The First Real Weekend of Summer Has No Holiday. Here's Why That's the Best Kind

You probably did a lot last weekend.

A parade, or a cookout, or a drive somewhere, or all three. Memorial Day is the loud start of summer. It's supposed to be loud.

This weekend is the opposite. No holiday. No big crowd surge. No reason to wake up early except whatever reason you give yourself.

That's actually the better weekend.

The brewery has a table

Last Saturday at 4 PM, every brewery patio in your town was full. The wait was forty minutes and a stranger was sitting at the end of your table.

This Saturday at 4 PM, the same patio has three open tables, the music is at a volume where you can hear the person across from you, and the bartender remembers your face from before. That's the brewery you wanted to go to. You just couldn't get into it last week.

The same applies to the wine bar, the coffee roaster doing late hours, the new ramen place that finally has Saturday availability. Open the Business Directory. Look at what's near you. The places that were impossible last weekend are easy this weekend.

The Experiences slots are open again

Memorial Day weekend sold out everything bookable. Kayak rentals, pottery classes, brewery tours, fishing charters, sunset boat rides. Whatever you wanted to do, somebody beat you to the reservation.

Check this weekend. The slots that were gone last week are back.

Open Experiences and filter for the next two days. The list is shorter than a Memorial Day weekend list, but the things on it are real openings. Same operators, same activities, same prices, half the competition for the time you actually want.

This is the weekend to book the thing you've been putting off.

The farmers market isn't overrun

Holiday Saturdays at the farmers market mean a line at every vendor, the tomatoes you wanted sold out before nine, and parking three blocks away.

This Saturday, you can show up at 9:30, walk straight to the strawberry guy, and have a conversation with the farmer about whether to expect a good peach year. That's the farmers market the farmer wants you at, too.

Check Events for your local market times. Several towns have weekly markets running every Saturday from now through October. This is the weekend to start that habit.

Trading Post just got refilled

Holiday weekends are when people clean out. Garages, sheds, basements, kids' rooms. Sunday and Monday of Memorial Day weekend were the highest-volume listing days on Trading Post all spring.

Most of those listings are still up. Patio furniture, bikes, kayaks, grills, baby gear, tools. The kind of stuff people post and then don't repost.

Open Trading Post and scroll for two minutes. There's more good stuff sitting there right now than there will be next weekend, because nobody's done a sweep through it yet.

The weekend that isn't trying

Holiday weekends are about the holiday. This weekend is just about the town.

That's the weekend the town actually shows you who it is.

Use it.