Great question - I think a big part of it depends on a public space being *entirely free*. I've found that in the city I'm living in, pretty much all of the rough attempts at forming community have revolved around meeting at bars, or traveling to activities. And those are all great, and should be part of a community, but i don't think a …
Great question - I think a big part of it depends on a public space being *entirely free*. I've found that in the city I'm living in, pretty much all of the rough attempts at forming community have revolved around meeting at bars, or traveling to activities. And those are all great, and should be part of a community, but i don't think a community can thrive if it depends on spending money to access it. Just by nature of making people spend a bit, it's excluding people who can't afford to be there, but it's also placing a lot of pressure on those who *can afford it* to get a kind of bang-for-their-buck, or view the relationship as transactional in some way. So I think the financial stakes need to be removed entirely.
Yes!! And as someone who doesn't drink, there's a whole new calculus of - do I want to sit at a bar sipping glorified juice for $10 because I don't drink and I have dietary restrictions so I also can't handle most mocktails?
This is a huge one for me, especially when you factor in cascading costs that aren't directly from the thing or the space. Even if the activity is free, if it takes up 90 minutes of my evening with a 45-minute commute either way (because I live in NYC so even with good transit things are often that far apart) that's three hours and now I'm buying dinner and how many nights a week can I do that before I also have to pay someone to clean my apartment because I can't keep up with it and so on and so forth.
*ding ding ding*. I’m right there with you. $2.90 either way on the bus or train, & all the time that includes. Cascading costs everywhere. And what are the other options: only making friends in your borough/ keeping any community you create exclusively to your neighborhood within walking distance? I don’t know if that’s the right answer.
The cascading costs especially I think come for single people -- if I don't wash the dishes, they're not getting washed, no one else is going to vacuum unless I pay someone for it -- and it's SUCH a barrier to me getting more involved with things. Sorry, I can't come to your meetup, I scheduled laundry for that night 😂
I don't want creating only neighborhood-centric community to be the answer, though I would also love it to be easier to find hyper-local communities to get involved with that don't involve spending a lot of money or having kids/dogs.
Yes! We don't talk enough about the obstacle of being able to afford something, but feeling we must get our money's worth. The financial expense is a certainty, but the enjoyment is hypothetical (you don't know these people yet), so overall, decisions tend towards not attending.
That's right!! Can't tell you how many meetup groups I've flaked on because I felt iffy on dropping $15/$20 for a cocktail with a group that I don't know.
Great question - I think a big part of it depends on a public space being *entirely free*. I've found that in the city I'm living in, pretty much all of the rough attempts at forming community have revolved around meeting at bars, or traveling to activities. And those are all great, and should be part of a community, but i don't think a community can thrive if it depends on spending money to access it. Just by nature of making people spend a bit, it's excluding people who can't afford to be there, but it's also placing a lot of pressure on those who *can afford it* to get a kind of bang-for-their-buck, or view the relationship as transactional in some way. So I think the financial stakes need to be removed entirely.
Or the thing is free, but parking isn't. The burden of figuring out where/how to park really keeps me from doing a lot of things.
Yes!! And as someone who doesn't drink, there's a whole new calculus of - do I want to sit at a bar sipping glorified juice for $10 because I don't drink and I have dietary restrictions so I also can't handle most mocktails?
This is a huge one for me, especially when you factor in cascading costs that aren't directly from the thing or the space. Even if the activity is free, if it takes up 90 minutes of my evening with a 45-minute commute either way (because I live in NYC so even with good transit things are often that far apart) that's three hours and now I'm buying dinner and how many nights a week can I do that before I also have to pay someone to clean my apartment because I can't keep up with it and so on and so forth.
*ding ding ding*. I’m right there with you. $2.90 either way on the bus or train, & all the time that includes. Cascading costs everywhere. And what are the other options: only making friends in your borough/ keeping any community you create exclusively to your neighborhood within walking distance? I don’t know if that’s the right answer.
The cascading costs especially I think come for single people -- if I don't wash the dishes, they're not getting washed, no one else is going to vacuum unless I pay someone for it -- and it's SUCH a barrier to me getting more involved with things. Sorry, I can't come to your meetup, I scheduled laundry for that night 😂
I don't want creating only neighborhood-centric community to be the answer, though I would also love it to be easier to find hyper-local communities to get involved with that don't involve spending a lot of money or having kids/dogs.
Good points. "If it's not accessible to the poor it's neither radical nor revolutionary." -Jonathan Herrera
Yes! We don't talk enough about the obstacle of being able to afford something, but feeling we must get our money's worth. The financial expense is a certainty, but the enjoyment is hypothetical (you don't know these people yet), so overall, decisions tend towards not attending.
That's right!! Can't tell you how many meetup groups I've flaked on because I felt iffy on dropping $15/$20 for a cocktail with a group that I don't know.