Making Friends After 25
Nobody warns you that friendship stops being automatic. Here's what changed, and what to do about it.
LA doesn’t really do autumn. What it does instead is stop being 95 degrees, which turns out to be the more useful version. The evenings get long and mild, the outdoor stuff stops being a survival exercise, and the city fills up with things worth putting on a calendar.
Here are six of them. All real, all recurring, all easier with company — which is where Buffet comes in.
Eat Your Way Through a Sunday
Smorgasburg LA – Downtown
📍 Location: ROW DTLA, 777 S Alameda St, Los Angeles
🗓️ When: Every Sunday, 10am–4pm
💰 Price Range: Free entry
🌮 Tags: Food Market, Weekly, Outdoors
Every Sunday, dozens of food vendors take over ROW DTLA and it becomes the most reliably good afternoon in the city. Entry is free and the first couple of hours of parking are too, which makes it a genuinely low-commitment plan.
It’s also the rare LA thing that works with a group of any size. Nobody has to agree on a cuisine. Everybody wanders off, everybody comes back with something different, and the table becomes a tasting menu nobody planned.
Get There Before Sunrise (Or Don’t)
Rose Bowl Flea Market – Pasadena
📍 Location: 1001 Rose Bowl Dr, Pasadena
🗓️ When: Second Sunday of the month — Sept 13, Oct 11, Nov 8, Dec 13
💰 Price Range: $15 general admission from 9am, $22 VIP from 5am
🛍️ Tags: Vintage, Antiques, Enormous
Roughly 2,500 vendors spread across the Rose Bowl parking lots, once a month, since 1968. It’s the flea market other flea markets are measured against, and it is genuinely too big to see in one visit.
The serious people go at 5am for VIP entry. Everybody else turns up at nine, drinks a coffee, and spends four hours looking at things they don’t need. Both are correct. Tickets go online in advance, and gates close at 4:30pm.
Watch a Movie Under the Sky
Street Food Cinema – Griffith Park and beyond
📍 Location: The Autry in Griffith Park, plus other parks around LA
🗓️ When: Saturday evenings — check the schedule for the current lineup
💰 Price Range: $$
🎬 Tags: Outdoor Movie, Food Trucks, Live Music
A film, a musical pre-show, and a car park’s worth of food trucks, on a lawn, as it gets dark. Street Food Cinema has been doing this around LA for years and the formula hasn’t needed changing.
Bring a blanket and get there early — the pre-show and the eating are half the point, and the good spots on the grass go fast.
Look at Something Very Far Away
Public Star Party at Griffith Observatory
📍 Location: 2800 E Observatory Rd, Los Angeles
🗓️ When: Monthly — Sept 19 and Oct 17, 2pm to 9:45pm
💰 Price Range: Free
🔭 Tags: Free, Astronomy, Griffith Park
Once a month, volunteers from the Los Angeles Astronomical Society, the Sidewalk Astronomers and The Planetary Society haul their telescopes up to Griffith Observatory and let anybody look through them. The Sun early on, then the Moon and whatever planets are up.
It costs nothing, the people running the telescopes are delighted that you asked, and the view back down over the city is worth the drive on its own. Lines get cut off in time to finish by 9:45, so don’t roll in at 9:30.
Walk the River on a Friday
Frogtown First Fridays – Elysian Valley
📍 Location: Starts at The Left Bank on Fletcher Drive, Elysian Valley
🗓️ When: First Friday of the month, through October
💰 Price Range: Free
🎨 Tags: Art Walk, Car-Free, Local
The Elysian Valley Arts Collective turns Frogtown car-free for an evening and opens up to sixteen venues along the LA River bike path — art, music, craft stations, food pop-ups, local shops staying open late.
It’s free, it’s walkable, and it’s the closest thing LA has to just wandering somewhere and seeing what’s on. Which, if you read our piece on third places, is exactly the kind of evening that’s been getting harder to find.
The Biggest Night of the Season
Día de los Muertos at Hollywood Forever
📍 Location: Hollywood Forever Cemetery, 6000 Santa Monica Blvd, Los Angeles
🗓️ When: Saturday, October 24, noon to midnight
💰 Price Range: $$ — ticketed, sold in entry windows
💀 Tags: Cultural, Enormous, Book Ahead
Now in its 27th year, and still the event of the LA fall. Altars, a ceremonial procession, Aztec performers, an art exhibition, and food and craft vendors filling the cemetery grounds from midday until midnight.
Tickets are sold in admission windows — noon to 4, 4 to 7, and 7 to 11 — so pick your slot depending on whether you want to see the altars properly or be there when it gets atmospheric. Buy in advance; this one sells out.
Go With Someone
Every one of these is better with company, and none of them require a group chat that takes four days to decide anything.
That’s the whole idea behind Buffet. We pick the place and the time, you say yes, and you show up to find people who said yes to the same thing. No planning, no chasing, no “we should do something soon” that never becomes a date.
Download the app and let us serve up the season.
