Things to do in Los Angeles this Sunday

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. 

Supporting Black-owned restaurants is getting even easier—and hyper affordable—thanks to the return of Black Restaurant Week. For 10 days straight, this celebration of African-American, African and Caribbean cuisines highlights participating restaurants across the city who'll all be offering prix-fixe plate specials—some for as little as $10.  There's also a BINGO card to keep score of your visits and enter you to win gift cards, plus a virtual cocktail contest and a database of local, independent Black-owned restaurants to use year round. Find the list of participating L.A. spots here.

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 this summer and parking itself at a few locations for drive-in movie screenings. The series—which includes flicks like 500 Days of Summer, The Sandlot and The Princess Bride—will host free screenings at Ontario International Airport’s Lot 5, as well as paid ones ($20 per car plus $8 per person) at the Brandeis-Bardin Campus in Simi Valley, Oak Canyon Park in Orange County and King Gillette Ranch in Malibu (they’re also overseeing Level 8 Drive-In atop the Americana). 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.

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.

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. 

Disneyland may still be closed, but Sherman Oaks’ Van Eaton Galleries is bringing a little bit of the magic to us with its latest auction of artifacts from the Happiest Place on Earth. “Disneyland: The First 65 Years” marks the theme park’s birthday with 1,100 props, signs, costumes, souvenirs and ride posters from the Anaheim theme park and its siblings around the world, all of which will go up for auction on August 15 and 16. But before then—pending updates to public health guidelines—you can book an appointment to stop by the Ventura Boulevard gallery to seem them for yourself (if last year’s similar exhibition is any indication, expect every bit of wall space to be covered). From July 25 through August 14 (assuming public health guidelines ease up and allow indoor galleries to reopen again), you can scope out items like an original Space Mountain ride vehicle, a tombstone from the Haunted Mansion, an original Eyvind Earle concept painting for the Sleeping Beauty Castle walkthrough, an It’s a Small World animatronic doll and many more. And if you’re interested in finding a home for any of these relics in your living room—and have thousands of dollars to spare—you can participate in the streaming auction in August. The free exhibition will be tentatively open from July 25 through August 14, with reservations available Tuesday through Saturday from 10am to 6pm and Sunday from noon to 4pm.