Forget the arena shuffle this Saturday. The smartest weekend plan in Las Vegas is one building downtown, two parties, and a costume.
THIRD Street hosts its inaugural Gala and Cockroach Ball on Saturday, November 14, at 814 S 3rd St, Las Vegas, NV 89101. The Gala starts at 5:30 p.m. The Ball takes over at 8:30 p.m. and runs to midnight.
Both are fundraisers for a nonprofit arts and media incubator turning a former downtown cinema into a permanent home for local performance, education, and production. You party. The building gets closer to real. That math works.
Pick Your Door: $300 Gala or $60 Ball Entry
The Gala is the full sit-down version. Tickets start at $300 per person and include a cocktail reception, dinner by Chef Lanny Chin, drinks, live entertainment, and auctions, plus admission to the Ball.
The night honors Teller, the magician and THIRD Street Honorary Patron. Human Nature performs. Table sponsorships start at $5,000, and the dress code is creative cocktail, glamour encouraged and personality adored.
The Ball is the move for everyone else. The $100 ticket, plus fees, includes all food and three drink tickets. Admission-only tickets cost $60, with drinks sold separately.
Both parts are 21 and older. Costumes are encouraged, and Piff the Magic Dragon headlines with Coco and Friends, Eccentric Artists, and dozens of local performers.
Here is the fresh insight most people will miss. The $100 Ball ticket is not just a cover charge. Food is included, three drinks are included, and six different rooms are included. Price it against a normal Saturday night out and it stops looking expensive fast.
Work the Six Rooms Before 10 p.m.
Do not plant yourself in one spot. The whole point is the rooms, and each one does something different.
- The Live Stage: Vegas-made bands and musicians, one set after another.
- The Vibes Room: games, a sound bath, and living-room comfort crossed with escape-room mischief.
- The Cinema: Las Vegas filmmakers, in collaboration with Eccentric Artists, with popcorn included.
- The Cabaret: the restaurant becomes a speakeasy for fringe acts, burlesque, drag, magic, and comedy.
- The Mural: one giant paint-by-numbers canvas that everyone at the party helps finish.
- The Nightclub: the cabaret flips at 10 p.m. into DJs and dancing until midnight.
That 10 p.m. flip is your deadline. Hit the Cinema, the Cabaret, and the Mural first, because the room you skip early is the room that changes later.
Food runs all night from Chopped Champion Chef Lanny Chin: smash burgers, dan dan shooters, fried-rice risotto balls, sweet wontons, and Fuji apple fritters. No seated dinner. Keep moving and keep eating.
The Move That Makes the Night Worth It
The name is not a gimmick. In 2002, five UNLV graduates founded Cockroach Theatre, making plays at night in loading docks and found spaces.
That company survived and evolved into Vegas Theatre Company. The Ball celebrates that spirit: artists finding space and building community with limited resources.
All proceeds support THIRD Street development and programming. So your Saturday plan is simple, in this order:
- Choose the $60 admission-only ticket if you will buy drinks slowly, or the $100 ticket if you plan to eat and drink. Do the math before you click.
- Arrive at 8:30 p.m., not fashionably late. The early rooms are the ones that disappear into the nightclub flip.
- Wear the costume. The release says turn up fabulous, and a room full of people who committed always beats a room full of people who hedged.
Strip headliners will be here next weekend. This night happens once, in one downtown building, for the people trying to give Las Vegas artists a permanent home. That is the plan worth building your Saturday around.
