9 Best Things to Do in Metro Phoenix This Week

New Times picks the best things to do in metro Phoenix from Monday, July 18, through Thursday, July 20. For more options, see our curated online calendar. 

Camera Obscura Workshop
What happens when you mix an ice-fishing tent with a white board? If you’re hanging out with photographer David Emitt Adams, it’s probably a giant walk-in camera like the one he’s bringing to his free Camera Obscura Workshop at Scottsdale Civic Center Library, 3839 North Drinkwater Boulevard.
Show up between 10:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. on Monday, July 18, and you can walk inside his homemade camera to get a feel for ideas that fueled the invention of photography – plus try your hand at using simple materials to make your own miniature camera obscura that projects images upside down and backward. For more information, visit www.scottsdalepublicart.org. Lynn Trimble

Arizona Rattlers vs. Orlando Predators
Here’s your vocabulary lesson for the day: “penultimate.” Say it like “pen” (that thing sitting on your desk) plus “ultimate” (like the Ultimate Warrior, God rest his soul). It’s often misused to refer to a finale, or the thing that happens last, but it actually means next to last. Your best chance to use it? When talking about the upcoming Arena Football League matchup between the Arizona Rattlers and the Orlando Predators, which will be the penultimate game of the Rattlers’ season, meaning it’ll be your second-to-last chance to see the team before they begin their postseason run to reclaim the AFL championship.

Grab your thesaurus and watch the Rattlers challenge the Predators at 6:30 p.m. Monday, July 18, at Talking Stick Resort Arena, 201 East Jefferson Street. Tickets start at $9. Call 602-514-8383 or visit azrattlers.com for more. Zach Fowle

Arizona Diamondbacks vs. Toronto Blue Jays
Attention Arizona Diamondbacks fans: When the Toronto Blue Jays visit Chase Field, 401 East Jefferson Street, on Tuesday, July 18, we advise that you don the blue and white and embrace your inner Toronto. Contrary to what the snakes have displayed on their home turf, they are in fact a good road team. And as the summer months wane, well, desperate times call for desperate measures. Painful yet tactical, the best thing Valley sports fans can do at this point is to make the ‘Backs feel like they’re somewhere else. Anywhere else. Tickets are $14 and up to the game, which starts at 6:40 p.m. Visit www.dbacks.com or call 602-514-8400 for details. Rob Kroehler 

"The Grand Couturiers and Tradition"
Phoenix Art Museum’s fashion curator Dennita Sewell is a wealth of information. From designers and fabrics to historical trends and obscure clotherie, she’s all but an encyclopedia. Which is precisely why we take every chance we get to learn from her. The next opportunity? That’ll be Sewell’s summer salon series at the museum. It’s devoted to the history of Parisian fashion, and the first talk, titled “The Grand Couturiers and Tradition,” focuses on the influential work of Charles Worth, Coco Chanel, and Cristobal Balenciaga. Start taking notes at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, July 20, at Phoenix Art Museum, 1625 North Central Avenue. For more information about the free event, see www.arizonacostumeinstitute.org or call 602-257-1880. Becky Bartkowski


Phoenix Pheud Game Show
Since the ‘70s, “Let’s start the family feud” are the words used to set the Family Feud game show into action, with two families competing to name the most popular responses to survey questions. Clash at the Crescent: Phoenix Pheud Game Show is your chance to compete in a live, uncensored version of the long-running TV show. Assemble your family, composed of whomever you want — blood relatives, good pals, frenemies, doesn’t matter — as long as there are five players per team. The Battle Royale-style “family” fight starts at 8 p.m. on Wednesday, July 20, at Crescent Ballroom, 308 North Second Avenue. Admission to the 21-and-over event is free. Teams must register online in advance, as space is limited. Call 602-716-2222 or visit www.crescentphx.com. Amy Young

Private Lives 
Private Lives is the quintessential arch, biting Noel Coward play, to the extent that it’s been parodied by everyone from Christopher Durang to (allegedly inadvertently) the writers of Frasier. The divorced survivors of a tempestuous relationship wind up honeymooning with their new spouses in adjoining Normandy hotel rooms, and high jinks ensue — though a classy British person would never call them high jinks. We don’t want to spoil the plot, but here’s a teaser: “Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.”
Don Bluth Front Row Theatre presents the 1930 comedy through Saturday, August 6, at 8670 East Shea Boulevard #103 in Scottsdale. Showtime is 7 p.m. for the opening night performance on Thursday, July 21, and tickets are $20 to $25 at 480-314-0841 or www.donbluthfrontrowtheatre.com. Julie Peterson

Sweet Salvage
Willkommen. Bienvenue. Welcome. Come on in. Travel the world with more than 10,000 square feet of destination-inspired shopping space at Sweet Salvage, 4648 North Seventh Avenue, for Where in the World.

Sweet Salvage is an occasional-sale marketplace, meaning it’s open every third Thursday through Sunday of the month. For July, the shop has been designed to feature themed vignettes of sites from around this old globe for a four-day grab of vintage, antique, and one-of-a-kind items. Think safari hats, old Paris, Hollywood Regency, and the picante sauce capital of the world, New York City.

Sweet Salvage welcomes shoppers from Thursday, July 21, through Sunday July 24, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. with food trucks in the courtyard. For more information, call 602-279-2996 or visit www.sweetsalvage.net. Lauren Cusimano

Destruction of Memory
Those conversations with ultra-conservative relatives might feel like culture wars sometimes, but they’re far from it. Actual culture wars don’t happen around nicely appointed dining room tables. They happen in landscapes devastated by physical destruction, as architecture and artifacts central to cultural identity are destroyed.

That’s the premise of Destruction of Memory, a film that explores the role of architectural destruction in cultural genocide – and what’s being done to prevent it. Arizona’s first screening happens at 7 p.m. on Thursday, July 21, at Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, 7374 East Second Street.

Director Tim Slade will discuss the film, which also reveals efforts to preserve cultural objects during the last century, following the screening. Today’s focus may be ISIS, but it’s not the first group to wreak cultural havoc, and it never hurts to have the long view of history in your sights. Tickets are $7. Visit www.smoca.org. Lynn Trimble

Showcase Showdown
While folks like Amy Schumer and Kevin Hart are able to pack giant venues full of fans eager to bear witness to their jokes and stories nowadays, it wasn’t always that way. To make it in stand-up, performers have to be willing to get up in front of small crowds to collect guffaws. The Showcase Showdown is an opportunity for you to get up close and personal with members of Phoenix’s comedy scene and see who makes you chuckle or grumble. It might be your chance to say you “saw them back when…” Cheers to that. The show starts at 8 p.m. on Thursday, July 21, at Stand Up Live, 50 West Jefferson Street. Admission is $5, seating is first-come, first-served, and there’s a two-drink minimum. Call 480-719-6100 or visit www.standuplive.com. Amy Young