The best things to do in Los Angeles this week

Join Grand Park and the Music Center for 12 days of virtual celebrations. You’ll find arts workshops, digital ofrendas and storytelling online, as well as in-real-life art installations at the neighboring Downtown locations. Self-Help Graphics & Art—which hosts its own Day of the Dead event—has curated 11 large-scale altars for socially distant viewing, with audio tours available online.

This annual film festival—now in its 36th year—simultaneously celebrates and launches the careers of Asian and Asian-American filmmakers. For this virtual edition, the fest expands to five weekends with streaming Q&As and movies from more than 225 filmmakers.

Peruse altars in the plaza of El Pueblo at this Day of the Dead celebration (the altars will still be set up this year, but face coverings and physical distancing are required). Though the rest of the in-person festivities have been scrapped, you can join Olvera Street merchants for a virtual celebration on November 1 that includes a performance by La Santa Cecilia.

Face your fears and head to the Natural History Museum’s Spider Pavilion, where you can observe several hundred orbweaver spiders in a living exhibit just outside of the museum. Scared the spiders might be hard to spot in the wild? Fret not. In previous iterations we’ve spotted ones about the size of an adult’s palm. Gulp. (But don’t worry: The scariest ones are in enclosed habitats.)  Reservations (which go on sale October 14) are required to visit this year, and they also include access to the nature gardens (currently the only portion of the museum that’s open). Note that the capacity of the pavilion is limited, face coverings are required and many paths will be one-way to ensure physical distancing.

Outdoor movie season isn’t canceled—it’s just headed to the drive-in. Seasonal fave Street Food Cinema is making some social-distancing–friendly tweaks to its schedule and parking itself at a few locations for drive-in movie screenings. And yes, the usual rotation of food trucks will thankfully still be showing up to screenings. There are some important rules you’ll need to follow: Guests must remain in their vehicles (except for when going to the restrooms or food trucks) and wear masks when interacting with staff. Cars must park one space apart from each other. And though outside food and beverages are permitted, dogs are not.

Theaters are still darkBut their marquees can still glowPerfect for poems Downtown L.A.’s Ace Hotel has always been creative with the text on its marquee, but the hotel and theater’s latest programming puts the focus squarely on the exterior sign instead of the stage. Through December, 12 poets, songwriters, essayists and visual artists will each have a turn in taking over the 1929 United Artists Theatre building’s marquee with a haiku (if you need a refresher, that’s a three-line poem that starts with five syllables, followed by seven and five again). The lineup includes David Horvitz, Jibade-Khalil Huffman, Sophia Le Fraga, Lawrence Weiner, Harry Gamboa Jr., Kim Gordon, Charles Gaines, Carlos Lara and Joyelle McSweeney.

One of the few in-person Day of the Dead happenings that we’ve found, Santa Monica will host temporary, larger-than-life art installations over the course of a weekend. Look out for La Catrina sculptures from local artist Ricardo Soltero, who’s created nine for the Third Street Promenade and four for the Santa Monica Pier. Face coverings and physical distancing are required at both locations. A portion of the installation is funded by the city’s Cultural Affairs Art of Recovery initiative, a grant-based program that helps out local artists.

One of our favorite spooky cultural events is back, and this time it's going partially virtual. Every year Haunted Little Tokyo turns the area into a ghoulish maze of Halloween-themed pop-ups, walking tours and performances spotlighting the 136-year-old neighborhood. Little Tokyo Historical Society and Go Little Tokyo team up for some seriously spooky events that pay tribute to the area and Japanese culture, and given everything that is 2020, now some of those events are even taking place online. This year you can take virtual ghost tours, go trick or treating IRL, eat a feast from some of the neighborhood's best restaurants, and even embark on a family friendly online adventure. On October 23 from 4 to 6pm there's the Quest for Candy, A Haunted Little Tokyo Virtual Mystery Adventure where kids can look for clues to find candy and save Little Tokyo ($13), and on October 24 from 5 to 6:30pm you can take a guided virtual ghost tour through Little Tokyo's haunted and historical buildings ($10). From October 25 to October 31, MOCA will be flipping to the BOO-SEUM over on the museum's Instagram account for themed works of art and tales of history. Wish you could sip your way through spooky season? On October 30 at 7pm, take part in an online cocktail demo complete with your own drink kits ($50), and if you're more of an explorer you can roam through Japanese Village Plaza during a candy scavenger hunt on Halloween from 4 to 7pm (free).   Lastly, you can nosh and drink your way thr

And we thought the Wendy's Twitter account was good at throwing shade: This Halloween the burger chain is celebrating spooky season with an immersive drive-thru that takes aim at frightening clowns, "Mad Kings" and creepy jack-in-the-box o’lanterns. From 6:30am until 3am today and on Halloween, one South Gate Wendy's flips to become a "Scare-Thru," complete with fog, ambiance and a massive cauldron you'll enter through. You'll drive through vignettes and creepy settings but there'll be less spooky draws, too, such as giveaways. This event is free, and no, you won't need to order food, though you might as well snag some fries and square burgers while you're here (and you will be able to get a free sweet treat on Halloween if you keep your eyes on the Wendy's Twitter page). Head to 8810 S Garfield Ave in South Gate for this red-headed "Scare-Thru."

Neither experienced from your car nor bent on scaring the gourd out of you, Descanso Gardens’ new monthlong event is bringing some fresh air and family-friendly fun to Halloween. Throughout October, you can take a socially-distanced stroll through the La Cañada Flintridge gardens and its seasonal displays: a hay maze, a pumpkin arch, wooden jack-o’-lantern boxes, a scarecrow trail through a forest and a house made entirely out of pumpkins. And over at the Oak Grove, you’ll find mandalas of orange, white and green pumpkins swirling around the trunks of trees. Halloween is included in regular admission ($15, kids $5), and reservations (and masks, of course) are required. Tickets are currently sold out for weekend dates, but if you can visit on a weekday, that’ll probably make for a more peaceful and leisurely experience anyway; we swung by on a Saturday and found most of the pumpkin photo ops near the entrance area bustling with families, though the farther reaches of the gardens were still uncrowded. You’ll be able to visit Descanso daily from 9am to 5pm, with extended 5 to 8pm hours the final week of October (Halloween night is reserved for Family Plus members).