so watch for the suite number or you will walk straight past it. An hour in here gives you more to talk about afterwards than most of what is in this email.
|
|
|
|
ICYMI
In case you missed it around Pittsburgh this week.
|
filled the David L. Lawrence Convention Center this week, where one of the biggest robotics conferences in the world pulled more than 7,000 researchers into Downtown. Pittsburgh got it for the obvious reason.
|
|
stop being a warning and start being a ticket on Thursday. Drive in the bus-only lanes on Forbes or Fifth between Bellefield and Craft and it is a $25 fine plus around $175 in court costs.
|
|
clears the tables out of its Lawrenceville pizza shop on the first Saturday of the month and turns the room into a house and UK garage party until late. The next one is this Saturday. City Paper went, stayed well past its bedtime, and filed a very fond report.
|
|
|
|
Thank You! Thanks for reading What's On Pittsburgh. If you found something useful, please share our Newsletter and Instagram with someone who'd like it. ❤️ Make it a great weekend, Pittsburgh!
- Madison
|
|
KEEP US IN YOUR INBOX
Move What's On Pittsburgh to your Primary tab so you don't miss the good stuff.
|
|
