For years the answer to "when is the market?" was Sunday morning on Swarthmore. You went early, you ran into four people you knew, you carried flowers home before lunch. That week is not the week the Palisades is living right now.
The Pacific Palisades Farmers Market came back on August 19 in a different slot entirely: Wednesdays, 1:30 to 5:30 p.m., on Swarthmore at Palisades Village. Raw Inspiration, which runs it, has been candid that this is not the old Sunday market restored, but a beginning. Pedro's Organic Avocado Ranch, Lily's Eggs, Frecker Farms, Rob & Isa Floral, Chickenhood, Funghi Valley, G Farms and Kepner/Maust are among the growers on the list. The produce is familiar. The hour is not.
That single schedule change is the most useful thing to understand about daily life here this fall, because it did not happen in isolation. Nearly everything that now reliably draws a crowd in the Palisades happens on a weekday, during daylight, and the weekend has quietly become the lighter half of the week.
The Village Rebuilt Its Calendar Around the Middle of the Week
When Palisades Village reopened on August 15 after roughly $100 million in remediation, the tenant list got the coverage. The programming calendar deserved more of it. Almost all of the free recurring events Caruso put back on the books land Monday through Thursday.
Mahjong runs Mondays from 10 a.m. to noon in The Park, hosted with Pali Mahj 90272, with reservations required each week. RummiKlubLA hosts Rummikub the first Tuesday of the month from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Giving Tuesday, a monthly initiative directing a share of proceeds from participating retailers to a local charity, started September 1. Kids Club, presented with Apple TV, runs Wednesdays at 10 and 11 a.m. in The Park. Ludus teaches self-defense and kickboxing on Thursdays. The weekend, by comparison, gets live musical trios near the Bay Theater on Friday and Saturday evenings and Sunday afternoons, plus Cars & Coffee on Swarthmore the fourth Sunday of each month from 8 to 10 a.m., which lands on September 27.
Stack it against a calendar and the shape is obvious.
| Day | What's on | Where | Hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | Mahjong Social with Pali Mahj 90272 | The Park | 10 a.m. – noon |
| First Tuesday | Rummikub with RummiKlubLA | The Park | 6 – 7:30 p.m. |
| Wednesday | Kids Club with Apple TV | The Park | 10 and 11 a.m. |
| Wednesday | Pacific Palisades Farmers Market | Swarthmore Ave | 1:30 – 5:30 p.m. |
| Thursday | Ludus self-defense and kickboxing | The Park | monthly |
| Fri / Sat | Live music trios | Near the Bay Theater | 6 – 9 p.m. |
| Sunday | Live music trios | Near the Bay Theater | 4 – 7 p.m. |
| Fourth Sunday | Cars & Coffee | Swarthmore Ave | 8 – 10 a.m. |
Four events before Thursday. Wednesday carries two of them, one of which is the market. If you have been timing your visits by the old rhythm and finding the place quiet, that is why.
The Daytime Population Explains the Schedule
There is a straightforward reason a weekday afternoon market works here in 2026 when it might not have in 2019. The people reliably in the Palisades between nine and five are the ones rebuilding it.
That reality has shaped which counters thrive. Palisades Garden Café at 15231 La Cruz Drive opens early and functions as a meeting point for people who are in town for the day, and it now hosts a Palisadian Coffee and Chat, an informal morning gathering organized by resident Rebecca Martin. Ace Building Materials operates a pop-up at 15401 Sunset on the site of a burned-out gas station, trucking masonry, stucco and construction supplies over from Van Nuys and, by its manager's account, connecting contractors with homeowners as much as selling them sand. Michelle Murphy's Pali Trading Post at 15248 Sunset is an upscale general store that also serves as a place to run into a neighbor. Gerry Blanck reopened his martial arts studio at 542 Palisades Drive in June after 44 years of teaching in the Palisades.
Up in the Highlands, the center at Palisades Drive and Sunset is the most complete commercial block in town: Starbucks, Moku Sushi, Spruzzo and Gerry Blanck's are all operating, and Café Vida is expected there in October. The Pacific Palisades Veterinary Center at 853 Via de la Paz was spared by the fire and has reopened. Vons at Sunset and PCH was the first major grocery store back.
"The opening of Palisades Village is one megastep in the recovery of the Pacific Palisades, but many more to go," Rick Caruso said at the August ribbon-cutting.
He is describing the same gap the calendar describes. Palisades Village reopened at roughly 99% leased with about a third of its tenants new to the property, while stretches of Sunset Boulevard remain undeveloped. The former Business Block at Swarthmore and Sunset and the old Chase property at La Cruz and Sunset, both Topa-owned, have no announced plans and no construction underway. One center returning at full occupancy does not repopulate an evening.
The Evening Calendar Is Currently Somewhere Else
Which brings up the second half of the pattern. Daytime in the Palisades has structure. Nights, for the moment, mostly happen at the edges of town or just outside it.
The strongest evening ticket this month is down PCH at the Getty Villa, where "Antigone: In the Language of Kings" runs Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m. from September 10 through October 3. Adapted from Sophocles by Evelina Fernández and directed by José Luis Valenzuela, co-produced with the Latino Theater Company, it is set in pre-conquest Tenochtitlan and performed in English, Spanish and Nahuatl with supertitles, about 90 minutes with no intermission. It marks the 20th annual Outdoor Classical Theater production at the Villa, with general admission starting at $45 and dining available on site before the show. Plan roughly 30 minutes for parking and security at 17985 Pacific Coast Highway.
Closer in, Friendship Bar opened at 112 West Channel Road in Santa Monica Canyon with a weekend-long grand opening the first weekend of September. On Paseo Miramar, the stewards of Villa Aurora, the 1928 artists' residence, held an August 30 open house celebrating both its survival and its restoration.
Inside the Village, Alphabet Bar & Grill from The h.wood Group and chef Tim Hollingsworth opened August 15 with about 70 seats, serving seven days a week from 11 a.m. until late, with a menu built around rotisserie chicken, all-day classics and the farmers market a few steps away. Angelini, Porta Via and Blue Ribbon Sushi are back. Nancy Silverton's Spacca Tutto, an Italian American steakhouse, has been announced for the property. The Bay Theater, which survived the fire, has not announced a reopening date, and Netflix's site still says only that it will reopen when it is safe to do so. Until that marquee is lit again, a Palisades weeknight ends earlier than it used to.
The Trails Reopened on the Same Partial Terms
The outdoor half of the week follows the identical logic: most of it is back, with specific exceptions worth knowing before you drive to a trailhead.
- Temescal Gateway Park, 141 acres, reopened at 8 a.m. on July 17 after 18 months during which it served as a fire staging area and then as a principal Army Corps of Engineers command site for debris removal.
- The rebuilt Rivas Trail is open to two overlooks and connects through to Will Rogers State Historic Park.
- The Sunset Trail is open, giving access to Temescal Ridge Trail and Topanga State Park.
- Temescal Canyon Trail to the waterfall remains closed until further notice because of unsafe conditions left by the fire.
- Will Rogers State Historic Park has been open daily from 8 a.m. to sunset since November 2025, with limited parking and some trail segments still closed.
Expect to see fire evidence and new stairs on the Temescal trails. Crews removed a number of mature oaks for safety, and habitat restoration continues as funding allows.
What Shifts at the End of the Month
Two things are worth putting in your calendar now.
Complimentary self-parking at Palisades Village runs through the end of September, with a ticketless system, where your license plate functions as the ticket, arriving this fall. Caruso Signature members keep complimentary parking longer. That leaves four more Wednesdays, September 9, 16, 23 and 30, when the market and the garage are both free. Worth confirming at the property before you rely on it in late September.
The tenant list also keeps moving. Buck Mason, Jacques Marie Mage and City National Bank have advertised September openings. Loomey's Toys arrives in November. Erewhon has signage on Sunset indicating a January 2027 return, at which point the Palisades will again have two full-scale grocery options. Staud and Mother are planning January and February 2027.
The practical takeaway is small and specific: for the rest of this fall, if you want the Palisades that feels like the Palisades, come midweek in the afternoon. Wednesday at 1:30 on Swarthmore is currently the closest thing this community has to its old Sunday morning.
For those weighing what this pace of recovery means for a coastal property, whether you are rebuilding, holding or quietly considering a sale, Irene Dazzan-Palmer brings more than three decades of Malibu and Westside market counsel to the conversation. Request a Private Market Valuation.
