The Borderland Playhouse, the small theater Borderland Tees built in the middle of its warehouse last year, has its next run this week: John, by Annie Baker, produced by Free Spirit Theatre. The playhouse's page lists the dates, and Free Spirit's ticket page has the detail: Thursday and Saturday at seven thirty, Friday at eight because Sevier Avenue is closed for Spooky Streets until seven thirty, and a Sunday matinee at two. General admission is twenty dollars.

★The play

Baker won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for The Flick, and John is the one she wrote next: a young couple from Brooklyn spend a late-November weekend at a bed-and-breakfast in Gettysburg run by an older woman with a house full of dolls and a blind friend who drops by. Not much happens and all of it matters; the ticket listing blocks three hours, which is about right for a Baker play. It is the playhouse's first show since Hedda Gabler closed on October 3.

★The practical part

Seating is first come, first served, so book online and arrive early. The yellow building with the possum painted on it is the one; the theater is through the shop. On Friday, park once for Spooky Streets and stay; the curtain is at eight.

The Borderland Playhouse's page lists a second thing this week, and it costs nothing: Best if Used By, by Doug Brendel, a one-night-only readers' theatre production directed by Marty Ragsdale and starring Chevy Anz and Carol Goans, Sunday at seven. A readers' theatre is the play read aloud from the script, on its feet but without sets or costumes, which is how new work and small casts get heard. The playhouse has been hosting table readings of local works in progress through Next Rung Productions, and this is the public-facing version of that habit.

It follows the two o'clock matinee of John in the same room, so the Sunday at 802 Sevier Avenue runs from the afternoon into the evening with a dinner break on the avenue in between. No reservation is listed; arrive early for a seat.

The Pink Cactus put The Big Pink House Party Vol. 5 on its October list at the end of September, and TJO, the DJ behind the series, filled in the rest: drum and bass nights don't come around here often enough, so volume five gives the whole night to the genre. Andrew Fetch, BLINDSIDE, which is TJO's own drum-and-bass alias, and Bounce Back play from nine on Friday, October 23. Tickets are ten dollars online and fifteen at the door, twenty-one and up.

★The pink house

The bar downstairs serves Latin-inspired food and cocktails, the front-yard patio has covered seating and yard games, and the private karaoke rooms upstairs book separately. Friday is the night the district closes the avenue for Spooky Streets until seven thirty, so the sidewalks will be full of costumes when the doors open an hour and a half later; the parking lots at either end of the district are the easy ones.

Fly by Night's October lineup, posted at the start of the month, puts Captain Ed and FreQ-K in the lounge on Thursday, October 22, playing what the post calls industrial slammers: get gothic is the instruction. Captain Ed is Ed McDaniel, whose own profile promises to start riots on the dance floor; FreQ-K bills himself as a frequency designer. It is the third of the lounge's five October nights, after the disco and the album pre-party, and before Wax Museum's spooky vinyl on the 29th and the Freaks Come Out at Night ball on the 30th.

The lounge opens at four on Thursdays and runs until one, and neither the venue nor the DJs have posted a set time, so plan on a night-time show and ask at the bar. The creepy cocktail list is on all month.

We're back, the host's post on Fly by Night's feed begins, and the back is from an earlier edition that drew a crowd: on Saturday, October 24 the lounge hosts a vampire party intended, in the host's words, for Knoxville's lesbian and sapphic community to sip, stalk the night and maybe find a fiendish friend or two before Halloween. There is time to mix and mingle and have a drink, and at ten the lounge's own DJ Iris plays, as the post puts it, a danse macabre for the ages.

The dress code is the point: find the hottest possible vampire inside you and let it out, whether that is a leather-clad raver, a blood countess, Nosferatu or a really good outfit with fangs. Come cute or come scary, just come thirsty. The lounge opens at four on Saturdays and closes at one; the creepy cocktails are on all month.

Trailhead's October flyer lists Rodney Lee and Corey Kimbro for Friday, October 23, and the flyer's standing rule applies: Friday and Saturday music starts at seven, outdoors, free. The flyer is the whole announcement, so the pairing will have to introduce itself on the patio. It is the beer market's last Friday show before Jake Smith Trio on the 30th and Four Legged Dog on Halloween.

Gato Peligroso, the kitchen in the back, is trying out a Southern Hospitality burger this week with house-made pimento cheese, candied bacon and apple-cider caramelized onions, alongside the barbecue pulled-pork sandwich and Brunswick stew. Friday is clear and in the sixties at seven, dropping to 44 overnight, so the patio heaters will earn their keep by the second set. Island Home Avenue is outside the Spooky Streets closure, but the gravel lot under the bridge will be the district's overflow lot that night.

Sunday music at Trailhead starts at four, and on October 25 it is The Lonetones, the Knoxville band whose own profile calls their sound mountain indie folk-pop. They are on the beer market's October flyer between Rodney Lee and Corey Kimbro on Friday and the Ben Garnett Trio with Daniel Kimbro the following Tuesday, and like every show on that patio, it is free.

Sunday is sunny and 73, the last of four clear days, so the outdoor stage gets the good one. Scruffy Roots Fest is on the Kern's lawn from one to seven thirty the same afternoon, a ten-minute walk away; the two patios are close enough to split the day.

The SoKno Rail Trail and Art Walk, the 3.8-mile walking and biking trail Legacy Parks Foundation is building along the old rail line from Chapman Highway to Ijams Nature Center, gets its trees on Thursday. Legacy Parks' post asks for help planting 37 flowering native trees along a stretch of the trail from nine to noon on October 22, and Trees Knoxville's event page puts the meeting point at the River's Edge Apartments, 1701 Island Home Avenue, two blocks past Printshop Beer Co.

★Sign up, then dig

Registration is free on Trees Knoxville's site, with a ten- or twenty-five-dollar donation optional, and the page showed twenty-nine spots left on Monday. The Mortgage Gallery and Realty Executives South are the sponsors. The trail is the one with the Anna Charney and Naomi Haverland murals on the back of Kern's; the trees are the next layer. Thursday starts at 44 and is 73 and sunny by the time the last hole is filled.

Monsters Made with Love, a Knoxville maker whose workshops teach beginner sewing by way of perfectly imperfect stuffed monsters, brings one to Kern's on Thursday, October 22 from five thirty to seven thirty. Kern's post calls it the Monsters Made with Love Halloween Workshop: kids come in costume, learn enough hand sewing to make a stuffed monster or a heart to take home, get a treat bag, and enter a costume contest whose prize is Dollywood passes.

Tickets are fifty dollars per creator through the link in Kern's bio, and the proceeds go to The Restoration House, the Knoxville nonprofit that supports single mothers and their children with housing, advocacy and enrichment programs. Ages five to seven need a parent sewing alongside; eight and up work on their own with the maker. Space is limited, and the food hall around it is open until ten on Thursdays for dinner after.

Printshop's specials page for the week lists a game-day deal for Saturday, October 24: a dollar off pints from thirty minutes before the Vols kick off until the final whistle. Tennessee is at South Carolina at 3:30, so the deal runs from three until the game ends, with the big screen on in the taproom and the patio open on a sunny 73-degree afternoon over the river.

The rest of the week's board is the usual: ten percent off cases, mixed ones included, on Thursday from four to nine, and twelve-dollar flights of four all day Friday from noon to nine. The brewery's gallery this month is all Dolly Parton, paintings by local artists, which is worth a lap with the pint.

The forest comes to life at Mead's Quarry on Saturday, October 24, which is how Ijams Nature Center describes its Enchanted Forest: come in costume and walk the woods meeting the park's animal ambassadors and, for one night only, magical life-size puppets of native critters, with candy and goodies to take home. The park's weekend post adds Halloween crafts and self-carving pumpkins. Cattywampus Puppet Council, the Knoxville puppet troupe, built the critters and lends the hands.

★Timed entry

Tickets are sold by entry time, on the half hour from three, and the park asks that you arrive at the time on your ticket. An individual ticket is ten dollars, a group of up to four is thirty, a group of up to six is forty, and children under two are free. The event runs until eight, so the late slots are the dark ones, which is the point.

★The practical part

Mead's Quarry is the Island Home Avenue entrance, not the visitor center. Saturday is sunny and 73 and drops into the 50s by the last entries, so a layer under the costume. Earlier that day the free Saturday storytime at the Nature Playscape, ten to noon, is on fairy tales, which the park's own listing calls the warm-up for the forest.

Ijams After Dark is the park's evening program series, and the October 23 edition is Mischief Night: adventure into the dark with Ijams naturalists, the listing says, and chat about all things mischievous and nocturnal. Participants meet some of the park's nocturnal animal ambassadors, learn about the not-so-creepy critters that have the woods at night, and take a guided night hike on the trails with the Halloween theme of what those critters get up to.

It is fifteen dollars, for ages six and up, from seven to nine on Friday, and the hike covers up to a mile over rocks, roots and gravel with stopping points. Every participant needs the park's assumption-of-risk form on file once a year. Friday night is clear and in the 50s at seven, falling to 44 overnight, which is good owl weather and jacket weather. It is the same hour as Spooky Streets on Sevier Avenue, so this is the one for a family that would rather have the woods than the crowd.

Ijams Nature Center's paddle program ends for the year on Sunday, October 25 with the Full Moon Paddle: Celebrating the Hunter Moon, a two-hour guided trip from Ijams River Landing from six thirty to eight thirty, and the park's listing marks it the last available date. Naturalists lead the group out to uncover the secrets of the Tennessee River after dark and read the night sky, looking for plants, animals and geology along the bank by moonlight.

★The practical part

It is forty-five dollars, ages fourteen and up with anyone under eighteen accompanied by an adult, and the park provides the kayak, the life jacket and the headlamp; you bring water and clothes for a night that starts in the 60s and ends near 47. A once-a-year liability waiver is on the park's site. The trip meets at the boat landing on Island Home Pike, not the visitor center. If the river is not your thing, the Full Moon Hike leaves the visitor center at the same half hour: ninety minutes and up to two miles of trail by blacklight and headlamp, fifteen dollars, ages ten and up.

See a play. Meet a stranger. Have a conversation. That is the park's three-line pitch for The Crossword Play, which Potential Energy Theatre brings to Ijams Nature Center on Sunday, October 25 at two. The full title is The Crossword Play (or Ezmeralda's Gift), by Donna Hoke, directed by Daniel Bird Tobin and performed by Erika Lee Sengstack, and the listing calls it a combination theatrical play and puzzle-making seminar: you meet the Puzzlemaker, watch a crossword constructed in front of you and learn how to make one, and along the way experience how a puzzle can change a life.

It runs ninety minutes, to three thirty, at the visitor center on Island Home Avenue. The park asks you to register on its calendar; no ticket price is listed. The Scruffy Roots Fest at Kern's is playing the same afternoon, a ten-minute drive back toward the river, if the day wants music after the puzzle.

Earl's runs a different special every day of the week from eleven to ten, and the Thursday-to-Sunday run is Patrón mango ritas, spicy pineapple ritas, house margaritas and then mimosas and Bloody Marys. Saturday the Vols are on the road at South Carolina, 3:30 kickoff, and the board Earl's lists for game days is the one to watch it on: two dollars off drafts and pizza, six-dollar Orange Bliss cocktails, beer buckets at six for the price of five, and four- and five-dollar shots. Every day of the stretch is sunny and 73, so the river tables are open through Sunday, when the Titans host the Browns at one and the mimosas are seven dollars.