Free: Original Farmers Market Fall Festival

Pet a pig, listen to some banjos, and find your autumnal joy at Third & Fairfax.

The standard sights seen around a fall festival setting?

You can probably name five tropes in the time it takes a pig to run a few yards. You can imagine spying a barn in the vicinity of a fall festival, and maybe a cornfield, and there will be farms in the distance, and scarecrows, and perhaps woods, too.

But seeing tall buildings and city-style streets? These don't spring to mind when we think of classic autumn hoedowns. Except, of course, when it comes to one of the oldest and most esteemed fall festivals in all of Southern California, an October bash that happens to be in the middle of the city, as middle-of-the-city-y as anything can possibly get.

It's the Fall Festival at the Original Farmers Market at Third & Fairfax, a free, weekend-long party that's been an important and anticipated annual event on the historic market's calendar since it first opened in 1934.

Nope, the venerable public market, known for its clocktowers, its green awnings, its yummy vittles, and its happy hangout-a-bility, isn't trucking in actual barns nor cornfields for the Saturday, Oct. 14 and Sunday, Oct. 15 event. 

But there will be a scarecrow, the beloved roaming scarecrow often seen at the homespun spectacle's bygone years, and pig races, and pie-eating contests, and banjo-riffic live music, and face painting, and a petting zoo, too.

And if you want to learn how to make a knot? There'll be a workshop for that, helmed by American Straw. 

The Scene

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Don't let anyone ever think that, just because you live in traffic-busy, neon sign-filled LA that you can't whip out your old-school knot-making skills in an instant.

The two-day roster is as packed as corn in a bin, so you decide what bands you want to hear, what activities you want to participate in, and how soon into the day you'll pet a pig or goat, which, let's be real, should be goal #1.

It won't be long before this famous fall festival hits its centennial, further proving that a classic autumn gathering doesn't need a rustic setting to be as sweet as a caramel apple, butter on corn, or a friendly scarecrow who'll actually chat you up.

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