Things to do in L.A. this weekend

Netflix’s stand-up specials keep us cackling at home, but the streaming service’s ambitious comedy festival is nothing to laugh at. Initially announced for 2020, Netflix is a Joke: The Festival made its delayed debut in 2022 with a staggering 295 shows over the span of a week in L.A. Now, it’s headed back here May 1 to 12, 2024 and upping the ante: We’ve counted over 500 shows slated for three dozen venues with sets from Ali Wong, Jerry Seinfeld, Jim Gaffigan, Chris Rock, Taylor Tomlinson and literally hundreds of others (we’ve highlighted 10 of the most unique offerings to help narrow things down).

Explore the history of early Los Angeles life with free admission to five museums in Northeast L.A. and Pasadena. The annual Museums of the Arroyo Day is the perfect opportunity to brush up on historical architecture—the Gamble House, Heritage Square and the Lummis Home—and relics from L.A.’s past—L.A. Police Museum and Pasadena Museum of History. In addition to free entry, you’ll find shuttle service between all five museums. Some of the sites are bike and A Line-friendly as well. MOTA Day runs from noon to 4pm.

One of L.A.’s best free live music offerings, Jazz at LACMA has featured legit legends over its three-decade run at the museum. Seating for the program is available in the museum’s plaza on a first-come, first-served basis, though you’re welcome to picnic on the grass, too (you won’t really be able to see the show, but you’ll still hear it). You’ll find the series on Friday evenings in LACMA’s welcome plaza (just behind Urban Light) throughout the summer.

L.A. has changed immeasurably since 1921, when this event was first staged as an agricultural fair. However, the perennially popular event still has farm-friendly appeal (livestock beauty contests, local produce) alongside the more modern acrobats, wine tastings, exhibitions and concerts.

RECOMMENDED: A guide to the L.A. County Fair

This surf-inflected music fest will once again take over the Redondo Beach coastline for three days in May. Sting, Incubus, My Morning Jacket, Dirty Heads, Seal, Devo, Local Natives, Santigold, Fleet Foxes, Courtney Barnett and Trey Anastasio top this year’s lineup.

Little Tokyo is one of L.A.’s most compact and bustling neighborhoods, so there’s a lot to explore in just a few blocks in the realm of food and drink. This year, Go Little Tokyo is back with its annual food tour and festival that will help you discover—or appreciate—the neighborhood’s cornucopia of legacy small food businesses. Highlights of the one-day event include a food history walkthrough of Little Tokyo, a bread decorating class and a whiskey workshop.

The former Lucha VaVoom has been essentially split into two, with this one helmed by longtime producer and burlesque and lucha scene mainstay Miss Rita. For its inaugural show at Don Quixote, Miss Rita’s Lucha VaVoom will stage an East L.A.-inspired Cinco de Mayo event with mariachis, lowriders, folklorico, minis, tamales, musica, mezcal and tequila.

Think men could do a bit of a better job listening when it comes to dating? This Bachelorette-style game show runs with that conceit as its one rule: The four men competing for a date can’t speak. Instead, they’ll nod and doodle while host Allison Goldberg searches their phones and dials their moms. You can usually find Love Isn’t Blind staged monthly (and you can even apply to participate in it); look out for the next edition at the Arts District’s House of Cocotte on May 4.

Peruse handmade pieces from about three dozen ceramic studios and artists during this annual celebrations of all things clay at Craft Contemporary. You’ll find the bulk of the vendors in the museum’s courtyard, with the rest located in a pop-up shop. Aside from the shopping, you can learn how to handcraft (1–3:30pm) and take home your own air-dry clay project.

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).

Catch a series of movies in the Valley screened at the locations where they were shot or at a local landmark that fits the film’s theme. My Valley Pass, the area visitors’ guide that runs the event, has lined up a showing of Star Wars in the parking lot of Neiman & Company (6842 Valjean Ave), the former location of Industrial Light & Magic, where the film’s groundbreaking effects were created.

No, the Academy Museum isn’t staying open past midnight—but it is celebrating films that have typically screened then. To complement the museum’s John Waters exhibition and Pink Flamingos’ place as a late-night mainstay, it’ll be screening some cult favorites this April and May, including Eraserhead, Up in Smoke, Donnie Darko and The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

The hour stands before another springtime, and the Renaissance Pleasure Faire is nigh. Good mistresses and masters, prepareth thy schedules and costumes for the return of the oldest Ren Faire in the country, a spectacle that cov’reth 20 Irwindale acres with Elizabethan libations and amusement: fully armored joust tournaments and tea parties with the Queen along with beguiling stage acts, rides, games, delicious edibles and ales abound. The fesitivies will transpire each weekend at the Santa Fe Dam Recreational Area; procureth day or season passes in advance by visiting ye olde online box office. And no, we can’t stop talking like this.

When is the Renaissance Pleasure Faire near Los Angeles?

The event takes place Saturdays and Sundays (10am–7pm) from April 6 to May 19, 2024 at the Santa Fe Dam Recreation Area in Irwindale.

How much are tickets?

Tickets cost $42 for adults, $37 for seniors (62+) and those with military IDs, $21 for kids ages 5 to 15 and free for kids 4 and under. A season pass costs $225. Parking is $12, with a VIP option available for $25.

Nature lovers rejoice! Spend a day at the Natural History Museum’s Butterfly Pavilion, which will open from March 17 through August 25 with up to 30 butterfly and moth species and an assortment of California plants. The seasonal outdoor exhibit allows for adults and children alike to witness nature up close—we’re talking having bufferlies take flight and land on your arms or shoulders. Prime time for these unique butterfly flight experiences are between 10 and 11am each morning.

The masters of alfresco rooftop movie viewing have returned for another season of screenings in Downtown L.A., with nearly-nightly showings this spring.

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.

For one summer in 1987, a carnival popped up in Germany with traditional rides adorned with artwork by Salvador Dalí, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, David Hockney, Sonia Delaunay and a couple dozen others. And then… it kind of just vanished, sent off into storage for decades. But now, thanks to a couple of art world partners and Drake, Luna Luna has been revived in L.A., restored and reassembled in a soundstage in Boyle Heights.

Let the wild rumpus start at this celebration of beloved children’s author and illustrator Maurice Sendak. The Skirball Cultural Center will be displaying more than 150 sketches, storyboards and paintings from the Where the Wild Things Are creator.

This major Ed Ruscha retrospective includes his meticulous photos of L.A. streets and a reconstruction of his Chocolate Room (which, yes, is a room made out sheets upon sheets of chocolate).

Did this past year’s Basquiat exhibition in DTLA leave you wanting more? Head to Beverly Hills where Gagosian will be displaying 50 rarely loaned Jean-Michel Basquiat pieces that were created in L.A. during the iconic artist’s time spent at his Venice studio between 1982 and 1984.

You might’ve noticed Johnson’s beautifully carved and gilded redwood organ screen on recent visits to the Huntington. Now, for the first time in four decades, you can see it paired with other pieces he created for the California School for the Blind in Berkeley, California—with 41 works in total on display.

In 1993, artist Charles Gaines mounted “ The Theater of Refusal: Black Art and Mainstream Criticism,” a UC Irvine gallery show that responded to the country’s cultural and political crises with works from then-up-and-coming Black artists. Now, three decades later, Hauser & Wirth has revived the show in two parts: a small reprise of “The Theater of Refusal” with ’90s pieces from Gaines, Gary Simmons and Lorna Simpson, as well as a larger room that continues the show’s themes with recent works from Lauren Halsey, Rashid Johnson, Caroline Kent and more.

Judy Baca’s half-mile–long The Great Wall of Los Angeles, a collaborative mural painted in the ’70s along the Tujunga Wash, has received all sorts of museum love in the past few years. But LACMA has a particularly unique show to boast about: The local Chicana muralist and SPARC artists will paint two new sections of The Great Wall during museum hours. The exhibit also debuts a new section of the wall, in honor of activists known as the Freedom Riders, dubbed Generation on Fire.

See how the Hairspray and Pink Flamingos writer and director’s delightfully filthy style has redefined the possibilities of independent cinema—as well as what exactly goes into making an indie movie—during this career-spanning exhibition at the Academy Museum.

Former HiFi space Gabba Gallery ushers in its new DTLA home with this retrospective of counterculture illustrator EMEK, famous for his posters for the likes of Foo Fighters, Queens of the Stone Age, Nine Inch Nails and Neil Young, as well as the annual Coachella poster.

See works from seven contemporary artists (Eliseo Art Silva, Allison Hueman, Anthony Francisco, Maryrose Cobarrubias Mendoza, Christine Morla, Maria Villote and Junn Roca) who address issues related to Filipino culture and the Filipino-American experience during this exhibition at the Forest Lawn Museum.

See early works in assemblage, installation, happenings and conceptual artmaking at this examination of art from the decades that followed the Korean War, the first such exhibition in North America to focus on this period.

What does living in L.A. look like? It’s a wildly different picture depending on each Angeleno’s point of view, and so to celebrate that diversity of perspectives, Hollywood gallery Jeffrey Deitch will display pieces from a dozen local artists that delve into underground economies, landscapes, surveillance, backyard hangouts and public transit, among other topics.

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.

See 1930s-to-50s concept cars plus artwork from Ed Ruscha, Andy Warhol and David Hockney at this Petersen exhibition.

The GRAMMY Museum celebrates hip-hop’s 50th anniversary with interactive DJing, rapping and sampling stations and instantly recognizable artifacts like LL Cool J’s red Kangol bucket hat and the Notorious B.I.G.’s red leather pea coat.

Alex Garland’s brutal, dystopian vision of America at war with itself is visceral but vague.

Eschewing gimmicky callbacks, this horror prequel is thoughtful and engaging—but still unsettling.

Dev Patel conceives, directs, produces, punches, stabs and brawls his way through this brash and frequently brilliant action flick.

It’s not clever, but it is big.

Sydney Sweeney’s blood-splashed nunsploitation horror falls just short of divine.