Santa Monica's Free Block Fest Goes Friendsgiving on Saturday

Admission costs nothing with a free advance RSVP. The night-market food and the 21-and-up drinks are where the money goes.

A dance troupe that performs among food trucks is taking its act to Santa Monica's Third Street Promenade on Saturday, at Block Fest. Heidi Duckler Dance stages ¡Ordena! Santa Monica from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m., following earlier shows in Culver City and Burbank, both at food truck gatherings, L.A. Dance Chronicle reported Tuesday.

The dancers are one slice of a free night. Block Fest, downtown's street party, has turned into a monthly habit that lands on each month's second Saturday until the year runs out, the Santa Monica Daily Press reported. It takes over all three blocks of the Promenade, with night-market food vendors lined up on Arizona Avenue. November's edition is the Friendsgiving one, and it's free and open to all ages.

The catch is small but real. Everybody needs a free RSVP in advance, and the dance show takes its own reservations through Heidi Duckler Dance. The food comes from night-market vendors, and the drinks are for the 21-and-up crowd inside the Promenade's Entertainment Zone.

Those drinks come with rules, and the Carrabba Group, a Compass real estate team, lays them out. Your drink has to come from a participating business, in a to-go cup made of anything but glass or metal. It also has to be empty before you set foot in the next business.

Plan on company: recent editions have topped 20,000 people, according to the Daily Press. The first one, in October 2025, was billed as "The 1200 Block" on organizer Yappy Studios' event list. Saturday's takes all three.

Source: secretlosangeles.com, retrieved November 11, 2026. Other sources: ladancechronicle.com, smdp.com, carrabbagroup.com, yappystudios.com.