Time Out LA
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The best things to do in Los Angeles
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Time Out LA
What is your favourite horror movie? Confront familiar foes at Universal Studios’ annual Halloween festivities, where big-budget scares meet iconic horror movie characters. You’ll be able to navigate multiple scare zones and mazes, including ones based on A Quiet Place, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, Insidious, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the Weeknd, an all-female assembly of the classic Universal Monsters and a selection of creatures inspired by Latin American folklore. Also, the “Terror Tram” edition of the studio tour will return with a Blumhouse takeover, while The Purge will again assume stage show duties over at the WaterWorld venue.
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Stroll through a mile-long trail filled with all things pumpkins, including an illuminated forest of jack-o’-lanterns, during Descanso Gardens’ annual Carved! For three weeks this fall (till Oct 30), the event lines a loop of the botanical garden with pumpkins in all sorts of forms: as a sea monster rising from a pond, in thick clusters on the ground and cobbled together into a house.
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Art & Science Family Festival The Getty Center celebrates its PST ART: “Art & Science Collide” initiative with this free family-friendly festival, which offers a lineup of dance, music, art installations, workshops, scientific activities and more all weekend long. Kids of all ages can explore the intersection of science and art with hands-on activities like creating their own suncatchers, astrological art and bubbles of all sizes and shapes. Don’t miss Dina Fisher’s Astrofengaiá installation, a “home-spun shrine to light” that invites viewers inside to meditate to a soundscape.
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West Hollywood Halloween Costume Carnaval This is one of the largest Halloween street parties in the world, and there’s really no better place to be on October 31st. Sure, the crowd is huge (like, a half-million people huge) and a bit belligerent, but the amazing display of costumes and general merry-making spirit deem it at least a worthy stop, if not your main destination for the evening. There will be dancing, drinking and many impromptu costume contests. Even if you don’t plan on entering one, it’s best to still come dressed to the nines—no one likes a party pooper in jeans and a T-shirt. Find it along Santa Monica Boulevard, between Doheny Drive and La Cienega Boulevard.
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Día de los Muertos at Hollywood Forever The largest Day of the Dead celebration in California, and we wouldn’t doubt it: art exhibitions, dance rituals, musical performances, arts and crafts projects and food vendors (and crowds) aplenty. This year’s theme, “Tonas and Nahuales,” celebrates the spiritual guides and guardians central to indigenous Mesoamerican cultures, and it’s sure to be a spectacular display, as always. And after a couple of years of being split into two sessions, the 2024 edition will return to an all-day event, albeit one with staggered admission times (10am–2pm, 2–6pm and 6–11pm). Regardless of when you enter the Día de los Muertos event, you can stick around until the midnight close. The glowing, flickering altars look absolutely incredible after dark—though that’s also when the crowds tend to be the thickest. Oct 26, 2024
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Grand Ave Arts Festival For one afternoon, more than a dozen institutions will celebrate their Bunker Hill home with free performances, exhibitions and tours. Most of the action takes place on Grand Avenue between Temple and Sixth Streets. Highlights of this year’s event on October 19 include a singing workshop and a chance to try instruments at the Colburn School; a sugar skull workshop and building tours at the Los Angeles Central Library; LA Opera recitals at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion; and a Day of the Dead celebration at Grand Park.
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CicLAvia—Heart of L.A. This free event welcomes bikes, tricycles, skateboards, strollers and basically anything else without an engine to ride a rotating cast of car-free routes. This Sunday’s “Heart of L.A.” event opens 7.5 miles of streets spanning Downtown (including the 6th Street Viaduct), Echo Park and Little Tokyo, among other neighborhoods. Expect music, street performances and food trucks, as well as general whimsy and shenanigans along the way. It goes without saying that you should bike or take the Metro to your desired spot along the route. Until Dec 8, 2024
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Oktoberfest at Fairplex Home of the Los Angeles County Fair, the Fairplex turns into a German wonderland for Oktoberfest every Friday and Saturday in October with Bavarian music, beer and plenty of chicken dancing. Sink your teeth into bratwurst, knockwurst and sweet corn while knocking back authentic German suds at this 21-plus event with DJs, oompah bands and the Das Kär Show, which will bring over 40 Volkswagen Beetles and other German-made autos to the Fairplex grounds.
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There are pockets of walkable shopping and dining districts scattered across Central L.A., but Los Feliz stands out among them as the neighborhood best experienced on foot. A lot of that comes down to the general vibe along the area’s two main streets: Sidewalk seating at Figaro Bistro turns part of Vermont Avenue into a European facsimile and the brick patio of Alcove and Big Bar makes Hillhurst Avenue feel welcoming at all hours. But Los Feliz also boasts some truly superlative destinations. Just over the East Hollywood edge of town, you can take a tour of the Hollyhock House (Thu–Sat 11am–4pm), the Mayan-inflected Frank Lloyd Wright masterpiece. Just down the street from there, you can stock up on indescribable curios at Soap Plant Wacko, or head up Vermont to peruse some novels at the leafy Skylight Books or catch American Cinematheque’s handpicked classics screening at the Los Feliz Theatre. Of course, the neighborhood also makes for the perfect starting point to head up to Griffith Observatory. You could hike there entirely on foot (the entrance along Fern Dell, past the Trails, is ideal for that though a bit to the west), but for just 35 cents you can board a DASH bus that’ll take you right to the top. If you’re looking to make your entire Los Feliz visit completely car-free, you can start at the Vermont/Sunset stop on the B Line; it isn’t quite in the heart of town, but it’ll get you close enough
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Of all Newport Beach’s man-made islands, Balboa Island is by far the folksiest. It also happens to feel more like a quaint East Coast harborfront village than the rest of Newport’s distinctly Southern Californian settlements. Wilma’s Patio is a breakfast time staple, or you can skip straight to dessert and get your hands on a frozen banana (both Sugar N Spice and Dad’s Donut & Bakery Shop claim to be the originators of the chocolate-covered treat). Outside of the mom-and-pop shops on Marine Avenue, a 1.6-mile boardwalk traces the small island’s perimeter of vacation homes. On the southwest side of the island, you’ll find find a handful of operators offering 8-to-12-person Duffy boat rentals to (booze) cruise around Newport Bay—a fantastic way to extend your visit to right around sunset. If there’s one downside, it’s the traffic getting onto the island. The small bridge at Marine Avenue is the most direct way in, but it routinely backs up on weekends and during the summer. Alternatively, you can take the pint-sized auto ferry from Balboa Peninsula, which might be the preferable option if you plan on riding the Ferris wheel or taking a whale watching tour by the Balboa Fun Zone.
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There’s a reason every tourist wants to visit the Santa Monica Pier: It perfectly fits that postcard-worthy image of the Southern California coast. But even if you remove that tourist-filled landmark from the equation, there’s still enough to do in Santa Monica—mostly all within walking distance—that you could easily fill a full day. Of course, if you simply want to lounge on the beach that’ll eat up plenty of hours. You don’t need to get your feet sandy to soak in the ocean vibes, though: Walk along the length of the blufftop Palisades Parks or grab a bite at rooftop spot Elephanté for views of the coastline. In that same downtown area, plan a visit on a Wednesday or Saturday morning to shop at the most legendary farmers’ market (and maybe the most compelling reason to venture in the direction of the Third Street Promenade). Otherwise, we’d actually suggest spending most of your time a few blocks south in Ocean Park, the city’s far more low-key hub of activity. It’s here along Main Street—the road gets particularly pedestrian-friendly past the California Heritage Museum—that you’ll find the majority of Santa Monica’s standout restaurants, like Pasjoli and Crudo e Nudo. And all the while, you’re still only about a block away from the beach. The notorious traffic headed into and around Santa Monica means that for anybody on the other side of the 405, you’ll basically need to make a day of it to make the drive worth it. Of course, you can bypass all that by taking the E Line into the city, about a block from Santa Monica Place and Tongva Park (consider a pit stop two stations out to check out the art galleries at Bergamot Station).
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Old Pasadena Thanks to plenty of trees, a half-dozen Metro stops and relatively dense clusters of businesses, Pasadena as a whole is pretty walkable. But Old Pasadena, the San Gabriel Valley city’s historic downtown area, just might be the most pedestrian-friendly spot in the county. The shops along Colorado Boulevard are largely the same ones you’d find in an upscale mall, but they’re certainly more pleasant to peruse when housed inside remarkably well-preserved old buildings, some of which date back to the late 1800s. Even the alleyways and courtyards here—lined in brick or cobblestone and dotted with restaurants and pubs—are worth a detour. On parallel roads, Union Street has become a proper culinary destination in the last few years thanks to spots like Union and Perle, as has Green Street, a tree tunnel of a road home to Agnes and Copa Vida. You’ll find a bunch of museums on the district’s periphery: the excellent Norton Simon, with its impressive collection of Old Masters and French impressionists; a centuries-spanning mix of traditional and contemporary works at the Pacific Asia Museum; and, about a mile outside of the area, the Arts and Crafts masterpiece Gamble House. Make sure to pass by the Moorish-meets-Victorian Castle Green and walk underneath the massive dome of Pasadena City Hall.
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Walkable destination worth spending an entire day: Claremont Leafy, mature trees provide some scenic shade all over this Pomona Valley city. Located on the very eastern edge of L.A. County, Claremont boasts seven colleges all smooshed together into one contiguous campus. It’s worth walking around here, particularly to encounter James Turrell’s Dividing the Light, a sky-framing installation by the Light and Space artist best viewed around sunrise or sunset. On the blocks between the colleges and the train station (the Claremont stop on Metrolink), you’ll find a town with a love of folk music and casual, pubby spots (including dual BBQ spots Smoke & Fire and Gus’s). Shop and dine along the Claremont Packing House, or scope out some artwork at the Benton Museum of Art or the small but architecturally impressive Claremont Lewis Museum of Art. About a mile north of town (and a doable walk if you want to see some beautiful homes along the way), you can stroll through native flora at the California Botanic Garden. Though it’s not in walking distance, we also have to mention the Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology, just north of the 210—because, seriously, what other high school do you know of that has its own dinosaur museum?
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Founders Ale House What: $6 well drinks, $7 cocktails, $5 wines, $6 beers; $7–10 bar bites; $3.50 sliders, taquitos and meatballs When: Mon–Thu 4–7pm, 10pm–close; Fri 3–7pm, 10pm–close; Sat, Sun 1–7pm, 10pm–close Why we love it: Filled to the brim every weekend, this longtime Pico-Robertson bar offers casual neighborhod pub atmosphere (and prices). Board games, dart boards and arcade fun upstairs keep locals occupied most evenings and weekends, but Founders Ale House turns into a party on game nights, when the bar breaks out a large-scale projector. Founders Ale House’s newer happy hour menu bucks the trend of rising prices with a selection of affordable bites priced by the item, including $3.50 sliders with vegan options, a $10 smashburger and $7 nachos.
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Nossa Caipirinha Bar What: $10–11 cocktails and wines, $5–8 beers, discounted food items When: Daily 4–6pm Why we love it: After a short stint as a sit-down restaurant, this Brazilian eatery in Los Feliz flipped into a neighborhood watering hole inspired by the country’s botecos. Now, Nossa Caipirinha Bar offers five well-balanced renditions of its namesake drink—Brazil’s national cocktail—as well as a host of traditional bar snacks like cheese bread and coxinhas (chicken and paprika croquettes). At happy hour, snack on discounted bites like $9 chicken heart skewers, $14 fried calamari and $13 coxinhas.
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Maple Block Meat Co. Barbecue What: $9 five-piece wings, $10–12 nachos, $10 sliders, BOGO drinks When: Mon 5–9pm, Tue–Fri 5–6pm Why we love it: Meat butchered on premise, brisket smoked over peach wood logs, a pitmaster from Texas—this Culver City barbecue joint checks all the right boxes, including an excellent happy hour menu. Steeply discounted bar bites are available before 6pm, including nachos topped with your choice of smoked brisket or pork belly, a set of smashburger sliders and smoky, juicy wings with house white barbecue sauce or honey Sriracha. Best of all, it's available all night on Mondays. For drinks, there's a buy-one-get-one free deal on nearly all drinks, which you can also get the last hour of service any day of the week. (Some top shelf label exceptions do apply.)
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Shirubē Japanese Santa Monica $5 beers, $6–9 sake, $8 “whiskey” cokes, $5–9 bar bites When: Mon–Thu 5–6:30pm; Sat, Sun 4–6pm Why we love it: This Tokyo-based restaurant chain serves seasonally inflected Japanese drinking fare on the northern edge of Santa Monica. The Westside location is the family-run company’s first location outside Japan, and while the regular dinner menu is excellent, the happy hour menu is a downright steal. Shirubē's ultra-popular corn ribs are on the menu as is the restaurant's surprisingly tasty negitoro over garlic bread. Snacky fare like pork belly tacos, edamame and garlic shrimp ($12) are also on offer during happy hour.