Your Guide to Celebrating Halloween 2021 in San Diego

October 2: Drew Brees Celebrity Pickleball Tournament

Former NFL quarterback Drew Brees will host a slew of celebrity athletes, chefs, and other hunger-relief supporters for a Celebrity Pickleball Tournament to raise money for Feeding San Diego. The tournament at the Barnes Tennis Center in Point Loma is part of the Del Mar Wine & Food Festival, which has raised more than $100,000 for Feeding San Diego and other local nonprofit organizations since 2023.

October 3: Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute Illumination Gala

Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute will celebrate 50 years of groundbreaking research at its Illumination Gala at the Fairmont Grand Del Mar. Support from the gala will help Sanford Burnham Prebys continue to advance medicine and change lives.  

October 3: San Diego Humane Society’s 40th Annual Fur Ball

San Diego Humane Society supporters—both people and pets—will get dressed to the nines for the 40th annual Fur Ball. Proceeds from the event at San Diego Humane Society’s Gaines Street campus will support the organization’s efforts to care for more than 40,000 animals each year. 

October 3: Voices for Children Starry Starry Night Gala

Voices for Children will celebrate the impact of its Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASAs) at its Starry Starry Night Gala on the Heron Lawn at the Park Hyatt Aviara Resort. The 46-year-old organization is the only agency in the county designated to provide CASAs to advocate for local foster children.

October 3: Autism Society of San Diego Diamond Anniversary Gala 

Show off your sparkle at the Autism Society of San Diego Diamond Anniversary Gala at the Town & Country Resort. The nonprofit will celebrate six decades of service with dinner, entertainment, and special guests.   

October 11: Robin’s Nest Rescue Rockin’ Robin Music Fest

More than 30 performers will take the stage to support Robin’s Nest Rescue at its fourth annual Rockin’ Robin Music Fest. The five-acre animal sanctuary in Ramona will also celebrate America’s 250th birthday, showcase local artisans, and introduce guests to some of its rescue animals. 

October 17: Adjoin Soil to Soul Garden Party

Local nonprofit Adjoin will host a whimsical garden party fundraiser at a private home in La Mesa. The Soil to Soul Garden Party will support Adjoin’s mission to build inclusive communities and support independence for people with disabilities and veteran families experiencing homelessness.

October 24: Living Coast Discovery Center Farm to Bay

Enjoy bites, beverages, and animal encounters at Living Coast Discovery Center’s Farm to Bay fundraiser. The annual event at the nonprofit zoo and aquarium on the San Diego Bay National Wildlife Refuge will support coastal conservation efforts.

This week marks summer’s last hurrah before the seasonal transition to fall, and there are plenty of ways to make the most of it. There’s the Surf Lounge Festival, the fifth annual BirdStock, and the two-day Adams Avenue Street Fair, all of which boast a plethora of live music options and local artisans. There are also world premieres, including the first chances to see the play A Black-billed Cuckoo at La Jolla Playhouse and MCASD’s Visiones Nocturnas: Queer Nightlife in Contemporary Art exhibition. On top of that, the Padres are back in town, and fans can pack the stands at Petco Park to support the team in their playoff push.

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Food & Drink Events in San Diego This Weekend

Harvest for Hope 

September 17

With September being Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, the Emilio Nares Foundation will present its 23rd annual Harvest for Hope fundraiser dinner this Thursday (5:30 p.m.). Guests will have the chance to try food from a curated selection of more than 20 chefs, breweries, and wineries from the SoCal and Baja regions while supporting a worthwhile cause. General admission is $250 online; tickets support free medical transportation, emotional care and critical services through the Emilio Nares Foundation for kids facing cancer and life-threatening diseases. 

5300 Grand Del Mar Court, Del Mar

Capital of Craft Beer Fest

September 19

Though San Diego Beer Week won’t start pouring until Nov. 6, Christmas has come early for enjoyers of locally crafted brews. The 21-plus Capital of Craft Beer Fest returns Saturday (1-4 p.m.) at Broadway Pier, with local food and merchant vendors, performances by 80s Resurrection and Agent 51, and best of all, more than 70 beers to sample via unlimited two-ounce tastings.Ticket options include general admission ($57) and VIP passes ($78), which come with in-and-out privileges and an exclusive hour of premium beer sampling from noon to 1 p.m.; a portion of proceeds will go towards the San Diego Brewers Guild. 

1000 North Harbor Drive, Embarcadero

Taste of Bonita

September 19

Toast to Bonita’s culture, history, and cuisine this Saturday (5-9 p.m.) during the Taste of Bonita. Held at the Bonita Museum and Cultural Center, this charitable and educational soirée will feature tastings from local restaurants, as well as silent auction drawings, children’s activities, artisans and craft items, and a gallery exhibit on BonitaFest. Tickets, which come with unlimited tastings and a beverage, are $55 for guests ages 12 and older, $20 for ages 5-12 years old, and free for kids ages four and younger; proceeds will help support the year-round free programming offered by the Bonita Historical Society.

4355 Bonita Road, Bonita 

Concerts & Festivals in San Diego This Weekend

BirdStock Music Festival & Artisan Market

September 19

Who needs Woodstock when there’s BirdStock? This Saturday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., all are invited to La Jolla’s Bird Rock neighborhood for entertainment from local musicians, an artisan market, and all-day activities to fundraise for arts and music programming at La Jolla Coastal Conservancy and Bird Rock Elementary. The 5th annual BirdStock Music Festival & Artisan Market will also include live DJs, a wine and beer garden, VIP libation areas, food trucks, pro BMX athletes and skateboarders, pickleball, a pet parade, and a custom hat bar.  

5500-5700 La Jolla Boulevard, La Jolla

Surf Lounge Festival

September 19

The legend of Pacific Beach’s bygone Surf Lounge lives on this Saturday from 2-10 p.m. during this 21-plus party at The Soap Factory. Surf Lounge Festival is a passionate celebration of surf culture with a healthy dose of indie rock, featuring performances by the bands Summer Salt, Three-Legged Dog, Tropa Magica, Couch Dog, and Bēd. The festivities will also include five vinyl DJs, tattoos, and 20 local vendors. General admission is $50, and $60 the day of the festival.

2995 Commercial Street, Logan Heights

Earth, Wind & Fire at Civic Theatre

September 19

Technically, “the 21st of September” doesn’t arrive until Monday, but any concert from Earth, Wind & Fire is certainly cause for celebration. The legendary group is still carrying its legacy of love, soul, and R&B brilliance more than five decades after its formation. Experience the jubilant rhythms of the band’s greatest, most danceable hits when they play the Civic Theatre this Saturday (8 p.m.). Tickets start at $138 for this concert. 

1100 Third Avenue, Gaslamp

Adams Avenue Street Fair

September 19-20

Tickets to the Del Mar Wine & Food Festival get you in the door. The real fun is figuring out who you’ll run into once you’re there. This year’s weeklong schedule of exclusive events, running September 30–October 4, includes dinners, tastings, and loosely-supervised chaos where celebrity chefs and local icons finally let their hair down.

The festival has a track record of the unexpected: Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul once toasted their mezcal brand Dos Hombres with an intimate dinner at the Lodge at Torrey Pines (and then, evidently unsatisfied, kept drinking it on the cliffs above Blacks Beach with a rotating cast of San Diego and Food Network chefs. Alex Morgan showed up for a dinner under the lights honoring the country’s most badass women chefs). Drew Brees ran a celebrity pickleball tournament where the guy from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia got absolutely humbled by locals.

If you scored a ticket to last year’s Grand Tasting, you might’ve caught Guy Fieri doing exactly what Guy Fieri does: strolling the grass, signing t-shirts and foreheads, and hanging off the DJ surf van like it was built for him. Meanwhile, local chef Ethan Yang of Glass Box walked off with the Chef Competition surfboard.

So whether your plan for 2026 is to corner legendary San Diego chefs like Victor Jimenez of Cowboy Star and Jon Sloan of Juniper & Ivy in person, or just aim for a spontaneous golf cart ride with a Food Network star—here’s your cheat sheet for where to run into a celebrity chef, TV personality, award-winning winemaker, or pro athlete at this year’s Del Mar Wine & Food Festival.

Troy Johnson, Karen Krasne

Signature San Diego Opening Night Party

September 30 | 6 – 9 p.m. | Monarch Ocean Pub 

Consider this your soft landing into festival week—the walk-around tasting that eases you in before things get chaotic later on. Monarch Ocean Pub hands its patio over to the flavors that define San Diego eating: Baja seafood done right, coastal bites, Mexican flavors with some heat behind them, all the staples locals will fight you over. 

The celebrity sightings here lean more “bump into” than “spot from across the room.” Troy Johnson—Food Network judge, San Diego Magazine chief content officer and co-owner, Emmy-winning host, a man who has eaten his way across the entire country professionally—is the type to materialize at whichever station has the longest line, because he already knows it’s worth the wait. Ask him what he’s had so far. He’ll have opinions.

Then there’s celebrity pastry chef Karen Krasne, owner and executive pastry chef of Extraordinary Desserts, James Beard House alum, and a woman Forbes once ranked among the top 10 pastry chefs in the country—which tracks, because you might find her holding court next to a tray of her roasted pecan shortbread dipped in white chocolate, explaining exactly why this is the flavor combination. You will listen to every word, too, because you’ll want to try that cookie.

This is an opening night party where the person next to you in line might just be the one who baked the thing you’re about to eat.

Bryn McArthur, Mawa McQueen

Chateau Montelena’s 50th Anniversary Celebration

October 1 | 6 – 9 p.m. | Fairmont Grand Del Mar

Fifty years ago, a Napa Chardonnay beat France at its own game and rewrote what the world thought it knew about wine. This dinner is that legacy, poured by the family who built it, course by course.

Under the arches at Fairmont Grand Del Mar, Ernie Hahn and the Hahn family, who partnered with the Barretts to revive Chateau Montelena into the Napa powerhouse it is today, host an evening built entirely around the winery’s most iconic pours. Every course gets its own pairing straight from the Montelena portfolio, so you’re not just hearing about the Judgment of Paris, you’re tasting the wine that started it.

Chef Mawa McQueen, a former James Beard Best of the West winner out of Aspen, brings globally inspired cuisine and serious technique to the table. Alongside her, Fairmont Grand Del Mar’s executive chef Bryn McArthur leans into farm-to-table sensibility shaped by a career of global kitchens. Together they’re building a menu meant to hold its own against wine that already changed history once.

This is the rare dinner where the wine isn’t just accompanying the meal, it’s the reason the meal exists. Fifty years after Paris, the rematch is happening right here in Del Mar.

Karen Krasne, Martin Munguia

Rioja Uncorked

October 1 | 6 – 9 p.m. | Rancho Valencia 

Fall Arts Preview presented by SDFC Playmakers

September

Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable World

Museum of Photographic Arts at the San Diego Museum of Art

Now through Jan. 10, 2027

Sift through over 200 photographs, sketches, letters, and costumes from “The King of Vogue,” who photographed World War II, modernized royal portraits, and created the aesthetic for 1920s socialites in London.

Washed Ashore: Art to Save the Sea

Natural History Museum

Now through Feb. 28, 2027

Walk through an 18-foot whale ribcage (and a couple dozen other marine-creature sculptures) made entirely of plastic bottles, flip-flops, lighters, rope, and other plastic detritus found on the beach in the Nat’s 3,000-square-foot second-floor gallery.

Forging a Legacy: 15 Years of Landmark Acquisitions

San Diego Museum of Art

Now through May 31, 2027

Part of SDMA’s centennial, “Forging a Legacy,” highlights artists from the past (Picasso, Monet) and modern day (Hugo Crosthwaite) who contributed to the museum’s collection.

ZWO Astronomy Photographer of the Year

Fleet Science Center

Now through 2027

See the stars (without the smog) at their best from the winners of the world’s largest astrophotography competition—all in the Fleet Science Center’s new basement gallery, specifically dimmed to let the cosmos shine.

Begin Again

The Old Globe

Sept. 6–Oct. 11

From the 2013 silver screen to this year’s The Old Globe stage, you can “Begin Again” (again) with a world-premiere musical adaptation featuring new songs—courtesy of Train—and a story overflowing with hope.

Dear Evan Hansen

Cygnet Theatre

Sept. 9–Oct. 4

“On the outside, always looking in…” marks the emotional crux of the Tony-, Grammy-, and Emmy-award winning musical coming to the Cygnet Theatre.

Kumeyaay Comics by the Kumeyaay Visual Storytelling Project

Museum of Us

Opening Sept. 12

Learn the history of the Kumeyaay Nation from the perspective of the members themselves in an immersive exhibit inspired by graphic novels “Our Past, Present, and Future,” and “Beyond Gaming.”

Good Night, Oscar

North Coast Repertory Theatre

Sept. 16–Oct. 11

During Oscar Levant’s appearances on “The Jack Paar Show,” he explained his reality with mental illness—the institutionalizations, electroshock therapies, nothing was too taboo for him. “Good Night, Oscar” takes us backstage in the raw moments before his 1958 television appearance.

Visiones Nocturnas: Queer Nightlife in Contemporary Art

Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego

Sept. 19–Jan. 17, 2027

A disco ball isn’t just a disco ball. It’s a symbol of where queer communities can finally exhale and be their fullest selves. “Visiones Nocturnas” uses paintings, sculptures, textiles, performances, photos, and videos from Latin American artists to explore what’s at stake when nightclub lights shut off.

Silent Movie Mondays

Balboa Theatre

Sept. 21, Oct. 26, Dec. 7

Guest organists from across the country will come to the Balboa Theatre to accompany a new silent film for each performance. This year closes out with The Headless Horseman (1922), Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (1920), and a holiday triple feature of Laurel and Hardy films.

Oh, Mary!

Civic Theatre

Sept. 29–Oct. 4

“What if Abe’s assassination wasn’t such a bad thing for Mary Todd Lincoln?” was the question that inspired Cole Escola’s play “Oh, Mary!” In the production, Mary Todd desperately tries to return to the cabaret stage, but her husband (President Lincoln in the midst of the Civil War) keeps getting in the way.

October

Payare Leads Strauss’ A Hero’s Life

Jacobs Music Center

Oct. 3–4

Conductor Rafael Payare opens the San Diego Symphony’s 2026-2027 season with a three-part concert featuring composers Sofia Gubaidulina, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Richard Strauss.

Emily–No Prisoner Be

Baker-Baum Concert Hall

Oct. 8

Two dozen of Emily Dickinson’s poems are turned into songs—composed by Pulitzer Prize winner Kevin Puts and performed by Grammy-winning mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato—for a one-night-only exploration of love, loss, loneliness, and mortality.

Ripcord

The Roustabouts Theatre Co.

Oct. 8–Nov. 1

Roommate beef has no age limit. The latest play from Pulitzer Prize winner David Lindsay-Abaire turns that experience into a comedy through retirement home roommates Marilyn and Abby and the bet between them to see who will break first and move out.

Des Canyons aux Étoiles

La Casa del Zorro

Oct. 12

Composer Olivier Messiaen has chromesthia, so for him, sound evokes a visual connotation. His work “Des Canyons aux Étoiles” brings desert rock and the night sky to mind. See what he means from La Casa del Zorro in the Anza-Borrego Desert, in this performance immersed within nature.

San Diego International Film Festival

Locations Vary

Oct. 13–18

San Diego International Film Festival salutes the silver screen for a 25th time, now with a sixth day adding extra time for parties, screenings, and movie-star tributes.

Rigoletto

Civic Theatre

Oct. 23–25

Considered one of the masterpieces from opera great Giuseppe Verdi, San Diego Opera’s “Rigoletto” sees what happens when the prurient Duke of Mantua and his sharp-tongued court jester become entangled in a fatal curse.

Grim

La Jolla Playhouse

Oct. 27–Nov. 29

When the Grim Reaper’s job becomes too…grim…and he retires after 300,000 years, his daughter picks up the family business. But when she falls for a human and finds beauty in the souls she’s meant to reap, she questions her purpose.

November

Skate Craft

Mingei International Museum

Nov. 21–May 9, 2027

San Diego is nothing without skate culture. Mingei’s “Skate Craft” portrays skateboarding as “living folk art” via its DIY roots (skateboards built in garages) and shows how that ethos shapes the future.

People remember the first time they see Joe Dreamz.

Mine was a mile into the 2023 Carlsbad Half Marathon. He was standing on a speaker in the middle of the course, singing: “Hey you with the shoes, are you living Joe Dreamz?” Clearly not. I’m running uphill at 7 in the morning, I thought.

Months later, walking out of The Rady Shell, there he was again—parting the crowd of concertleavers Moses and the Red Sea style, singing the same song: “Hey you with the purse, are you living Joe Dreamz?”

Who’s this man at every public spectacle, singing metaphysical questions in a hand-altered, color-coordinating suit that would make James Brown proud and standing on a Soundboks speaker with a microphone and tip bucket?

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A post shared by Joe Dreamz (@joedreamz)

A few years ago, San Carlos–born, El Cajon–based Joe Dreamz wasn’t exactly living Joe Dreamz—making $5 footlongs at Subway, dealing with croissant coworkers at Costco’s bakery, and selling life insurance. After he got let go from the life insurance gig and his car broke down in the middle of a 2020 road trip in Seattle, he used his emergency savings to buy a microphone and a speaker; a self-taught musician, he pulled from the only skillset he knew to monetize. He’d set up at Seattle’s Pier 55 and ask people what their dreams were. Then, for $5, create a freestyle rap to commemorate (and hopefully activate) those dreams.

“The goal is that someone listens to a Joe Dreamz song, and they don’t have to wait until metaphorically their car breaks down before they chase their dreams,” he says.

A chance encounter with an airport worker led to a free flight back to San Diego, and Joe Dreamz came home “transformed,” he says. He started busking at the Mission Beach boardwalk, Kate Sessions Park, outside Gaslamp bars; then Padres games, farmers markets, marathons. He also hit the mic outside of Coachella this year (“Joe-chella,” he says).

It’s not a get-viral-quick gimmick; people’s lives are changing. One fan finished writing her book after a dose of Joe Dreamzpiration. Another named his own daughter Joy Dreams.

Now, he’s working on the upstart “Tell Me Your Dream” podcast and DREAM Week in local schools, where each day represents a step toward achievement (D is destination day, R is reason day…). He doesn’t want inspiration to reach you only after hearing a song or watching a video: He believes in this message so much that he literally got DREAM tattooed onto his forehead.

“It’s on my face, so people have no choice [but to see it],” he says. “I’m a local celebrity here, so everywhere I go, people ask me for pictures. In every selfie, the message goes along for the ride too.”