Tujunga's First Halloween With Somewhere to Go After Dark
October 22, 2026
October 22, 2026
On Foothill Boulevard in Tujunga, two brothers and a longtime friend took an empty lot and painted the patio, tables and decor themselves. They hid speakers among the palm fronds, brought in a mechanical bull and bounce houses, and decided not to serve alcohol. More than 400 people came to the first gathering. That's how the Crescenta Valley Weekly described Cravings Night Market in its Oct. 1 feature.
This Halloween season is the market's first, and it changes how the next ten days fit together. This year's Sunland-Tujunga fall calendar is strong in the afternoon: a park festival, a lodge trunk-or-treat, a hilltop remembrance at the old cemetery. The ones with posted hours end by early evening. Starting Thursday, Oct. 22, there's a place on Foothill Boulevard open until 10:30 p.m., four nights a week.
Cravings Night Market is at 7636 Foothill Blvd. in Tujunga. It's open Thursday through Sunday, 5 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. Greg and Johnny Kasabyan created it with Eddie Ghazarian, and the market now has at least 20 vendors at a time. The food covers Japanese dishes, barbecue, fried chicken, dumplings and desserts. The Kasabyans also make their own ice cream and lemonade with their families.
A couple of vendors stand out. Viola's Taste of Home sells Armenian treats, including halva and baklava. HoshiZora, a space-themed stand run by Ken Matsutsuru, sells plant-based, no-sugar fruit drinks with a natural acacia glitter, and each one comes with a small 3D-printed character.
The founders see the hours as the point. Johnny Kasabyan told the Crescenta Valley Weekly:
"It's the first thing of this kind we have in Tujunga. We have people walking in Tujunga who haven't walked here in a long time. Before this market, our options were very limited."
The market also hires high school students to help clean the grounds, and organizers plan to set up donation boxes for local shelters. The organizers have announced a pumpkin patch and trick-or-treat activities for Halloween, with more holiday events planned for December. No dates or times have been published for either, so check with the market before planning a night around them.
The best way to see what's changed is to compare closing times. The other new market in the foothills, Foothill Community Market at 3334 Foothill Blvd. in La Crescenta, is a certified farmers market that runs Wednesdays from 3:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. Founder Bruce Beba of Bruce's Twisted BBQ timed it to catch families after school and workers after their shifts. That's a sensible weekday window, and it ends about when Cravings is hitting its stride.
The same is true of the Halloween calendar. Here's how the season lines up, starting on publication day:
Apart from Cravings, every scheduled event on that list ends at or before 8 p.m. On the four nights Cravings is open, the evening keeps going after that.
That Friday shows the change most clearly. The Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks' 2026 Halloween list puts music, costume contests, a trick-or-treat village, a senior citizen snack booth, a moonbounce, candy, prizes and carnival game booths at Sunland Recreation Center, all free. The neighborhood council posted the same festival as the Halloween Festival at Sunland Park.
The festival wraps up at 8 p.m. Cravings, a short drive east on Foothill Boulevard at 7636, has two and a half hours left on its Friday schedule. For a family that has already done the costume contest and the candy, the night can now end with dumplings and lemonade on a painted patio. Before the market, that patio was an empty lot.
Saturday, Oct. 31, works the same way. Halloween falls on one of the market's regular nights, the same weekend as the Elks Lodge Trunk or Treat.
The season closes at the Verdugo Hills Cemetery, and this year's event has a different format. In 2025, the Friends of Verdugo Hills Cemetery held Dinner with the Dead, a sold-out fundraiser built around a three-course meal by Chef Tumara of Joselito's Restaurant. The group now alternates events each year.
So for 2026, Dine with the Dead, Walk for Life is free to enter. Food is for purchase, and games, photo opportunities and marigolds carry small fees. The Friends ask visitors to bring cash because there's no internet at the cemetery. The food comes from Tujunga's Joselito's and the Back Door Bakery, which the Crescenta Valley Weekly lists at 8349 Foothill Blvd.
Craig Durst is the cemetery's volunteer caretaker and president of the Friends of Verdugo Hills Cemetery, and he signs his writing as The History Hunter. In his Oct. 15 column for the Crescenta Valley Weekly, he lays out the day: photo opportunities, games and prizes, and a gathering every half hour at a gravesite with an ofrenda. Día de los Muertos dance shows by Dani and her performers run at 2 p.m., 3:30 p.m. and 5 p.m. The cemetery itself dates to April 1922, and Pioneer Hill at its highest point is where many Little Landers colonists are buried.
There's a climb involved. The Friends say to park on Terecita Road, as close to the top as you can, and walk the rest of the way. Rides are offered up what they call the Terecita Trudge, and anyone who makes the walk gets an award certificate. Durst's column gives 10950 Terecita as the address to navigate to for parking.
The last dance show starts at 5 p.m. on a Sunday, the same hour Cravings opens down on Foothill Boulevard. Nov. 1 can start at a 1922 hilltop cemetery with an ofrenda and end at a new market built on what was an empty lot.
If you're heading out on publication day or the night after, plan for one detour. Caltrans scheduled closures Monday, Oct. 19, through Friday, Oct. 23, on the northbound Sunland Boulevard on-ramps to both eastbound and westbound I-210, for culvert drainage work near the Sunland Boulevard Undercrossing. The work runs in daytime and overnight windows, according to the closure notice reposted by the Sunland-Tujunga Neighborhood Council. Caltrans notes the schedule may change for weather or operations. The closures are part of a $7 million upgrade to culverts, guardrails, roadside signs and wrong-way markers, with completion expected in summer 2028.
That matters most for the St. Luke's screening on Friday and the market's first weekend of the season, since both fall inside the Oct. 19 to Oct. 23 closure window.
The neighborhood council's October calendar also listed an Indigenous Peoples Day event on Big Tujunga Canyon Road, which was canceled on Oct. 11 because of rain. The council said a rescheduled date would be announced.
A new gathering place on Foothill Boulevard is the kind of local change Alexander Trevino and the team at Trevino Properties follow closely across Sunland-Tujunga and the foothills. If you own nearby and want to know how changes like this factor into your home's value, request a free home valuation and we'll walk you through it in plain terms.
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