What we’re about
Unplug and unwind. Bond over shared experiences. Make authentic friendships.
So Cal Explorers Meetup is the antidote to a hyper-mediated, disconnected world. We go on outings to learn, explore, and celebrate Southern California's most historic, iconic, interesting, cool and lesser-known spots, together. It’s through shared experiences that bonds are formed. We are not a dating group. We are not a networking group. We want everyone to have a place where they can connect and form friendships with other adults without any pressure or ulterior motives.
We'll enjoy walking tours, presentations, hiking, kayaking, museums, live music, movies, dining, exploring, and meetin' up. While everyone 18 and older is welcome, we tend to be a group of progressive, slightly irreverent, 40-60 year olds with counter culture sensibilities.
Come explore with other like-minded folks for relaxed, casual, and fun socializing, learning and dining. So Cal Explorers is where awkward encounters turn into epic friendships!
Upcoming events (4+)
See all- TRYST ALTERNATIVE ART FAIR / NOMAD IV 2025 - FREE!Del Amo Crossing, Torrance, CA
I attended this last year, and it was very cool.
Tryst: An Independent, non-commercial, Art Fair for Artist-Run-Spaces and Collectives (Definition of tryst: a rendezvous by lovers at a given time or place, often in secret)
NOMAD IV is a non-commercial exhibition that showcases the diverse and dynamic talents of Southern California artists.
Date: Sunday, July 13: Open 12-6pm
Venue: Torrance Art Museum
Del Amo Crossing ‘Roundhouse’
21615 Hawthorne Blvd, Torrance, CA 90503TAM Website: www.torranceartmuseum.com/upcoming-exhibitions
Free and open to the public.
Photos from last year HEREWhat is TRYST:
www.torranceartmuseum.com/tryst-2025TRYST is an international art fair for artist-run-spaces and collectives as well as an international gathering to address the needs and future of global exchange for artist-run spaces, collectives and organizations, run through the Torrance Art Museum (TAM) and the City of Torrance. This will be the third edition of TRYST.
With the need for opportunities and artistic exchange worldwide between grass-roots artist organizations, this fair aims to facilitate the exposure of international artists to new Los Angeles audiences, and to network with each other, to engage and to provoke further international exchanges and interaction between participants. Talks and performances will included in the program, as well as social events for participants.
NOMAD IV:
www.torranceartmuseum.com/nomad-ivNOMAD IV is a giant artistic get together. It is aimed at letting artists show what they have been making recently to each other as well as to the wider public. It is an opportunity to meet peers, make connections, and arrange for future opportunities. It is a non-commercial exhibition that showcases the diverse and dynamic talents of LA artists.
This year’s exhibition will once again take place at Del Amo Crossing in the heart of the South Bay region of Los Angeles located at 21535 Hawthorne Blvd, Torrance, CA 90503. The space itself features open plan concrete floors where we will present 150+ artists alongside the third edition of TRYST, an art fair for alternative galleries and artist run initiatives. - CLASSIC MOVIE NIGHT: TOP HATThe Frida Cinema, Santa Ana, CA
Top Hat
Make sure to get to the screening early, as our Marketing Director Bekah will be doing a very informative and entertaining presentation on the film before it starts!Date: Wednesday, July 16 @ 7:30 pm
Venue: Frida Cinema
305 E 4th St #100, Santa Ana, CA 92701Optional dinner @ 6:15 pm
Fourth Street Market (4SM)
201 East 4th Street
Santa Ana, CA 92701Buy Your Tickets Here $13.00
Parking
There are two parking structures adjacent to 4SM off of 4th & 5th Streets accessible via Spurgeon St, a metered parking lot off of 3rd and Bush, and metered parking throughout East End and Downtown Santa Ana. Parking structures offer first 2 hours free!Watch Trailer here
Director: Mark Sandrich Run Time: 101 min. Release Year: 1935
Starring: Edward Everett Horton, Eric Blore, Erik Rhodes, Fred Astaire, Ginger RogersOur Classic Movie Nights series heads to the peak of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers’ legendary collaborations with Top Hat, an art deco dream of gravity-defying dance! Set against a backdrop of gleaming ballrooms and breezy Venice vistas, this musical comedy is pure cinematic joy!
Astaire is the dashing American dancer who falls for Rogers’ quick-witted society girl, but a case of confused identity threatens their budding romance. What follows is a confection of screwball comedy and iconic choreography—including the immortal “Cheek to Cheek,” where Rogers floats across the floor in that legendary feathered gown.
With music by Irving Berlin, direction by Mark Sandrich, and the kind of sparkling chemistry you can’t fake, Top Hat is a love letter to the golden age of movie musicals. Eighty-plus years later, it still sings, sways, and seduces. - MOVIE: WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY-ORIGINALThe Frida Cinema, Santa Ana, CA
WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY
Date: Saturday, July 19 @ 2:45 pm
Venue: Frida Cinema
305 E 4th St #100, Santa Ana, CA 92701Optional dinner after the movie
Fourth Street Market (4SM)
201 East 4th Street
Santa Ana, CA 92701Buy Your Tickets Here $13.00
Parking
There are two parking structures adjacent to 4SM off of 4th & 5th Streets accessible via Spurgeon St, a metered parking lot off of 3rd and Bush, and metered parking throughout East End and Downtown Santa Ana. Parking structures offer first 2 hours free!Watch Trailer here
Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz Run Time: 139 min. Release Year: 1950
Starring: Anne Baxter, Bette Davis, Celeste Holm, Gary Merrill, George Sanders"Our Technicolor Summer series goes from surreal to scrumptious with Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory—a candy-colored fantasy that has enchanted generations with just the right amount of weirdness and pitch-black humor! When poor but kind-hearted Charlie Bucket finds a golden ticket inside a Wonka Bar, he wins the chance of a lifetime: a tour of the mysterious, magical chocolate factory run by the reclusive and eccentric Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder, in one of the greatest screen performances of all time). Charlie joins a group of wildly different children—each one a cautionary tale—on a journey through a world of edible delights, fizzy-lifting drinks, and Oompa Loompa morals. Whether you grew up with it or are discovering it anew, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory is a golden ticket to a world where imagination rules—and where the most dazzling sights often hide the strangest secrets. In the early 1930s, the 3-strip Technicolor process was introduced to audiences, inviting them to experience a world dripping with vibrant saturation for the very first time. The Technicolor Summer series ranges from familiar classics to rarely-screened gems all Summer long!"
- MOVIE: JAPANESE ARTHOUSE 101: WOMAN IN THE DUNES" (1964)The Frida Cinema, Santa Ana, CA
Cross-posted with LA & OC Weirdo Music & Art Forum
Part of the series Arthouse 101: Japanese Cinema
Date: Monday, July 21 , 7:45 pm
Venue: Frida Cinema
305 E 4th St #100, Santa Ana, CA 92701
Phone: (714) 285-9422Dinner 6:15 TBD
Tickets: $9 https://thefridacinema.org/movies/woman-in-the-dunes/
Trailer here
Review here
Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 100% positive review
1964 Japanese New Wave avant-garde psychological thriller film directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara and starring Eiji Okada, Kyōko Kishida, and Kōji Mitsui. It received widespread critical acclaim and was nominated for two Academy Awards. The screenplay for the film was adapted by Kōbō Abe from his 1962 novel of the same name.[1] The film follows an amateur entomologist (Okada) who is led to settle in the house of a lonely widow (Kishida) at the bottom of a sand dune in a rural coastal village. He soon realizes that the villagers have trapped him there and expect him to work for them.
Woman in the Dunes was an independent, joint production of Teshigahara Productions and the Japanese Art Theater Guild, a group of young film- makers involved in an attempt to create political-aesthetical films in opposition to the dominant studio productions of the 1960s, which they viewed as commercial, unartistic, and uninteresting[2]
The film is considered to be Teshigahara's masterpiece, and is now widely regarded as one of the greatest films of all time.Director: Hiroshi Teshigahara Run Time: 147 min. Release Year: 1964
Language: Japanese
Starring: Eiji Okada, Hiroko Itō, Kōji Mitsui, Kyôko Kishida
The third film in our Arthouse 101: Japanese Cinema series is Woman in the Dunes, a film about an entomologist on a casual field trip that finds himself lured into a nightmarish existence—trapped in a sand dune with a mysterious woman and forced into a Sisyphean task of survival. What begins as a bizarre circumstance becomes a harrowing philosophical inquiry into time, identity, and the illusion of freedom.
Based on the novel by Kōbō Abe, and brought to life by Hiroshi Teshigahara’s stark, surreal direction and Torū Takemitsu’s haunting score, Woman in the Dunes is a landmark of Japan’s 1960s avant-garde cinema. Nominated for two Academy Awards and winner of the Special Jury Prize at Cannes, it’s both a psychological thriller and a profound existential riddle.
Arthouse 101: Japanese Cinema is a curated 12-film trip through the evolution of Japan—from the quiet post-war resilience of the 1940s all the way to the radical reinventions of the 1990s. Each Monday this July-September, we will explore a new facet of this incredible nation’s cinematic journey throughout the 20th century! All films will be presented in their original Japanese language with English subtitles!
