This weekend, spend the day at the Cleveland International Film Festival, express your style at Cleveland Fashion Week, sip a glass of bubbly at the Week of Wine, and party at Near West Theatre’s annual benefit gala.

Social dancing is a great way to meet new people, get exercise and explore Cleveland. From Brazilian capoeira to contra dancing, here are four local places to get your groove on.

Marrion Demore has always loved improving on commercial bottled barbeque sauce. “I used to have really big family cookouts and I’d just doctor up some Open Pit to make it taste better,” Demore recalls. “People always said, ‘you should market this.’ I never gave it much thought until the economy went down hill. Then I knew I had to make it from scratch.”
 
Today, Demore calls himself the Rock and Roll Star of Sauce. In 2009 he began experimenting with homemade sauce, trying his various versions out on friends and family. Two years later, he had perfected his flavors and launched Demore’s Fusion Sauce in 2011 “There were a lot of taste tests and a lot of money being blown on bad batches, he says of his two-year journey. “It was important to me that my sauce was all natural, with no preservatives.”
 
Demore makes and bottles four versions of his sauce – mild, medium, flaming and hickory smoke. He uses ghost peppers, ground into a powder, to add the heat to his flaming sauce and buys his bottles from Cleveland Bottle and Supply. In addition to being all-natural, all varieties are also low in sugar and sodium. “It’s more sauce with less calories,” he says.
 
Demore describes his company as a grass-roots effort. He recently launched an online store on through his Facebook site. Last November he began handing out free samples and selling his sauce on Saturdays at Zagara’s Marketplace in Cleveland Heights, where he sells 15 to 20 bottles a week.
 
“A tell-tale sign to me us when you have a taste-testing and people buy it,” Demore says. “I let people try it and tell them about it. It keeps me motivated and keeps me going when people walk away with a bottle. Ninety-five percent of people are going to enjoy one of my sauces when they try it.”

While Demore still makes his sauce in his home kitchen, he has gone to the Cleveland Culinary Launch and Kitchen (CCLK) for advice and guidance. “Cleveland is very supportive once you plug yourself in,” he says. “Even though this is not high-tech, the platform is here. It gives you more confidence with the product to know there are people you can call for mentoring and that kind of thing.”
 
Demore is always thinking of new flavors and ideas. He is currently testing coconut and pineapple sugars in sauces and he is working on dry rubs.

Game-changing projects will soon launch in St. Clair Superior and North Collinwood: Hub 55, a new fresh market, cafe and incubator, and ActiVacant, which will draw new retailers to E. 185th.

"Not your average flea market, this pop-up event serves as a business incubator for small businesses and has helped spur development in the neighborhoods where it's held."

Read the full story here.

"Chateau Hough, one of the first American vineyards set on reclaimed urban land, was started in 2010 with a $15,000 grant from the city and about $8,000 of Frazier’s own cash. Frazier’s main objectives were to beautify the lot across from his house (hopefully raising its value) and help out parolees, who often have trouble finding work. But he also wanted to see if Cleveland’s most notorious neighborhood could maybe make a pretty damn good wine."

Read the full story here.

Downtown Minneapolis is booming with new residents, and growth is spilling into outlying neighborhoods. Now plans are in the works to ensure that existing residents and artists have a seat at the table. 

"The vibrant redevelopment of a corridor linking art, educational and healthcare institutions with surrounding neighborhoods, creating lively outdoor gathering spaces, retail shops and restaurants, student and market-rate housing, and public transit connections," stated the Bruner Foundation its website.

Read the full list of winners here.

Take your sweetheart to a ‘90s dance party, ward off winter at the Kurentovanje Festival, see a $1 family movie, and keep up the romance on Fat Tuesday by eating a Paczki with your Valentine.

Cleveland chef and restauranteur Zack Bruell's eighth restaurant will feature "open spaces, expansive views of the Cuyahoga River and open-air dining to take advantage of Cleveland’s all-too-short summer season," according to a news release that was issued this week.

Alley Cat oyster house, as the venue will be called, will be accessible by foot and by boat, since it will be located adjacent to the boardwalk in the new Flats East Bank development.

The release dubs it a "piscatorial paradise" (say that 10 times fast) that will feature "oysters, peel–and–eat shrimp, mussels, clams and fresh fish. A variety of pasta dishes, chicken, chowders, soups and salads will accompany the seafood selections, in addition to vegan menu items."

“This isn’t a big-ticket restaurant –it’s an oyster bar that you’d stroll into in a coastal town, like Santa Barbara or Nantucket; yet Alley Cat is right here on the Cuyahoga,” said Bruell in the release. “Our goal is to draw attention and visitors to Cleveland’s latest up-and-coming entertainment district, similar to what we’ve done in recent years with Chinato on East 4^th Street or Cowell & Hubbard in PlayhouseSquare.”

Bruell is partnering with The Wolstein Group and Fairmount Properties to build the 170-seat restaurant, which will be his first venue to be constructed from the ground up.

As mentioned earlier, outdoor space is one of the driving themes here -- the new venue will feature a lower level patio and rooftop patio.

Got cabin fever? Well, here are some excuses to get out of the house this week. Warm yourself by a community campfire at Ohio City’s first-ever Hingetown Hygge, listen to the city's best storytellers at Keep Talking, and much more.

Fresh Water's inveterate barfly looks through the bottom of her pint glass at the history of Nighttown, one of Cleveland's oldest and most celebrated bars, restaurants and music clubs.

Here's what Conde Nast Traveler has to say about Cleveland's already-risen beer scene:

"The Midwest--American beer's ancestral seat--is finally stealing the spotlight back from the craft brew-sodden coasts. The freshest flavors and most creative styles pour in places like Cleveland, home to super-small-batch start-ups such as Platform (try their Anathema series, aged in local cider barrels), Nano, and Market Garden.--William Bostwick, author, The Brewer's Tale: A History of the World According to Beer

Read the full story here.