If your Sunday starts at the Wells Fargo lot on Riverside and Forman, you already know the drill. You circle the same ten-ish stands, grab tamales, maybe a jar of honey, and you're on your way. It is a good routine. It is also only half the neighborhood's Sunday.
Four blocks away, inside a restored 1929 Spanish villa that once belonged to Roy Disney, a second market runs on alternating Sundays, and it draws a different crowd doing a different thing entirely. Most people who've perfected the Wells Fargo lot loop have never set foot inside it. That gap, and what fills it later this month, is the actual story of Toluca Lake in September.
The Market You Already Know
The Toluca Lake Farmers Market has been running behind the Wells Fargo Bank branch at 10225 Riverside Drive for long enough that it barely needs an introduction to anyone who's lived here a year or more. It's a Sunday market, 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., tucked at the corner of Riverside and Forman. It is small by design: produce, honey, handmade preserves, a rotating tamale vendor that regulars will tell you to get to early, some jewelry and skincare tables, and live music most weeks. It is not trying to be the Studio City farmers market or a destination stop. It is a neighborhood errand, the kind of Sunday fixture that shows up on Nextdoor threads more often as a landmark than as news.
That's precisely why it's easy to stop noticing what else is happening on the same street, on the same day, a short walk away.
Four Blocks Away, on the Same Sunday
Villa Blanca Lifestyle occupies a 1929 Spanish villa that spent decades as a private residence before its current life as an event space, and on a biweekly basis it opens its ground-floor rooms and courtyard for a Sunday-afternoon market that looks nothing like the Wells Fargo lot. Vendors sell accessories, candle flower bouquets, and there's live poetry alongside the shopping. Food runs to sourdough pizza, cookies, cupcakes, and coffee rather than produce and tamales.
It is, in effect, the same day of the week hosting two entirely different versions of a market: one utilitarian and outdoor, built around produce and errands, the other indoor-outdoor and curated, built around browsing and atmosphere. Neither replaces the other. Most residents just default to whichever one they found first.
Here's how the two compare when you actually put them side by side:
| Toluca Lake Farmers Market | Villa Blanca Market | |
|---|---|---|
| Cadence | Every Sunday | Biweekly Sundays |
| Hours | 9:30 a.m. – 2:30 p.m. | Afternoon |
| Location | Wells Fargo lot, Riverside & Forman | 1929 Spanish villa, Riverside Drive |
| What's for sale | Produce, tamales, honey, preserves | Accessories, candle bouquets, live poetry |
| Food | Farm-fresh, prepared foods | Sourdough pizza, cookies, coffee |
The overlap in geography and the total lack of overlap in feel is the point. You can do both in one loop and never repeat yourself.
The Same Villa, a Different Calendar in September
What makes this month specific to 2026, rather than a general observation about Toluca Lake having two markets, is what else that villa is hosting this September. Chabad of Toluca Lake, led by Rabbi Moishe Carlebach and his wife Michal, is holding its High Holiday services in the outdoor courtyard at Villa Blanca, 10623 Riverside Drive, the same 1929 villa that opens for the vendor market. Free, open to anyone regardless of affiliation, no membership required, though donations are appreciated.
The schedule, if you're mapping your month:
- Friday, Sept. 11 — Rosh Hashanah begins with a "Jew Year's Eve" cocktail hour at 6 p.m., candle-lighting at 6:47 p.m., and evening services at 7 p.m.
- Sunday, Sept. 13 — Community Shofar in the Park, 5:30 p.m., at North Weddington Park in North Hollywood, a family-friendly gathering to hear the shofar sounded outdoors.
- Sunday, Sept. 20 — Yom Kippur begins with Kol Nidrei at 6:45 p.m.
- Monday, Sept. 21 — Morning service at 10 a.m., Torah reading and sermon at 11 a.m., Yizkor Memorial Service at noon, and the day closes with Neilah and a community break-fast in the evening.
That's three distinct events on three different weekends, all rooted in a building most residents know, if they know it at all, as a wedding venue or the occasional vendor pop-up.
The villa that hosts a shopping afternoon on one Sunday hosts a community's holiest days two weeks later. Same courtyard, same street, entirely different reason to show up.
What Changes If You Walk the Extra Four Blocks
None of this requires reorganizing your weekend. It requires knowing that Riverside Drive between the Wells Fargo lot and the villa is doing more work this month than the produce-and-errands version of Sunday suggests. If you're already walking to the farmers market, the villa's next open Sunday is close enough to add to the same trip. If you've never had a reason to notice the building at 10623 Riverside, September gives you three.
Pair the walk with what the rest of the block is already good at. Aroma Coffee & Tea Co. is the closest thing the neighborhood has to a clubhouse, the kind of place where you're likely to see someone you know before you've ordered. Red Maple and Aeirloom cover the brunch stretch. If you're staying out later, Verse runs live music nightly under ownership from a Grammy-winning sound mixer, and Don Cuco remains the after-work stop it's always been. None of this changes because a market moved in or a holiday calendar landed on the same street. It's just more reason to treat the walk as worth taking twice.
Toluca Lake's charm has always been that it rewards repetition rather than novelty. This September, the reward is that the repetition covers more ground than the Wells Fargo lot loop alone.
If you're weighing a move within Toluca Lake, comparing it to a neighboring pocket of the Valley, or just curious what a specific block is actually like to live on, Steve Shanks has spent decades working this stretch of the San Fernando Valley and is glad to walk you through it, no obligation attached.
