May 2024 events calendar for Los Angeles

For dinner and a movie, all in one, just follow the food trucks. During the spring, summer and fall, Street Food Cinema throws together a series of outdoor parties—usually alfresco, sometimes in a drive-in format—that include screenings of some of our favorite movies, paired with an assortment of gourmet food trucks and even a live music performance from a cool local band. The screenings are held in venues across L.A. and alternate from week to week, so make sure to check the schedule. Some of the outdoor venues are dog-friendly, allowing you to bring your four-legged cinema lover along.

See more of this season’s outdoor movie screenings in L.A.

This weekend-long concert will once again return to West Hollywood Park as part of WeHo Pride. Kylie Minogue, Janelle Monáe and Diplo headline this year’s fest with additional sets from Doechii, Ashnikko, Noah Cyrus, Trixie Mattel, Keke Palmer, Channel Tres, Yaeji, Big Freedia, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, VINCINT and more.

It’s more than just the low clearance: This exhibition at the Petersen explores the custom paint, engraving, upholstery and, of course, the gravity-defying suspension of the lowrider scene. In addition to iconic cars, the exhibit spotlights influential artists in the Chicano lowrider art scene.

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. Cinespia returns to the cemetery in late may, but earlier in the month it’ll stage a few off-site events at L.A. State Historic Park and, for the first time, at the Rose Bowl.

LA Pride may have moved out of West Hollywood, but that hasn’t stopped the city from holding its own colorful Pride celebration. WeHo Pride will take place May 31 through June 2 in and around West Hollywood Park.

WeHo Pride features an all-weekend music fest dubbed OUTLOUD that includes performances from Kylie Minogue, Janelle Monáe and Diplo. That follows a free night of music on Friday from a to-be-announced lineup of performers.

The weekend’s musical lineup coincides with the free WeHo Pride Street Fair along Santa Monica Boulevard, between Hancock and La Per, on Saturday and Sunday (noon–8pm). In addition, you’ll find the Women’s Freedom Festival (noon–6pm) and Dyke March (6–6:30pm) on Saturday, June 1.

Then, on Sunday, June 2, WeHo Pride will hold a parade (which this year honors Cyndi Lauper as a Lifetime Ally Icon) that starts at Santa Monica Boulevard and North Crescent Heights Boulevard at noon, and heads west on Santa Monica to North La Peer Drive (just past the park).

Listen to classical and jazz in a dome more than a mile above L.A. during this mountaintop concert series. The Mount Wilson Observatory is hosting monthly concerts this summer inside the dome of its 100-inch Hooker telescope, which was the largest telescope in the world for much of the first half of the 20th century.

Tickets cost $60 (that also includes access to the exhibit at the observatory) and it’s highly recommended that you buy them in advance since seating is limited. You’ll need to be able to climb 53 steps to reach the dome, and children under 12 aren’t permitted. 

The masters of alfresco rooftop movie viewing have returned for another season of screenings to LEVEL in Downtown L.A. Instead of listening to the movie over loudspeakers, you’ll get a set of wireless headphones so you never have to miss a word. This spring and summer, look out for a slate of wedding season picks and AAPI Heritage Month selections in May, as well as Pride and Black Music Month screenings in June. Also, select “wooftop” screenings will be dog-friendly starting in May.

Take a seat in the Skirball Cultural Center’s courtyard for this series of outdoor screenings. The Sepulveda Pass museum is showing The NeverEnding Story, Where the Wild Things Are and Pan’s Labyrinth to tie in to its Wild Things Are Happening: The Art of Maurice Sendak exhibition.

Irish playwright-director Conor McPherson spins a tale of strife in the Great Depression—set to songs by Bob Dylan—in Girl From the North Country, which we gave four stars during its New York run.

Best known for her rhinstone-studded paintings of Black women, collages of old Jet Magazine spreads and revisions of historic paintings, Thomas’s large-scale works (80 of them from the past two decades) will be on display at the Downtown museum.