It can be quite a laborious task to try and weed through the feathers and frills of this weekend's Los Angeles Culture Festival to finally get all the details about what exactly this exciting event entails. Lucky for you, we have broken down the information, including the confusion behind what the name of the actual event itself is.
June 23-26, 2016 marks the 5th Annual Los Angeles Culture Festival, a celebration to honor different cultures from around the world and their traditions, costumes, dances, food and music. This colorful weekend event is put on by two separate entities: Hollywood Carnival and the Los Angeles Culture Festival. You may hear it being called the Hollywood Carnival as well, so for simplicity's sake, go ahead and use the one with fewer syllables.
There are four days of festivities, but the biggest event is definitely the Parade of the Bands on Saturday, June 25, when three miles of Hollywood Boulevard will be closed down for a sea of people dressed in colorful costumes, dancing to the upbeat tunes of soca, reggae, merengue and more. The parade is completely free and begins at Hollywood Boulevard and Vermont Avenue at 11am, and ends at Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue.
The parade feeds into the entrance of the Carnival Culture Village, which lasts until 9pm and will feature plenty of live performances and food. Tickets for the the Village are $10 and can be purchased here. The festivities don't stop there, as an Official After Party begins at 10pm at Tiffany's On Vine, where there will be a DJ all night. Tickets are $25 in advance and $35 at the door. For those that still have a little left in them, SHINE is a day party on Sunday, June 26 at Ohm Nightclub. There are a couple other events taking place, so visit this page for a complete list.
To conclude, LACF—or Hollywood Carnival—is an event to spotlight the unique qualities of various cultures from all over the world. Regardless of what you call it, the festival is ultimately a way to unite everyone—differences and all—as part of one bigger and global world, and what better place to celebrate this diversity than the City of Angels? So, feed that anthropological curiosity and stop by Hollywood this weekend for an event, or two, or three.