THE BEST PARTY EVER!!!
Saturday
likeafriendsaid Summer Pool Party
A summer pool party at Hotel June featuring swimming, a live DJ, photo booth, Kosas goodies, towels, and a complimentary first drink made with Luna Nueva Tequila. If you have a ticket, see you there!!! If you didn’t snag one, don’t worry, there will be more in the future!
Malibu
Saturday
Malibu Country Mart Summer Block Party
A community event featuring live music, free ice cream, and family-friendly activities including face painting, glitter tattoos, and flower crown making.
Santa Monica
Saturday
Coffee & Chill: 3rd Annual DOG PPL Classic
A dog-friendly wellness morning featuring a CorePower Yoga flow, coffee, iced tea, protein shakes, sauna sessions, cold plunges, a water slide, giveaways, and plenty of time to hang with the dogs.
Sunday
Wellness on the Westside
A wellness festival at Santa Monica Place featuring Pilates, yoga, dance, sound baths, massage, compression therapy, wellness treatments, healthy bites, giveaways, and local Westside brands.
Saturday
Good Spirits, On The Go
A summer fragrance pop-up at Ulta Beauty featuring The Nue Co.’s newest fragrance, Good Spirits, alongside refreshing raspados.
Beverly Hills
Friday–Sunday
Stoney Clover Lane at The Beverly Hills Hotel
A Stoney Clover Lane pop-up at the iconic Beverly Hills Hotel featuring shopping, special events, customizations, and exclusive experiences on select dates.
Sawtelle
Sunday
BDE Coffee Club
A casual dog-friendly coffee meetup bringing together adoptable rescue dogs, fosters, volunteers, adopters, and dog lovers for coffee, breakfast, pup cups, and a morning supporting local rescues.
West Adams
Saturday
Anemone at Twentieth Street Garden
An open-air afternoon of live music, DJ sets, and garden-inspired food and drinks featuring an all-local lineup of artists and selectors.
Sunday
Buji Sunday
A Sunday pop-up featuring BUJI Matcha drinks and a special BUJI x STRIPT merchandise collection.
Fairfax
Saturday
Cole Henry Los Angeles Pop-Up
A one-day Cole Henry pop-up featuring exclusive pieces, new Mainline and Blanks items, plus special giveaways and discounts for the first guests in line.
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Koreatown
Sunday
Sound Bath & Love Letters
A wellness gathering centered around a guided sound bath, mindful reflection, writing love letters and intentional connection.
East Hollywood
Saturday
I Think You Should Dance!
A late-night dance party with four hours of disco, funk, soul, and other dance-floor favorites.
Burbank
Sunday
Feybl Grand Reopening
A grand reopening celebration for Feybl’s newly renovated café featuring free tastings of five new drinks from its updated menu, served by Sean Lew and the Feybl barista team.
Los Feliz
Saturday
Mystic Vision: A Surrealist Ball Honoring Betye Saar
An art celebration honoring Betye Saar featuring live music, DJ sets, performances, installations, tarot readings, workshops, and other immersive art experiences at the Philosophical Research Society.
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Echo Park
Sunday
Outdoor Drawing Workshop at Echo Park Lake
An outdoor drawing class hosted by C.W. Moss and Heavy Manners Library, bringing artists of all skill levels together for a relaxed morning of drawing by the lake.
Highland Park
Friday-Saturday
Party How You Like It
A special two-day celebration at When Two Become One. Expect a DJ, drinks, dancing, wellness activities, exclusive shopping, special gifts, and freebies!
Pasadena
Sunday
Cool Fam Fest
A family-friendly festival featuring shopping, live DJ sets, kids’ crafts and games, skincare giveaways, a Twinings hydration station, brand activations, and family photo moments.
Sunday
Slay 5K
A community 5K at the Rose Bowl powered by Nike, SLAY, and Create & Cultivate, bringing runners together for a fun morning run and high-energy community experience.
After Hours
Over the last few weeks, I’ve noticed more than a few grown-ass adults I know rushing off after work with somewhere to be.
Not post-work drinks. Not even the gym.
Practice.
A colleague of mine casually mentioned that she plays in both a softball and a volleyball league. A Friend who’s a mom sings in an a cappella group. Another Friend started taking ballroom lessons.
I didn’t even realize I was underachieving recreationally until everyone around me started developing extracurricular schedules.
And once I started noticing it, I couldn’t stop. Suddenly, I was seeing extracurriculars everywhere.My cousin crocheted my birthday present. My other cousin is still baking sourdough six years after the pandemic. My sister is getting her Pilates certification while earning her master’s degree because apparently one educational pursuit at a time was insufficient. A few months ago, a Friend invited me to see her boyfriend’s band play—a band made up entirely of guys who work in law enforcement and tech but book gigs on their nights off just because they love to play. My uncle already does yoga daily and has now added a mahjong coach to the rotation.
I respect the commitment to extracurricular excellence.
Then there’s my TikTok feed. People are making rugs. They’re bedazzling art. They’re crocheting. They’re making things I don’t know the official names for but require a very specific set of tiny tools that Amazon can have at my doorstep tomorrow.BookTok is my extracurricular drug of choice. Now with its own section at Target, BookTok has turned reading into its own cultural universe. People have TBR lists, favorite book influencers (proving publishing is no longer the only career path for professional bookworms), and very strong feelings about dragon stories. And smut. And dragon smut. Not to mention celebrity book clubs, elaborate annotation systems and passionate opinions about fictional people who will never know we exist.
No longer reserved for kids and retirees, extracurriculars are officially back in our adult lives.Just last night I was having dinner at Bone Kettle in Pasadena and overheard one woman ask her Friend, “Are you still taking those hip-hop classes?” to which she responded, “Yes, but I suck at it!” I’d like to think she was inspired by our conversation earlier this year about how cool it is to be a beginner...
And clearly, there’s no shortage of activities we’re willing to take our best swing at.
As kids, extracurriculars were completely normal. You went to school, but you also played soccer, took piano, danced, joined clubs, and routinely brought home craft projects your parents were contractually obligated to display.
Then we grew up, and most of that quietly disappeared.
Ask an eight-year-old what they do and you might get six answers ranging from karate to collecting caterpillars. Ask an adult, “What do you do?” and we all know exactly what you’re asking: What do you do for work?Lately, I’m much more interested in what people do when they’re done working. In a city full of creatives and major industry leaders, we’re used to seeing creativity, passion, athleticism, curiosity, and imagination built directly into someone’s profession. But no matter what your industry or title is, we all need somewhere to put the parts of ourselves our jobs don’t ask for. And it makes me so happy seeing so many Angelenos with a second act waiting for them after 6 p.m.
Hell, I’ll even give my ex a shoutout for being a chemist by day and writing poetry by night. (Me ignoring the fact that those poems might as well have screamed, “I’m emotionally unavailable,” is beside the point.)
And not every second act needs to reach Troy Bolton in High School Musical levels of range. (Although I know there’s a football player out there moonlighting as a musical theater protégé. You got this.) It’s just that sometimes, the other parts of our brains need somewhere else to go. If you work in a high-stress environment, maybe adult coloring books, gardening, or baking with a glass of wine is your version of relaxing. If you spend all day sitting at a desk, maybe you’re the one out hiking or racing to a dance studio in your free time. Or maybe you spend your days buried in spreadsheets and your nights behind a pottery wheel.
Those other parts of our brains seem to know exactly what kind of outlet they need. Sometimes it’s crocheting. Sometimes it’s joining an adult softball league. And sometimes it’s moving tiny tiles around a table with enough strategic intensity to justify professional coaching.
This really goes beyond creativity. We’re curious creatures. We’re active. We’re competitive. We’re social (to varying degrees). We like making things, learning things, moving our bodies, solving problems, reading, singing, and playing.
We like having a thing. And I see you, fantasy football people. You may not call it a hobby, but if you spend time researching whether a professional athlete’s hamstring should affect the future of a team that does not technically exist, welcome to the adult extracurricular club.And to take it one step further—and prove this isn’t just happening in my own little bubble—an entire economy has sprung up around our desire to do the things.
Pickleball has exploded its way from seemingly every millennial Friend group into hotel guest programming around the world. Mahjong is officially the new It Girl of leisure activities, with everyone from Hilary Duff to my uncle bragging about their mahjong coach and weekly games. Walk down any busy street in your neighborhood and I can almost guarantee you’ll find at least one business built around teaching people how to make candles. Or perfume. Or lipstick.
I guess walking into Sephora and trying a thousand shades was no longer hands-on enough for us. We needed to get involved in manufacturing.
Even staying home to craft got a glow-up. I’ve watched the chicest puzzle and paint-by-number companies make deals on Shark Tank and are now sold by Anthropologie and Whole Foods. Not to mention the hundreds of TikToks I’ve seen from the “junk journaling” community. I’m still not 100% sure what’s going on over there, but they make gluing literal scraps of trash look like a Martha Stewart MasterClass.
There is truly something for everyone: solo pursuits for those craving a little time to themselves and entire communities for those looking for connection. Our hobbies give all the extra parts of us somewhere to live. To unwind. To belong. Something can be entirely yours while still connecting you to a whole world of other people.
Of course, having time for any of this isn’t always easy during every phase of life. Any parent still reading this is probably wondering what magical 25th hour of the day I’d suggest they dedicate to a hobby. Which is fair. We’re aiming for joy here, not another item on the to-do list. So maybe some hobbies become things we do together as a family. Or they happen less often. Or they disappear for a little while because keeping small humans alive is already quite the extracurricular. And then at some point we find ourselves back in an a cappella group like my best mom Friend.
And maybe that’s what I find so beautiful about all of this.
Adulthood gives us plenty of things we’re required to do. Careers. Errands. Appointments. Responsibilities. The never-ending administrative task of keeping our lives functioning.
And apparently, we looked at all of that and said: You know what this calendar needs?Volleyball.
Or ballet.
Or crochet.
Or a 600-page fantasy novel.
There are so many parts of ourselves that don’t go in our LinkedIn bio.
I’m glad we’re finding places to put them.
—Your Friend