6
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Oct 24, 2026
$30+
Rose Bowl, 1001 Rose Bowl Dr, Pasa…
Green and white in the arroyo is still a sight that scrambles the brain a little — Michigan State, a proud Big Ten blue-collar program, three time zones from home, playing a late-October game in a stadium ringed by palm trees and mountains. That surreal collision is exactly why the new era of West Coast college football is worth seeing in person: matchups that used to only exist in bowl games or video games, now happening on a random autumn Saturday at the Rose Bowl. The Bruins get another heavyweight, the crowd gets another only-in-Pasadena spectacle, and the whole thing unfolds in the golden California light that makes Midwestern visitors a little jealous. Saturday, October 24, 2026, Rose Bowl, Pasadena. Claim a tailgate spot in the shadow of the San Gabriels, walk the historic concourse, and come watch two very different football cultures meet in the grand old bowl on a perfect fall afternoon.
While you are lookingDifferent scene, same night out.
Monthly
3075 Gathering
5 days away
3075
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8 saved
Monthly· Next Oct 13
Various venues, Los Angeles, CA
Somewhere in this city tonight there is a back room where the pinball never stopped — machines everyone assumed died with the arcades, lined up, lit up, and played for blood by people who know each ruleset cold. You thought it was nostalgia. They kept it a sport.
Once a month the league runs a real tournament: matchplay, a new opponent and a random machine every round, points stacking across the night. It is IFPA-sanctioned, but that is not why the regulars come. A good table is the most honest machine there is. It does not care who you are, only whether you can read the ball.
Here is what outsiders never expect: this crowd wants you to get good. Show up knowing only how to keep a ball alive and someone ranked will lean over between rounds and show you where the safe nudge is, when to let it drain on purpose.
Venues rotate. Check the league's Facebook group and the IFPA calendar for this month's location. All-ages at most stops, 21+ at the bars.
Coming Soon
1445 Gathering
7 days away
1445
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9 saved
In 7 days· Oct 15 – Oct 18
Riot Games Arena, 12181 Bluff Cree…
Every region sends its dark horses, and most of them go home in the first week. That is what makes the opening stage the most nervous, least predictable stretch of the whole tournament.
The Play-In Stage is where teams that did not walk in with a guaranteed bracket spot have to earn one, on foreign soil, against opponents they have only ever studied on video. Nothing is safe and nobody is comfortable. Upsets that reshape the entire championship happen here, in front of a few hundred people, before the broadcast audience has fully tuned in.
Riot Games Arena is the tightest, loudest room in North American esports — small enough that crowd noise reaches the stage, close enough to watch a player's posture change when a fight goes wrong. From inside that building it is a different sport.
Riot Games Arena, 12181 Bluff Creek Dr, Playa Vista. October 15-18. Tickets through lolesports.com.
If you have only ever watched it on stream, this is the one to go to.
Weekly
669 Gathering
16h away
669
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You do not need a group, a character, or any idea what you are doing. That is the entire design.
Drop in on a Thursday evening, pick up a pregenerated character sheet, and join a table — mid-campaign or at the start of something fresh. Dungeon Masters are provided. Dice are provided. Rules questions are not tolerated so much as encouraged.
Tables sort by Tier, so a first-time player rolling their first d20 sits with other new characters instead of getting lost behind a party three levels deep. If you already have a D&D Beyond character in Adventurers League legal format, bring it — after tonight it is recognized at any AL table anywhere in the world, which is the quietly remarkable part of organized play.
Game Empire SD, 5037 Shawline St, San Diego — a dedicated tabletop store with real event space and staff who know the rules. Parking on-site. Most sessions need no reservation; check the store calendar.
The only bad session is the one you did not show up for.
Coming Soon
246 Gathering
29 days away
246
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Nov 6 – Nov 9, 2026
Free admission
Broadway Pier, 1000 North Harbor D…
Your chest hears them before your ears do. A sound comes in off the water, every conversation on the Embarcadero stops mid-sentence, and a few thousand heads tilt back at the same moment. This is the week the Blue Angels belong to San Diego Bay, flying low enough that the downtown skyline becomes their backdrop.
What visitors miss is the quieter half. You can walk aboard Navy destroyers, submarines, and amphibious ships free of charge, up the gangway and into the passageways where somebody's kid stands on deployment. The Parade of Ships moves through the bay, the bands play, and the city says out loud that the Navy is its largest employer. This is not a show San Diego hosts. It is San Diego looking at itself.
Free, family-friendly, on the Broadway Pier and Embarcadero in October, and the trolley beats parking on air show day. Bring the person who has never stood underneath one of those passes.
Coming Soon
184 Gathering
22 days away
184
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Oct 30 – Nov 1, 2026
Los Angeles Convention Center, 120…
The big one down the coast takes all the attention. The people who come to this one prefer it that way, and they are quietly glad you have not worked it out yet.
Three days at the Convention Center — celebrity signings, panels, and an exhibitor floor that runs independent publishers alongside the major houses. Fifty thousand people who grew up on the same stories, turning a hall into a reunion.
The character is different on purpose. This is the industry's own convention, the one people attend in costume because they want to rather than because the press is watching. Comics, sci-fi, gaming, horror, anime, fantasy, across all three days.
Los Angeles Convention Center, 1201 S Figueroa St. October 30 through November 1.
The mythology is still being made in that room, and some of the people making it are sitting at a table waiting for someone to say hello.
Coming Soon
173 Gathering
233 days away
173
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May 29 – May 31, 2027
Riverside Convention Center, 3637 …
An hour to Los Angeles for the big convention, an hour back at one in the morning — that is what being an anime fan out here has always meant. This is the year that stopped. There is a real pride in a room full of people from Riverside, San Bernardino, Temecula and Redlands who finally did not have to leave home to find each other. It is the whole format at a scale you can actually walk: panels, an exhibit hall, artist alley, gaming rooms, and a cosplay contest judged by a crowd that recognizes the characters without being told. No airport-terminal sprawl. That trade was made on purpose — less distance between you and the thing you came for. The convention takes over the Riverside Convention Center downtown, with dates confirming at animeriverside.com. Bring the friends who made that drive with you one too many times.
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