Maria Bamford’s East LA Over-50 Singles Social Club
East L.A. Over-50 Singles Social Club at the Meadow in Highland Park, October 1, 2026.
The comedian Maria Bamford hosted an East LA Over-50 Singles Social Club last night in Highland Park at the Meadow Coworking Space, a former soccer shop now painted head to toe in mint green. Picture being inside a container of Breyer’s.
At the entrance, name tags were offered, and attendees were encouraged to write something they’re “nerdy” about. To help inspire connection, board games from the 70s had been placed on the tables. Donkey Party, Connect 4, Fashion Plates. (The card game Old Maid, which I played as a child, was tastefully omitted.)
I introduced myself to Maria (not Bamford), dark hair and eyes, dressed in faded denim layers as if she’d just left her art studio, and Laura, tall and thin as a breadstick and wearing horn-rimmed glasses, a striped tee, a short skirt, and a small black backpack that slouched behind her. Her shoulders were hunched in that don’t-notice-me way that some tall people adopt, and her hair was bunched in a pigtails-like ’do, which — when considered with her clothing — made her appear as if she’d had a tremendous growth spurt aged 9 and decided to stay in what she had on at the time. But styled and postured differently, Laura would have been walking a runway somewhere.
My name tag said I was nerdy about NTS.live, a music platform I’d recently learned of from my friend Joanna (not single, not in LA). Maria wrote it down, ripping a sheet of paper from one of the many yellow notepads made available by our host for moments like this.
At which point Inge walked up. Inge — butterscotch-colored eyewear, blonde hair, caramel-hued outfit — is from Belgium but has lived in LA for 30 years. She came to Singles Social Club with her sister, whose two children she helped raise here in Highland Park.
When I mentioned I live in Glendale, Inge expressed surprise. “I thought this event was only for people on the East Side,” she said. I gathered that although Inge has been in the States for three decades, she remains one beat behind in conversation, hindered, I’m guessing, by a cosmic translation process.
When Laura commented, with acquiescent disappointment, that the crowd was composed almost entirely of women (some, I noticed, with an exceptionally macabre sense of humor), Inge asked, “Were you hoping to meet men?” “Yes!” Laura and Maria exclaimed in unison. “That’s why we’re here!”
In the snacks area, Natalie introduced herself, raising her plastic tumbler of wine to toast the LaCroix I was cracking open. Her name tag was approximately 5 cm tall and adhered just above her left breast on her low-cut black top, making it necessary to get close to achieve legibility. I thought about the past-eras magician whose portrait hung in the library. Tricks.
Natalie was tall, strong, and confident, calling to mind a champion equestrian from the pages of Town & Country circa 1998. She explained that she’d met a man within 15 minutes of arriving, and he was European (“I spend a lot of time in Europe,” she said), and, “We speak all the same languages.” She was pretty sure they’d stay in touch. But she wasn’t hanging out with him now because “I don’t want to meet just one person tonight.” Like Laura and Maria, Natalie noted the preponderance of women at tonight’s Over-50 Singles Social Club. “You can always count on men to be unreliable,” she said.
