L.A. WeeklyFrom panels for all your favorite shows at Vulture Festival to a dessert extravaganza, here are the 13 best things to do in Los Angeles this week.
fri 11/8
ART
See America’s Natural Treasures
Even if you have yet to see all 59 U.S. National Parks in person, you can still marvel at their majestic beauty at Gallery Nucleus’ 59 Parks Poster Exhibition. Curated by JP Boneyard, founder of The National Poster Retrospecticus, the touring exhibit features screen prints created by international artists who’ve captured each of the 59 national landmarks, with their mountains, deserts, beaches, caves, glaciers, waterfalls, wildlife and other natural wonders, from Yosemite to Yellowstone to the Everglades. The posters are currently being archived by the Library of Congress, and 5 percent of online sales benefit The National Park Service. Gallery Nucleus, 210 E. Main St., Alhambra; Fri., Nov. 8, 7-10 p.m.; free. (626) 458-7477, gallerynucleus.com. —Siran Babayan
CULTURE
Expand Your Reality
Miss Refinery29’s surreal pop up experience last time it was town? Here’s another chance to room it up. 29Rooms: Expand Your Reality is more than a selfie-pose fest, it’s an interactive walk through art, themes and ideas, wherein creating, consuming and moving around all play a part. Touting “a diverse group of local and national collaborators,” 29Rooms aims to make us think about art, culture, fashion, tech, entertainment, politics and lifestyle in an imaginative and novel way, even while it injects marketing elements into each room (brand collaborations include Uber, Lola, Facebook AR, Smashbox, Clarins and Hulu). Pop-ups started as marketing initiatives, after all. In our social media savvy world, presenting environments of wonder can be a challenge, but Refinery has proven they are up for it, 29 times up for it in fact. 4315 Beverly Blvd., East Hollywood; Fri., Nov. 8-Sun., Nov. 17, various times. $25. 29rooms.com. —Lina Lecaro
sat 11/9
FOOD&DRINK
Embrace Your Sweet Tooth
‘Tis the season to overeat. The holidays are fast approaching, but why wait until Thanksgiving or Christmas when you can overindulge at Dessert Goals’ Los Angeles Dessert Festival? First launched in New York in 2016 by Miraya Berke, the event, this year themed “Tie Dye Tiki,” takes place over two weekends and gathers 20-plus vendors selling all kinds of desserts that are anything but ordinary. (Ever had liquor-infused cake balls?) Eat — or, better yet, take home — creative sweets like stuffed cookies, cookie shots, raw cookie dough, jasmine tea ice cream, chili gummies or organic lollipops that taste like thyme, rosemary and sage. You can even plant the biodegradable sticks in soil and grow an herb or flower. Evolve Project, 1921 Blake Ave., Elysian Valley; Fri.-Sat., Nov. 9-10 & Nov. 16-17, noon-6:30 p.m.; $10-$35. (213) 246-2200, dessertgoals.com. —Siran Babayan
ART
Portraits About the Border
For painter and video artist Hugo Crosthwaite, life has unfolded in equal parts on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, and he has come to understand that in a way the border region itself is its own nation, with a unique culture that is both blended and divided, and a population comfortable with dualities. Both his films and graphite and ink drawings on canvas — often at monumental scale — exist in a black-and-white palette and are rich with regal, stylized detail. In his portrayal of the everyday people of the border, Crosthwaite channels influences from Goya to Posada, surrealism and futurism, with a penchant for gestural abstraction and a narrative cinematic wit. This weekend’s opening reception for Crosthwaite’s Tijuas! is long-planned but it suddenly doubles as an award celebration, since he just last week garnered first place at the 2019 edition of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery’s triennial American portraiture project, The Outwin. Luis De Jesus, 2685 S. La Cienega Blvd., Mid-City; opening reception: Sat., Nov. 9, 6-8 p.m.; exhibition: Tue.-Sat., 11 a.m.-6 p.m., Nov. 9-Dec. 21; free. (310) 838-600, luisdejesus.com. —Shana Nys Dambrot
Girl Gang Craft Fair
CULTURE
Girl Gang Brain Trust
Did you know that the Girl Gang Craft Fair is the largest women’s craft fair in California? You’ll luck into all sorts of illumination when you experience today’s marketplace that’s stuffed to bursting with the stellar wares of makers from Chicky Botanica, Happy Organics, Revive Kombucha and Ritual Practice — among many, many others. The craft fair is also a braintrust of — and for — entrepreneurs who know they have something to say but might not know where to access the platform from which to say it. After all, the greatest thing the people here today will craft is sisterhood. Grand Central Market, 317 S. Broadway, downtown; Sat.-Sun., Nov. 9-10, 11 a.m.; free. (213) 624-2378, facebook.com/events/
Swan Lake by Michael Keegan-Dolan. (Colm Hogan)
DANCE
When Swans Go Gaelic
It’s called Swan Lake and while created for England’s Sadler Wells Ballet, choreographer Michael Keegan-Dolan brings his own company Teaċ Damsa for this revision of the classical ballet. Moving the action to Ireland, the choreographer went with music recalling the Irish melodies in the film Titanic rather than the Tchaikovsky ballet score and the official title is in Gaelic: Loch na hEala with Swan Lake in parenthesis. No pointe shoes or tutus are in sight on the 14 dancers, four of whom are barefoot but do sport long feathered wings over their arms. And there is a narrator as this Swan Lake finds story similarities in an Irish legend of a sorcerer who turned four women into swans to prevent them exposing him after he rapes one of them. UCLA Royce Hall, 10745 Dickson Court, Westwood; Sat., Nov. 9, 8 p.m., $28-$59. cap.ucla.edu. —Ann Haskins
CULTURE
Vulture Festival
New York Magazine’s Vulture website hosts for a third year Vulture Festival, a two-day, pop-culture party with actors and celebs appearing in talks, screenings, podcast tapings, live comedy shows and other events, mostly taking place at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. Saturday’s schedule features discussions with the cast from The Good Place, Superstore and Pen15, as well as with Tony Hale; a food demonstration with Netflix’s David Chang; a game night with couples from The Bachelor; and a sing-along screening of last year’s A Star is Born. While Sunday’s highlights include more conversations with the cast from The Man in the High Castle and One Day at a Time, in addition to Elisabeth Moss; Party Down and Community reunions; a “star tour” led by guides Adam Pally and Casey Wilson; a live-commentary screening of MacGruber with Will Forte; and a comedians’ showcase at Dynasty Typewriter. The Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, 7000 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood; Sat.-Sun., Nov. 9-10, noon-10 p.m.; prices vary. (323) 856-1970, vulturefestival.com. —Siran Babayan
sun 11/10
CULTURE/MUSIC
Get Your Motor Running
Four years after the Love Ride seemingly took its final ride, the annual charity motorcycle ride is back, albeit in a smaller, revamped version. Doors guitarist Robby Krieger breaks on through in a performance with Foo Fighters spinoff band Chevy Metal, and actor Emilio Rivera (Sons of Anarchy, Mayans M.C.) is also scheduled to appear at the combination barbecue and concert. The 33rd edition of Love Ride starts this year at Harley-Davidson of Glendale and finishes at Harley-Davidson of Santa Clarita, in a benefit for Santa Clarita Education Foundation, which raises funds for 54 public elementary schools. Harley-Davidson of Glendale, 3717 San Fernando Road, Glendale; Sun., Nov. 10, 9 a.m.-5 p.m.; $150. (818) 246-5618. facebook.com/events/
V. Vale (Courtesy of Beyond Baroque)
LITERATURE
Poetry Salon
Hurl yourself through the beatific doorway that leads to the next 50 years of Beyond Baroque greatness with The Beyond Salon. Beyond Baroque’s 9th Annual Awards Dinner sees executive director emeritus Richard Modiano getting the nod for decades of tireless devotion, while poet Harryette Mullen receives ample recompense for her services to the grace of the written word. Also: Re/Search publisher V. Vale holds forth with Devo founder and Beyond Baroque supporter Gerald Casale, and UCLA professor Johanna Drucker is fêted for her paeans to posterity — namely, sensibly organizing over 50,000 items in the archives of Beyond Baroque itself. Santa Monica Bay Woman’s Club,1210 4th St., Santa Monica; Sun., Nov. 10, 5 p.m.; $50-10,000. (310) 822-3006, beyondbaroque.org. —David Cotner
mon 11/11
MUSIC
Got 5 Hours?
Morton Feldman’s 1984 musical work For Philip Guston is a spectral and magical piece that unfolds in layers, with keening, intermingled tones of flute and celesta drifting airily across wide spaces broken up by watery percussion. Like all great spells of enchantment, this kind of tone poem takes its time to unwind — nearly five hours in total. In a presentation by Monday Evening Concerts, the longtime local series of adventurous contemporary-music performances, Christine Tavolacci (flutes), Brendan Nguyen (piano and celesta) and MEC’s Jonathan Hepfer (percussion) unlock Feldman’s work, which was composed in tribute to his friend Philip Guston, the defiant and idiosyncratic painter of the New York School (and beyond). Listeners are invited to come and go during the lengthy performance, which is part of “Resilience: Philip Guston in 1971,” the first solo exhibition by the late artist (who was raised in L.A.) in more than 50 years. The exhibit is curated by Musa Mayer, the artist’s daughter. Hauser & Wirth, 901 E. Third St., downtown; Mon., Nov. 11, 6:30-11 p.m.; free with RSVP. (213) 943-1620, facebook.com/events/
(Mary Melton) Christina Gandolfo
tue 11/12
BOOKS
Slouching Toward Pasadena
“There’s no getting around the fact that setting words on paper is the tactic of a secret bully, an invasion, an imposition of the writer’s sensibility on the reader’s most private space,” Joan Didion declared in her 1976 essay “Why I Write,” in the New York Times. The Sacramento native used her arch powers of observation to document an entirely new frontier in California at a time when the literary establishment was fixated only on words coming out of New York City. Alta Magazine books editor David L. Ulin and editor at large Mary Melton discuss Joan Didion: The 1960s & 70s (The Library of America), a collection of Didion’s crucial early work — including the novels Run River, Play It as It Lays, and A Book of Common Prayer and the classic essay collections Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album — that has been newly compiled and edited by Ulin. Vroman’s Bookstore, 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena; Tue., Nov. 12, 7 p.m.; free. (626) 449-5320, vromansbookstore.com. —Falling James
wed 11/13
BOOKS/MUSIC
Acid for the Children
Before he was one of the most famous bassists of all time, Flea of The Red Hot Chili Peppers was a scrawny punk kid, meandering around the streets of L.A., going to clubs, taking drugs and getting into trouble. Michael Peter Balzary (his given name) had a horrific childhood, as his step-father was psychotic, but he was also a jazz musician and Flea followed in his footsteps, picking up music early and honing it as a Fairfax high school student with his friend Anthony Kiedis. If you’ve ever read or watched an interview with Flea, you know the guy has many stories to tell, and his new memoir, Acid For The Children (yes, he means that literally) promises to spin some tempestuous tales of his rockstar adventures and his freaky pre-Peppers formative years. He’ll talk about it all with Malcom Gladwell at this book signing and Q&A. Palace Theatre, 630 S. Broadway, downtown; Wed., Nov. 13, 7-10 p.m.; $29-$100. facebook.com/events/
thu 11/14
CULTURE
Female Indiana Jones
While opportunities continue to open for women in technology and engineering, there’s always room for female-forward adventure — as such, National Geographic Live presents Mireya Mayor: Pink Boots and a Machete. Described as a sort of “female Indiana Jones” — or “in Diana Jones,” certainly — noted primatologist Mayor has escaped furious gorillas, dodged dodgy elephants, and discovered an entirely new species of Malagasy lemur. She’s also a correspondent for Nat Geo, which means that tonight will be presented in startling color, chaos and clarity that reveals unto you more about the natural world than you’ve ever ventured into in your wildest dreams. Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, 18000 Park Plaza Drive, Cerritos; Thu., Nov. 14, 7 p.m.; $45. (562) 916-8500, tickets.cerritoscenter.com/
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