The best things to do in Los Angeles this week
Find concerts, screenings, art exhibits and more of our critics’ picks with the best events and things to do in Los Angeles this week
If we could write the rules of living in Los Angeles this would be our No. 1, always at the top of our list: When you live in this city, there’s no excuse for boredom just because it’s a weeknight. There are hundreds of things to do in Los Angeles each week, including concerts, comedy shows, happy hour deals, free museum days—and that’s really only scratching the surface. Well, we don’t make the rules, but we will provide you with plenty of ideas for your next free weeknight right here. Now put down that TV remote. There you go. Now get out of the house and tackle these things to do in L.A. this week.
While all in-person events have been canceled and major venues closed, we’re recommending what Angelenos can do from home (or a couple of things outside—safely). Find more suggestions in our Time In guide.
Time Out loves
Comedy Quarantine
If there’s one cathartic release we could use right now, it’s a bit of levity from L.A.’s top-notch stand-ups. Thankfully, some of L.A.’s best comedians are coming together for a live show over Instagram. Each night, you’ll see five or so comedians deliver stand-up sets from the homes. Just head over to @comedyquarantine on weeknights at 7pm to watch the show, and consider tipping each comedian as well via Venmo (@ComedyQuarantine).
LA Opera At Home
You’ve been meaning to go to the opera for ages, but, well, it’s just too expensive and your Italian is a little rusty. Right now, though, you have no excuse: The LA Opera is livestreaming living room performances on its Facebook account. Tune in each day and you’ll see a couple of different performers tackling their favorite classical songs from the comfort and safety of their living rooms—or, on some days, you might catch an archived stream of a previous production.
At Home with Gustavo
Disney Hall may be down for the moment, but LA Phil director Gustavo Dudamel is still sharing his favorite classical musical selections alongside some personal reflections with this radio series. You can tune in to KUSC (91.5 FM) and KDFC from Tuesday to Friday at 6pm, and a Spanish-language broadcast on Sunday at 7pm.
Mindful Awareness Meditation
In the name of keeping Angelenos sane—and who couldn’t use some sanity right now?—the Hammer Museum holds free weekly drop-in sessions on mindful awareness, now hosted online via Zoom.
Order takeout from one of your favorite local restaurants
You’ve eaten through two bags of beans and six cans of chickpeas. Now what? You leave it to some of the city’s top restaurants and bars, who are making your social distancing as painless as possible. We’re keeping a running list of our favorite pickup and delivery menus that are popping up at L.A. restaurants.
And make sure to add in a booze order, too
Some of L.A.’s best restaurants and bars have your back when you need a stiff drink at home, thanks to a new order from Mayor Garcetti. Restaurants and bars can now deliver alcohol to your door—whether it’s craft beer, wine or house-made cocktails—as long as they’re offering food, which means we can finally sip from some of our favorite spots in town from the comfort of our own couches.
Visit your favorite L.A. museums virtually with these online tours and exhibitions
You may not be able to visit L.A.’s best museums right now, but you can bring a little piece of them home with you. No, we’re not encouraging art theft: We’re talking about all of the streams, image databases and lecture archives that’ve bubbled up to museums’ homepages.
Go for a walk—but maybe not a hike at your usual spots
Going for a walk or a hike is still allowed, and even encouraged, as long as you’re following proper social distancing guidelines. But under L.A.’s “safer at home” order, you should really just be sticking to your own neighborhood right now. Consider our list of the best hikes, linked here, exactly the spots you don’t want to go to right now—and with most trails in the county closed now, you couldn’t even try if you insisted.
Find some peace at a botanical garden
If your neighborhood isn’t conducive to walking and you’re looking for a wide-open outdoor space, two major gardens remain open: South Coast Botanic Garden and the Los Angeles County Arboretum. Do note that tickets are limited and must be purchased online. And remember to keep a safe distance from other visitors.
Take a scenic drive around L.A.
Contrary to some rumors, the LAPD is not ticketing people for being outside of their homes. And while staying home is the best strategy, we understand the itch to get out. So finally, our automobile-addicted culture has an upside: You can see some of L.A.’s most stunning scenery safely from your car window. With traffic at an unprecedented low, you may be inclined to drive as far as you can, but we’d stick to whichever scenic drive in our guide is closest to your area; more miles means more unccessary gas station visits. And please drive safe: You don’t want to add to the burden at our already overwhelmed hospitals.
Popular
Cakeland: The Beauty War
A section of Chinatown’s Central Plaza is getting a subversively sweet makeover. Conceptual cake sculptor Scott Hove has taken over 943 Mei Ling Way and turned it into Cakeland, a gallery with floor-to-ceiling sculptures that look just like layer cakes. For “The Beauty War” exhibition, a labyrinth of mirror mazes and layer cakes will examine what Hove calls a light-versus-dark exploration of “the forces of beauty and the cycles of nature.” Hove isn’t actually laying down buttercream and fondant, instead he uses acrylic and poly foam to frost his sculptures by hand the same way you would a cake. The resulting creations—like one in DTLA a couple of years ago—look convincingly like cake, only with more disco balls and taxidermy fangs.
Cinespia Cemetery Screenings
It isn’t summer in L.A. until the first cemetery screening brings hoards of movie-lovers to Hollywood Forever, toting folding chairs, picnic blankets, snack spreads and lots of booze. Each year, Cinespia brings classic cult favorites to the hallowed resting place of such Hollywood greats as Rudolph Valentino and Bugsy Siegel. The series typically releases its slate one month at a time, most recently for August: Point Break (Aug 3), Boyz n the Hood featuring a John Singleton tribute from Questlove and DJ Pooh (Aug 10) and Psycho (Aug 24). Of particular note: the 9th Annual Slumber Party on August 24, with a trio of sleepover staples including Never Been Kissed, I Know What You Did Last Summer and Jawbreaker. Angelenos line up for hours to partake in the concept—and to enjoy DJ sets, dance parties, sleepovers and more magical mischief otherwise strictly forbidden behind the cemetery gates. It’s an L.A. rite of passage, a quintessential summer experience and one of the best film venues in the city. Just be sure to get your ticket early, arrive early (doors open at 6:45pm), pee early… it’s getting a bit overcrowded, to say the least.
The Art of the Brick
Budding engineers and artists will be equally enthralled by the masterpieces Nathan Sawaya has intricately crafted with over 1,000,000 toy blocks. (No, that number is not a typo.) Visitors who love dinosaur activities will gawk at the artist’s 20-foot T. Rex, which is comprised of over 80,000 pieces alone. Creative youngsters will enjoy Sawaya’s recreation of Van Gogh’s Starry Night and Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, along with the exhibit’s interactive elements, as well.
The Zone
It’s Britney, bitch, and she’s getting in on the pop-up game. “The Zone” recreates some of Britney Spears’s most memorable music video moments (think the locker room from “…Baby One More Time,” the Mars station from “Oops… I Did It Again” and the sleek airliner from “Toxic”) across 10 made-for-Instagram rooms. Is it just a wildly expensive photo op? Yes. Will you dance in the rainforest with a snake around your shoulders anyway? Yes.
Hamilton
Due to the ongoing coronavirus outbreak, all performances this March have been canceled. You can keep up with more local event cancelations here. L.A. once again gets its shot at Broadway’s hottest ticket, Hamilton. The hip-hop historical hootenanny by Lin-Manuel Miranda (everything winner for In the Heights) uses several musical genres to craft a totally unexpected look at the Founding Fathers and the creation of America… though Miranda has said, “We take it as a given that hip hop is the music of the Revolution.” There’s British pop (for King George), soul, modern girl-group groove and a full-on rap smackdown about the role of the federal government between the first secretary of the treasury (Alexander Hamilton) and Thomas Jefferson himself.
Free
Smorgasburg LA
Indulge your inner foodie and shopaholic at this weekly food-focused market. The Brooklyn export has landed in the Arts District and become a hotbed of fantastic food and retail vendors, with some that are testing out their dishes before launching a full-blown brick-and-mortar in the city. Bonus: there is plentiful (and free, for two hours!) parking in the nearby parking garage.
Comedy Quarantine
If there’s one cathartic release we could use right now, it’s a bit of levity from L.A.’s top-notch stand-ups. Thankfully, some of L.A.’s best comedians are coming together for a live show over Instagram. Each night, you’ll see five or so comedians deliver stand-up sets from the homes. Just head over to @comedyquarantine on weeknights at 7pm to watch the show, and consider tipping each comedian as well via Venmo (@ComedyQuarantine). The series started as a one-off show in mid March with sets from Maria Bamford, Adam Conover, Chris Garcia, Nick Turner, Jena Friedman, Naomi Ekperigin and James Adomian, as well as some of our recent comedians-to-watch picks, including Zach Noe Towers, Jared Goldstein, Atsuko Okatsuka, Paul Danke and Christina Catherine Martinez.
LA Opera At Home
You’ve been meaning to go to the opera for ages, but, well, it’s just too expensive and your Italian is a little rusty. Right now, though, you have no excuse: The LA Opera is livestreaming living room performances on its Facebook account. Tune in each day and you’ll see a couple of different performers tackling their favorite classical songs from the comfort and safety of their living rooms—or, on some days, you might catch an archived stream of a previous production.
Nicolas Party: Sottobosco
The fast-rising New York-via-Switzerland artist has transformed Hauser & Wirth’s stark white south gallery into a pastel wonderland of boldly hued landscapes, portraits and still lifes in his L.A. solo debut. Party has erased the built-in architecture of the gallery by repainting walls, constructing slender doorways and applying finishes that mimic natural materials. They all tie into a central idea, the concept of sottobosco, a Dutch movement that borrows the Italian word for “undergrowth.” The exhibition runs concurrently with blacklit, mid-century spatial environments from Italian artist Lucio Fontana and August Sander photographers that were part of the first gay and lesbian journals ever published.
“With Pleasure: Pattern and Decoration in American Art 1972–1985”
See colorful, abstract and pattern-driven works of painting, sculpture, collage, ceramics, installation art and performance documentation in this survey of the Pattern and Decoration movement, which defiantly embraced forms typically held to be inferior to “fine art.”
Concerts
LA Opera At Home
You’ve been meaning to go to the opera for ages, but, well, it’s just too expensive and your Italian is a little rusty. Right now, though, you have no excuse: The LA Opera is livestreaming living room performances on its Facebook account. Tune in each day and you’ll see a couple of different performers tackling their favorite classical songs from the comfort and safety of their living rooms—or, on some days, you might catch an archived stream of a previous production.
Power to the People!
It’s been a mainstay of protest signs, songs and chants, but this spring the “power to the people” refrain will fill the Walt Disney Concert Hall. Gustavo Dudamel and Herbie Hancock are bringing together musicians, artists and activists for a series of shows between March 5 and April 11 that celebrate solidarity and humanitarian spirit. Programs include sets from Dudamel and the LA Phil, Hancock and Patti Smith, a talk from Dr. Angela Davis about social change, the movie music of Spike Lee and his go-to composer Terence Blanchard and more.
Wilco
More than two decades in, Wilco sounds just as magnetic and Jeff Tweedy’s lyrics just as sweet and sharp as they’ve ever been. The Chicago group has shuffled its lineup and sound over the years, mostly ditching its alt country roots for detours into noise rock and jam band territory—or, on its latest record Ode to Joy, more quiet meditations. Live, you can expect to see the incredibly tight band alternate between krautrock grooves and Lynyrd Skynyrd-like guitar attacks.
Billie Eilish
The pop wunderkind behind kinda-dark chart hits “When the Party’s Over” and “Come Out and Play” galvanizes her rise with a duo of dates at the Forum.
Celine Dion
Due to the ongoing coronavirus outbreak, this event has been postponed. You can keep up with more local event cancelations here. After eight years in Las Vegas, Celine Dion is hitting the road for her first U.S. tour in over a decade, including a stop at the Staples Center. If an intimate reveal in L.A. is anything to go by, boy are you in for a show, one filled with that legendary set of pipes, wonderfully all-over-the-place banter, new songs from her forthcoming album Courage and familiar favorites—you better believe you’ll hear “My Heart Will Go On.”
Theater
Hamilton
Due to the ongoing coronavirus outbreak, all performances this March have been canceled. You can keep up with more local event cancelations here. L.A. once again gets its shot at Broadway’s hottest ticket, Hamilton. The hip-hop historical hootenanny by Lin-Manuel Miranda (everything winner for In the Heights) uses several musical genres to craft a totally unexpected look at the Founding Fathers and the creation of America… though Miranda has said, “We take it as a given that hip hop is the music of the Revolution.” There’s British pop (for King George), soul, modern girl-group groove and a full-on rap smackdown about the role of the federal government between the first secretary of the treasury (Alexander Hamilton) and Thomas Jefferson himself.
Movies
Cinespia Cemetery Screenings
It isn’t summer in L.A. until the first cemetery screening brings hoards of movie-lovers to Hollywood Forever, toting folding chairs, picnic blankets, snack spreads and lots of booze. Each year, Cinespia brings classic cult favorites to the hallowed resting place of such Hollywood greats as Rudolph Valentino and Bugsy Siegel. The series typically releases its slate one month at a time, most recently for August: Point Break (Aug 3), Boyz n the Hood featuring a John Singleton tribute from Questlove and DJ Pooh (Aug 10) and Psycho (Aug 24). Of particular note: the 9th Annual Slumber Party on August 24, with a trio of sleepover staples including Never Been Kissed, I Know What You Did Last Summer and Jawbreaker. Angelenos line up for hours to partake in the concept—and to enjoy DJ sets, dance parties, sleepovers and more magical mischief otherwise strictly forbidden behind the cemetery gates. It’s an L.A. rite of passage, a quintessential summer experience and one of the best film venues in the city. Just be sure to get your ticket early, arrive early (doors open at 6:45pm), pee early… it’s getting a bit overcrowded, to say the least.