Toby B

Toby is our uber-busy events editor for Mommy Poppins LA. Feel free to email Toby about events for our LA area calendar.

Latest posts by Toby

Things To Do in LA this Weekend: Enchanted Crawly Halloween, Boos at Zoos, and P-22

Submitted by Toby B on Thu, 10/17/2019 - 1:25am

Get hands on with some creepy crawlers at the Enchanted Crawly Hallow's Eve. Photo courtesy of STAR Eco Station

Throw on your masks and open up your treat sacks, because this is the weekend we start taking Halloween seriously. True, in some corners Halloween has always been deadly serious (as in full-on Zombie attack), but for the most part we have been attending our trick or treateries sans costumes, and more in onlooker mode. Well, no more. This weekend you start trick-or-treating at the LA Zoo. You can trick-or-treat at the Santa Ana Zoo. You can trick-or-treat with the Peanuts gang, and you can trick-or-treat with bugs (though hopefully not for bugs).

You can get pumpkins, pumpkins, pumpkins, from a town called pumpkin (ish), and then you can watch as they light up the night.

You can party with guinea pigs (no, that's not a costume; they're always that adorbs). You can party with the Jonas Brothers (no that's not a costume, they're always that adorbs). You can party with P-22 (don't bother calling an Uber, he'll get there on his own).

Or you can spend the weekend with a bunch of superheroes. Not the types who wear capes: I'm talking the kind who save lives. The 22nd Annual LA Cancer Challenge 5K Walk/Run brings folks together on the UCLA campus for fun times, fitness, and raising awareness about pancreatic cancer research. It's a cause we believe in so much we became a media sponsor. (Do we still have to do 5 kilometers if we're sponsors? Asking for my knees.)

Keep reading for our most heroic picks for the weekend, because next week things are going to get real:

Things To Do in LA this Weekend: Farmers Market Fall Fest, Depot Day, and Lots of Halloween Scares

Submitted by Toby B on Thu, 10/10/2019 - 12:21am

Photo courtesy of The Original Farmers Market

The weekends around here have been Halloweeny for a while now, but they're starting to get a little...scary. And I don't just mean because you realized that your kid's desired costume is on backorder til Christmas so you may have to make one yourself. I mean honest to goodness, Momma's too old for this, scare the bejeebus out of you, old school nightmare-inducing terror.

Thank heavens for the light side. The pumpkin paths with a little extra, the fall festival in the middle of our big city, the old fashioned mechanisms, and the prehistoric history. Nothing beats the look of joy on an elephant's face as he chows down on a whole pumpkin. (At least I think that's joy?) Nothing beats the look of joy on a mom's face when she meets her childhood hearthrob. (Now I know that's joy!)

This weekend you can go to your happy place, whether it's a train depot, a Japanese garden, the land of the dead, or outer space. Tons of fun, and none of it scary. Except for that thing about the costume. Anyone know a good seamstress?

Keep reading for our favorite picks for the weekend, which totally aren't scary...

Things To Do in LA this Weekend: Boo at the Zoo, Children's Book Fest, Mark in the Park

Submitted by Toby B on Thu, 10/03/2019 - 1:01am

Make Your Mark in the Park. Photo by Debra Morrison courtesy of The Big Draw LA

It's beginning to look a lot like pumpkins, everywhere I go. And so it begins! The Harvest. The Corn Mazes. The Patches. We are on a crazed, giddy run to the end of the month.

But don't get spooked! Yes, there are scary things afoot. Yes, you can choose the dark and shadowy path. But you can also choose to welcome the season with laughs (and science!). You can fear the night or you can get in on the fun. Halloween is what you make it, and LA makes it easy to choose family-friendly. Or not.

Public service announcement for purists who wait to celebrate Halloween until, well, Halloween: There's still lots to do! This weekend sees festivals Greek and Southeast Asian, Manhattan Beachian and Encinoish. You can buy a ticket to the 20s, catch a plane, train, or (very small) automobile. The streets of Los Angeles are open wide, and you can make your mark in Grand Park. So go out there and scare up some fun.

Keep reading for our favorite treats for this weekend, no trick!

Things To Do in LA this Weekend: Abbot Kinney, Underwood Farms, Watts Tower

Submitted by Toby B on Thu, 09/26/2019 - 12:00am

Photo courtesy of Underwood Family Farms

See, this is why I like fall. Our Mondays through Fridays are filled with serious, go-to-school-and-learn-things Important Business. And possibly homework (just for the kids, thank Heavens). But the weekends, man, do they make up for it! For starters: Halloween comes at us with a spooky vengeance this weekend, with world class theme park approved ooking and spooking at Knott's Berry Farm and Legoland, and at that LA original, Underwood Farms. (These join the pumpkin patches and fests that have already gotten an early and/ or supercute start.)

And talk about festivals: this weekend we have festivals that are westside eclectic, aquatic by way of Aztec, and infused with the beat of the drum. We have one that smells like wet dog, and a birthday party for a singing cowboy. You can touch a truck and have victuals with a viola. It's bananas!

You might even end the weekend a little smarter than when you started. This weekend's mind expanders include conquering the kingdom, defending the realm, exploring wide open spaces, and learning all the notes. You'll be reading en español and speaking for the trees. Remember: it's not work if you're doing it for fun!

Keep reading for our most playful weekend picks...

Things To Do in LA this Weekend with Kids: Museum Day, Sing-a-long Sound of Music, and Dino Fest

Submitted by Toby B on Thu, 09/19/2019 - 1:16am

To the top of the pumpkin pile at Tanaka Farms! Photo by Arianna Menon

I'm sorry, but do you EVER clean up? Look around you—this place is a mess! Well, this weekend we are putting our foot down. You are getting yourself to the coastline (or possibly an inland waterway) to do your part, pitch in, and clean up. The Coastal Cleanup is a simple way for the whole family to participate in making the world a better place. (This week the beach; next week their rooms.)

I'm not saying there's any reason you have to clean up now in particular, though it might have something to do with the parade of pumpkins making their way toward every doorstep near you, in preparation for October (fest). Hey, did we mention the spiders? Yeah, you're probably gonna wanna clean.

If you do a good job, then rewards await you. You can delve into dinosaurs and race with rubber duckies; you can solve a problem like Maria and the puzzle of getting into museums for free. We appreciate you (we're not the only ones), and we want the best for you. Such as... the cleanest picks for this weekend's events.

Keep reading to find them.

Things To Do in LA this Weekend: Mexican Independence, Chinatown Moon, and Coast

Submitted by Toby B on Thu, 09/12/2019 - 12:49am

Pose in a spider's web. Photo courtesy of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County

They're going to try to tell you it's pumpkin season, but it's not, not matter what the seasonal aisle at Trader Joe's may be implying. It's just plain old September, a neither here nor there month, but clearly not fall and in no way Halloweeny.

You know what it is? Fiestas Patrias, aka Mexican Independence Day. No hay calabazas ahora.

You know what it is? Talk like a Pirate Day, so shut yer gourd about Jack-o'-lanterns afore we make ye walk the plank.

You know what it is? Coast Open Streets, a day we get out and walk our way through Santa Monica. You're going to use your feet to get around, not some bippity boppity boo'ed pumpkin.

You know what it is? Opening day of the Spider Pavilion, an arachnology themed exhibit without any seasonal connotation to speak of.

To review: this weekend is many things, but pumpkiny it is not. Sorry to squash your hopes.

Keep reading for our spiciest picks for this big orange weekend....

Weekend Fun for LA Kids: Tall Ships, Lobsters, Touch a Truck, Hammer Family Day

Submitted by Toby B on Wed, 09/04/2019 - 11:05pm

Summer's over, and we're back in school doing some serious nose-to-the-grindstone big fat textbook learning, so it's time we talk about...

VACATION!!!!

Seriously, two weeks of reading, writing, and getting up on time to go to school are enough. We think you've earned the right to throw your feet up, eat mints off your pillow, and enjoy a $1000 vacation package to... [drum roll]... Smugglers Notch! It's our final giveaway package of the summer, and it is our biggest and bestest yet.

Even if you're not our big winner, you're a big winner! Because you are the recipient of a fun-filled weekend in Los Angeles (home to the stars!) packed to the rafters with tons o' things to do! We've got big boats and tasty critters and truck touching and sky booming. You can celebrate the cultures of Germany, the Philippines, and Mexico, of unicorns, faeries, and monsters. We've got free movies galore. We're turning friends into trading cards, the baseball diamond into our playground, and finding common ground in the boundaries that separate us. No doubt about it, just by living in Los Angeles, we are winning.

Keep reading for our prize-winning picks for this weekend...

Weekend Fun for LA Kids: Cardboard Regatta, Fiesta La Ballona, LA Birthday, & More

Submitted by Toby B on Thu, 08/22/2019 - 3:06am

We say good-bye to summer break as one after another our favorite seaonal series come to a close (or just start, for those who want to be contrary). A new academic year is upon us, and those kids who aren't back in school will be soon enough.

It's not just kids: whether you're 10 or 50, or old enough for the senior senior discount, you're feeling a change in the way the wind blows. Luckily, we've been through this rodeo enough to know it's never the end: the sun sets, only to rise again. Soon enough there will be a sequel or a live action remake.

There's always something going on in the City of Angels, whether it's rocking, rolling, or floundering with questionable seaworthiness. We've got plenty to look forward to in the weeks and months ahead, but ah, those summer niiiiights.

Keep reading for our best end-of-summer picks for this weekend....