I figured this out recently! Visit all of the Board Games shops and card game shops in your town and find a group that meets publicly and plays board games.

If you don’t like Board Games, go do an outdoor hobby like disc golf and join other groups.

The board game meet ups have been fantastic because you can just focus on the board game and you don’t have to get a bunch of anxiety trying to come up with small talk. It can just happen organically overtime at your comfort level.

Birdwatching.

There is always the risk of awful people, but doing something with people who have shared interests is a great start.

For me political and school related organizations were great but any form of social work helps. You don’t have to go to a bar or a club, you can tend to a community garden or volunteer at a canteen. The first start to meeting people is finding an environment you feel comfortable ti meet them in imo

I think you’re approaching with the wrong approach: first that there is a place that one can just go to where there’s people you’ll like, and second that meeting people you don’t like meat be avoided. Is people turn out to be awful for you, don’t meet them again, you can’t always know beforehand.

As others have implied, going somewhere where people with similar interests go can be a good start.

You’d be surprised how many people want to have a 30-40 second conversation with a stranger (it happens to me constantly). You don’t have to go into an interaction expecting to become life long friends, quick conversations are a good step one.

There might well simply not be a specific place where you’ll magically find friends.
In that case or if all this just seems exhausting and intimidating, i’d recommend just going anywhere there’s other people and not being afraid to greet them and exchange some words with them.
Think of it like microdosing social interaction, i’ve found it to be very doable and it both helps you get used to interacting with people and feel less lonely.