People love to see movies on holidays, whether to enhance the day or escape unrealistic expectations of delight and good cheer, so Laemmle Theatres is open every day of the year. We do, however, close a little early on New Year’s Eve, skipping the last round of shows so our theater managers and staff can enjoy some well-deserved time off. With that in mind, allow us to point you to an impressive list of New Year’s Eve events planned in and around Los Angeles, compiled by LAist.com. Assuming you prefer attending a public event to a private house party or staying home with a good book, the free (as in no entrance fee and alcohol-free) celebration downtown — Grand Park’s New Year’s Eve L.A. — looks like the most promising of the bunch: food trucks, lots of live music, KCRW DJ’s, free public transportation, and much more, all in a terrific public space. Regardless of how you see in it in, Happy New Year! Thank you for your patronage in 2014 and here’s to more great movies in 2015.

We are big bicycle boosters here at Laemmle Theatres so get quite excited about big things like CicLAvia and small things that most people wouldn’t notice, like the installation of bike corrals. So naturally when we heard that our friends at UCLA’s Fowler Museum were planning an exhibit about a seminal event in the early history of bicycling, we wanted to help spread the word. From the Fowler website:

“In the summer of 1890, two young Americans, William Sachtleben and Thomas Allen, Jr., set off to circle the globe on new-fangled “safety” bicycles. Three years later, after pedaling some 18,000 miles across three continents, their harrowing tales of adventure made them international celebrities. Their timely championing of the bicycle helped spark the great bike boom of the mid-1890s, which transformed cycling from an elitist, male-dominated pastime into a wildly popular means of recreation and transportation for all. Along the way, Sachtleben and Allen chronicled their adventures with two novel compact Kodak film cameras, heralding a new “democratic” era for photography, as well.

“Round Trip: Bicycling Asia Minor, 1891—on display at the Fowler Museum from Dec. 14, 2014–Apr. 5, 2015—features forty-two circular black-and-white photographs taken by the cyclists and reproduced from recently scanned negatives held by the UCLA Library Special Collections. The images track a year on the road between Athens, Greece, and Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and their accompanying captions are based on Sachtleben’s meticulous notes, written on the envelopes that contained each original negative.

“The photographs vividly convey what the two adventurers experienced as they pedaled across barren dirt roads, river crossings, mountain passes, and volcanic terrains, encountering peoples and cultures entirely foreign to them. The scenes of everyday life also reflect how the locals—many of whom had never before seen a Westerner or a bicycle—reacted to them and to the marvelous technologies that were destined to change ancient ways of life.

“During their three-year journey, Sachtleben and Allen traversed Europe, Asia, and North America and recorded some 1,200 circular images on 3.5-inch nitrate negatives. Only about a third of the negatives are known to have survived, and these are now part of the Sachtleben Collection kept since 1984 by UCLA Special Collections. The negatives were scanned in 2013—a complicated process, given their fragile and combustible state.

“The exhibition features four of the countries Sachtleben and Allen toured in 1891, arranged chronologically: Greece, Turkey, Persia (Iran), and the Russian Empire (Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan). Approximately ten images have been selected from each country, and enlarged to 20” in diameter.

“Round Trip: Bicycling Asia Minor, 1891 is organized by the Fowler Museum at UCLA and co-sponsored by the UCLA Library Special Collections. The guest-curator is David V. Herlihy, historian and author of Bicycle: The History and Lost Cyclist: The Epic Tale of an American Adventurer and His Mysterious Disappearance.

There are just a few more weeks to catch an impossibly cool exhibition at the Autry Museum of Western Heritage. Route 66: The Road and the Romance ends January 4.

“Discover the facts and the fiction surrounding the Mother Road through more than 250 extraordinary artifacts that trace the history of the route and its impact on American popular culture.

“Connecting Chicago to Los Angeles, the 2,400-mile-long highway was a witness to history and a symbol for America on the move. Route 66: The Road and the Romance travels the iconic road from its inception in 1926 through the drama of the Great Depression to its heyday as a travel destination and the route’s eventual displacement by the Interstate Highway System. The exhibition concludes with a contemporary look at the road and the movement for its preservation.

“Route 66 presents historical artifacts from institutions and private collections across the United States, many never before displayed together. See the oldest existing Route 66 shield, an early Jackson Pollock landscape painting, a ten-foot twin visible gas pump, the handwritten page from The Grapes of Wrath manuscript that introduces the “Mother Road,” renowned Dust Bowl–era photographs, Woody Guthrie’s guitar, the original typewritten scroll of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, a classic 1960 Corvette, and countless objects adorned with the Route 66 moniker or acquired along the route.”

The best way to experience a city is on foot or bicycle and this Sunday CicLAvia, the walking/biking event, returns, closes a generous stretch of roads to cars, and opens up another part of our giant city for leisurely exploration. For the first time, the area in question is South L.A. From CicLAvia.org:

“CicLAvia makes its first journey to South L.A. on December 7. The South L.A. route will connect beautiful Leimert Park with historic Central Avenue, traveling along Martin Luther King Boulevard. Participants will be able to enjoy the sights, music, food and culture that makes South L.A. such a vibrant part of Los Angeles.” So whether you hoof it, bike it, run it, scoot it, skate it or [fill in the non-motorized blank] it, the weather is supposed to be pleasant, so enjoy it.