Honolulu Avenue's Fall Calendar Hasn't Changed. The Storefronts Running It Have.

Walk the last half of the 2200 block of Honolulu Avenue this Saturday and you'll see the Oktoberfest ride route staged the way it always is, stretching from Aladdin Rugs and Gallery down to Sabrina's Pizzeria Napoletana. The route is the same one the Montrose-Verdugo City Chamber of Commerce has used for years. What's different is that one end of it didn't exist the last time you walked this block without a beer ticket in your hand.

Sabrina's opened in April 2025. This October will be its second Oktoberfest as the block's anchor tenant, not its fifth or its tenth. The corridor's four-event fall calendar, the one every Montrose resident has memorized without trying, is running this year on a stretch of Honolulu Avenue that turned over more of its storefronts in the last eighteen months than most people clocked while it happened.

The Calendar Nobody Needs a Reminder About

The fall lineup on Honolulu Avenue doesn't change much year to year, and that's the point of it. The Montrose Harvest Market runs every Sunday from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., rain or shine, except Easter, with EBT SNAP accepted at the information booth. Montrose Oktoberfest, now in its 47th year, lands on Saturday, October 3, from noon to 10 p.m., sponsored by Babaians Law Firm, with two Weingartens pouring wine on the 2300 block from 2 p.m. until last call at 9:45. The Halloween Spooktacular takes over the 2200, 2300, and 2400 blocks on Halloween night from 5 to 7 p.m. The Montrose Holiday Wine Walk is set for Saturday, November 14. And the 48th Annual Montrose-Glendale Christmas Parade closes the year on Saturday, December 5, stepping off at 6:10 p.m.

None of that is new information if you've lived here more than a season. What's easy to miss is that the businesses framing these events, the ones you duck into for a pre-parade meal or a post-Wine-Walk nightcap, have been reshuffling underneath the fixed calendar the whole time.

The Ride Route Has New Owners

Sabrina's Pizzeria Napoletana sits at 2200 Honolulu, in the space that used to hold Benitoite. It's owned by Rima and Donnell Cameron, and it's named after a Crescenta Valley High School alumna. The pizza chef, Josafat Mejia, trained under Vito Iacopelli, and the restaurant built a dedicated Neapolitan oven to hit the temperatures that style of pizza requires. None of that existed on this block three Oktoberfests ago.

Next door at 2201, Gus & Andy's Kitchen & Bar tells a longer version of the same story. The space sat empty for years after longtime restaurant Rocky Cola closed in 2012. Gus & Andy's filled it, currently running a limited Friday through Sunday breakfast and lunch schedule, 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. By April 2026, it had become the top-ranked pick in La Crescenta-Montrose on one local restaurant guide, which is a fast climb for a spot that spent over a decade as a vacant storefront before that.

So the two businesses bookending this year's ride route, the ones every attendee walks past to get from the rides to the beer garden, are both recent arrivals to a corridor that looks, from a distance, like it hasn't changed in decades.

The Corner That Keeps Changing Hands

A few blocks over, at Ocean View Boulevard and Florencita Drive, the turnover has been faster and messier. Alissa's Ocean View Bar and Grill closed abruptly in December 2024. Monna by Gev's Kitchen moved into the space not long after, filing its incorporation paperwork in June 2025 and opening as a Middle Eastern and steakhouse fusion concept with live music and a private dining room.

Monna's first year on Ocean View wasn't smooth. In November 2025, LA County's Department of Public Health posted a Notice of Closure on the restaurant for lacking a public health permit and failing to submit plans before remodeling the space. According to public health records, the owners submitted corrected plans that November and worked through the county's Expedited Plan Review process to get back open. By 2026, the restaurant was running again, with a menu update logged in June and steady reviews rolling in through the summer on OpenTable and Yelp.

What that means for this fall is simple. Last year, Monna was either brand new or briefly shuttered for most of the corridor's marquee events. This is the first fall it gets to run straight through the Harvest Market, Oktoberfest, the Spooktacular, the Wine Walk, and the Christmas Parade without an interruption in the middle. If you tried Monna once last year and had a mixed experience, or you skipped it because the doors were dark for a stretch, this season is effectively a fresh look at a restaurant that's had time to settle into its own space.

Down the street, Joselito's Mexican Restaurant at 2345 Honolulu has quietly become the kind of fixture that doesn't make news precisely because it hasn't changed. The Crescenta Valley Chamber of Commerce picked it as the site of its monthly social hour in May 2026, the latest stop in a rotation where the Chamber gathers each month at a different local business to show support. Sabrina's hosted the same gathering back in April. It's a small habit, but it's one more thread tying the corridor's newer restaurants into the same civic rhythm as its older ones.

What's Actually Stayed Put

The restaurant turnover on Honolulu Avenue is real, but it's not the whole picture. Tom's Toys, Once Upon a Time Bookstore, Color Me Mine, Black Cow Cafe, Montrose Bowl, and Moo Moo Mia's are still the names people mention when they describe the avenue to someone who's never been. Lost Books, the plant-tunneled offshoot of downtown's Last Bookstore, is still tucked into its spot. These are the businesses that make Honolulu Avenue read as a small-town main street rather than a strip of rotating storefronts, and they've held their ground while the dining scene around them has moved faster.

Even the corridor's history of turnover predates this current wave. Faye's Intimate Apparel held its corner at Honolulu and Ocean View for 73 years before closing in 2022, a run long enough that most current residents never knew the block without it. The building changed hands to another local family, Executive Jewelry, which set about finding new tenants. Storefronts on this stretch don't sit empty for long, but they also don't sit still.

What This Means If You're Timing Your Fall Around It

If you're planning your own version of the fall calendar, the practical version looks like this. Grab your weekly produce at the Harvest Market on Sunday mornings before the crowds show up for anything bigger. Save October 3 for Oktoberfest, and if you want a pre-parade meal that didn't exist two years ago, Sabrina's or Gus & Andy's are both right on the route. If you haven't been to Monna since last year, or haven't been at all, this fall is the version of the restaurant that's had a full year to work out its kinks. Halloween night runs from 5 to 7 on the three main blocks, the Wine Walk lands November 14, and the Christmas Parade caps everything off on December 5 at 6:10.

The calendar repeats. The storefronts hosting it this year are not the same ones that hosted it two Oktoberfests ago, and that's worth knowing before you assume you already know this block.

If you've noticed a storefront on your own street change hands this year and wondered what it means for the neighborhood around it, that's the kind of question Trevino Properties spends a lot of time thinking about, being based right here in La Crescenta. Say hello next time you see the team at the Harvest Market.