October 2024 events calendar for Los Angeles

For dinner and a movie, all in one, just follow the food trucks. During the spring, summer and fall, Street Food Cinema throws together a series of outdoor parties that include screenings of some of our favorite movies, paired with an assortment of gourmet food trucks and even a live music performance from a cool local band. The screenings are held in venues across L.A. and alternate from week to week, so make sure to check the schedule. Some of the outdoor venues are dog-friendly, allowing you to bring your four-legged cinema lover along. See more of this season’s outdoor movie screenings in L.A.

Every Sunday you can find dozens of food vendors at this market at ROW DTLA, with a mix of much-loved pop-ups and future foodie stars. Look out for this year’s new vendors, including Basket Taco Co, Battambong Barbecue and Taste of the Pacific.

It’s more than just the low clearance: This exhibition at the Petersen explores the custom paint, engraving, upholstery and, of course, the gravity-defying suspension of the lowrider scene. In addition to iconic cars, the exhibit spotlights influential artists in the Chicano lowrider art scene. Even if you have no interest in cars, this colorful showcase of 20-plus lowered cars and bikes is excellent: The candy-colored paint jobs are dazzling, and the craftsmanship of the customizations—many vehicles are on display with their engines and undercarriages visible—is remarkable. You’ll learn a little bit of history here, how the “low and slow” movement is rooted in the postwar Mexican American zoot suit counterculture, but largely this is an excuse to ogle some L.A. automotive icons.

Plunge into the deep end while watching a slate of movies (sometimes ones filmed at the Hollywood Roosevelt) during this outdoor screening series at the Tropicana Pool & Cafe. You’re welcome to get wet (towels, blankets and heaters are available on a first-come, first-served basis) or stay dry. Seating is available by the bed, which fit two to four people comfortably.

Hollywood’s Japan House has tapped artist Sebastian Masuda to dive into the roots of all things cute and colorful with this exhibition on Japanese kawaii culture. The free show includes multiple pieces and installations from Masuda.

Move through a suite of sci-fi installations that depict a world overcome by rising seas and unchecked capitalism in this exhibition from Josh Kline. The MOCA Grand Avenue show includes a mix of sculpture, photography, moving images and ephemeral materials.

Listen to classical and jazz in a dome more than a mile above L.A. during this mountaintop concert series. The Mount Wilson Observatory is hosting monthly concerts this summer inside the dome of its 100-inch Hooker telescope, which was the largest telescope in the world for much of the first half of the 20th century. Tickets cost $60 (that also includes access to the exhibit at the observatory) and it’s highly recommended that you buy them in advance since seating is limited. You’ll need to be able to climb 53 steps to reach the dome, and children under 12 aren’t permitted. 

Oof. Honk. Spam. Ed Ruscha’s laconic canvases are familiar fixtures for L.A. museumgoers, and LACMA has brought them all together in this major, floor-filling retrospective. Ruscha’s background in commercial art is evident in the big, bold text that draws your attention in his earliest Pop art paintings. But so too is his fascination with urbanism and infrastructure: the vibrant colors and sharp angles of his Standard station paintings, the black-and-white shapes of his catalog of L.A. apartments, the mesmerizing aerial shots of some of L.A.’s largest parking lots and his meticulous photos of the Sunset Strip. The retrospective also presents the opportunity to see the fiery painting Los Angeles County Museum of Art on Fire on display at LACMA for the first time ever, as well as a reconstruction of his Chocolate Room (which, yes, is a distinct-smelling room made out sheets upon sheets of chocolate).

Want to peer through the eyepiece of Mt. Wilson’s historic telescopes? Your best and most economical bet just might be one of the Talks & Telescopes events. These monthly Saturday night astronomy lectures are followed up with a few hours of stargazing on portable telescopes on the grounds as well as the 60 and 100-inch telescopes for only $50 (a fraction of the price of the observatory’s late-night stargazing sessions).

Ready or not, spooky season is slowly stalking its way ever closer. The clearest sign? Universal Studios has already announced the first of its haunted houses set inhabit its Hollywood-adjacent theme park for Halloween Horror Nights. A Quiet Place will be getting its own haunted house at Universal Studios Hollywood this year (as well as the theme park’s Orlando location). Specifically, the attraction will take inspiration from the first two films in the series, so expect more silent dread and less city destruction à la the recent Day One. You’ll travel through the Abbott family’s farmhouse shelter with sound design that “mirrors the silence in the films” and includes the incorporation of American Sign Language. That’s in addition to an icy, New York-set haunted house inspired by Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, a demonic one dubbed “Insidious: The Further” (inspired by the Blumhouse franchise) as well as the return of “Monstruos 2: The Nightmare of Latin America” and “Dead Exposure: Death Valley.” You’ll also find “Universal Monsters: Eternal Bloodlines,” an all-female assembly of the classic Universal Monsters (The Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula’s Daughter, She-Wolf of London and Anck-Su-Namun) on the very stage where Dracula and Frankenstein were filmed in the ’30s. Halloween Horror Nights will run on select evenings from September 5 to November 3. Tickets cost $77 to $107, depending on the night; with Express Pass add-ons, options range from $209 to $309. See more of