32
{# Rendered ALWAYS and hidden below the threshold, never omitted. An
element that is absent at 0 cannot be repainted when the reader
makes it 1 — that is why the card's count used to sit stale until
a reload. falkorPresence (base.html) owns the text from here. #}
0 saved
Nov 6 – Nov 10, 2026
Embarcadero, Harbor Dr, San Diego,…
The difference between a tasting and a good tasting is whether the person pouring actually made the thing. Here they did, and by the third table you stop reading the little signs and start asking questions.
Five days in November turn the downtown waterfront into the annual meeting point for everyone in this city who takes food and wine seriously. The Grand Tasting is the headline — hundreds of wineries, breweries, spirits producers and kitchens spread along the Embarcadero across a weekend, open to anyone holding a badge. The signature dinners are the quieter, better secret: seated, small, one chef paired with one producer, close enough that you end up in a real conversation with both of them.
On Harbor Drive, walkable from the Gaslamp, trolley at the waterfront stop. It is not a budget weekend.
Bring the friend who photographs every plate before anyone is allowed to eat. This is their Super Bowl.
Coming Soon
85 Gathering
241 days away
85
{# Rendered ALWAYS and hidden below the threshold, never omitted. An
element that is absent at 0 cannot be repainted when the reader
makes it 1 — that is why the card's count used to sit stale until
a reload. falkorPresence (base.html) owns the text from here. #}
0 saved
Somewhere past the halfway mark your legs go quiet and the voice in your head turns mean. Then you round a corner in Balboa Park, a live drummer picks the beat back up for you, and your stride comes back before your brain agrees to it. The whole 26.2 is scored, a band every mile, and it changes what the distance does to a body.
That is why the sidewalks fill as thickly as the course. People who will never run it come stand inside a street festival that happens to have runners in it, through downtown, Mission Hills, Old Town, and the beach neighborhoods, out to a finish on the waterfront. San Diego is where this format started back in 1998, and the city still treats it as its own invention.
The half and the 5K share the weekend, spectating costs nothing, and entry fills fast. Go run it, or go stand at mile twenty and hand a stranger their second wind.
This Happened
39 Gathered
39
{# Rendered ALWAYS and hidden below the threshold, never omitted. An
element that is absent at 0 cannot be repainted when the reader
makes it 1 — that is why the card's count used to sit stale until
a reload. falkorPresence (base.html) owns the text from here. #}
0 saved
Sep 26, 2026
Free
Embarcadero Marina Park North, 400…
Three coats of candy apple, a hundred hours of pinstriping, and a trunk of hydraulics your dad helped you wire when you were sixteen. Nobody paid you for any of it. Nobody asked you to. You did it because the car is how you sign your name.
This is not a concours show with velvet rope and judging criteria written by people who have never turned a wrench. The builder stands next to the build, and the story behind it runs as detailed as the paint. Lowriders, hot rods, classics, trucks, and bikes lined up with San Diego Bay behind them and the Coronado Bridge framing every photograph anybody takes.
Somewhere in that crowd is a fourteen-year-old watching a '64 Impala lay frame for the first time and having the most important automotive moment of their life. Music, food, vendors, nothing at the gate.
Bring the person who taught you what a good line looks like. They will not stop talking. Let them.
This Happened
18 Gathered
18
{# Rendered ALWAYS and hidden below the threshold, never omitted. An
element that is absent at 0 cannot be repainted when the reader
makes it 1 — that is why the card's count used to sit stale until
a reload. falkorPresence (base.html) owns the text from here. #}
0 saved
Sep 20, 2026
Free
Embarcadero, San Diego, CA 92101
A character you'd photograph against Balboa Park's mission arches reads completely differently against ferry docks, harbor patrol boats, and the downtown skyline at sunset - and that's the entire reason to bring your build to the water instead. The So-Cal Cosplay Shoot at the Waterfront is the open-air edition, San Diego Bay behind every frame, the Embarcadero handing each costume an urban backdrop with water and skyline in the same shot. It's not better or worse than the park version; it's a different image, and the difference is the point. Any fandom, any build. Photographers with gear are welcome and encouraged. The waterfront light peaks in the late afternoon, so arrive early enough to catch golden hour before the crowd fills in. The shoot is organized but relaxed - come in costume and find the right backdrop. Embarcadero, San Diego. September 20th. Free. Follow @socosplayscene on Instagram for the exact gather point and start time.
This Happened
30 Gathered
30
{# Rendered ALWAYS and hidden below the threshold, never omitted. An
element that is absent at 0 cannot be repainted when the reader
makes it 1 — that is why the card's count used to sit stale until
a reload. falkorPresence (base.html) owns the text from here. #}
0 saved
Once a year the Coronado Bridge closes to cars and opens to bicycles, and the view from the top — the whole bay laid out beneath you, downtown glinting across the water — rearranges how you think about a city you already live in. You are not allowed up there any other day of the year.
It is not a race. Twenty-five basically flat miles through Coronado, Imperial Beach, Chula Vista, and National City before looping home, with a capped field that fills up with families on cruisers, weekend warriors in lycra, kids on training wheels with a parent jogging alongside, and the occasional tandem that makes everybody smile. Rest stops, mechanics, and sweep vehicles mean nobody gets stranded out there.
The County Bicycle Coalition runs it, and the proceeds go back into bike infrastructure. Register early and it costs less.
Bring the friend who always says they want to start cycling. This is the ride that converts them.
This Happened
37 Gathered
37
{# Rendered ALWAYS and hidden below the threshold, never omitted. An
element that is absent at 0 cannot be repainted when the reader
makes it 1 — that is why the card's count used to sit stale until
a reload. falkorPresence (base.html) owns the text from here. #}
0 saved
Every year, the harbor fills with chrome. Not the polished-for-a-dealership kind — the kind that somebody spent a Saturday morning with a rag and a can of polish, the kind that reflects the face of a person who knows exactly what year the factory stopped making that particular shade of candy apple red.
The 27th Annual All-American Car Show takes over Embarcadero North at Seaport Village for one summer morning. All vehicles welcome — domestic, foreign, exotic, trucks, motorcycles. No era excluded. No make turned away. Registration opens at 7:30 AM and the show runs until 3:00 PM with live music, vendors, food trucks, door prizes, a 50/50 raffle, and enough conversations about engine displacement to last you until next August.
Admission is free. 100% of proceeds from registration and auctions benefit veterans' organizations. If you're the kind of person who slows down for a Chevelle in traffic, or who has opinions about split bumpers, or who simply likes watching people light up when they talk about something they built with their hands — this is your Saturday. The harbor. The cars. The people who keep them alive. Free to spectate. Impossible to leave quickly.
This Happened
13 Gathered
13
{# Rendered ALWAYS and hidden below the threshold, never omitted. An
element that is absent at 0 cannot be repainted when the reader
makes it 1 — that is why the card's count used to sit stale until
a reload. falkorPresence (base.html) owns the text from here. #}
0 saved
The Embarcadero Marina Park runs free outdoor concerts on summer evenings with the bay and the downtown San Diego skyline as the backdrop. The South Park and North Park music community treats this as an extension of the season: the kind of show you go to with whoever is free that night and end up staying three hours longer than you planned.
The concerts are free, family-friendly, and positioned on the water in a way that makes a Tuesday or Thursday evening feel like a weekend. Bring food from the nearby restaurants or the Seaport Village vendors. The bay breeze is the venue's best feature.
Summer 2026 series runs July through August. Schedule at portofsd.org. Parking in the Embarcadero Marina garage off Harbor Drive. The Coronado Bridge is in the frame for the entire show.
While you are lookingDifferent scene, same night out.
Coming Soon
47 Gathering
2 days away
47
{# Rendered ALWAYS and hidden below the threshold, never omitted. An
element that is absent at 0 cannot be repainted when the reader
makes it 1 — that is why the card's count used to sit stale until
a reload. falkorPresence (base.html) owns the text from here. #}
0 saved
In 3 days· Oct 10 – Oct 11
Free
Third Ave, Chula Vista, CA 91910
Most San Diego neighborhoods either took their main street for granted or lost it outright. The South Bay spent two decades rebuilding one on purpose, a walkable commercial stretch with an identity of its own, and the street fair is the day it shows you the work.
Third Avenue closes to traffic completely. Vendors set up along the pavement, several stages run at once, and the food is the tell — this is one of the most diverse cities in California and the fair does not sand any of that down into generic festival fare. People come up from across the southern county for it, and the crowd looks like the census, which is rarer at a San Diego event than it ought to be.
A full free day in Chula Vista, with dates posted at thirdavenuechula.com. Go with somebody who has only ever driven through on the way to the border.
Coming Soon
65 Gathering
27 days away
65
{# Rendered ALWAYS and hidden below the threshold, never omitted. An
element that is absent at 0 cannot be repainted when the reader
makes it 1 — that is why the card's count used to sit stale until
a reload. falkorPresence (base.html) owns the text from here. #}
0 saved
Nov 4 – Nov 8, 2026
San Diego Bay Waterfront, San Dieg…
Valle de Guadalupe winemakers and Ensenada cooks work the same tables here as the San Diego kitchens do, and no other American food festival can say that, because no other American city sits this close to Baja.
That is the whole identity of it. Five days of dinners, panels and headline tastings build toward an open-format weekend on the bay with downtown lit up behind you, hundreds of producers and chefs spread across stations you wander between with no schedule to keep. Coastal wine, Baja wine, craft beverage, and food from people who cook here all year rather than fly in for it. The smaller pre-festival dinners in restaurants around the county are ticketed on their own and are where the real conversations happen.
Along the waterfront in early November, walkable from Little Italy, and the Grand Tasting sessions go weeks ahead of the date.
Buy early, and take the person who keeps saying you two should get down to Ensenada. Call this the preview.
Coming Soon
63 days away
{# Rendered ALWAYS and hidden below the threshold, never omitted. An
element that is absent at 0 cannot be repainted when the reader
makes it 1 — that is why the card's count used to sit stale until
a reload. falkorPresence (base.html) owns the text from here. #}
0 saved
Dec 10, 2026
$30
Belly Up, 143 S Cedros Ave, Solana…
Most Christmas records are covers of covers. The good ones sound like somebody actually had a December worth writing about.
JD McPherson made one of the good ones in 2018: SOCKS, eleven original Christmas songs played as greasy, stomping rock and roll, a record that makes a holiday party sound like a sock hop in a snowstorm. This is the fifth annual tour of it, which means the people up front have favorites and will yell for them by name. Melissa Carper opens, a singer who plays bass and slides between country, jazz and soul like the borders were never real.
A standing floor, a seated loft upstairs, and a Thursday in December when most of the county is still pretending the holidays are not here yet.
Thursday, December 10. Doors 7 p.m., show 8 p.m., 21+. Belly Up, 143 S. Cedros Ave, Solana Beach. $30 advance. Bring the friend who refuses holiday music on principle; this record was made for them, and they will ask what else you have been hiding.
Coming Soon
23 Gathering
🌎 Nation's Best
127 days away
23
{# Rendered ALWAYS and hidden below the threshold, never omitted. An
element that is absent at 0 cannot be repainted when the reader
makes it 1 — that is why the card's count used to sit stale until
a reload. falkorPresence (base.html) owns the text from here. #}
0 saved
There is a photograph you have seen without knowing where it came from: someone in an elaborate costume standing on a marble staircase under an eighteen-story glass atrium, winter light coming through, looking like a still from a film that was never made. That is Katsucon, and the building is most of the reason it has the reputation it does. Held every February at the Gaylord National Resort on the Potomac just outside Washington, it is among the most photographed anime conventions in the world, and the cosplay community treats a weekend there as something closer to a pilgrimage than a trip.
The atrium is the event. Other conventions have panels and dealers and artist alleys, and Katsucon has those too, but what actually happens is that thousands of people spend three days building and wearing things they worked on since summer, and then the building gives them the best backdrop in North America to be seen in. Photographers book months ahead. There are impromptu gatherings by series on the staircases at all hours. Because the whole thing is under one roof and the weather outside is February in Maryland, the convention never really stops — the hallways at three in the morning are as busy as the floor at noon.
Worth it? If you make things — sew, foam-smith, wig-style, prop-build — this is the room where that labor is understood without explanation, and there is no substitute for that. If you are coming to shop or to meet voice actors, other conventions do that better and cheaper. Katsucon is for the makers and the people who love watching them, and it is honest about that. First-timers who come without a costume routinely report it was still the best convention they had been to, because the spectacle is genuinely free to watch.
What to know: the host hotel sells out almost immediately, and staying on-site is materially different from staying off — the atrium at night is the whole point. Budget for that. Bring a repair kit; something will break. The convention center portion and the hotel portion are connected but the walk is longer than it looks in costume. And Friday is the quiet day worth arriving for.
It earns a place here because it is the clearest example in American fandom of a venue and a community finding each other perfectly, and because knowing it exists changes what you think a costume is for. Katsucon 2027 runs February 12–14, 2027 at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center, National Harbor, Maryland.
Coming Soon
57 Gathering
198 days away
57
{# Rendered ALWAYS and hidden below the threshold, never omitted. An
element that is absent at 0 cannot be repainted when the reader
makes it 1 — that is why the card's count used to sit stale until
a reload. falkorPresence (base.html) owns the text from here. #}
0 saved
Under the highway overpass in Barrio Logan, the murals are the walls. The lowriders are the parade. And the music is the sound of a community that fought for a park in 1970 and has been celebrating the win every April since.
The 57th Annual Chicano Park Day returns April 24, 2027 to the National Historic Landmark at the base of the Coronado Bridge — the park that exists because the neighborhood refused to let it become a parking lot. Lowrider car show, traditional music and dance, children's art workshops, food vendors, and cultural performances that trace the roots of the Chicano movement from this exact piece of ground.
Chicano Park, 1949 Logan Ave (under the I-5/Coronado Bridge), San Diego, CA 92113. Free admission. 10 AM to 5 PM.
If you've driven over the Coronado Bridge and looked down at the murals and wondered — this is the day they come alive.
Monthly
3074 Gathering
5 days away
3074
{# Rendered ALWAYS and hidden below the threshold, never omitted. An
element that is absent at 0 cannot be repainted when the reader
makes it 1 — that is why the card's count used to sit stale until
a reload. falkorPresence (base.html) owns the text from here. #}
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.
Want personalized recommendations?
Create a free account and we'll surface events matched to your taste.