We Luv Video 3rd Birthday Party + Silent Madness

We Luv Video is turning three, and they're celebrating with a full-day block party at 100 E. North Loop Blvd. on Saturday, July 25. The party runs from 12 PM to 7 PM, and the whole block shuts down for it. The day is presented by Howdy Gals, the inclusive women and POC-led live music booking and promotion group.

Inside the store, there are new-member sign-up deals, mystery DVD bundles, and new merch voted on in a design contest. There's also a raffle table with prizes like soft sculptures by window-display resident Maura Murnane and film-themed flash tattoos by Slowpoke Tattoo's Annika. Outside, Subculture Swap brings in vendors and a kidz zone with face painting and a station to design your own VHS tape cover and 3D glasses.

Music and workshops run throughout the afternoon. At noon, TAMI (Texas Archive of the Moving Image) leads a curation and archiving workshop. From 3 PM to 6 PM, Nova, Team Trust, Whisper, and Queen Serene take the stage, with DJ 007 keeping things moving. After the block party winds down, the night shifts to the microcinema in the back for a screening of Silent Madness at 7:30 PM.

If you haven't spent much time there, We Luv Video is a volunteer-run, membership-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit and old-school video store with a microcinema in the back, dedicated to preserving and sharing essential, weird and rare physical media. It opened its doors three years ago, inheriting the archive of Austin cinema icon I Luv Video in Vulcan Video's old space, and has become an icon in its own right, with a cozy back room showing truly rare movies, a cast of dedicated volunteers, and rotating staff picks. The birthday bash is a good chance to see how it all works from the inside. The block party runs 12 PM to 7 PM, and the screening of Silent Madness starts at 7:30 PM.