The social calendar
Meetups & clubs that run on boba
Southern California treats boba shops as third places — clubs meet in them, crawls route through them, and fandoms take them over for a night. Everything below is a real group with a real public page; details come from each organizer's own listing, so check their page before you go.
Boba social clubs
SoCal Boba Run Club
The flagship. Their words: "no running, just vibes." Launched at 3CAT in Arcadia and now fills tea bars across the 626 — Summerfield Tea Bar in Rosemead, UG Tea in San Gabriel, Jianghui NLA in Alhambra — with events that draw a few hundred people.
Follow: @socalbobarunclub · events post via Partiful
SGV Boba Mahjong Club
Mahjong nights inside a working tea bar — recent editions ran Saturday evenings. Bring patience; the tiles move fast.
Recent listing: Partiful
Boba Buddies LA
The format is simple: order at a shop — past picks include Junbi, Just Boba, and Sunright — then find a spot nearby and actually talk. Sometimes board games.
Boba Tea Social Club
Two-thousand-plus members meeting at the shops along the Convoy corridor's orbit — Cafe 86 on Mira Mesa Blvd, Tea N More on Clairemont Mesa Blvd.
Join: meetup.com/bobateasocial
Silent Book Club — Irvine
Order a drink, read silently for forty-five minutes with a few thousand fellow members' chapter, then talk about it. The rare club where showing up alone is the whole point.
Crawls, runs & circuits
Pasadena Boba Trail
The city's official digital passport — check in at shops along Route 66, collect points, earn boba-themed prizes. A ready-made route for a group afternoon or an ambitious second date.
Start: visitpasadena.com
Run 4 Boba 5K
The one entry where running is actually involved: finish your 5K anywhere, then — their words — reward yourself with boba from your favorite shop.
Enter: raceentry.com
Fandom nights
The K-pop cupsleeve circuit
Fan-organized celebrations around idol birthdays and comebacks: collectible cup sleeves with any drink, artist alley, raffles. The circuit also passes through Katsubo Tea in Fullerton, Almond Haus in Garden Grove, Feng Cha in Costa Mesa, Calitea in Long Beach, and Miss Cheese Tea in Pasadena.
Track events: kpoptracker.net · background: Spectrum News
Sunright Tea Studio collab meetups
The chain runs sanctioned crossovers — Honkai Star Rail with voice actors and cosplayers, MapleStory pop-ups — that turn the Little Tokyo store into a fan meetup for a weekend.
Current collabs: snrtea.com/collaboration
Run a club? Put your boba stop on the map.
Real jogging clubs in the 626 end their runs at coffee and beer — as far as we can find, no SoCal run club has a published boba-shop home yet. If yours does (or you're a shop that wants to host one), we'll list it with a link to your page. Tell us here — listing is free, and we only publish what your own page says.
FAQ
How do we know these are real?
Every listing links to the organizer's own public page — Meetup, Instagram, Partiful, or an official site. We publish nothing we can't link.
Are the days and times current?
Schedules change without telling us, so we point you at the organizer's page instead of asserting times ourselves. When we say "Thursdays," it's because their page said so at our last check.
Meeting someone from an app instead?
Different mission, same drinks — start with the First Meet guide on our homepage, then pick a first-meet room.