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Happy Tuesday, Meridian!
Enjoy today. It's the last warm one for a while — low-to-mid 80s, and then a wind that means it.
Today: the DMV is putting registration kiosks in two Meridian Fred Meyers, the city handed out its arts awards at a park concert, and a bike shop that lives inside Meridian's first Catholic church gets its moment. Plus a Labor Day weekend you can actually plan, and a park with a 40-yard dash painted on the ground.
Let's get into it.
In this issue
🪪 Two of Idaho's first five DMV kiosks are going into Meridian Fred Meyers
🎭 Four locals honored with the city's Tammy de Weerd Awards in the Arts
🚲 Meridian Cycles, nearly 20 years in, inside a former church on N. Main
🗓️ Six things to do, from tonight's trivia through Labor Day
💨 Gusts near 30 today, then the season's first real cool-down
🏞️ Trivia: the Meridian park where you can time your kid's 40
🧠 Trivia
One Meridian park has a permanently marked, ready-to-race 40-yard dash on the ground — right next to the zip lines. Which park is it?
(Answer at the bottom.)
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This one's built as a Labor Day weekend planner — everything from tonight through Monday, in order, so you can stop hunting.
Tonight — Tuesday, Sept. 1
Trivia Tuesday at Voodoo Brewing Co., 7–9 p.m., 713 N. Main St., Ste. 120. Weekly, free to play. Add to calendar
Wednesday, Sept. 2
Open Board Game Night at Phoenix Fire Games, 7–10 p.m., 94 E. Fairview Ave. Bring a game or borrow one off the shelf. Add to calendar
Thursday, Sept. 3
Thursday Night Bingo at the Meridian Senior Center, 4–9 p.m., 1920 N. Records Way. Add to calendar
Saturday, Sept. 5
Meat & Tater BBQ Fest & Car Show, from 10 a.m., Julius M. Kleiner Memorial Park. Free entry. Car show on the lawn (load-in from 8 a.m.), a Lions Club pancake breakfast, a KCBS-sanctioned barbecue competition, food trucks, a beer garden and live music. Add to calendar
Listings disagree on the finish — one says 4 p.m., one says 5. Either way, go early for the pancakes.
Monday, Sept. 7 — Labor Day
Bash on the Grass, 1–7 p.m., Discovery Park, 2121 E. Lake Hazel Rd. Free, all ages, free parking. A skate and scooter competition, gaga ball, 9 square, spikeball, cornhole, pickleball, an art walk, food trucks, coffee and mini donuts, with live music headlined by Hopeful. out of Oceanside, California. It's a youth-focused event run by local churches and ministries, so there's a worship set, a prayer tent and a gospel message in the mix — worth knowing going in. Add to calendar
Bobby's Transmission Labor Day Races at Meridian Speedway, gates 4:45 p.m., racing 6:30 p.m. The NAPA Auto Parts NSX 360 Showcase, trophies from Ferguson Water Works, and a Lucky Ride Night for kids. Add to calendar
Housekeeping: the city's GIS tools and online web maps go down for scheduled upgrades starting 6 a.m. today. If you were planning to look up a parcel or a park boundary this morning, do it later.
Also worth knowing: Friday is the last line dancing night on Big Al's patio — we ran that one yesterday, so we won't re-run it, but the series ends Sept. 4 and doesn't come back until summer.
Today: low-to-mid 80s, and windy enough to notice. The National Weather Service's Boise office has a strong low pressure system sliding toward the region. Today looks a lot like yesterday temperature-wise, but the wind picks up — gusts around 30 mph are possible across the valley. Secure the patio umbrella, and if you've got a trash can going out, weigh the lid.
Then the real change. Wednesday and Thursday the low actually arrives and Treasure Valley highs fall into the mid-to-upper 70s — call it a ten-degree haircut in 24 hours. Rain chances go up to 30–60%, but almost all of that is aimed at southeast Oregon and the west-central Idaho mountains, not Meridian. Storms today and tomorrow stay south and in the mountains too.
The low may hang around off the Oregon coast into Friday, with another round of showers possible over the weekend or early next week. So: Meat & Tater on Saturday is probably fine, but keep half an eye on it.
Fine print, because we'd rather tell you than not: the NWS's Meridian-point data file we normally pull has been frozen since Aug. 23 and its forecast now ends before today — there is literally no Sept. 1 row in it. So today's numbers come from the Boise forecast desk's own written outlook (published yesterday morning) plus the live three-day strip, checked four separate times tonight, which held steady at 86 for Boise today and 77 tomorrow. Boise typically runs three to four degrees warmer than Meridian, which is where the low-to-mid 80s comes from. No alerts or advisories in effect as of this writing.
🪪 You'll soon be able to renew your registration at Fred Meyer — and two of the first five kiosks in Idaho are in Meridian
AI illustration.
The Idaho DMV is rolling out self-service kiosks inside grocery stores under a program it's calling "Skip the Trip," and Meridian gets two of the five soft-launch locations: Fred Meyer at 1850 E. Fairview Ave. and Fred Meyer at 1400 W. Chinden Blvd. The other three are in Boise.
At launch the machines do one thing — renew a standard vehicle registration. You scan the renewal notice, pay, and it prints your plate tag on the spot. Address and vehicle changes aren't supported yet. The first kiosks are expected over the next several weeks, with four more coming statewide within a month of those and one more planned for the Coeur d'Alene area.
The catch, stated plainly by the DMV: expect a vendor service charge plus a standard credit card fee. Convenience is not free, but it is probably cheaper than an afternoon.
🎭 Four locals just took home the city's arts awards — handed out at a park concert most people didn't know was happening
AI illustration.
The Meridian Arts Commission gave out its 2026 Tammy de Weerd Awards in the Arts on the evening of Aug. 26, at Bear Creek Park, during the Morrison Center's first-ever Meridian neighborhood concert. The awards are named for the mayor who ran Meridian for 16 years and founded the arts commission in the first place.
The winners: James Ogle for Support of Performing Arts — he conducted the Boise Philharmonic for 20 years and the Meridian Symphony for 13 seasons. Jessica Peters for Support of the Arts, a former commission chair who still turns up to volunteer at city art events two years after her term ended. Kristofer Crozier for Arts in Education, band director at Owyhee High School, starting his sixth year teaching. And Anne Watson Sorensen for Excellence in the Arts, a watercolor and mixed-media artist with more than 20 solo exhibitions who helped bring a regional watercolor exhibition to the valley during COVID.
A first-ever Morrison Center concert in a Meridian neighborhood park is the kind of thing that should have been on more calendars. Consider this the nudge for next year.
🚲 The bike shop in the old church on N. Main is about to hit 20 years
AI illustration.
If you've driven N. Main and wondered about the bike shop in the old church — yes, that was a church. Meridian Cycles sits inside what was Meridian's first Catholic church, and staff say customers still walk in and mention that their grandparents got married in the room they're now buying tubes in.
The shop opened in 2007 and moved into the church building in 2017. Manager Christian McKenna is carrying on the business his parents Paul and Krista spent 18 years building; service manager Anthony French has been there since it opened. They work on everything from kids' bikes to high-end road and mountain rigs, and both were clear about the actual point: "We want the person that's never ridden a bike and wants to get into it to come down and feel completely welcome."
Nineteen years in, French says they still see the same riders Paul and Krista first got on bikes.
Presented by Meridian Local Scoop
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🧠 Trivia answer
It's Discovery Park, at 2121 E. Lake Hazel Road in south Meridian, between Eagle and Locust Grove.
The 40-Yard Dash Challenge is a real, permanent, city-listed amenity — it sits alongside a list that reads less like a park and more like a dare: dual zip lines, roller slides, a climbing wall, a skatepark, a bike park and pump track, bocce ball courts, sand volleyball, hammock poles, a selfie station and a covered performance stage with lawn seating.
At 64 acres it's the biggest park in the city, and it's newer than most people assume — established in 2019, and still not finished; the city has been building it out in phases. Which is also why it's hosting Bash on the Grass on Monday: there are very few places in Meridian where you can run a skate competition, a nine-square court and a live music stage at the same time without anyone getting in anyone's way.
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