Best Things to Do in SoCal and LA This Week: February 16-22, 2026
A Lunar New Year parade and celebration
The Chinese Chamber of Commerce of Los Angeles presents the 127th Annual Golden Dragon Parade, a vibrant showcase of culture and heritage. Featuring colorful dragon and lion dancers, the procession includes high school marching bands and drill teams, cultural performers, and appearances by civic leaders and celebrities. With over a century of history, the Golden Dragon Parade offers a spectacular way to ring in the Lunar New Year.
600 N Broadway
Material and memory embrace destruction and renewal
"Material Prophecies: Craft as Divination" at the Armory Center for the Arts brings together eight artists who use craft as a tool for ancestral knowledge and spiritual inquiry. Working across earth, fiber, metal, cyanotype, terracotta, and film, the artists treat materials as living archives that hold inherited wisdom and unseen connections across time. Rooted in the San Gabriel Valley’s cycles of wildfire, floods, winds, and regrowth, the exhibition embraces time as nonlinear and transformative, where destruction and renewal are intertwined.
145 N. Raymond Ave.
Dreamer goes to Washington
The East West Players presents "Tam Tran Goes To Washington" at Hollywood American Legion Post 43 as part of their Theatre For Youth program. The play follows Tam Tran, a UCLA senior who prefers life behind the camera, but is unexpectedly propelled into the spotlight when her undocumented status places her at the forefront of the fight for the DREAM Act. This free performance centers the human stories behind immigration policy and honors the legacy of young advocates whose voices continue to shape conversations around belonging and social justice.
120 Judge John Aiso St
Neon and nostalgia in one unforgettable exhibition
Artist Patrick Martinez returns to Charlie James Gallery with two concurrent exhibits: "Left in Ruins," an exhibition with new works and "Homegrown," a companion exhibition curated by Martinez. Through mixed-media paintings, neon works, sculpture, and drawings, Martinez envisions the Los Angeles landscape as material and medium, transforming his hometown into layered reflections on migration and cultural resilience. Using materials like stucco, cinderblock, tile, and neon, Martinez builds and erodes surfaces to mirror the city’s constant reinvention. Homegrown expands this narrative by tracing Martinez’s artistic lineage, showcasing work by family members whose creative practices shaped his own.
969 Chung King Rd
The painting is inside
"Jon Serl: As One, As Many" looks at the life and work of painter Jon Serl, whose unexpected journey from vaudeville performer to self-taught artist unfolded across Southern California. Filled with free-form figures, vibrant color, and eccentric theatricality, Serl’s work reflects a lifelong search for truth beyond artistic convention. Tracing his evolution from depictions of rural Southern California in the 1940s to imaginative, introspective compositions shaped by perception and memory, the exhibition highlights painting as Serl’s act of discovery.
18881 Von Karman Ave
#100