📍 EVENTS Los Angeles Home / Vibes / 🤙 Back to School Vibes
Curations
CurationsLA
HEAT ADVISORY THROUGH TONIGHT X TAR PITS LAND $236 MILLION X BOMBAS OPENS ON ABBOT
Back to school intro animation for the CurationsLA VIBES newsletter.
VIBES - THURSDAY, AUGUST 20, 2026
🤙 BACK TO SCHOOL VIBES

Wattstax turns 54 today, the Tar Pits land $236 million, Bombas opens on Abbot Kinney, and a heat advisory runs through tonight.

VIBES · THURSDAY, AUGUST 20, 2026THU + AUG 20
THE WEEK IN SKY
THU
🥵
89 69
Sunny, heat advisory
FRI
☀️
88 69
Sunny
SAT
☀️
89 69
Sunny
SUN
☀️
90 69
Sunny
🌤️ DISCUSSION

The National Weather Service has a Heat Advisory up for parts of Los Angeles County through 8 p.m. Thursday. Downtown runs sunny and near 89 today with a light south southwest wind, then holds in the high 80s Friday and Saturday before nudging to about 90 on Sunday. Overnight lows stay near 69 all week, so the mornings stay soft and the afternoons do the work. Drink water, find shade, and check on your neighbors.

FULL FORECAST
💭 QUOTE OF THE DAY

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”

— Nelson Mandela
⏪ 1972

Wattstax fills the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Stax Records staged it seven years after the Watts uprising, set tickets at a dollar so the neighborhood could actually get in, and drew more than 100,000 people. Isaac Hayes closed the night. People have called it Black Woodstock ever since, but it was really Los Angeles showing up for itself.

❓ TRIVIA QUESTION

Los Angeles High School, the oldest public high school in Southern California, opened in 1873 on a downtown hill with a gloriously unserious name. What was that hill called?

It sounds like something you would order for dessert.
EATS01 / 06
A beach bag with chips and an agua fresca from Chicas Tacos in Hermosa Beach.
HERMOSA BEACH

Chicas Tacos Opens on The Strand in Hermosa Beach

Chef Eduardo Ruiz has taken his 2016-founded LA taco brand to the sand. The Hermosa counter sits on the back patio of The Deck at 1272 The Strand, the renovated former Poop Deck and one of the oldest oceanfront bars on the walk, and it opened Saturday, August 15 with a beach lounge out front. Tacos run carne asada, beer-battered fish, shrimp, chicken, braised pork and a plant-based option on hand-pressed corn tortillas, plus nachos, quesadillas and churro bites. Open daily 11:30 a.m. to 8 p.m.

One catch worth knowing: The Deck is 21 and over, so a family lunch means the public tables next door rather than the patio. Come down the bike path and skip the parking hunt entirely.
The nostalgia turkey club focaccia sandwich from Frank n Franks in Chinatown.
CHINATOWN

Frank n Frank’s Serves Focaccia Sandwiches Until 1:30 AM

Amboy alum Brian Ayala and former Howlin’ Ray’s chef Mario Aguilar took the old Burgerlords space at 943 N Broadway and opened on June 10. The name belongs to Ayala’s brother Frank, who died in 2024. Five sandwiches, all on sesame focaccia from Ceor Bakery, all with chips: the Spicy Italian with ‘nduja stracciatella, the Chrissy with Burbank pastrami, the Nostalgia turkey club, the mortadella GodFrank, and a peanut butter and jelly pressed hot with candied Nueske’s bacon.

The real move is the clock. Friday and Saturday it runs until 1:30 a.m., which makes it one of the only kitchens still working in Chinatown Central Plaza after midnight. Order window and patio only, no dining room, closed Monday and Tuesday. Bring a layer.
The new Ferrazzanis Pasta and Market location at 2082 Lincoln Avenue in Altadena.
ALTADENA

Ferrazzani’s Pasta & Market Sets a New Altadena Address

Leah Ferrazzani, who owns Semolina Artisanal Pasta, has a new Altadena address in the frame at 2082 Lincoln Avenue. It is the same operation that turned a Lincoln Avenue pasta shop into a full Italian American deli: sandwiches, fresh and dried housemade pasta by the pound, Italian ice and pantry shelves.

Watch item, not an opening. No public opening date has surfaced yet, and current listings still point to the Pasadena shop at 1976-1978 Lincoln Avenue, open daily 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Use those links today and keep 2082 on your list. Lincoln Avenue is quietly becoming one of the better food corridors north of Pasadena.
MORE EATS

🎈 FOR THE KIDS Kid-friendly restaurants with playgrounds, sand and room to run. — THE INFATUATION

🍽️ EATER EATS The best dishes Eater LA editors ate this past week. — EATER LA

🌯 CHIPOTLE X GEN ALPHA Chipotle launches the Salish Matter Order, built around one of Gen Alpha’s biggest celebrities. — CURATIONSLA

COMMUNITY02 / 06
RAIL

Amtrak Lands $5.3 Billion for New Trains, New Track and Bottleneck Fixes

Amtrak picked up $5.3 billion in federal funding on Friday, spread across 41 projects in 23 states. Those were chosen from 103 applications that asked for more than $11.6 billion, so roughly two of every three requests went home empty.

The money arrives through the new National Railroad Partnership Program, which folds together several older grant programs from the 2021 infrastructure law. $2.05 billion of it is equipment, funding 43 new trainsets. The rest goes to bridge repair, signal and track work, and new double track aimed at the bottlenecks that make schedules slip.

The California detail worth knowing: more than $2 billion of this pot was redirected from grants previously cancelled for the California High Speed Rail project. Trains.com has the full project-by-project list.
LANCASTER

Antelope Valley College Becomes California’s NASA Aerospace Workforce Hub

NASA named the Antelope Valley Community College District in Lancaster one of just a handful of new State Hubs under its Aerospace Skilled Technical Workforce initiative, alongside groups in six other states.

Read the job list and the point becomes obvious: welders, electricians, machinists. This is not a degree pipeline, it is a trades pipeline, aimed at people who want to build the thing rather than write about it. Over the next three years the hub will line up employers, community colleges, high school career and technical programs and apprenticeships into one route into the industry.

Siting it in the Antelope Valley is the part that makes sense. Lancaster sits next to Edwards, Plant 42 and decades of aerospace payroll, and now a kid from the Valley has a marked path into it without leaving home.
MORE COMMUNITY

📚 WEST HOLLYWOOD The L.A. Kids Book Festival returns to West Hollywood Park this Sunday. — BEVERLY PRESS

🌹 PASADENA The City of Pasadena considers $7.5 million for street repairs tied to water projects. — PASADENA NOW

🧊 COOLING STATIONS West Hollywood activates the Plummer Park Cooling Center as high heat returns. — CURATIONSLA

DEVELOPMENT03 / 06
Aerial rendering of the redesigned La Brea Tar Pits park and George C. Page Museum in Mid-Wilshire.
MID-WILSHIRE

The La Brea Tar Pits Revamp Lands $236 Million in State Bond Financing

The state has put $236 million in bond financing behind the long-planned overhaul of the La Brea Tar Pits and the George C. Page Museum. The Weiss/Manfredi design reworks how the whole 13-acre park reads, pulling the museum, the pits and Hancock Park into one continuous walk instead of a building sitting next to a fence.

First phase completion is expected mid-2028. It is the biggest thing to happen to that stretch of Wilshire in a generation, and it is happening while the rest of Museum Row is also in motion.
Rendering of the approved 244-unit affordable senior housing development at 19300 West Sherman Way in Reseda.
RESEDA

244 Units of All-Affordable Senior Housing Approved on Sherman Way

A 244-unit development at 19300 West Sherman Way has been approved, and every unit is affordable and reserved for seniors. Five stories, roughly 68 feet, about 161,322 square feet of residential floor area, and 125 parking spaces around shared landscaped open space.

It cleared through the Affordable Housing Incentive Program, which is what allowed the floor-area ratio to go to 2.9:1 instead of 1.5:1. The site belongs to the Los Angeles Jewish Home for the Aging, with Meta Housing Corp. developing and Y&M Architects designing. No construction timeline has been confirmed yet.
MORE DEVELOPMENT

🎭 SFV The Valley College Arts Center opens after a decade of construction. — SAN FERNANDO VALLEY SUN

🏅 LA28 The Los Angeles City Council moves to streamline 2028 Olympics construction. — LOS ANGELES DAILY NEWS

BUSINESS04 / 06
VOID founders Anastasia Surkova and Shanaya Santos at the Performance of Self exhibition at Al’s General in Downtown Los Angeles.
DOWNTOWN LA

VOID Turns a One Night Show Into a Case for Collaboration Over Competition

Anastasia Surkova and Shanaya Santos founded VOID as a Los Angeles creative house working across fashion, photography, film and immersive experiences. Both are immigrants, both are recent graduates, and both built the thing they could not find: a room where emerging artists collaborate instead of compete.

Their first chapter, Performance of Self, ran one night on July 18 at Al’s General in Downtown Los Angeles. Original work from the founders sat alongside four curated LA artists, and close to 100 people came through. The detail that stays with us: disposable cameras handed out during the night, developed afterward, and shown next to handwritten letters to Los Angeles that attendees wrote on the spot.

That is a real idea, not a launch party. Congratulations on this launch, Anastasia and Shanaya!
VENICE

Bombas Opens Its First Los Angeles Store on Abbot Kinney

Bombas lands at 1140 Abbot Kinney on Friday, August 21. It is the brand’s first Los Angeles store and only its fifth anywhere, following the New York flagship that opened last fall.

The company started in socks and has since grown into underwear, tees, slippers and shoes, all running on its one purchased equals one donated model. It says customers have moved more than 200 million clothing items to people who need them through a network of over 4,000 giving partners.

First 150 customers get a pair of exclusive Sushi Socks. Hours are Monday to Saturday 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., Sunday noon to 6 p.m.
MORE BUSINESS

🚀 CONVENTION CENTER The Los Angeles Convention Center signs over a dozen new shows. — LOS ANGELES MAGAZINE

🏥 SOUTH LA Kaiser Permanente gives a $25 million grant for emergency services at Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital in Willowbrook. — LOS ANGELES BUSINESS JOURNAL

ENTERTAINMENT05 / 06
The Star Wars: Starfighter title treatment in silver lettering across the yellow Star Wars logo on a starfield.
LUCASFILM

Ryan Gosling Is Kade Auberon in Star Wars: Starfighter

Gosling took the D23 stage with director Shawn Levy to introduce Star Wars: Starfighter, landing Memorial Day 2027. He plays Kade Auberon, described by Gosling as “a guy from the wrong side of the galaxy, whose fate is intertwined with the fastest starfighter ever built.” The logline: a cynical rogue is confronted by his mysterious past and hurled across the galaxy on a crash course with destiny.

The release date is the whole flex. Star Wars opened Memorial Day weekend in 1977, so Starfighter arrives exactly 50 years later, to the weekend. Levy called it an honor, and cited American car culture, The Outsiders and Lucas’s own American Graffiti as what he had in his head while making it.

Kathleen Kennedy produces with Levy, Jonathan Tropper wrote it, and the cast runs Gosling, Flynn Gray, Matt Smith, Mia Goth, Aaron Pierre, Simon Bird, Jamael Westman, Daniel Ings and Amy Adams. Gosling turned up in a Mickey Mouse Club jacket first: “I owe a lot to Disney.”
BOX OFFICE

Spider-Man: Brand New Day Is the Fastest Film Ever to $800 Million Domestic

Sony confirmed Wednesday that Spider-Man: Brand New Day crossed $800 million in North America in just 19 days, the fastest any film has ever done it. The running domestic total is $803.9 million, good for fourth on the all-time chart and closing on No Way Home at $814.8 million.

It also cleared $2 billion worldwide over the weekend, the eighth film ever to get there, and passed Sony’s own all-time mark along the way. Destin Daniel Cretton directed, Tom Holland stars.
MORE ENTERTAINMENT

💃 MADONNA X MTV Madonna leads the 2026 MTV VMA nominations as the show heads to Los Angeles on September 27. — CURATIONSLA

🪶 TOM HANKS Warner Bros is locking down film rights to Allen Levi’s bestseller Theo of Golden, with Tom Hanks set to star. — DEADLINE

SPORTS06 / 06
NFL

Chargers and Rams Land in the 2026 Division Sweep Odds

Fox Sports put out 2026 odds on which teams could run the table inside their own division, and both Los Angeles clubs are in the conversation. The Chargers have the stronger case on paper: they went 5-1 in the AFC West last season, which is the kind of number that makes a sweep look less like a fantasy.

The Rams draw the harder road. The NFC West has not handed anybody a clean sweep in a long time, and it is not getting friendlier this year. Both playbooks below track it all season.
COLLEGE FOOTBALL

USC and UCLA Draw Their 2026 Big Ten Title Odds

Early odds for the 2026 Big Ten championship are out. USC sits at +1600, in the mix but behind Ohio State and Oregon. UCLA is a genuine longshot at +17000.

The Bruins number is the interesting one. New head coach Bob Chesney and quarterback Nico Iamaleava are walking into year one together, and a longshot line in August is exactly the sort of thing a program like this would enjoy making look foolish by December.
MORE SPORTS

🧢 DODGERS The Rockies lose the series finale in 10 innings and get swept by the Dodgers at Coors Field, 6-4. — DENVER POST

⚾ ANGELS Pecko fans four in his MLB debut and Vázquez hits his seventh homer as the Astros beat the Angels 3-2. — ESPN

🎮 NBA 2K27 NBA 2K27 just rewrote the sports game story mode. — GAMESPOT

✅ TRIVIA ANSWER
ANSWER: Poundcake Hill.

Los Angeles High opened in 1873 at Temple and Fort Street, the street we now call Broadway, on a rise everybody knew as Poundcake Hill. It was two stories of wood with a clock tower on top and steep wooden stairways climbing up from the street below. The hill later became the site of the Los Angeles County Courthouse, and the school moved several times before settling on Olympic Boulevard in 1917. The motto still nods back to that first campus: always a hill, always a tower, always a timepiece.

A teacher in a blue sweater and lanyard dances in a line with students at a school dance.
SCHOOL X WEEKEND VIBES