I like the additional upcoming links on the main page for now. I do like the idea you mentioned of putting up events that are similar to ones you have voted on, but until there are enough events in any one person's area, upcoming local events may be your best bet.
After reading the search description and trying out a sample query, I like it. It's rather intuitive and it performed correctly as far as my brief testing was concerned. One slight gripe -- I don't think you should use "u". That is, "as you would say it when u fill in the blank" should be, "as you would say it when you fill in the blank."
Anyways, I'm glad to see you taking the feedback seriously and making such quick changes. I really do like this idea. The more I think about it, I like how it connects an online community in the real world. I think this has some great potential, and again, I wish you the best of luck with it.
That said, perhaps the text needs to be just slightly lighter in order to give it a little more contrast with the background. Also, the size is minuscule. I know that Ctrl-+ is not too hard to press, but if that's the first thing that every visitor has to do, it's kind of a waste of time. On my display, at least, the size of event titles is about the same size as the normal text on this site. I would personally increase the size by 25-50%, but I tend to like larger text, so take that recommendation with a grain of salt.
I agree with the other comments that the front page should have a little bit more useful information. It could be something like a list (in order of decreasing popularity) of the events that are happening that day. The search seems somewhat strange, because if I was using that site, I think it would be in a situation where I'm like, "Hmm... what am I going to do tonight?" not a situation where I already know what I want to do and just want to figure out when it is happening (although that is a legitimate use case as well).
In spite of the criticisms, I'm liking the idea, and I wish you the best of luck with it. Have you considered trying to tie it into e.g. Google Calendar so that people can easily add events? Of course, ideas like that are just added features, but I'm curious where you plan on going with this.