Can't Miss It: Thursday

WHAT WE NEED: Coffee. Like, right now. These events today don't make any sense, and writing this is proving unusually difficult. And, of course, there's no coffee in the cupboard. Also, we don't live anywhere near a Macrina Bakery. They turn 16 today, and to celebrate you get a free coffee if you buy bread. But bread we do have. It's the coffee we're out of. All this is hard.

all day // Macrina Bakery // 2408 First Ave., 615 W. McGraw St., & 1943 First Ave. S.

HOSTEL: Okay. We can do this. The American Hotel, Seattle's newest youth hostel, is...open. If you want to see what the inside of a new youth hostel looks like, that desire can be satisfied tonight at their open house in the ID. Yeah. Youth hostel.

4:30-7:30 p.m. // American Hotel // 520 S. King St. // free

BOOKS: Still trying to get this straight (still haven't got any coffee): Scott Oki used to work at Microsoft, made a bunch of money, bills himself as a philanthropist, and, as far as we can tell, has absolutely no qualifications in the field of education. That's why, apparently, he's written a book explaining how to fix our broken education system that "avoids the insider jargon and heavy academic prose common to books on public education." Oh business school! You teach people to treat us all like idiots. If you're interested in this, it's down at Elliott Bay Books.

7:30 p.m. // Elliott Bay Book Co. // 101 S. Main St. // free

KID ROCK: Rounding out what really does feel like an oddly aimless series of events, this evening is the second annual Rock Your Class Off Benefit at Showbox SoDo. All the proceeds go to help Maple Elementary School. The concert features two bands we've never heard of, Tic Tic Boom! and Stereofix, as well as the Seattle School of Rock.

8 p.m. // Showbox SoDo // 1700 First Ave. S. // $15, all ages, bar w/ID