Manhattan

1. Saturday Oct 3, 12:30 PM The Mid-Autumn community table on Mott Street, between Canal and Bayard — Free, Saturday only, 11 AM to 3:30 PM, run by the Chinatown Partnership with AAAAH Culture. One block of Mott, Canal to Bayard: a stop, not an afternoon. Give it an hour.
2. 2:30 PM South to Gotham Park, 1 Rose Street, for the Mid-Autumn Festival — Half a mile, 12 minutes on foot: south on Mott to Chatham Square, then toward the bridge's Manhattan approach; the park sits underneath. Free, 1 to 7 PM: 100-plus painted lanterns, mahjong, mooncake and lantern workshops, and 20-plus AAPI food and retail vendors, Anna Ye Tea and Tay Ninh Food among them. Enough time to eat through the vendor rows once and still claim a parade spot.
3. 5:00 PM The lantern parade — Saturday only; Friday and Sunday have the festival, not the parade. No route is published. Sunset is about 6:33, so the parade runs in daylight; the lanterns glow in the festival's last half-hour, 6:33 to the 7 PM close. Stay for it.
4. 7:15 PM Dim sum at Nom Wah Tea Parlor, 13 Doyers Street — Back north the same half-mile, about 12 minutes, to a dining room dating to 1920. Saturday hours are listed as 11 AM to 9 PM, which gives you an hour and forty-five minutes at the table; confirm on nomwah.com. No reservations listed, so plan on walking in.

Why it lands: One appointment all day, the 5 PM parade; everything else is free and walkable inside a mile. The Mott Street table and the park are two celebrations by different organizers, so you keep moving instead of standing in one spot for six hours. The 7 PM close ends the outdoor part, and dinner is twelve minutes from the gate.

Weather backup: Friday Oct 2 and Sunday Oct 4 run the same Gotham Park festival, 1 to 7 PM, free, minus the parade and the Mott Street table; Sunday adds Fun Fest Japan at Corlears Hook Park, noon to 4 (in the radar). No rain policy posted; check welcometochinatown.com the morning you go.

1. Friday Oct 2, 6:15 PM The Oishii strawberry shop on Chelsea Market's Main Concourse — Open Thursday to Sunday, 11 AM to 7 PM, through Nov 1, so you get 45 minutes before close. We printed it as a Sept 10 opening; tonight it's just your first bite. Chelsea Market is 75 Ninth Avenue, between 15th and 16th Streets.
2. 7:00 PM Dickson's Farmstand Meats Oktoberfest, same building — Friday only, 7 to 11 PM, 21 and over. $59 buys four hours of Bavarian food from the Dickson's butchers and unlimited pours from six beer stations, with Threes, KCBC, Industrial Arts, Wild East, Kills Boro and SingleCut among the brewers. A brass band plays first, German disco later; no set time for the switch. $59 is this year's price; we re-checked it. Buy from Chelsea Market's own event page, not a reseller.
3. 11:00 PM Out the Ninth Avenue side to the 14th Street station — The A, C, E and L at 14th Street and Eighth Avenue: one block south, one avenue east, five minutes on foot. Unlimited beer with a hard 11 PM stop means nobody has to decide when the night is over.

Why it lands: A fixed price kills the running tab, and one building kills the where-next question. The 45-minute strawberry stop gives you a start time that isn't a door; the 11 PM close gives you an end time that isn't a choice. The least logistics per hour in this edition.

Weather backup: The Oktoberfest is one night only. Oishii keeps its Thursday-to-Sunday hours through Nov 1, and Saturday Oct 3 brings Daddy Rabbit's opening weekend at the Ace Hotel on West 29th, about a 20-minute walk northeast (in the radar).