Oh my god my number one is to replace Facebook. There are so many communities that exist only on Facebook and it seems to be the only way people have of organizing around neighborhood stuff beyond the people you already know IRL. I hate it so much. The private platform problem wouldn’t be so bad if there were real alternatives but it’s just the one. A public or at least nonprofit alternative would be better, I think? At least for this specific use case. I don’t know. It’s a hard problem.
I miss when Craigslist was king. It was truly a community space, for good, ill, and weird. But your point is very good--what's the digital equivalent to a (literal) community board, where announcements can be posted?
even for buying and selling, facebook has almost completely replaced craigslist in my experience. It's one of the few reasons I keep my facebook account active! sometimes you need some secondhand furniture!
I deactivated my next door after about a year- very toxic. My Facebook I leave with only family showing in the main feed, and visit occasionally and for makertplace.
Facebook has also mostly replaced in-person yard sales, in my experience (small town Maine). Why wander in the hope of finding something when you can locate it on the Marketplace?
Not so here in Ann Arbor. We advertise our sales on Craigslist or with old-school cardboard signs. FB Marketplace is seen as untrustworthy and I would never sell or buy from it. I do buy from Etsy and less often from EBay.
Everything went downhill after myspace...I stopped using boomerbook, instagram, etc and I'm in a better place. Reddit can be cool here and there just not all the time bc it's a whole lotta complaining. Ps - craigslist personals getting pulled was a loss to local online communities everywhere
Yes! I pay for a Patreon where the ONLY way to take part in discussions is via Facebook groups. I don't use Facebook (Cambridge Analytica and other reasons) and I can't even log in anymore anyway. But the number of Patreons and classes, etc, that still use Facebook groups as their only platform is criminal. I don't know why there hasn't been a substitute—maybe it's too hard to monetize? But I'd pay $5/month or something to not use Facebook!
Ugh yes! The number of times I've paid for classes, podcasts etc only to be told what I'm paying for (groups & conversation related to the thing) is only available on Facebook is so frustrating. I always try to reply very kindly and say that I'm not on Facebook and I'd appreciate another option in the future. Mighty Networks isn't bad for closed groups, but I get why people default to facebook.
I have been asking what platform any group or discussions are held on before signing up. Though I’m on Facebook nominally, I do NOT want to be on there extensively or in any needed fashion, and will decide against a fb platformed group discussion.
My local neighborhood facebook group can get really combative and angry and I forget that the entire neighborhood is not in that group. Have been surprised several times now by reading incredibly vitriolic discussions over big issues and then going for a walk, expecting the neighborhood to feel tense and angry and it just doesn't? Our neighbors have nice chats with us and everything is...fine.
I feel like this is the problem with anything neighborhood-related--people only comment when they have something to complain about. My mom spends too much time on Next Door or whatever it is, and she thinks her neighborhood is SO much worse than it actually is. It's criminal.
Vermont has a home-grown, non-profit alternative to Nextdoor called Front Porch Forum, and it's amazing. We use it for...building community! and I forget not everyone has it. A key feature is it has human moderators.
Coming to say just this! Front Porch Forum is so helpful in that you only get one or two emails a day, which is enough to keep you informed but not the kind of thing you can get sucked into or waste time on.
Yes! I deleted my Facebook account years ago... and just made a new one because as a new mom I 1) want to buy used baby gear and 2) everyone kept telling me to “join a moms group” and I as far as I can tell they only exist on Facebook. They didn’t accept my request though as my Facebook account is just a picture of my cat and I have no friends on the account. Gah. Guess I’ll just lurk in the coffee shop asking everyone with a baby “how old is your baby?”
I feel the same way about discord. It just doesn’t make intuitive sense to me. Or any sense! I prefer Mighty Networks (still private). This is a great idea.
THIS! I wish I could get rid of Facebook, but I really need access to the groups I'm in. Some are neighborhood groups, some are mom groups, or resale/buy nothing groups, some are writer groups. Seems like Facebook is the only way I can access these. It's just become the default.
FB is something I have (and use for work) specifically because people still really rely on it for community, but it has gotten downright unpleasant in some recent time. Agreed. It is a huge problem.
I find that every group starts to use their own app. So at any time I have 10 text threads, a few facebook messages, 4-6 messaging apps, and unique passwords and logins for each. It somehow is not more simple and I end up opting out of connecting due to overwhelm.
Agree with this! There are some hobbies and interests I have that I would love to be able to have a community for, and I know they exist, but they're all on Facebook! Things like substack are close but not quite the same
More work flexibility would be key for me. In the early days of the pandemic, it felt like there was a shift, where my company treated us like whole humans again because lives were literally on the line (I recognize this was just my company and I was very privileged to experience that). I was able to duck out at 4 to meet friends for an early happy hour, or I could start late after meeting someone for a cup of coffee. My job has reverted back to butts in seats, and that lack of flexibility has really dampened my attempts to meet with my community.
I know I always blame capitalism….but capitalism. At least how we know it now.
this. I'm just so fucking tired all the time & barely have time to cook actual food, workout, keep the house clean, keep up on medical care, and maintain one (1) hobby. And I don't have kids! I don't know how people with kids, especially, have any time to devote to gathering and fostering community.
edited to suggest something concrete: a former job in higher ed gave us Friday afternoons off during the summer & it was amazing what those extra 4 hours of personal time did for my mental health & ability generally keep my life together. Wish I had that kind of time and/or flexibility now.
I work a 4 day week and it is amazing -- I actually have energy sometimes, I don't have to do sad Sunday evening laundry, it's great. Unfortunately, not sustainable -- my rent was raised, of course, so now it's more than 50% of my monthly take-home pay, and I don't see how I can continue after this year, which is really just...to finally find a job I don't hate with people who respect me but capitalism won't allow it. I dunno, I'm exhausted thinking about it. If anyone knows where I can dig up like $10,000/year so I don't die, that would be cool...*sigh*
Same. Moved in with my parents a year ago after I lost my job and couldn't pay the rent. Got a new job that paid almost twice as much, but rent is still going up so I still haven't moved out. It's ridiculous.
So much! Like, if the arbitrary random lottery was open, I absolutely qualify to apply for Section 8 housing vouchers. It's so depressing because this is the first time that a job doesn't suck all of my life force, I actually like it, and it's a great environment, flexible, the health coverage is great for my chronic illness self, but...the option seems to be wish you were dead every day because of work, or actually die because you can't afford to live. I hate it here.
I pray that we will see a widespread adoption of the four day work week in our lifetimes. I'm not optimistic - but it is my most preciously held dream.
I just went from a four to five day work week this month (because I was only being paid at 80% FTE and I have to pay for two kids in childcare now)... it sucks so much. FOUR DAY WORK WEEK! (with full time pay & benefits! and also while I'm here, SUBIDIZED CHILDCARE!!!)
Seriously tho. It feels like finding balance is a myth in this system. Child-free also, and I don't know how parents do it. Well sadly, the parents I know are basically drowning.
agreed. I don't know what would make it easier to do things than to not work?
all of the things you listed above are already on my plate, plus kid activities on the weekend ... my best friend has two(ish) jobs now, but they're both flexible, so i'm admittedly a little jealous to see how she's able to go to a pottery class, go for a hike, etc. around the work she does.
My old job also did half-day Fridays during the summer, and it truly was a game changer. It seemed to deprogram people from scheduling meetings and expecting deliverables even on non-summer Friday afternoons, so folks could still manage to slip out early.
i worked a 10/4 schedule for a summer during my time working at a university and it was...just life changing. and now we dont even have to do 10, why not just 8/4 and call it a day!
Certainly my experience after some 20 years of working like my life depended on it, I burned out in 2017 and resigned my full time job for a part time role. Poorer but happier, having more time is a game changer.
I agree with that! My first response to the question about small changes would be 1) scheduling/work hours. I work in an elementary & middle school, and I struggle to see why we are bound and determined to keep kids in school and adults at work 40+ hours a week. We already know that most people are not spending that entire time productively working, and kids are definitely not spending that entire time engaged in learning. The bulk of those 40 hours is busy work and time-killing. Also, and this is the case for most people, I have a 30-minute commute both ways, which sometimes turns into a longer one because the population of my city has exploded but our infrastructure has not kept up with the demand -- traffic and car accidents are commonplace and cause huge slowdowns. So that's a whole other thing we need to change to facilitate getting together-- 2) poor infrastructure & transportation options. Oftentimes I don't visit friends because I don't want to muster the stamina to sit through the traffic to get five miles across town for a hangout, and sometimes the timing just doesn't work. It's tough to find time for friends after work, since everybody also has to cook dinner, exercise, do dishes, get groceries, etc. at some point during the day. Even if I can clear two hours to meet up with friends, if I know that half that time will be spent just in the car, that's a huge deterrent. And lastly, 3) eating out seems like a good solution for problems 1 & 2. Save time on cooking and cleanup, meet in the middle instead of driving to each other's homes... But the steeply rising cost of food, especially at restaurants, is prohibitive for me and my friends, who are all lower middle class and struggling to afford just rent and groceries. If any one of these 3 problems were resolved, it would go a long way toward making "real life" friendship (as opposed to just sending each other TikToks and texting/calling) feasible.
Same. And it wasn't just the flexibility (though I'm not discounting that), but being seen as a human with needs that mattered. There was such a vibe shift, and it was so disheartening to watch is slip away.
This. You hit the nail on the head. Companies saw our humanity, if that makes sense. We all agreed that there were more important things than work. Then…that went away.
This. With the climate crisis, it makes no sense to RTO. Think of all the carbon we are emitting on our daily commutes! I get that commercial real estate was affected but why not turn empty offices into housing since we have a housing crisis as well? I mean the solution to many of our problems is right in front of us.
In Feb 2020, I was gearing up to speak with my boss about this. I was tired of driving an hour 1 way, just to park in a huge structure full of cars, to sit in meetings on a computer with people all over the country. My (former) company went back to the office, so downtown Louisville wasn't completely abandoned, but thankfully I'm in a fully remote position now.
Also I realize my comment wasn’t clear - I wasn’t ducking out to meet friends early in the pandemic! I just meant that early pandemic flexibility years later afforded me the opportunity to see friends in a way I wasn’t used to, but now my work has decided to revert back to rigid structure which hinders it again.
Even if you were ducking out early to meet friends, I fail to see the harm in it. Your workplace clearly didn't come crashing to the ground because you were offline a few hours earlier than usual. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
As a chronically ill and disabled person with Long COVID and at high risk of additional COVID harms, i and many others have the roadblock of airborne pathogens in a culture where masking has been discarded, indoor ventilation is unreliable and weather can impede outdoor plans. I am grateful for other COVID cautious people who make efforts to be able to share space or host online gatherings but it’s a very intense and sad problem.
This is mine too. I am not willing to put my health at risk, and other people's health at risk. Anyone who takes COVID seriously is missing in-person community A LOT A LOT, but besides hooking up with other COVID cautious people, it's a very communityless way to exist. The online COVID-conscious folks have done their best, but one of the best places for talking about this stuff is a cesspool (RIP Twitter) and yeah, anyway.
My barrier to more community is that the entire world is now pretending COVID isn't still a pandemic and isn't dangerous.
I was coming here to say just this. The fact that almost all of society--including my dear friends and family--have "moved on" into this denial of the ongoing risks of the pandemic for ALL OF US, not to mention those of us who are immunocompromised.
I was deeply influenced in my early twenties by examples of beautiful kind of radical community: shared meals, shared life, hanging out with my friends' kids, even shared cars (facilitated by proximity in a northern Chicago neighbourhood). I learned how amazing it is to have a huge pot of soup on the stove and a houseful of random people chatting about life and kids running around. For years, I hosted and facilitated these communities: truly scrappy and truly glorious community, a little chaotic, a little random, and just deeply nourishing.
But then the pandemic came, AND I got sicker with my chronic diseases and started immunpsuppressing medication. I would love nothing more than to return to those earlier practices of open-door hospitality: I long for it like an ache in my already-achy body. But because very few others are trying to avoid COVID, the risk is too high for me. I live in a cold climate, too, so about half the year disallows easy outdoor gathering.
(I also have a lot of the barriers for my life stage: full-time job, busy kids, spread-out friends, etc. So extra effort on top of the fatigue that results feels like A LOT.)
Concrete things that would help:
1. Wide-scale, community-level efforts to clean indoor public air, the way we clean municipal water supplies
2. More efforts to clean indoor private air (HEPA filters, etc.)
3. Re-normalize masking (with n95-type masks, which are evidence-based best practice) in public spaces (why not wear one in the grocery store? in all healthcare settings? what is the actual cost here?) [Also: for some kinds of small events/gatherings, organizers could privately poll folks and ask if anyone would prefer masking--one person preferring it would lead to a requirement for all to wear it. This would mean centering the most vulnerable instead of implicitly pressuring them to opt out.]
4. Also normalize a culture of transparency: normalize care that imagines what it's like to be extra vulnerable more generally, rather than just assuming "everyone" who deserves to participate should be fine with pre-pandemic norms.
I'm keen to hear what other folks would add, because this is just a start.
I commented before I saw yours, but I love the idea of cleaning indoor air just like we do with water. Universal municipal wastewater testing for covid (and other viruses?) that is published for the public in a user-friendly format would be fabulous as well. I know that where I am in Oregon, some indoor air quality control is mandated by OSHA for workplaces because of annual wildfire smoke, but the requirements are still very minimal
I’m writing a thing now about the EPA’s Clean Air in Buildings Challenge. It is not enough because what made water supplies safe was legislation and regulation and lots of standards. We could do this for indoor air—building codes are the tool. The political will for this seems to be negligible, but write and call your representatives to ask for more!
Absolutely this. And a barrier that seems solvable in theory but remains really challenging for me is the protocols. Could we come up with an agreed-upon-by-everyone-so-it's-not-so-awkward way of sharing information about recent exposure possibilities, test results, and so forth? Even though I've practiced what feels like A LOT, it is still really touchy sometimes to ask people, have you been around a lot of people unmasked recently? Are you wearing an N95 or just a loose mask? Did you get a pharmacy test or just a (less reliable) home test? I don't *want* people to feel like I'm judging them in these interactions (and for me, if I'm asking, it's because I care about you and want to see you! I'm not interested in picking a fight!), but some people really do feel judged and it seems like ANY question about these protocols feels to them like an attack. I feel like the cost of all this stuff also plays in - it's expensive to care for ourselves and each other in this current situation! And talking about money stuff is (for me at least) awkward with all but my closest contacts. It just feels like, with the push for "back to normal" yet knowing that COVID remains a serious danger for a not-insignificant number of people, we ought to be able to figure out a way of handling these protocols that becomes routine for everyone. This stuff is so hard.
I also wish people felt more comfortable saying, "I would really appreciate if you wore a mask," because I am 10000% willing to wear one at any time to make anyone comfortable. But I also know that some anti-maskers are so combative and defensive and horrible that people don't feel safe making this simple request.
I mean this kindly, but every single person who is wearing a mask in public wants you to wear a mask but is afraid to ask. So rather than waiting for people to risk their safety to ask, you could follow a general rule of “see a mask, put on a mask.”
It would honestly go such a long way to making the world safe for me to inhabit if people did that.
I reread my comment and it wasn't clear--I didn't mean a face-to-face confrontation (as I said, I just whip out a mask and put it on when I see anyone with one). I was thinking more along the lines of, "This event is scheduled. Any person can contact the event planner and request that everyone wear masks and the planner will tell everyone to wear masks."
But I know that even that is not a safe thing to request and many planners will not support it.
This is something that my very wonderful local fiber / craft store does very well -- they have mandatory masking on Mondays, all staff wear masks, masks are mandatory for classes. The other day I popped in and noticed they were asking everyone to mask, because someone had called ahead and requested it. love it!
I have friends who are immunocompromised and we've talked about these things, so if I didn't pull on a mask, I would feel SO guilty. It's the good kind of peer pressure.
I agree! Mostly in one-on-one situations. I'm still masking, though not 100%. But if I see someone wearing a mask, I'll just put mine on in solidarity. It's really hard when I'm at doctor's offices and they see my mask and ask, do you want me to put on a mask? Because I want to say yes but also if they're not wearing one, they clearly don't want to. I often just say, it's fine, especially if it's a nurse I'm going to see for five seconds. Assume 90% of the time, people would say yes even if they're saying no!
it's so hard to say yes. I have started proactively asking (I have a little script for myself) and it's still hard! but also sometimes it turns into a conversation, such as the mammogram tech who didn't know that long covid is a thing. I think about how if I were asking on behalf of my bff, I wouldn't feel shy about it at all... and how I can bring that energy to myself too.
re-negotiating protocols all the time is one of the worst parts of this. the constant second-guessing, and questioning trust in the people you want to be able to trust implicitly. nothing is implicit anymore! to say nothing of people who say they care about accessibility, equity, etc -- it's very painful to watch as their actions go further and further away from their professed values.
This is so true! It truly sucks to have lost so much trust. But I don't see how to regain it with the current situation. I wish I could see a way through this!
Can you even get PCR tests where you are? My MIL recently had a virus that her doctor declared Not Covid on the basis of a regular rapid test -- despite her loss of sense of smell, extreme fatigue, and wheezing/cough significant enough that they prescribed her some kind of inhaler, the doctor never gave her a PCR, and none of the pharmacies closest to her were doing them.
We have to pay out of pocket for PCRs now (about $157 CAD), as the public health system in my province won't even let family doctors refer for PCRs. This is MADDENING. It is also ENRAGING to imagine that your MIL's doctor would think a negative rapid test means "not COVID," as we know they give tons of false negatives, especially depending on the stage of the illness. I've heard lots of laypeople make this mistake, and the idea that doctors are contributing to the misinformation is mind boggling and heartbreaking.
This!!! My son is chronically ill, my husband and mother are both very high risk, and I'm high risk. I cannot take chances that could harm any of us. There's enough risk in daily my train commute. Taking precautions to avoid being infected and infecting others is the most important thing I can do for myself, my family, and my community. But it's getting awfully lonely for all of the reasons you outlined. Thank you for posting! I'm glad to know others are out there aside from my Twitter bubble.
Yup, same. I’m lucky/privileged enough to not be chronically ill but I sure as hell don’t want to catch covid and then get long covid. It’s really painful to be going on year 4 of the pandemic and still see it treated so casually by so many people. I don’t want to get sick. I don’t want others to get sick. I don’t want to get others sick.
I really struggle with community and friends and dating and any kind of social relationship building. Online communities don’t cut it for me. But I know that it would all be a hell of a lot easier if I didn’t have the barrier of covid that keeps me from hanging out in bars or going out dancing or joining a book club or going to trivia nights or any other kind of public cultural programming where I know I would meet likeminded people. It really sucks.
This is mine too. It feels like my world has become smaller and smaller over the last year as spaces remove masking or testing protocols. There really are a limited number of spaces and groups that are accessible to me as a high-risk person with Long Covid these days, even in a city as big as New York (where I’m located).
same here. in early 2023 i signed up for a volunteer org that works with immunocompromised people, and a couple days later they dropped their mask policy. bananas!!! going smaller/less official seems to help (mutual aid/activist/nonhierarchical kinda things) but it took me mooonths to get in contact with these covid-cautious groups without social media. nonetheless i finally finally joined! anyway, i don't usually leave comments, but wanted to chime in bc i appreciate seeing the number of ppl talking about this.
Yes, omg! I was very happy to read the other day that a group of Seattle hospitals are keeping masking in place, because yikes.
The University just took back all the large air filters from non-classsrooms because they don't want to keep paying for maintenace (much cheaper if everyone is just sick), and I am furious and fighting to get it back if our department pays for filters, &c.
Why wouldn't we wear masks where people are already sick???!! I'm also incensed on the no masks in healthcare policies. I have had a lot of health issues this year and it's so frustrating to feel like I'm exposing myself to covid when I'm trying to get healthy. I of course still wear my mask but almost no one else is.
Add me to the list of Covid cautious people!! I have one friend I see regularly that is also high risk like I am and I know still masks and takes precautions, which is such a gift as I don’t have to feel awkward and ask questions about how she’s living her life. But other than that my husband and I have a pretty quiet life most of the time. My friends that are choosing not to mask are easier to meet up with in the summer months, so as the rains start here in the PNW I know things are slowing down. My kids who are in New York and Minneapolis are still masking will be home for the holidays which is another bright spot in the winter! It is definitely a major roadblock in creating community though, as I’m hearing of more and more people getting it around us, including my in-laws in Ohio for the first time, I can feel our world shrinking again.
Our friends and siblings with little kids have given up on all masking, even in crowded indoor areas, because their kids get every germ anyway.
This makes it way less safe to hang out with our child-having friends. We don't have kids and we're the only people we know (including our family!) who still mask all the time, everywhere. It SUCKS.
Absolutely agree. Anytime I suggest that I'd love to get together if we can find a patio, it's like *crickets*. More outdoor spaces that have some weather-protection features (like a roof, for rain) would be lovely, but haven't really taken off here - despite that fact that our weather is really amenable to this. And there's even less discussion about air filtration or other ways to improve indoor quality, which is utterly ridiculous.
Yep, I came here to say more transparency about indoor ventilation in public buildings (maybe using a standard in terms of air changes per hour and what grade of filter they use/how often they change it)
I saw on Twitter while I was still on it, that in some countries they had ratings outside of business’s for their air quality, like food safety ratings, which would be unbelievably helpful and maybe even incentivize cleaning the air? Having no real reliable metrics anymore to turn to to gauge how much it’s circulating is also a real problem, and just requires erring on the side of extra caution all the time which is a real shame.
Improving indoor air quality is critical. Up until May 2023, I was spending a lot of time/energy organizing outdoor get-togethers. (Even in the Canadian north - I was making it work!) But then the wildfire smoke arrived in May and just ... never left. So I lost the option to safely socialize outdoors. It's been lonely and we're heading into winter any minute now...
I spend most of my days thinking about this, as someone whose job is effectively community organizing around the (lack) of (safe) public spaces. In my opinion, from a societal POV, two built environment challenges are key impediments: 1) As you mention, a dearth of public spaces to connect with others, especially during times when people are not working, which has made it very challenging to find the spaces to do the important work of community creation, whether that is as "simple" as a knitting circle (one here meets in a Whole Foods, which seems nice until you realize that a Whole Foods or a Starbucks is no substitution for a truly public space that *everyone* has and can feel ownership over) or a group trying to organize to improve their neighborhood. 2) Car culture supremacy (in the US, at least), which means that people drive nearly everywhere. Walking and biking and transit are the forms of movement that lend themselves to spontaneous and key social interactions, but they are least-used, and car supremacy makes them dangerous and unpleasant (or people perceive them that way) in most places. The prevalence of cars spirals outward: our public funds go into highway expansions and endless road maintenance instead of public spaces or art; parents can succumb to the pressure of endlessly packed kids' schedules because driving is "easy" and "fast"; people are frustrated and mad and individualistic as they get behind the windshield; and cars are obscenely expensive, meaning that people are working a great deal to be able to afford them.
How to solve is broad and wide-reaching, but IMO it starts with all of us making a choice. I hear time and again from others who look at my life that it is impossible for them, for any number of reasons. But they look with a sigh of jealousy at my cargo bike and 2-block access to a grocery store with reasonable rent, while telling me that kids "need" a yard. From people who want to make change where they are at but are hesitant to move forward. It is very difficult, but it takes doing things like walking your kid to school one day a week - and if that is too unsafe, starting to raise a stink and organizing with other parents who are also pissed by the lack of a sidewalk or traffic light. It takes doing things like my old roommate did and leaving notes at every house on the block about how she is available to call if they need help or want to connect (out of which she has made a lifelong friendship with someone of a different generation, and made smaller connections with others). It takes looking around at what others are doing that feels impossible and trying it out. It is so hard, but that is where all of the power is, because that is how organizing and demands for better transit, public spaces, whatever all come from.
Sorry, soap box. In terms of solutions, we also need way more organizing trainings - places where average people who care about something can learn how to talk to others about their concerns, how to listen, how to build meeting agendas and make meetings inclusive and dynamic spaces and know when to move urgently and when to pause, how to do things like understand power dynamics and how to understand what has been ripped away from them through our starvation of the collective realm.
Love this so much. I spent several days in Copenhagen over the summer and was awed by the transit, bike lanes, pedestrian facilities, and public spaces - and the way all those things supported each other. Felt true grief when I came back to my beloved city in the SE United States.... so I started taking transit to work every day. It’s imperfect, and some days I wish I could re-plan my city to avoid sprawl and highway supremacy. But as someone who works in the multi-modal transportation industry, I am SO excited about the energy and money coming to support safer and more accessible transportation that isn’t car-dependent. Taking transit and reading on the train and people-watching makes me feel like a whole person. I’m pushing for bike lanes on the street in front of my house so kids can get to school safely and neighborhood residents can get to community spaces in town. Transportation is the backbone of so much 💛
I can here to say this! I was in Copenhagen too and a young man told me one of the most interesting things about the city was how they use public space. Then I could not stop noticing it. There were so many parks, open city spaces with seating, and swimming platforms along the canal. But I'm from Texas and a lot of what makes this possible in Denmark is not true here - nice weather, grass you can sit on without being eating alive by bugs, etc. The other thing, though, is that people there has time to use this space. It didn't seem like they were planning a week in advance to meet up; they and their friends had time and space in their lives for that, and I think that is related to so much more than public space - work culture, societal support for parents in the form of childcare and a community where children can move about without their parent's constant supervision. Just a million small ways in which life is "easier" because the physical and social environments are more human.
I've never been to Copenhagen, but I visited some places around Western Europe over the summer and was in awe at the public transport, how walkable everywhere was, seeing way less cars, a lot more biking, and all the green spaces. I'm back in the US now and it influenced my decision to move to Chicago next and ditch my car. My car is a 🍋 and I already live in the Midwest so wanted to stay in the general area. I think the steps you're taking where you're at are great 💫
I so agree about car supremacy; it is incredibly disconnecting. Cars have become little individualistic pods where we can all hide out from each other, while also getting really angry at strangers. Like social media on wheels.
Car supremacy becomes so obvious when you look at homes built in the last 30 years. The front door is barely visible; the double or triple garage doors are what is closest to the street. So you drive your 24 miles home from work, click the garage door open, roll your car in, click the garage door closed, and never see a neighbor.
Love this! I'd add to your list of trainings - how to move through conflict together! I think folks believe the idea of community means everyone in harmonious agreement, when actually it's messy and almost always includes conflict. But conflict doesn't have to be unhealthy; it can be generative if folks understand power dynamics (like you said) and are able to move through it in a healthy way. Too many of us don't know the basics of moving through conflict well.
Yes! I come from a union organizing background and one value I got from that experience is that community doesn’t mean friends or people who agree about everything.
As someone who lives in a co-housing community, this is very very true. You need to be able to acknowledge conflict, and work through it, and see that there is a way to remain in community with people afterwards. I'm not in any way good at this, but have so much respect for the elders of our co-housing community who have done this over and over, chosen not to leave, and kept our community together through hard things.
It all feels like a vicious cycle! Without good, walkable public spaces, parks and playgrounds, people are more inclined to choose a private version of that (i.e. a yard).
Also, what parents/kids get in a yard is a place they can be safely without constant supervision. We also need the attitude that kids can be unsupervised without it being automatically neglect or a safety issue. And for kids to have freedom to be kids in public spaces--pick a flower, dig a hole, climb a tree, throw a rock in the pond, have a meltdown--without it being seen as some kind of intolerable breach of the peace.
100% agree with biking as community-building. We are a one-car family with an e-cargo bike; my husband can take the train to get to work and I work for myself at home; our kids go to school 1.5 blocks away and after-school care 5 blocks away so there are days when we actually don't use the car at all. We are paying more to be in an area of town that is flatter so it's easier to get around. I recognize that we are privileged to be able to afford to do so. And, these are also conscious choices we have made because it's important to us that our kids grow up without car-as-default. (Not to mention, women and children are more likely to walk so pedestrian safety is a feminist issue!) I strongly advocate for multifamily housing and strong public transit so more people can experience what we have.
When I'm on the bike, I get a lot of interested or admiring comments, especially when they see my two kids in the back. I hope it shows people that a different world is possible. The bike to me is the ideal speed for traveling around town and I love how easy it is to stop and talk to neighbors or run errands without worrying about parking. When there is a lot of traffic, it's actually faster to take my bike usually! While there are more bicyclists here than there were a few years ago, I have a pretty distinctive orange bike and I often have people tell me that they saw me or my husband on the bike somewhere and it's a nice moment of connection.
One of the reasons I left the automotive industry a few years ago is that I felt complicit on the car supremacy problem. There are so many great solutions to start making our cities pedestrian friendly, and I follow several groups working on it in my community.
Training would be a huge help for me - and the opportunity to connect with other organizers in different places. I've organized a pretty wide variety of things over the years, and learned a lot as I went and from collaborators, but I don't have a lot of connections to people doing similar things in other places. And I don't know how to find them, either!
I want to have a place to talk shop - what communication tools are working for your groups? What are your current thoughts on queer safety at events, or covid protocols? What resources have you found that have been helpful?
Not to be totally weird, but this community may be a good place to try something like this. Personally I also find it really helpful to hear from people who are doing organizing around different topics, too. I would very happily go to a Zoom call that's a space to talk about those things (with maybe more formal trainings over time).
I really like your last point, about community building training. Is there an online platform of any kind that can serve as a sort of guidebook for all of these things you mention? From my perspective, I've done some organizing in the past around an issue but this was a long time ago (and took a lot of work!).
Really enjoyed your comment, it gave me a lot to think about. And thanks for pointing out how wildly expensive cars are. I'm relocating to Chicago from a smaller car-centric city, and the #1 reason is because I don't feel like I can afford a car any longer. I've been driving a used 🍋 for years and it's costed me so much money, I don't feel like I can afford to take on a car loan for a newer vehicle.
Came here to comment immediately because for me, the roadblock is so straightforward - our HUGE spread out metro area. After many years living here, grad school, jobs, activities, etc - we have tons and tons of friends who theoretically live in our metro area. But in reality, they are all at least 45 minutes away, if we're lucky and there's no traffic. So we end up actually seeing each other maybe a few times a year. It drives me CRAZY.
totally agree. I moved to a small village of 2800 people, and I have unending options for meeting. We have a whole community center that will rent you rooms for free!! Everything is at most 5 minutes away and everyone is always walking around 'downtown.'
I live in Yellow Springs, Ohio-and we're a VERY rare example of a small, progressive, midwestern village. I credit a lot of our existence to Antioch College, and as they've struggled, we are too. Strangely, the other thing that has really held us down financially and kept us diverse is the fact that Dave Chappelle still lives here (his dad was a prof and an important activist). While his opinions are obviously problematic, as a neighbor and acquaintance, he and his wife and kids are friendly and supportive of the schools, arts and social justice movements in our community.
We also have an ordinance that all business has to be non-corporate; we grandfathered in US bank branch and a gas station, but that is IT. Subway just moved out of town. We have a lot of tourism on the weekends, and the funny thing is that the people visiting us have a hard time figuring out why they like it so much-but it's the walkability, human-scaled building, and overall embracing of 'weird' that our community values.
I have a sociology background and it's all very interesting to me-I could go on for days about the sheer joy of the older man who rides a Harley around town with a bubble machine strapped to the back on weekends, or the seniors that hang out outside the local grocery (they bring lawn chairs!) on Tuesdays to have a chill get together.
I love Yellow Springs! I moved to Columbus 5 years ago from the east coast (raised in Baltimore then spent 6 years in NYC) and that fall my sister and I took a day trip to YS with our dogs for a hike and to visit the sunflower fields. The whole day was magic. As soon as we drove into town I felt my entire body relax. It reminds me of our family trips to upstate NY as a kid... my father grew up in Syracuse and went to college in a small town in the finger lakes region and every time we stopped in one of the small towns like Skaneateles, it was euphoric. Only having lived in major metro areas, I’ve been so conditioned to believe that towns and villages are for weekend excursions only, that I have never seriously considered moving to a small town. (Also, many of them have become stupid expensive because wealthy people “discover” them then move there permanently or buy second homes there.) But in retrospect, the popularity of shows like Gilmore Girls that revolve around small-town life are probably a sign that I’m not alone in craving that sense of community, quirkiness and calm that are much harder to come by in cities. I wonder what it would take to make living in places like Yellow Springs a more viable and/or accessible option for people.
I grew up in Huber Heights and my dad had two very close friends who lived in Yellow Springs so I spent a lot of time there. I live outside of Boston now, but I *miss* Yellow Springs SO MUCH. <3
I first came here in the '90s-grew up outside of Cincinnati-and moved here during the pandemic. I have an elementary-aged kiddo and it is IDYLLIC for kids, if a little sheltered. It's an amazing little village in so many ways.
Well this sounds absolutely fabulous! Especially the non-corporate ordinance - damn, what a great idea. I’m contemplating places to move in the future and put down roots and this is definitely getting added to the list! Thanks for sharing! 🙏🏼
helooo!!! waves wildly from a neighboring state. I grew up in YSO in the 70's and 80's. It's my dream to move back but I haven't figured out the income/COL balance. It's changed a lot but it's still a great place.
I wanted to agree! We’ve lived in walkable communities twice post-college and the joy just spontaneously running into beloved friends at the grocery or the post office was huge, and almost always led to more intentional hangouts. We were also able just to sit on chairs outside or pop a blanket out front and more neighbors would join. It revolutionized what we now seek out from neighborhoods.
Yup, this is what I came here to say. I've lived my whole life in the DC metro area, and so I have a huge network but rarely can see everyone. Everyone is 45 mins away with traffic, making weeknight hangs impossible. And this is a problem even for my ethnic/church community, where we all feel like family and truly WANT to see each other. there's just too much sprawl. better transit would make a difference (esp across state lines), as would shorter work hours.
I live in the DC area and this is so real! my friends used to all live in silver spring, but they've scattered to move closer to work and if I meet anyone new at work or a hobby, they could live anywhere from Baltimore to northern VA to Maryland suburbs. It's frustrating how we're all in the same metro area, but too far apart to casually meet up. (not to mention that half of my friends live on the other side of the red line from each other, so public transit to get together takes 4x as long as driving for no reason)
Greater Denver metro area chiming in, this is so true. Add in unpredictable mass transit (including a train that we’ve paid for but hasn’t yet been built…) and it’s just a crapshoot for meeting up with people. Meanwhile, our particular flavor of sprawl has not been conducive to community-building. Some neighborhoods are more tight-knit than others, and I think that has a lot to do with the vibe check (often wealthier people who probably would know each other anyways from social/professional networks, or older folks who are connected through mutual volunteering and sheer length of time of living in the same region together) and the long-existing infrastructure (old micro-Main Street areas that have managed not to be totally razed).
How do we make community easier here? Density. Give me a community coffee shop I can walk to from my house in ten minutes. Give me bikeways to get everywhere else in 20 minutes. Give me affordable housing options so I don’t have to live on the literal opposite side of downtown as my friends. There are efforts toward these things, in fits and spurts, but it is not unified or strategic on the metro-wide scale.
I think about this a lot and love to read about communities that seem to have it figured out. I live in a northern Canadian city that is the second largest in our province by land area but has a fraction of the population of the next largest city (by land area). We sprawl in every direction and we have poor public transport. It's generally agreed that you absolutely must have a car to get by here. And like many cities, we do not have enough housing. I am watching with interest how our city council is grappling with this. They continue to approve new suburbs and developments. Which means, among other things, new roads...which means more money spent on snow removal (a subject about which people here are very passionate). Proposals to build more housing in already populated areas are often met with NIMBYism. There are so many good reasons to build up rather than out, even though we're surrounded by millions of square kms of wilderness, but we seem to be stuck in a 60s/70s era mindset of city planning, and usually only talk about the financial pros and cons. Absent from the conversation here is what I see as the biggest benefit which is the social connection that comes with walkable, liveable neighborhoods and cities. Everyone goes to Europe and exclaims about how great it is, for all the reasons other people have outlined, then come back and wonder why we don't also have a bustling town centre where they can run into their friends and go for a spontaneous glass of vino on the nearest sunny patio. We can have that! But we need our city councils and city planners to step up. And we need to keep talking to them about it and supporting the projects that would densify our neighborhoods. Even if it means losing access to that tract of land that everyone uses as a dog park but that's actually privately owned and zoned for development. We need to talk to the NIMBYs in our lives. And if I have to win people over to my way of thinking by citing the ballooning snow removal budget then so be it.
I totally agree with this one! I have many friends 30+ minutes away and it just feels like too much effort most times to carve out a few hours in our busy schedules to see each other. It's sad because it honestly makes me almost more lonely because they are there but not really there.
Honestly, we moved across the country for that exact reason. We were in a large midwestern city full of family we almost never got to see. We're now in an inland PNW town of 33,000 with 3 colleges and a mountain view. Not perfect, but we spend so much more time together at home, and many errands take 10 minutes to complete including driving there and back. I run into friends by accident almost every time I leave the house. My husband walks to work. Every single day is better.
Walla Walla, WA, and I highly recommend it. I have never had so many satisfying conversations with strangers, nor so many strangers step in to help when I needed it (stuck in snow, etc).
It’s MCOL but salaries are decent overall. Housing is expensive. Like all towns these days, we need more free public Third Places. And…they’re building them. One street downtown got converted to a pedestrian plaza during the pandemic and was made permanent this year.
I have been to Walla Walla several times and liked some parts of it. But it's sooooo far away from anywhere that visiting my family, or having them visit me, would be burdensome -- let alone my current friends.
Hard same. With people's scheduling constraints + massive sprawling metro area it feels next to impossible to get the right people together in person on a regular basis.
Yep. I live in the metro Toronto area. When I was working, I lived just east of the city and took the commuter train (25-40 minute ride, depending on whether it was an express train or all stops) to my job downtown for 25 years. My coworkers were scattered all across the region -- I knew people who commuted from Hamilton in the west, Orangeville in the northwest, Barrie to the north, Oshawa and Bowmanville in the east. That's a huge area. Very difficult to get anyone to stick around too late after work for drinks, and to get together on weekends? Forget it.
The lack of places with COMFY chairs to just sit and hang solo or as a group of 2-6. Restaurants have the seats, but alcohol and noise. Library room chairs aren't comfy, park picnic tables are weather dependent - and not comfy. Coffee shops now cater to the laptop crowd. There used to be a Cafe designed around the "come in and hang" with couches, comfy chairs, etc. and it was the best.
Yes. And in my very large city, we have giant parks with ... a few picnic tables. And often no bathrooms nearby. Having movable seating would be so helpful to have a friends hangout in a park.
Omg public bathrooms! We literally all have to pee and poop, and it is stunning to me, and outrageous, how rare a clean, functional public bathroom is (I live in NYC).
Yes! Our local park has public restrooms but they are usually locked due to the fact that volunteers maintain them and it's not possible to keep them usable and open without full time staffing. It would be amazing if someone was paid to keep them open and usable.
Yes! The overwhleming majority of chairs are built for the average man, who's approximately 5'8'' tall. I'm 5'1'' and have two kids' chairs at home. They're much more comfortable than regular chairs. Outside my place, I'm only comfortable on couches, since they are the only seating options where my feet actually, fully touch the floor without causing me considerable strain. As for standing, I have essentially no muscle tone at rest, so that's extremely uncomfortable too.
or all those places that use stools or chairs with *no backs* on them, especially if they're tall stools where my feet can't touch the ground either -- sorry but my poor coordination, joint pain and I are never coming back.
I wonder how much of this is because of anti homeless people design. I noticed it moving from a place that had a lot of comfy gathering places to a place without one and it seemed like I found a lot of other things that were associated with preventing homeless population access (locks on things like toothpaste and deodorant at stores, locks on all bathrooms, bars on benches to prevent people being able to lay down, etc).
Yes! I felt this acutely as a new parent. My husband and I would trade time off and it made the most sense for the on-duty parent to stay home with the kid.
I struggled so much to just find somewhere to quietly read a book for an hour! I would happily buy a beverage but even the coffee shop chairs are hard and uncomfortable!
I think the biggest roadblock for several groups I'm involved in is a lack of personal accountability to a group. It might have to do with an urban mindset (I live in the NYC metro area and have thought a good bit about this) where everyone is consciously or subconsciously holding out in case "something better" comes along, but that means that no one ever fully commits to "being there in person" or "taking charge of something that needs to be done." We are all incredibly protective of our time, so if it's going to take an hour to get to, say, a picnic in the park (because for at least half the people, no matter where the picnic is held, it's going to take an hour), we might tentatively commit and then wait to see if we schedule something better the night before or the day of, which would make us "unfortunately unable to make it."
This is such a big part of my experience trying to connect with people--and I am on both sides of the equation here! I wonder how much of the protectiveness of our time is related to there simply being too many demands on our time for largely structural reasons (you can tell me how this relates to the "urban mindset" you refer to which I suspect I don't have).
I was in the middle of writing about this "urban mindset" phenomenon and the page kicked me out :( The long and short of it is that there's so much on offer that everyone wants the best of everything . . . and it's available! IF you spend enough money, wait long enough, pay close enough attention, try hard enough, etc. (Contrast this with remote suburbia where, for instance, there might be just a handful of dining options available, so the only real decision is whether to eat in or out, and not "which place will be most worth my time/money? how do I decide? what if someone tells me about somewhere better between now and when I sit down?")
I think this is linked to the impulse to optimize & curate every aspect of our lives. Can't just buy a backpack, must buy the WorldsMostVersatile Backpack. Can't just make your kid a birthday cake, must make a confection sculpted into the share of their favorite cartoon. Can't just snap a photo, gotta pose-filter-post.
My husband and I like to reminisce about sub-optimal activities that were fun. Last week we went to a local theater performance, and it was pretty bad. We still laughed at the jokes, we still hummed along with the familiar songs. Our resort vacation hotel room overlooked an active construction site - we watched the earthworks happen while we sipped our coffee on the balcony each morning. Still recall it as one of the highlights of the trip. It was fun because we were together and chose to be entertained instead of annoyed.
100% agreed. It's so hard to make the most of our current situation/possession/etc. if we're always being made aware of all the other "better" alternatives. (And yet I still haven't jumped off the precipice of deleting Instagram...because "connection!")
I find myself trying to stay involved-yet-not-in-charge of groups after severe burnout in college and early career volunteering for everything, only to find myself in charge soon after. In hindsight I did not know how to manage my time or say no firmly enough at the time and should have picked one or two... but now I have a toddler and have to work 40+ hours per week as the only income in my family. So yeah I feel guilty about not taking accountability for improving or or organizing group activities but just have such a bad reaction because of all the times I've agreed to take on extra organization work for "just one time" or "just help out" and then end up getting stuck organizing every church potluck sign up or reaching out to dozens of potential community sponsors when I'm not even getting enough sleep. Keeping the email lists or website maintained, etc. I know there's probably a lot more to unpack here and also a facet of "not enough time after everyday demands of life" which has been touched on in other comments. But TLDR I feel guilty for this lack of commitment to my own community orgs but also that my reluctance has been proven somehow justified...
I FULLY understand. It's always the people who are reliable and will get things done who get suckered into "leading" and "organizing" for everyone else. Hold those self-care boundaries!
I feel this. I'm a great planner and I enjoy it, but it can become stressful and way too much quickly. I have a tendency to take on too much and I have to really watch out for that now and adjust expectations for what I can take on - a work in progress. I realized when covid hit I needed to slow down. I haven't exactly done that, but I'm learning. I've had to move in the direction of cutting things out and keeping things more simple. I recently stopped volunteering altogether because I felt so overbooked with everything else I have going on. I'm working on dealing with taming unnecessary guilt I have surrounding everything I'm not doing. My partner tells me I should be more selfish...and not in a bad way, like put myself first more.
Yes, I was thinking about this. I also feel like it has something to do with technology (not hating on technology here, it enables us to do lots of great things!), but I feel like it's so much easier to change your response from "going" to "not going" with the click of a button or send a text last minute that says "sorry can't make it!" Maybe something to do with the lack of face-to-face interaction? But I can't remember the last time I received a physical invitation to something and then had the audacity to flake out at the last minute.
Agreed. My mother blames cell phones. In the past, when you made a plan, you had to honor it (and show up on time!) because there was essentially no way to contact the other person once everyone was on their way.
So true! I was also thinking about this yesterday as I was in a massive group text about joining a casual volleyball team. It was absolute chaos for me with so many unknown numbers, and I was thinking, "How would this have been organized 20 years ago?"
We hosted a party this summer that involved inviting a bunch of our neighbors to our house. We didn't have most people's phone numbers or email addresses, so we decided to use plain old paper invitations stuffed into mailboxes. It was a delight. So many people came, everyone thanked us for hosting it, people loved the invitations--I love a Paperless Post invite as much as the next girl, but it was a lot of fun to distribute real invitations. I might start doing it more often!
Ah that is lovely! I totally agree, evites, have their role, and I'm grateful for them, especially when I need to get something out quickly because I've procrastinated, but I can just imagine the novelty of opening one's mailbox to an actual real live invitation!! And what a great way to build community.
Thank you for putting this into words! I find this type of planning incredibly stressful (and so prevalent among my community.) You might be optimizing your day and saving yourself an hour in transit, but how many hours are you spending on text threads renegotiating The Plan?
It's not a small change, by any means, but dying malls are such perfect spaces to revitalize, and I don't even know where to start. They've (at least around me) got a bus stop, mine generally have a kid area, food, everything you need when you can't be outside.
It’s so true - and I have seen and read about a few malls making this change! The one near where I live, for example, has a huge and thriving Maker’s Space.
I was at one of the dying malls the other day, and I was surprised to discover that one space had been rented out to the local model train enthusiasts, another to a tutoring group (whether free or not, I do not know), etc. It really delighted me, even if the rest of the building felt so depressing.
I keep hoping our local mall, which has been slowly dying for decades, would convert to senior housing. With significant winters here, it's so important that older folks especially have safe, indoor spaces to socialize and perambulate all year round.
I think it's really hard to do that because of the lack of windows and of plumbing. Like, turn it into a kind of community center? Possible. Turn it into housing? You'd essentially have to raze the building and start again.
Actually, there's a developer in Providence who converted a 200-year old indoor mall to micro-apartments while preserving the common space. It's totally possible:
This development is amazing and it would be so great to have more of these.
But when you watch the video, they say that it only works because the mall is very old and so uses a pre-1980's design. They say this would not be feasible with most modern malls (which is the vast majority of dying malls). The typical shop here is much smaller, plus there are windows around the building, and a huge central skylight that gets sunlight into all of the units. Just think of the 150,000 sq ft 2-story Macy's in most malls - it would fit hundreds of these apartment units but they would all have to be windowless with insufficient plumbing. Plus, in most cities, the zoning code makes it illegal to rent out micro-apartments of this size anyway.
Mall-to-apartment conversion is possible in some cases but there are tons of difficulties that often make it impossible.
When I was in high school in small-ish town Idaho, our mall was dying and our school district rented cheap space for the robotics team! It was a really cool place, we could build the robot and community members could come watch and ask questions, or see demos, build their own free little art projects with the scrap pieces. I wish they would have rented more of the spaces for other clubs as well. We got lots of genuinely surprised comments from older community members who came to the mall get their steps in the winter about how they never saw teenagers doing anything "productive" with their lives in public spaces anymore so assumed we were all lazy delinquents ):
And churches!! Sooo many churches in every city and town I’ve ever lived in, and they all have incredibly large and mostly unused spaces. Some have seating areas, libraries, kitchens, places to dine, sleeping quarters, etc that are sitting empty 95%+ of the time.
Our citizens have become less religious over time, and therefore this space originally built for community rests empty. I’d love to reclaim it! (Maybe without the God emphasis and other factors that drove people away from religion in the first place.)
Yes!! I live in a city with a hot climate with a few dying malls and cannot believe we can't figure out a way to use those giant air-conditioned areas.
we have several dying malls (and one thriving indoor one surrounded by several outdoor shopping centers) in my city, the one i worked at had a barnes and noble and a belk but no other stores. the rest were being used as office spaces and for things like table tennis and karate tournaments, though now it's being torn down for a mixed use development.
For me, the biggest roadblock is around covid safety/indoor air quality. I live in Boston, and during the fall and winter the hardest thing is navigating covid safety when most fun community activities are indoors. It took me a painfully long time to recover from my last covid infection a year ago, and I now have long-term health issues that will get worse if/when I am infected again.
Especially this year, it's been somewhat devastating to watch as places that had been accessible from a covid pov become less so. My community choir, which was mask-mandatory until this fall, is one of the places that I'm mourning the most, and I question the decision to go mask optional when many of our members are older adults.
So it brings me a lot of joy to be in spaces where covid community care is still being practiced, by way of masks, hepa filters, open windows, etc. Shoutout in particular to my local fiber arts store which has continued to make their store an incredibly safe community place for people like me who still need to be careful.
Yes! The small town where I live had started doing some not-kid-focused outdoor events after lockdown lifted, where we could socialize relatively safely, but they have decided to stop all of those and go back to indoor-no-mask-protocols for those types of events. It's really disappointing.
Molly, I also lost my community chorus this fall when they stopped requiring masks. I’m sorry you’re experiencing this too. It really sucks to lose something that brought joy and community.
ugh I'm so sorry!! it is such a bummer! and to make it worse, in the email they shared that they're aware that singing is relatively ~dangerous~ covid-wise, but not to worry, "vaccination reduces the risk of serious disease and hospitalization to nearly zero"... which at this point is just not true! so so hard.
I agree!! Also, I'm sorry for the loss of access to your choir. I used to do that ages ago and loved it. My sport (fencing) is no longer accessible for the same reasons. It's the social connections I miss the most because I felt at home in the club and like I'd found my people.
To expand on this, since I responded quickly before having to jump on a work call:
I live in DC, where we have a pretty good metro and bus system. But there are so many places they don't go, or don't go efficiently! And Ubers and Lyfts have gotten real expensive. I am about to move from living right above a metro station and within one block of numerous bus lines, to living five blocks from two bus lines, only one of which goes to a useful location for me, and a 25 minute walk to a metro station, and I am thinking a lot about how much more I'm going to have to drive or pay for Ubers/Lyfts. If my new place - which is in a very popular and populated part of town! - was closer to more public transit, it would make it so much more convenient to get together with friends, I'd be better able to go to local businesses vs ordering things online to be delivered to me, and I'd be able to take advantage of more areas of this really robust city vs being more limited to whatever's along the green line + 64 bus.
I also consider the lack of robust public transit as being a barrier to community in that it means so many more cars on the road that pose dangers to kids, make it harder for cyclists to get around, block bus lanes, etc. Cars and parking are also the source of so much conflict in community discourse around here, so greater investment in and usage of public transit could mean a more cohesive community that doesn't fight with each other about quite so much.
I said this in another comment, but it's so frustrating how dc's public transit is focused on getting people from suburbs into DC to work and literally nothing else. transit to work is important! but so is being able to socialize with people who live in other suburbs while you're not working. I'll never get over the moment I realized as a teenager that the 25min drive from Takoma Park to my doctor's office in Bethesda would be a 90 minute train ride because of how the red line is laid out.
Every time I visit a European city, I wonder why it seems to have a more relaxed attitude than any place in the US, especially when it comes to kids and families existing in the public sphere. And yes, I don’t think it can be boiled down to one cause and I’m sure a lot of comes from better social safety nets and actually caring for children, but the presence of tons of public space - that people can use freely without being accused of loitering - always makes me jealous. The number of times I’ve seen preteens joyfully playing soccer in a public square at night breaks my heart for what US kids could have! Why can’t we build things in hopes that something great will come out of it (community, socializing, exercise) instead of defaulting to squashing a common good in fear of “the worst” outcome?
I guess my blocker is people lacking imagination and thinking change isn’t possible when our current reality is the outcome of other people’s (or corporations) imaginations (and personal interests).
I was on a tour of libraries in Denmark when I was in library school, and we visited this beautiful space that had used to be an old shipyard and was turned into a modern glassy library -- it was gorgeous and did such a great job of incorporating the history of the building and the community into the design.
The children's area was fully on-theme with shippy-things for kids to explore, a giant bear named Bamse Hansen who used to work in the shipyard but now lived in the library -- it was amazing. The support columns for the buildings had been turned into these like, stacks of crates, like you would find on a dock or shipyard. And when I asked how they stopped kids from climbing on them and what happened when they fell, the sweet Danish librarian paused, thought, and said, "...our parents are not so litigious as yours are," and I think about that ALL. THE. TIME. There's so much cool stuff I want to do that I'm so afraid of doing because other people are afraid of the worst. For instance, the main branch of the DC Public Library installed a slide from the second floor children's room to the first floor and me and all of the other librarians (I no longer work there) were terrified and apprehensive because someone (a child too small) was going to get hurt on it and then someone (us) was going to be yelled at even thought someone else (the parent or nanny) had been the one to actually put them on the slide.
This is all to say -- creating cool spaces and community bonds takes risk, but it's terrifying to be the face of the risk because what if what if -- and then your whole job becomes What Iffing the risks instead of doing cool things.
was this dokk in arhuaus? their library is AMAZING. they also have social services in the building too! and a lovely bell that rings every time a baby is born in the nearby hospital.
There's a park right by my house with large soccer fields that are empty 90% of the time, but they only allow random people to use them for one evening a week. The rest of the time they are "reserved" for the civic kids' league. It pisses me off so much because the kids use them for about three or four hours perhaps two times a week.
Lmao I also have a dislike of golf courses (the space! All the watering! Fun/sad fact: when you drive by a golf course during the summer you’ll see the temp go down by a few degrees because that’s how heavily they’re watered!!) but mostly because I have (perhaps an irrational) dislike of golf. I find it synonymous with the old boys club, leaving your partner and kids at home all weekend, just Stereotypical Whack WASP Man Stuff (TM) that I grew up around.
Also apparently golf is becoming less popular and it makes me so, so happy. 🤗
A big one is the challenge of finding each other. On the internet, it's easy to find people who have similar interests or perspectives as you. But in real life...how do you find someone who likes the same genre of books or who wants to talk about philosophy or whatever? I would love to hang out with more ace people, but it's almost impossible to find them, not only because I live in a very conservative and religious area, but also because most people don't tell other people they're ace. It just doesn't come up.
Let's say I want to start a book club to read scifi novels written by women. (I want to do this.) The public library will help me, provide the space, even include it on the library newsletter, but there's a huge barrier to finding other people who would want to read those books. Some of them might see the library newsletter or a sign hung up in the physical library. But many simply will not.
I want a book club! But I don't want any of the book clubs that already exist. My tastes are niche, I guess.
So I talk to my friends online about whatever book I read lately instead, and that is a good thing, but not as good as if I also had the option of doing it with people in real life.
As a librarian who has started (and failed to start) many new programs -- my trite advice is to not give up. There is surely a library staff member who shares some of your tastes and would be thrilled to take an hour off of desk time to help facilitate. And after that, it just takes time and patience to grow things. There will be a few events where people don't see the marketing or don't have time and it sucks (nothing NOTHING is worse than storytiming to ONE kid -- it's a lot of eye contact) but you show up next time and the next and surely, sometime at some point, someone else will come, too and THAT will be awkward (again, probably a lot of eye contact) but it will grow. Things that don't require people to put some skin in the game -- free things -- are so easy for people to blow off, so you just have to ride it out until the skin becomes fun and friends. Good luck!!
Really want to up this. Always...always, someone is *thinking* about going to that thing you are doing, but is a little nervous or the time didn't work out. Consistency is key...there is always a silent audience, thinking about joining you.
Re: bookclubs, I was successful using Meetup years ago, not sure if it is useful anymore, but I just started a feminist bookclub by myself and folks just showed up randomly. Benefit of being in a liberal city though.
I want to piggyback on what Christina said about her library experience. I work in public libraries and my experience starting new programs is very similar to hers. And I have the same questions as you do about meeting people in person and starting groups.
I agree with Christina about having a consistent time and location for the group meeting, and needing lots of time (several months in some cases) for the group to take off. I've had some success advertising with flyers in local coffee shops (that I know are homes to communities that may be interested in programs I'm offering at my library), posting the event on MeetUp, posting on online community calendars, and of course posting flyers in the library and on the library's online calendar. They key is it spread the word in multiple places. I'm sure there are more spaces to share the event.
I've found groups this way - flyers in local coffee shops, friends reposting them on Instagram stories, and online community calendars - but it can be hard to overcome the shyness of meeting new people in person as opposed to discussing things online, where the barrier to entry feels more accessible (for me at least).
I second the focus on commitment. I wanted a zine club in my smallish city so I decided to team up with a librarian and make it happen. It's tiring that I don't get help making flyers and posting them or keeping up with the social media every.single.month, but I made the commitment to see this through as a personal decision, no matter what. And attendance has had its ups and downs, but I truly believe it's doing good and attracting awesome people. So, if you really want it and commit to making the effort no matter what, you CAN make it happen. It's truly about commitment and consistency.
I feel this! I encouraged my husband to look for a book club (scifi) recently, but he couldn't find one in our area that was still active that interested him. Perhaps he is a bit too niche also? He's recently been reading books that have both the Hugo and Nebula awards.
I relate to your whole comment but as a fellow ace want to add to that specifically. I'd like to hang out with other ace people too, but, like, being ace in itself isn't really much to talk about -- at least not without getting very personal, which you're probably not gonna do with strangers. Occasionally an ace (online) friend and I share memes or random observations, but it's not exactly something you can build an entire friendship around. I live in a city and my local LGBTQ+ org has an ace meetup but I've never gone, because, like, what would we talk about?
This is really challenging for me, too! I live in a fairly small town, but there's a university here, and I am SURE there are others who share some of my niche interests, but HOW to connect?
Not a small change, but for my diseased ass, and now the millions with sister-disease long covid, not being so f'n sick.
On all days, I am in pain, exhausted, and feel like I have food poisoning and the flu. Many days, I get myself fed and go to the bathroom—period. On a good day, I can add briefly getting out of the house, and do 90m of work or attend a telehealth appointment. On a great day, I can add a shower. On a stratospherically rare day, I can add in a hang, but often at huge cost.
The last time I hung out with my galpals I was crashed for a full 8 days—no ability to work, leave the house, and only got one or two showers in while in serious pain and duress.
For people like me, online community and Facebook becomes a lifeline—no one needs us to shower, leave our houses; no one is giving us COVID through the wifi.
We need research, awareness, treatments and dare I hope, cures.
Thank you for sharing these realities. I know it takes precious energy just to add it to this discussion!
It’s really easy to be down on online community when there’s a chance in hell of having anything else … but for a lot of us, it’s just not possible and you’re so right that it’s a lifeline.
I can relate. I have chronic migraine with constant sensory sensitivities. Even if I’m feeling well enough to leave my house, the public spaces that are available are inaccessible to me due to fluorescent lights, loud music, proximity to a busy street, and/or big crowds. And those are the barriers BEFORE factoring covid into it. I can’t get sicker. Chronic migraine made my life small and then covid came and made it even smaller.
My community is on facebook and twitter but those platforms suck. The loss of twitter as a public space right after losing IRL public spaces due to covid risk has been devastating.
*bathrooms in public spaces! Our city has a ton of parks and public spaces but many have no bathrooms or bathrooms with extremely limited hours. I can't enjoy a day at the park if there's no restroom.
*spaces for families. So many spaces are designed for adults or kids. Why can't a space be both?! A few friends are actually starting a business to make adult friendly spaces more accessible to children and I'm excited to see what they build.
*reliable public transit. It's been a disaster here since the pandemic. I'd love to drive less but when the alternative is waiting 20 mins for a bus that never comes, I'll stick with my car.
*multi-purpose spaces: you can't eat in a library, there's no table in the park, no bathrooms in the square...we need to rethink and rebuild so that spaces can serve more than one purpose.
I second the bathrooms in public spaces! So often it gets talked about as an issue for the unsheltered population which, yes is very true. But also folks with kids, folks with disabilities, folks like me who just have small bladders and want to be able to use a public restroom without having to either sneak into a Starbucks or buy something! Especially during Covid, this was a huge problem. I think our communities would be better functioning if everyone had access to free, or very low cost like in Europe where it's a euro, to use a clean bathroom while out and about.
I appreciate the note about multi purpose spaces. Yes. Yes. Let there be a cafeteria in the library. A table and community poster/announcements display in the park. Etc
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.
Oh my god my number one is to replace Facebook. There are so many communities that exist only on Facebook and it seems to be the only way people have of organizing around neighborhood stuff beyond the people you already know IRL. I hate it so much. The private platform problem wouldn’t be so bad if there were real alternatives but it’s just the one. A public or at least nonprofit alternative would be better, I think? At least for this specific use case. I don’t know. It’s a hard problem.
I miss when Craigslist was king. It was truly a community space, for good, ill, and weird. But your point is very good--what's the digital equivalent to a (literal) community board, where announcements can be posted?
even for buying and selling, facebook has almost completely replaced craigslist in my experience. It's one of the few reasons I keep my facebook account active! sometimes you need some secondhand furniture!
I feel like Nextdoor was intended to do this but... yeah, not so much
nextdoor had so much potential but its honestly more unhealthy that facebook. just vile stuff and people being terrible neighbors.
I deactivated my next door after about a year- very toxic. My Facebook I leave with only family showing in the main feed, and visit occasionally and for makertplace.
a lot of NIMBYS and just pessimistic people. it sucks :(
Facebook has also mostly replaced in-person yard sales, in my experience (small town Maine). Why wander in the hope of finding something when you can locate it on the Marketplace?
Not so here in Ann Arbor. We advertise our sales on Craigslist or with old-school cardboard signs. FB Marketplace is seen as untrustworthy and I would never sell or buy from it. I do buy from Etsy and less often from EBay.
Getting rid of infinite scroll and moving to a paid platform (it needn’t be expensive) without targeted ads would absolutely reform social media.
Everything went downhill after myspace...I stopped using boomerbook, instagram, etc and I'm in a better place. Reddit can be cool here and there just not all the time bc it's a whole lotta complaining. Ps - craigslist personals getting pulled was a loss to local online communities everywhere
Yes! I pay for a Patreon where the ONLY way to take part in discussions is via Facebook groups. I don't use Facebook (Cambridge Analytica and other reasons) and I can't even log in anymore anyway. But the number of Patreons and classes, etc, that still use Facebook groups as their only platform is criminal. I don't know why there hasn't been a substitute—maybe it's too hard to monetize? But I'd pay $5/month or something to not use Facebook!
Ugh yes! The number of times I've paid for classes, podcasts etc only to be told what I'm paying for (groups & conversation related to the thing) is only available on Facebook is so frustrating. I always try to reply very kindly and say that I'm not on Facebook and I'd appreciate another option in the future. Mighty Networks isn't bad for closed groups, but I get why people default to facebook.
I have been asking what platform any group or discussions are held on before signing up. Though I’m on Facebook nominally, I do NOT want to be on there extensively or in any needed fashion, and will decide against a fb platformed group discussion.
I agree - I refuse to use Facebook (since 2016) as it is bad for America and I really side-eye organizations that rely on it. But it is everyone!
ugh, our "unofficial" neighborhood group is on facebook and I hate it. I really just want an email listserv and call it a day.
God, how I miss old school listservs!
Right?! Or go back to Google Groups, except not sucky?
my block has a Google Groups list and wow it really does suck to use doesn't it
My local neighborhood facebook group can get really combative and angry and I forget that the entire neighborhood is not in that group. Have been surprised several times now by reading incredibly vitriolic discussions over big issues and then going for a walk, expecting the neighborhood to feel tense and angry and it just doesn't? Our neighbors have nice chats with us and everything is...fine.
I feel like this is the problem with anything neighborhood-related--people only comment when they have something to complain about. My mom spends too much time on Next Door or whatever it is, and she thinks her neighborhood is SO much worse than it actually is. It's criminal.
Vermont has a home-grown, non-profit alternative to Nextdoor called Front Porch Forum, and it's amazing. We use it for...building community! and I forget not everyone has it. A key feature is it has human moderators.
Coming to say just this! Front Porch Forum is so helpful in that you only get one or two emails a day, which is enough to keep you informed but not the kind of thing you can get sucked into or waste time on.
And to make it worse, add a dash of Ring doorbell surveillance state paranoia.
Yes! I deleted my Facebook account years ago... and just made a new one because as a new mom I 1) want to buy used baby gear and 2) everyone kept telling me to “join a moms group” and I as far as I can tell they only exist on Facebook. They didn’t accept my request though as my Facebook account is just a picture of my cat and I have no friends on the account. Gah. Guess I’ll just lurk in the coffee shop asking everyone with a baby “how old is your baby?”
Yep- I find this especially challenging in groups with multigenerational membership.
I feel the same way about discord. It just doesn’t make intuitive sense to me. Or any sense! I prefer Mighty Networks (still private). This is a great idea.
and nextdoor is a cesspool, too! there's gotta be something better.
THIS! I wish I could get rid of Facebook, but I really need access to the groups I'm in. Some are neighborhood groups, some are mom groups, or resale/buy nothing groups, some are writer groups. Seems like Facebook is the only way I can access these. It's just become the default.
FB is something I have (and use for work) specifically because people still really rely on it for community, but it has gotten downright unpleasant in some recent time. Agreed. It is a huge problem.
YES.
I am clinging to my fb account because it lets me create invites and events so easily. I don’t want to text or email all of these people all the time!
Our open water swim group uses GroupMe. The hiking, biking, choir, and some others use email lists. But the vegans are stuck on Facebook.
I find that every group starts to use their own app. So at any time I have 10 text threads, a few facebook messages, 4-6 messaging apps, and unique passwords and logins for each. It somehow is not more simple and I end up opting out of connecting due to overwhelm.
Right. There's also one on google groups, another on a gmail group that won't work one phone...
Agree with this! There are some hobbies and interests I have that I would love to be able to have a community for, and I know they exist, but they're all on Facebook! Things like substack are close but not quite the same
More work flexibility would be key for me. In the early days of the pandemic, it felt like there was a shift, where my company treated us like whole humans again because lives were literally on the line (I recognize this was just my company and I was very privileged to experience that). I was able to duck out at 4 to meet friends for an early happy hour, or I could start late after meeting someone for a cup of coffee. My job has reverted back to butts in seats, and that lack of flexibility has really dampened my attempts to meet with my community.
I know I always blame capitalism….but capitalism. At least how we know it now.
this. I'm just so fucking tired all the time & barely have time to cook actual food, workout, keep the house clean, keep up on medical care, and maintain one (1) hobby. And I don't have kids! I don't know how people with kids, especially, have any time to devote to gathering and fostering community.
edited to suggest something concrete: a former job in higher ed gave us Friday afternoons off during the summer & it was amazing what those extra 4 hours of personal time did for my mental health & ability generally keep my life together. Wish I had that kind of time and/or flexibility now.
FOUR DAY WORK WEEK
FOUR DAY WORK WEEK
YES
I work a 4 day week and it is amazing -- I actually have energy sometimes, I don't have to do sad Sunday evening laundry, it's great. Unfortunately, not sustainable -- my rent was raised, of course, so now it's more than 50% of my monthly take-home pay, and I don't see how I can continue after this year, which is really just...to finally find a job I don't hate with people who respect me but capitalism won't allow it. I dunno, I'm exhausted thinking about it. If anyone knows where I can dig up like $10,000/year so I don't die, that would be cool...*sigh*
Same. Moved in with my parents a year ago after I lost my job and couldn't pay the rent. Got a new job that paid almost twice as much, but rent is still going up so I still haven't moved out. It's ridiculous.
My rent is also more than 50% of my take-home pay. It SUCKS.
So much! Like, if the arbitrary random lottery was open, I absolutely qualify to apply for Section 8 housing vouchers. It's so depressing because this is the first time that a job doesn't suck all of my life force, I actually like it, and it's a great environment, flexible, the health coverage is great for my chronic illness self, but...the option seems to be wish you were dead every day because of work, or actually die because you can't afford to live. I hate it here.
I pray that we will see a widespread adoption of the four day work week in our lifetimes. I'm not optimistic - but it is my most preciously held dream.
I just went from a four to five day work week this month (because I was only being paid at 80% FTE and I have to pay for two kids in childcare now)... it sucks so much. FOUR DAY WORK WEEK! (with full time pay & benefits! and also while I'm here, SUBIDIZED CHILDCARE!!!)
Seriously tho. It feels like finding balance is a myth in this system. Child-free also, and I don't know how parents do it. Well sadly, the parents I know are basically drowning.
agreed. I don't know what would make it easier to do things than to not work?
all of the things you listed above are already on my plate, plus kid activities on the weekend ... my best friend has two(ish) jobs now, but they're both flexible, so i'm admittedly a little jealous to see how she's able to go to a pottery class, go for a hike, etc. around the work she does.
related: the comments on this Ask A Manager post from yesterday are extremely relevant to our discussion https://www.askamanager.org/2023/09/im-25-and-dont-want-a-full-time-job.html#comments
My old job also did half-day Fridays during the summer, and it truly was a game changer. It seemed to deprogram people from scheduling meetings and expecting deliverables even on non-summer Friday afternoons, so folks could still manage to slip out early.
i worked a 10/4 schedule for a summer during my time working at a university and it was...just life changing. and now we dont even have to do 10, why not just 8/4 and call it a day!
Certainly my experience after some 20 years of working like my life depended on it, I burned out in 2017 and resigned my full time job for a part time role. Poorer but happier, having more time is a game changer.
I agree with that! My first response to the question about small changes would be 1) scheduling/work hours. I work in an elementary & middle school, and I struggle to see why we are bound and determined to keep kids in school and adults at work 40+ hours a week. We already know that most people are not spending that entire time productively working, and kids are definitely not spending that entire time engaged in learning. The bulk of those 40 hours is busy work and time-killing. Also, and this is the case for most people, I have a 30-minute commute both ways, which sometimes turns into a longer one because the population of my city has exploded but our infrastructure has not kept up with the demand -- traffic and car accidents are commonplace and cause huge slowdowns. So that's a whole other thing we need to change to facilitate getting together-- 2) poor infrastructure & transportation options. Oftentimes I don't visit friends because I don't want to muster the stamina to sit through the traffic to get five miles across town for a hangout, and sometimes the timing just doesn't work. It's tough to find time for friends after work, since everybody also has to cook dinner, exercise, do dishes, get groceries, etc. at some point during the day. Even if I can clear two hours to meet up with friends, if I know that half that time will be spent just in the car, that's a huge deterrent. And lastly, 3) eating out seems like a good solution for problems 1 & 2. Save time on cooking and cleanup, meet in the middle instead of driving to each other's homes... But the steeply rising cost of food, especially at restaurants, is prohibitive for me and my friends, who are all lower middle class and struggling to afford just rent and groceries. If any one of these 3 problems were resolved, it would go a long way toward making "real life" friendship (as opposed to just sending each other TikToks and texting/calling) feasible.
Infrastructure is so key. Public transit specifically creates less friction and is cheaper.
💯
Same. And it wasn't just the flexibility (though I'm not discounting that), but being seen as a human with needs that mattered. There was such a vibe shift, and it was so disheartening to watch is slip away.
This. You hit the nail on the head. Companies saw our humanity, if that makes sense. We all agreed that there were more important things than work. Then…that went away.
This. With the climate crisis, it makes no sense to RTO. Think of all the carbon we are emitting on our daily commutes! I get that commercial real estate was affected but why not turn empty offices into housing since we have a housing crisis as well? I mean the solution to many of our problems is right in front of us.
In Feb 2020, I was gearing up to speak with my boss about this. I was tired of driving an hour 1 way, just to park in a huge structure full of cars, to sit in meetings on a computer with people all over the country. My (former) company went back to the office, so downtown Louisville wasn't completely abandoned, but thankfully I'm in a fully remote position now.
Also I realize my comment wasn’t clear - I wasn’t ducking out to meet friends early in the pandemic! I just meant that early pandemic flexibility years later afforded me the opportunity to see friends in a way I wasn’t used to, but now my work has decided to revert back to rigid structure which hinders it again.
Even if you were ducking out early to meet friends, I fail to see the harm in it. Your workplace clearly didn't come crashing to the ground because you were offline a few hours earlier than usual. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
As a chronically ill and disabled person with Long COVID and at high risk of additional COVID harms, i and many others have the roadblock of airborne pathogens in a culture where masking has been discarded, indoor ventilation is unreliable and weather can impede outdoor plans. I am grateful for other COVID cautious people who make efforts to be able to share space or host online gatherings but it’s a very intense and sad problem.
This is mine too. I am not willing to put my health at risk, and other people's health at risk. Anyone who takes COVID seriously is missing in-person community A LOT A LOT, but besides hooking up with other COVID cautious people, it's a very communityless way to exist. The online COVID-conscious folks have done their best, but one of the best places for talking about this stuff is a cesspool (RIP Twitter) and yeah, anyway.
My barrier to more community is that the entire world is now pretending COVID isn't still a pandemic and isn't dangerous.
I was coming here to say just this. The fact that almost all of society--including my dear friends and family--have "moved on" into this denial of the ongoing risks of the pandemic for ALL OF US, not to mention those of us who are immunocompromised.
I was deeply influenced in my early twenties by examples of beautiful kind of radical community: shared meals, shared life, hanging out with my friends' kids, even shared cars (facilitated by proximity in a northern Chicago neighbourhood). I learned how amazing it is to have a huge pot of soup on the stove and a houseful of random people chatting about life and kids running around. For years, I hosted and facilitated these communities: truly scrappy and truly glorious community, a little chaotic, a little random, and just deeply nourishing.
But then the pandemic came, AND I got sicker with my chronic diseases and started immunpsuppressing medication. I would love nothing more than to return to those earlier practices of open-door hospitality: I long for it like an ache in my already-achy body. But because very few others are trying to avoid COVID, the risk is too high for me. I live in a cold climate, too, so about half the year disallows easy outdoor gathering.
(I also have a lot of the barriers for my life stage: full-time job, busy kids, spread-out friends, etc. So extra effort on top of the fatigue that results feels like A LOT.)
Concrete things that would help:
1. Wide-scale, community-level efforts to clean indoor public air, the way we clean municipal water supplies
2. More efforts to clean indoor private air (HEPA filters, etc.)
3. Re-normalize masking (with n95-type masks, which are evidence-based best practice) in public spaces (why not wear one in the grocery store? in all healthcare settings? what is the actual cost here?) [Also: for some kinds of small events/gatherings, organizers could privately poll folks and ask if anyone would prefer masking--one person preferring it would lead to a requirement for all to wear it. This would mean centering the most vulnerable instead of implicitly pressuring them to opt out.]
4. Also normalize a culture of transparency: normalize care that imagines what it's like to be extra vulnerable more generally, rather than just assuming "everyone" who deserves to participate should be fine with pre-pandemic norms.
I'm keen to hear what other folks would add, because this is just a start.
I commented before I saw yours, but I love the idea of cleaning indoor air just like we do with water. Universal municipal wastewater testing for covid (and other viruses?) that is published for the public in a user-friendly format would be fabulous as well. I know that where I am in Oregon, some indoor air quality control is mandated by OSHA for workplaces because of annual wildfire smoke, but the requirements are still very minimal
I’m writing a thing now about the EPA’s Clean Air in Buildings Challenge. It is not enough because what made water supplies safe was legislation and regulation and lots of standards. We could do this for indoor air—building codes are the tool. The political will for this seems to be negligible, but write and call your representatives to ask for more!
Absolutely this. And a barrier that seems solvable in theory but remains really challenging for me is the protocols. Could we come up with an agreed-upon-by-everyone-so-it's-not-so-awkward way of sharing information about recent exposure possibilities, test results, and so forth? Even though I've practiced what feels like A LOT, it is still really touchy sometimes to ask people, have you been around a lot of people unmasked recently? Are you wearing an N95 or just a loose mask? Did you get a pharmacy test or just a (less reliable) home test? I don't *want* people to feel like I'm judging them in these interactions (and for me, if I'm asking, it's because I care about you and want to see you! I'm not interested in picking a fight!), but some people really do feel judged and it seems like ANY question about these protocols feels to them like an attack. I feel like the cost of all this stuff also plays in - it's expensive to care for ourselves and each other in this current situation! And talking about money stuff is (for me at least) awkward with all but my closest contacts. It just feels like, with the push for "back to normal" yet knowing that COVID remains a serious danger for a not-insignificant number of people, we ought to be able to figure out a way of handling these protocols that becomes routine for everyone. This stuff is so hard.
I also wish people felt more comfortable saying, "I would really appreciate if you wore a mask," because I am 10000% willing to wear one at any time to make anyone comfortable. But I also know that some anti-maskers are so combative and defensive and horrible that people don't feel safe making this simple request.
I mean this kindly, but every single person who is wearing a mask in public wants you to wear a mask but is afraid to ask. So rather than waiting for people to risk their safety to ask, you could follow a general rule of “see a mask, put on a mask.”
It would honestly go such a long way to making the world safe for me to inhabit if people did that.
I reread my comment and it wasn't clear--I didn't mean a face-to-face confrontation (as I said, I just whip out a mask and put it on when I see anyone with one). I was thinking more along the lines of, "This event is scheduled. Any person can contact the event planner and request that everyone wear masks and the planner will tell everyone to wear masks."
But I know that even that is not a safe thing to request and many planners will not support it.
This is something that my very wonderful local fiber / craft store does very well -- they have mandatory masking on Mondays, all staff wear masks, masks are mandatory for classes. The other day I popped in and noticed they were asking everyone to mask, because someone had called ahead and requested it. love it!
This is such a good idea!
Ah, I see. I appreciate that you ask when you see a mask! <3
Honestly, if people would offer that and abide by it, it would be amazing.
I have friends who are immunocompromised and we've talked about these things, so if I didn't pull on a mask, I would feel SO guilty. It's the good kind of peer pressure.
I agree! Mostly in one-on-one situations. I'm still masking, though not 100%. But if I see someone wearing a mask, I'll just put mine on in solidarity. It's really hard when I'm at doctor's offices and they see my mask and ask, do you want me to put on a mask? Because I want to say yes but also if they're not wearing one, they clearly don't want to. I often just say, it's fine, especially if it's a nurse I'm going to see for five seconds. Assume 90% of the time, people would say yes even if they're saying no!
it's so hard to say yes. I have started proactively asking (I have a little script for myself) and it's still hard! but also sometimes it turns into a conversation, such as the mammogram tech who didn't know that long covid is a thing. I think about how if I were asking on behalf of my bff, I wouldn't feel shy about it at all... and how I can bring that energy to myself too.
I do this! I always have a mask with me and put it on when I see other people wearing one. But most people don’t.
re-negotiating protocols all the time is one of the worst parts of this. the constant second-guessing, and questioning trust in the people you want to be able to trust implicitly. nothing is implicit anymore! to say nothing of people who say they care about accessibility, equity, etc -- it's very painful to watch as their actions go further and further away from their professed values.
This is so true! It truly sucks to have lost so much trust. But I don't see how to regain it with the current situation. I wish I could see a way through this!
Can you even get PCR tests where you are? My MIL recently had a virus that her doctor declared Not Covid on the basis of a regular rapid test -- despite her loss of sense of smell, extreme fatigue, and wheezing/cough significant enough that they prescribed her some kind of inhaler, the doctor never gave her a PCR, and none of the pharmacies closest to her were doing them.
We have to pay out of pocket for PCRs now (about $157 CAD), as the public health system in my province won't even let family doctors refer for PCRs. This is MADDENING. It is also ENRAGING to imagine that your MIL's doctor would think a negative rapid test means "not COVID," as we know they give tons of false negatives, especially depending on the stage of the illness. I've heard lots of laypeople make this mistake, and the idea that doctors are contributing to the misinformation is mind boggling and heartbreaking.
Oh, this is so frustrating!!
This!!! My son is chronically ill, my husband and mother are both very high risk, and I'm high risk. I cannot take chances that could harm any of us. There's enough risk in daily my train commute. Taking precautions to avoid being infected and infecting others is the most important thing I can do for myself, my family, and my community. But it's getting awfully lonely for all of the reasons you outlined. Thank you for posting! I'm glad to know others are out there aside from my Twitter bubble.
Yup, same. I’m lucky/privileged enough to not be chronically ill but I sure as hell don’t want to catch covid and then get long covid. It’s really painful to be going on year 4 of the pandemic and still see it treated so casually by so many people. I don’t want to get sick. I don’t want others to get sick. I don’t want to get others sick.
I really struggle with community and friends and dating and any kind of social relationship building. Online communities don’t cut it for me. But I know that it would all be a hell of a lot easier if I didn’t have the barrier of covid that keeps me from hanging out in bars or going out dancing or joining a book club or going to trivia nights or any other kind of public cultural programming where I know I would meet likeminded people. It really sucks.
This is mine too. It feels like my world has become smaller and smaller over the last year as spaces remove masking or testing protocols. There really are a limited number of spaces and groups that are accessible to me as a high-risk person with Long Covid these days, even in a city as big as New York (where I’m located).
THIS!!! As more and more places have ditched masks, there are fewer and fewer places I feel welcome.
same here. in early 2023 i signed up for a volunteer org that works with immunocompromised people, and a couple days later they dropped their mask policy. bananas!!! going smaller/less official seems to help (mutual aid/activist/nonhierarchical kinda things) but it took me mooonths to get in contact with these covid-cautious groups without social media. nonetheless i finally finally joined! anyway, i don't usually leave comments, but wanted to chime in bc i appreciate seeing the number of ppl talking about this.
oh that would have made me so mad! don't get me started on dropping mask policies in healthcare!
Yes, omg! I was very happy to read the other day that a group of Seattle hospitals are keeping masking in place, because yikes.
The University just took back all the large air filters from non-classsrooms because they don't want to keep paying for maintenace (much cheaper if everyone is just sick), and I am furious and fighting to get it back if our department pays for filters, &c.
Why wouldn't we wear masks where people are already sick???!! I'm also incensed on the no masks in healthcare policies. I have had a lot of health issues this year and it's so frustrating to feel like I'm exposing myself to covid when I'm trying to get healthy. I of course still wear my mask but almost no one else is.
Add me to the list of Covid cautious people!! I have one friend I see regularly that is also high risk like I am and I know still masks and takes precautions, which is such a gift as I don’t have to feel awkward and ask questions about how she’s living her life. But other than that my husband and I have a pretty quiet life most of the time. My friends that are choosing not to mask are easier to meet up with in the summer months, so as the rains start here in the PNW I know things are slowing down. My kids who are in New York and Minneapolis are still masking will be home for the holidays which is another bright spot in the winter! It is definitely a major roadblock in creating community though, as I’m hearing of more and more people getting it around us, including my in-laws in Ohio for the first time, I can feel our world shrinking again.
Our friends and siblings with little kids have given up on all masking, even in crowded indoor areas, because their kids get every germ anyway.
This makes it way less safe to hang out with our child-having friends. We don't have kids and we're the only people we know (including our family!) who still mask all the time, everywhere. It SUCKS.
Absolutely agree. Anytime I suggest that I'd love to get together if we can find a patio, it's like *crickets*. More outdoor spaces that have some weather-protection features (like a roof, for rain) would be lovely, but haven't really taken off here - despite that fact that our weather is really amenable to this. And there's even less discussion about air filtration or other ways to improve indoor quality, which is utterly ridiculous.
Yep, I came here to say more transparency about indoor ventilation in public buildings (maybe using a standard in terms of air changes per hour and what grade of filter they use/how often they change it)
I saw on Twitter while I was still on it, that in some countries they had ratings outside of business’s for their air quality, like food safety ratings, which would be unbelievably helpful and maybe even incentivize cleaning the air? Having no real reliable metrics anymore to turn to to gauge how much it’s circulating is also a real problem, and just requires erring on the side of extra caution all the time which is a real shame.
Me too!
My world has gotten so small between my health condition and the fact that even my chronically I’ll friends are rawdogging Covid these days.
lolol I also always think of it as "rawdogging covid" thank you for that
yep yep yep this is mine too
Improving indoor air quality is critical. Up until May 2023, I was spending a lot of time/energy organizing outdoor get-togethers. (Even in the Canadian north - I was making it work!) But then the wildfire smoke arrived in May and just ... never left. So I lost the option to safely socialize outdoors. It's been lonely and we're heading into winter any minute now...
🩵
I spend most of my days thinking about this, as someone whose job is effectively community organizing around the (lack) of (safe) public spaces. In my opinion, from a societal POV, two built environment challenges are key impediments: 1) As you mention, a dearth of public spaces to connect with others, especially during times when people are not working, which has made it very challenging to find the spaces to do the important work of community creation, whether that is as "simple" as a knitting circle (one here meets in a Whole Foods, which seems nice until you realize that a Whole Foods or a Starbucks is no substitution for a truly public space that *everyone* has and can feel ownership over) or a group trying to organize to improve their neighborhood. 2) Car culture supremacy (in the US, at least), which means that people drive nearly everywhere. Walking and biking and transit are the forms of movement that lend themselves to spontaneous and key social interactions, but they are least-used, and car supremacy makes them dangerous and unpleasant (or people perceive them that way) in most places. The prevalence of cars spirals outward: our public funds go into highway expansions and endless road maintenance instead of public spaces or art; parents can succumb to the pressure of endlessly packed kids' schedules because driving is "easy" and "fast"; people are frustrated and mad and individualistic as they get behind the windshield; and cars are obscenely expensive, meaning that people are working a great deal to be able to afford them.
How to solve is broad and wide-reaching, but IMO it starts with all of us making a choice. I hear time and again from others who look at my life that it is impossible for them, for any number of reasons. But they look with a sigh of jealousy at my cargo bike and 2-block access to a grocery store with reasonable rent, while telling me that kids "need" a yard. From people who want to make change where they are at but are hesitant to move forward. It is very difficult, but it takes doing things like walking your kid to school one day a week - and if that is too unsafe, starting to raise a stink and organizing with other parents who are also pissed by the lack of a sidewalk or traffic light. It takes doing things like my old roommate did and leaving notes at every house on the block about how she is available to call if they need help or want to connect (out of which she has made a lifelong friendship with someone of a different generation, and made smaller connections with others). It takes looking around at what others are doing that feels impossible and trying it out. It is so hard, but that is where all of the power is, because that is how organizing and demands for better transit, public spaces, whatever all come from.
Sorry, soap box. In terms of solutions, we also need way more organizing trainings - places where average people who care about something can learn how to talk to others about their concerns, how to listen, how to build meeting agendas and make meetings inclusive and dynamic spaces and know when to move urgently and when to pause, how to do things like understand power dynamics and how to understand what has been ripped away from them through our starvation of the collective realm.
Love this so much. I spent several days in Copenhagen over the summer and was awed by the transit, bike lanes, pedestrian facilities, and public spaces - and the way all those things supported each other. Felt true grief when I came back to my beloved city in the SE United States.... so I started taking transit to work every day. It’s imperfect, and some days I wish I could re-plan my city to avoid sprawl and highway supremacy. But as someone who works in the multi-modal transportation industry, I am SO excited about the energy and money coming to support safer and more accessible transportation that isn’t car-dependent. Taking transit and reading on the train and people-watching makes me feel like a whole person. I’m pushing for bike lanes on the street in front of my house so kids can get to school safely and neighborhood residents can get to community spaces in town. Transportation is the backbone of so much 💛
I can here to say this! I was in Copenhagen too and a young man told me one of the most interesting things about the city was how they use public space. Then I could not stop noticing it. There were so many parks, open city spaces with seating, and swimming platforms along the canal. But I'm from Texas and a lot of what makes this possible in Denmark is not true here - nice weather, grass you can sit on without being eating alive by bugs, etc. The other thing, though, is that people there has time to use this space. It didn't seem like they were planning a week in advance to meet up; they and their friends had time and space in their lives for that, and I think that is related to so much more than public space - work culture, societal support for parents in the form of childcare and a community where children can move about without their parent's constant supervision. Just a million small ways in which life is "easier" because the physical and social environments are more human.
I've never been to Copenhagen, but I visited some places around Western Europe over the summer and was in awe at the public transport, how walkable everywhere was, seeing way less cars, a lot more biking, and all the green spaces. I'm back in the US now and it influenced my decision to move to Chicago next and ditch my car. My car is a 🍋 and I already live in the Midwest so wanted to stay in the general area. I think the steps you're taking where you're at are great 💫
I so agree about car supremacy; it is incredibly disconnecting. Cars have become little individualistic pods where we can all hide out from each other, while also getting really angry at strangers. Like social media on wheels.
Car supremacy becomes so obvious when you look at homes built in the last 30 years. The front door is barely visible; the double or triple garage doors are what is closest to the street. So you drive your 24 miles home from work, click the garage door open, roll your car in, click the garage door closed, and never see a neighbor.
Social media on wheels, so well put 💯
Love this! I'd add to your list of trainings - how to move through conflict together! I think folks believe the idea of community means everyone in harmonious agreement, when actually it's messy and almost always includes conflict. But conflict doesn't have to be unhealthy; it can be generative if folks understand power dynamics (like you said) and are able to move through it in a healthy way. Too many of us don't know the basics of moving through conflict well.
Yes! I come from a union organizing background and one value I got from that experience is that community doesn’t mean friends or people who agree about everything.
As someone who lives in a co-housing community, this is very very true. You need to be able to acknowledge conflict, and work through it, and see that there is a way to remain in community with people afterwards. I'm not in any way good at this, but have so much respect for the elders of our co-housing community who have done this over and over, chosen not to leave, and kept our community together through hard things.
You make a really interesting point about pushing back on this idea that kids “need” a yard. I would guess you don’t hear that as much in Europe
It all feels like a vicious cycle! Without good, walkable public spaces, parks and playgrounds, people are more inclined to choose a private version of that (i.e. a yard).
Also, what parents/kids get in a yard is a place they can be safely without constant supervision. We also need the attitude that kids can be unsupervised without it being automatically neglect or a safety issue. And for kids to have freedom to be kids in public spaces--pick a flower, dig a hole, climb a tree, throw a rock in the pond, have a meltdown--without it being seen as some kind of intolerable breach of the peace.
100% agree with biking as community-building. We are a one-car family with an e-cargo bike; my husband can take the train to get to work and I work for myself at home; our kids go to school 1.5 blocks away and after-school care 5 blocks away so there are days when we actually don't use the car at all. We are paying more to be in an area of town that is flatter so it's easier to get around. I recognize that we are privileged to be able to afford to do so. And, these are also conscious choices we have made because it's important to us that our kids grow up without car-as-default. (Not to mention, women and children are more likely to walk so pedestrian safety is a feminist issue!) I strongly advocate for multifamily housing and strong public transit so more people can experience what we have.
When I'm on the bike, I get a lot of interested or admiring comments, especially when they see my two kids in the back. I hope it shows people that a different world is possible. The bike to me is the ideal speed for traveling around town and I love how easy it is to stop and talk to neighbors or run errands without worrying about parking. When there is a lot of traffic, it's actually faster to take my bike usually! While there are more bicyclists here than there were a few years ago, I have a pretty distinctive orange bike and I often have people tell me that they saw me or my husband on the bike somewhere and it's a nice moment of connection.
1000% agree on the need for trainings that demystify community organizing
One of the reasons I left the automotive industry a few years ago is that I felt complicit on the car supremacy problem. There are so many great solutions to start making our cities pedestrian friendly, and I follow several groups working on it in my community.
Training would be a huge help for me - and the opportunity to connect with other organizers in different places. I've organized a pretty wide variety of things over the years, and learned a lot as I went and from collaborators, but I don't have a lot of connections to people doing similar things in other places. And I don't know how to find them, either!
I want to have a place to talk shop - what communication tools are working for your groups? What are your current thoughts on queer safety at events, or covid protocols? What resources have you found that have been helpful?
Not to be totally weird, but this community may be a good place to try something like this. Personally I also find it really helpful to hear from people who are doing organizing around different topics, too. I would very happily go to a Zoom call that's a space to talk about those things (with maybe more formal trainings over time).
I really like your last point, about community building training. Is there an online platform of any kind that can serve as a sort of guidebook for all of these things you mention? From my perspective, I've done some organizing in the past around an issue but this was a long time ago (and took a lot of work!).
Really enjoyed your comment, it gave me a lot to think about. And thanks for pointing out how wildly expensive cars are. I'm relocating to Chicago from a smaller car-centric city, and the #1 reason is because I don't feel like I can afford a car any longer. I've been driving a used 🍋 for years and it's costed me so much money, I don't feel like I can afford to take on a car loan for a newer vehicle.
Came here to comment immediately because for me, the roadblock is so straightforward - our HUGE spread out metro area. After many years living here, grad school, jobs, activities, etc - we have tons and tons of friends who theoretically live in our metro area. But in reality, they are all at least 45 minutes away, if we're lucky and there's no traffic. So we end up actually seeing each other maybe a few times a year. It drives me CRAZY.
totally agree. I moved to a small village of 2800 people, and I have unending options for meeting. We have a whole community center that will rent you rooms for free!! Everything is at most 5 minutes away and everyone is always walking around 'downtown.'
Oooo, that sounds amazing, where do you live? (If you don’t mind my asking)
I live in Yellow Springs, Ohio-and we're a VERY rare example of a small, progressive, midwestern village. I credit a lot of our existence to Antioch College, and as they've struggled, we are too. Strangely, the other thing that has really held us down financially and kept us diverse is the fact that Dave Chappelle still lives here (his dad was a prof and an important activist). While his opinions are obviously problematic, as a neighbor and acquaintance, he and his wife and kids are friendly and supportive of the schools, arts and social justice movements in our community.
We also have an ordinance that all business has to be non-corporate; we grandfathered in US bank branch and a gas station, but that is IT. Subway just moved out of town. We have a lot of tourism on the weekends, and the funny thing is that the people visiting us have a hard time figuring out why they like it so much-but it's the walkability, human-scaled building, and overall embracing of 'weird' that our community values.
I have a sociology background and it's all very interesting to me-I could go on for days about the sheer joy of the older man who rides a Harley around town with a bubble machine strapped to the back on weekends, or the seniors that hang out outside the local grocery (they bring lawn chairs!) on Tuesdays to have a chill get together.
I love Yellow Springs! I moved to Columbus 5 years ago from the east coast (raised in Baltimore then spent 6 years in NYC) and that fall my sister and I took a day trip to YS with our dogs for a hike and to visit the sunflower fields. The whole day was magic. As soon as we drove into town I felt my entire body relax. It reminds me of our family trips to upstate NY as a kid... my father grew up in Syracuse and went to college in a small town in the finger lakes region and every time we stopped in one of the small towns like Skaneateles, it was euphoric. Only having lived in major metro areas, I’ve been so conditioned to believe that towns and villages are for weekend excursions only, that I have never seriously considered moving to a small town. (Also, many of them have become stupid expensive because wealthy people “discover” them then move there permanently or buy second homes there.) But in retrospect, the popularity of shows like Gilmore Girls that revolve around small-town life are probably a sign that I’m not alone in craving that sense of community, quirkiness and calm that are much harder to come by in cities. I wonder what it would take to make living in places like Yellow Springs a more viable and/or accessible option for people.
I grew up in Huber Heights and my dad had two very close friends who lived in Yellow Springs so I spent a lot of time there. I live outside of Boston now, but I *miss* Yellow Springs SO MUCH. <3
I first came here in the '90s-grew up outside of Cincinnati-and moved here during the pandemic. I have an elementary-aged kiddo and it is IDYLLIC for kids, if a little sheltered. It's an amazing little village in so many ways.
Well this sounds absolutely fabulous! Especially the non-corporate ordinance - damn, what a great idea. I’m contemplating places to move in the future and put down roots and this is definitely getting added to the list! Thanks for sharing! 🙏🏼
helooo!!! waves wildly from a neighboring state. I grew up in YSO in the 70's and 80's. It's my dream to move back but I haven't figured out the income/COL balance. It's changed a lot but it's still a great place.
I wanted to agree! We’ve lived in walkable communities twice post-college and the joy just spontaneously running into beloved friends at the grocery or the post office was huge, and almost always led to more intentional hangouts. We were also able just to sit on chairs outside or pop a blanket out front and more neighbors would join. It revolutionized what we now seek out from neighborhoods.
Yup, this is what I came here to say. I've lived my whole life in the DC metro area, and so I have a huge network but rarely can see everyone. Everyone is 45 mins away with traffic, making weeknight hangs impossible. And this is a problem even for my ethnic/church community, where we all feel like family and truly WANT to see each other. there's just too much sprawl. better transit would make a difference (esp across state lines), as would shorter work hours.
I live in the DC area and this is so real! my friends used to all live in silver spring, but they've scattered to move closer to work and if I meet anyone new at work or a hobby, they could live anywhere from Baltimore to northern VA to Maryland suburbs. It's frustrating how we're all in the same metro area, but too far apart to casually meet up. (not to mention that half of my friends live on the other side of the red line from each other, so public transit to get together takes 4x as long as driving for no reason)
exactly!
Lol yes. People ask why I don’t hang out with co-workers and it’s because everyone lives 30 min away from work in different directions.
Greater Denver metro area chiming in, this is so true. Add in unpredictable mass transit (including a train that we’ve paid for but hasn’t yet been built…) and it’s just a crapshoot for meeting up with people. Meanwhile, our particular flavor of sprawl has not been conducive to community-building. Some neighborhoods are more tight-knit than others, and I think that has a lot to do with the vibe check (often wealthier people who probably would know each other anyways from social/professional networks, or older folks who are connected through mutual volunteering and sheer length of time of living in the same region together) and the long-existing infrastructure (old micro-Main Street areas that have managed not to be totally razed).
How do we make community easier here? Density. Give me a community coffee shop I can walk to from my house in ten minutes. Give me bikeways to get everywhere else in 20 minutes. Give me affordable housing options so I don’t have to live on the literal opposite side of downtown as my friends. There are efforts toward these things, in fits and spurts, but it is not unified or strategic on the metro-wide scale.
I think about this a lot and love to read about communities that seem to have it figured out. I live in a northern Canadian city that is the second largest in our province by land area but has a fraction of the population of the next largest city (by land area). We sprawl in every direction and we have poor public transport. It's generally agreed that you absolutely must have a car to get by here. And like many cities, we do not have enough housing. I am watching with interest how our city council is grappling with this. They continue to approve new suburbs and developments. Which means, among other things, new roads...which means more money spent on snow removal (a subject about which people here are very passionate). Proposals to build more housing in already populated areas are often met with NIMBYism. There are so many good reasons to build up rather than out, even though we're surrounded by millions of square kms of wilderness, but we seem to be stuck in a 60s/70s era mindset of city planning, and usually only talk about the financial pros and cons. Absent from the conversation here is what I see as the biggest benefit which is the social connection that comes with walkable, liveable neighborhoods and cities. Everyone goes to Europe and exclaims about how great it is, for all the reasons other people have outlined, then come back and wonder why we don't also have a bustling town centre where they can run into their friends and go for a spontaneous glass of vino on the nearest sunny patio. We can have that! But we need our city councils and city planners to step up. And we need to keep talking to them about it and supporting the projects that would densify our neighborhoods. Even if it means losing access to that tract of land that everyone uses as a dog park but that's actually privately owned and zoned for development. We need to talk to the NIMBYs in our lives. And if I have to win people over to my way of thinking by citing the ballooning snow removal budget then so be it.
And when I say "absent from the conversation here..." by "here" I mean "in my city"
I totally agree with this one! I have many friends 30+ minutes away and it just feels like too much effort most times to carve out a few hours in our busy schedules to see each other. It's sad because it honestly makes me almost more lonely because they are there but not really there.
Honestly, we moved across the country for that exact reason. We were in a large midwestern city full of family we almost never got to see. We're now in an inland PNW town of 33,000 with 3 colleges and a mountain view. Not perfect, but we spend so much more time together at home, and many errands take 10 minutes to complete including driving there and back. I run into friends by accident almost every time I leave the house. My husband walks to work. Every single day is better.
May I ask what town? This sounds beautiful :)
Walla Walla, WA, and I highly recommend it. I have never had so many satisfying conversations with strangers, nor so many strangers step in to help when I needed it (stuck in snow, etc).
It’s MCOL but salaries are decent overall. Housing is expensive. Like all towns these days, we need more free public Third Places. And…they’re building them. One street downtown got converted to a pedestrian plaza during the pandemic and was made permanent this year.
I have been to Walla Walla several times and liked some parts of it. But it's sooooo far away from anywhere that visiting my family, or having them visit me, would be burdensome -- let alone my current friends.
I hear you. That was my fear too, at first.
Hard same. With people's scheduling constraints + massive sprawling metro area it feels next to impossible to get the right people together in person on a regular basis.
Yep. I live in the metro Toronto area. When I was working, I lived just east of the city and took the commuter train (25-40 minute ride, depending on whether it was an express train or all stops) to my job downtown for 25 years. My coworkers were scattered all across the region -- I knew people who commuted from Hamilton in the west, Orangeville in the northwest, Barrie to the north, Oshawa and Bowmanville in the east. That's a huge area. Very difficult to get anyone to stick around too late after work for drinks, and to get together on weekends? Forget it.
The lack of places with COMFY chairs to just sit and hang solo or as a group of 2-6. Restaurants have the seats, but alcohol and noise. Library room chairs aren't comfy, park picnic tables are weather dependent - and not comfy. Coffee shops now cater to the laptop crowd. There used to be a Cafe designed around the "come in and hang" with couches, comfy chairs, etc. and it was the best.
Yes. And in my very large city, we have giant parks with ... a few picnic tables. And often no bathrooms nearby. Having movable seating would be so helpful to have a friends hangout in a park.
public bathrooms and well-compensated staff to maintain them are also an underrated consideration
Omg public bathrooms! We literally all have to pee and poop, and it is stunning to me, and outrageous, how rare a clean, functional public bathroom is (I live in NYC).
Yes! Our local park has public restrooms but they are usually locked due to the fact that volunteers maintain them and it's not possible to keep them usable and open without full time staffing. It would be amazing if someone was paid to keep them open and usable.
Yes! The overwhleming majority of chairs are built for the average man, who's approximately 5'8'' tall. I'm 5'1'' and have two kids' chairs at home. They're much more comfortable than regular chairs. Outside my place, I'm only comfortable on couches, since they are the only seating options where my feet actually, fully touch the floor without causing me considerable strain. As for standing, I have essentially no muscle tone at rest, so that's extremely uncomfortable too.
plus the anti-homeless design of public furniture and spaces make them less welcoming!
or all those places that use stools or chairs with *no backs* on them, especially if they're tall stools where my feet can't touch the ground either -- sorry but my poor coordination, joint pain and I are never coming back.
I wonder how much of this is because of anti homeless people design. I noticed it moving from a place that had a lot of comfy gathering places to a place without one and it seemed like I found a lot of other things that were associated with preventing homeless population access (locks on things like toothpaste and deodorant at stores, locks on all bathrooms, bars on benches to prevent people being able to lay down, etc).
Yes! I felt this acutely as a new parent. My husband and I would trade time off and it made the most sense for the on-duty parent to stay home with the kid.
I struggled so much to just find somewhere to quietly read a book for an hour! I would happily buy a beverage but even the coffee shop chairs are hard and uncomfortable!
I think the biggest roadblock for several groups I'm involved in is a lack of personal accountability to a group. It might have to do with an urban mindset (I live in the NYC metro area and have thought a good bit about this) where everyone is consciously or subconsciously holding out in case "something better" comes along, but that means that no one ever fully commits to "being there in person" or "taking charge of something that needs to be done." We are all incredibly protective of our time, so if it's going to take an hour to get to, say, a picnic in the park (because for at least half the people, no matter where the picnic is held, it's going to take an hour), we might tentatively commit and then wait to see if we schedule something better the night before or the day of, which would make us "unfortunately unable to make it."
This is such a big part of my experience trying to connect with people--and I am on both sides of the equation here! I wonder how much of the protectiveness of our time is related to there simply being too many demands on our time for largely structural reasons (you can tell me how this relates to the "urban mindset" you refer to which I suspect I don't have).
I was in the middle of writing about this "urban mindset" phenomenon and the page kicked me out :( The long and short of it is that there's so much on offer that everyone wants the best of everything . . . and it's available! IF you spend enough money, wait long enough, pay close enough attention, try hard enough, etc. (Contrast this with remote suburbia where, for instance, there might be just a handful of dining options available, so the only real decision is whether to eat in or out, and not "which place will be most worth my time/money? how do I decide? what if someone tells me about somewhere better between now and when I sit down?")
I think this is linked to the impulse to optimize & curate every aspect of our lives. Can't just buy a backpack, must buy the WorldsMostVersatile Backpack. Can't just make your kid a birthday cake, must make a confection sculpted into the share of their favorite cartoon. Can't just snap a photo, gotta pose-filter-post.
My husband and I like to reminisce about sub-optimal activities that were fun. Last week we went to a local theater performance, and it was pretty bad. We still laughed at the jokes, we still hummed along with the familiar songs. Our resort vacation hotel room overlooked an active construction site - we watched the earthworks happen while we sipped our coffee on the balcony each morning. Still recall it as one of the highlights of the trip. It was fun because we were together and chose to be entertained instead of annoyed.
100% agreed. It's so hard to make the most of our current situation/possession/etc. if we're always being made aware of all the other "better" alternatives. (And yet I still haven't jumped off the precipice of deleting Instagram...because "connection!")
I find myself trying to stay involved-yet-not-in-charge of groups after severe burnout in college and early career volunteering for everything, only to find myself in charge soon after. In hindsight I did not know how to manage my time or say no firmly enough at the time and should have picked one or two... but now I have a toddler and have to work 40+ hours per week as the only income in my family. So yeah I feel guilty about not taking accountability for improving or or organizing group activities but just have such a bad reaction because of all the times I've agreed to take on extra organization work for "just one time" or "just help out" and then end up getting stuck organizing every church potluck sign up or reaching out to dozens of potential community sponsors when I'm not even getting enough sleep. Keeping the email lists or website maintained, etc. I know there's probably a lot more to unpack here and also a facet of "not enough time after everyday demands of life" which has been touched on in other comments. But TLDR I feel guilty for this lack of commitment to my own community orgs but also that my reluctance has been proven somehow justified...
I FULLY understand. It's always the people who are reliable and will get things done who get suckered into "leading" and "organizing" for everyone else. Hold those self-care boundaries!
I feel this. I'm a great planner and I enjoy it, but it can become stressful and way too much quickly. I have a tendency to take on too much and I have to really watch out for that now and adjust expectations for what I can take on - a work in progress. I realized when covid hit I needed to slow down. I haven't exactly done that, but I'm learning. I've had to move in the direction of cutting things out and keeping things more simple. I recently stopped volunteering altogether because I felt so overbooked with everything else I have going on. I'm working on dealing with taming unnecessary guilt I have surrounding everything I'm not doing. My partner tells me I should be more selfish...and not in a bad way, like put myself first more.
Yes, I was thinking about this. I also feel like it has something to do with technology (not hating on technology here, it enables us to do lots of great things!), but I feel like it's so much easier to change your response from "going" to "not going" with the click of a button or send a text last minute that says "sorry can't make it!" Maybe something to do with the lack of face-to-face interaction? But I can't remember the last time I received a physical invitation to something and then had the audacity to flake out at the last minute.
Agreed. My mother blames cell phones. In the past, when you made a plan, you had to honor it (and show up on time!) because there was essentially no way to contact the other person once everyone was on their way.
So true! I was also thinking about this yesterday as I was in a massive group text about joining a casual volleyball team. It was absolute chaos for me with so many unknown numbers, and I was thinking, "How would this have been organized 20 years ago?"
We hosted a party this summer that involved inviting a bunch of our neighbors to our house. We didn't have most people's phone numbers or email addresses, so we decided to use plain old paper invitations stuffed into mailboxes. It was a delight. So many people came, everyone thanked us for hosting it, people loved the invitations--I love a Paperless Post invite as much as the next girl, but it was a lot of fun to distribute real invitations. I might start doing it more often!
Ah that is lovely! I totally agree, evites, have their role, and I'm grateful for them, especially when I need to get something out quickly because I've procrastinated, but I can just imagine the novelty of opening one's mailbox to an actual real live invitation!! And what a great way to build community.
Thank you for putting this into words! I find this type of planning incredibly stressful (and so prevalent among my community.) You might be optimizing your day and saving yourself an hour in transit, but how many hours are you spending on text threads renegotiating The Plan?
Negotiating plans will be the death of me.
This one hits me. Since when is connecting with others not worthy of our precious time? It was what we all need more than ever -- connection!
It's not a small change, by any means, but dying malls are such perfect spaces to revitalize, and I don't even know where to start. They've (at least around me) got a bus stop, mine generally have a kid area, food, everything you need when you can't be outside.
It’s so true - and I have seen and read about a few malls making this change! The one near where I live, for example, has a huge and thriving Maker’s Space.
I was at one of the dying malls the other day, and I was surprised to discover that one space had been rented out to the local model train enthusiasts, another to a tutoring group (whether free or not, I do not know), etc. It really delighted me, even if the rest of the building felt so depressing.
I keep hoping our local mall, which has been slowly dying for decades, would convert to senior housing. With significant winters here, it's so important that older folks especially have safe, indoor spaces to socialize and perambulate all year round.
I think it's really hard to do that because of the lack of windows and of plumbing. Like, turn it into a kind of community center? Possible. Turn it into housing? You'd essentially have to raze the building and start again.
Actually, there's a developer in Providence who converted a 200-year old indoor mall to micro-apartments while preserving the common space. It's totally possible:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmL2l-bcuUQ
This development is amazing and it would be so great to have more of these.
But when you watch the video, they say that it only works because the mall is very old and so uses a pre-1980's design. They say this would not be feasible with most modern malls (which is the vast majority of dying malls). The typical shop here is much smaller, plus there are windows around the building, and a huge central skylight that gets sunlight into all of the units. Just think of the 150,000 sq ft 2-story Macy's in most malls - it would fit hundreds of these apartment units but they would all have to be windowless with insufficient plumbing. Plus, in most cities, the zoning code makes it illegal to rent out micro-apartments of this size anyway.
Mall-to-apartment conversion is possible in some cases but there are tons of difficulties that often make it impossible.
When I was in high school in small-ish town Idaho, our mall was dying and our school district rented cheap space for the robotics team! It was a really cool place, we could build the robot and community members could come watch and ask questions, or see demos, build their own free little art projects with the scrap pieces. I wish they would have rented more of the spaces for other clubs as well. We got lots of genuinely surprised comments from older community members who came to the mall get their steps in the winter about how they never saw teenagers doing anything "productive" with their lives in public spaces anymore so assumed we were all lazy delinquents ):
And churches!! Sooo many churches in every city and town I’ve ever lived in, and they all have incredibly large and mostly unused spaces. Some have seating areas, libraries, kitchens, places to dine, sleeping quarters, etc that are sitting empty 95%+ of the time.
Our citizens have become less religious over time, and therefore this space originally built for community rests empty. I’d love to reclaim it! (Maybe without the God emphasis and other factors that drove people away from religion in the first place.)
Yes!! I live in a city with a hot climate with a few dying malls and cannot believe we can't figure out a way to use those giant air-conditioned areas.
we have several dying malls (and one thriving indoor one surrounded by several outdoor shopping centers) in my city, the one i worked at had a barnes and noble and a belk but no other stores. the rest were being used as office spaces and for things like table tennis and karate tournaments, though now it's being torn down for a mixed use development.
For me, the biggest roadblock is around covid safety/indoor air quality. I live in Boston, and during the fall and winter the hardest thing is navigating covid safety when most fun community activities are indoors. It took me a painfully long time to recover from my last covid infection a year ago, and I now have long-term health issues that will get worse if/when I am infected again.
Especially this year, it's been somewhat devastating to watch as places that had been accessible from a covid pov become less so. My community choir, which was mask-mandatory until this fall, is one of the places that I'm mourning the most, and I question the decision to go mask optional when many of our members are older adults.
So it brings me a lot of joy to be in spaces where covid community care is still being practiced, by way of masks, hepa filters, open windows, etc. Shoutout in particular to my local fiber arts store which has continued to make their store an incredibly safe community place for people like me who still need to be careful.
Yes! The small town where I live had started doing some not-kid-focused outdoor events after lockdown lifted, where we could socialize relatively safely, but they have decided to stop all of those and go back to indoor-no-mask-protocols for those types of events. It's really disappointing.
Molly, I also lost my community chorus this fall when they stopped requiring masks. I’m sorry you’re experiencing this too. It really sucks to lose something that brought joy and community.
ugh I'm so sorry!! it is such a bummer! and to make it worse, in the email they shared that they're aware that singing is relatively ~dangerous~ covid-wise, but not to worry, "vaccination reduces the risk of serious disease and hospitalization to nearly zero"... which at this point is just not true! so so hard.
I agree!! Also, I'm sorry for the loss of access to your choir. I used to do that ages ago and loved it. My sport (fencing) is no longer accessible for the same reasons. It's the social connections I miss the most because I felt at home in the club and like I'd found my people.
Public transit. I saw the prompt and didn't even have to think, it's better public transit that goes more places more quickly and more safely.
whew! Like make it easy for us PLEASE. I have a car and I prefer not to drive if I don't have to.
To expand on this, since I responded quickly before having to jump on a work call:
I live in DC, where we have a pretty good metro and bus system. But there are so many places they don't go, or don't go efficiently! And Ubers and Lyfts have gotten real expensive. I am about to move from living right above a metro station and within one block of numerous bus lines, to living five blocks from two bus lines, only one of which goes to a useful location for me, and a 25 minute walk to a metro station, and I am thinking a lot about how much more I'm going to have to drive or pay for Ubers/Lyfts. If my new place - which is in a very popular and populated part of town! - was closer to more public transit, it would make it so much more convenient to get together with friends, I'd be better able to go to local businesses vs ordering things online to be delivered to me, and I'd be able to take advantage of more areas of this really robust city vs being more limited to whatever's along the green line + 64 bus.
I also consider the lack of robust public transit as being a barrier to community in that it means so many more cars on the road that pose dangers to kids, make it harder for cyclists to get around, block bus lanes, etc. Cars and parking are also the source of so much conflict in community discourse around here, so greater investment in and usage of public transit could mean a more cohesive community that doesn't fight with each other about quite so much.
I said this in another comment, but it's so frustrating how dc's public transit is focused on getting people from suburbs into DC to work and literally nothing else. transit to work is important! but so is being able to socialize with people who live in other suburbs while you're not working. I'll never get over the moment I realized as a teenager that the 25min drive from Takoma Park to my doctor's office in Bethesda would be a 90 minute train ride because of how the red line is laid out.
I'll once again note youth sport hegemony. No one has time or energy for anything else when you are taking 9 year olds out of state for sports.
Or even just across town.
Every time I visit a European city, I wonder why it seems to have a more relaxed attitude than any place in the US, especially when it comes to kids and families existing in the public sphere. And yes, I don’t think it can be boiled down to one cause and I’m sure a lot of comes from better social safety nets and actually caring for children, but the presence of tons of public space - that people can use freely without being accused of loitering - always makes me jealous. The number of times I’ve seen preteens joyfully playing soccer in a public square at night breaks my heart for what US kids could have! Why can’t we build things in hopes that something great will come out of it (community, socializing, exercise) instead of defaulting to squashing a common good in fear of “the worst” outcome?
I guess my blocker is people lacking imagination and thinking change isn’t possible when our current reality is the outcome of other people’s (or corporations) imaginations (and personal interests).
I was on a tour of libraries in Denmark when I was in library school, and we visited this beautiful space that had used to be an old shipyard and was turned into a modern glassy library -- it was gorgeous and did such a great job of incorporating the history of the building and the community into the design.
The children's area was fully on-theme with shippy-things for kids to explore, a giant bear named Bamse Hansen who used to work in the shipyard but now lived in the library -- it was amazing. The support columns for the buildings had been turned into these like, stacks of crates, like you would find on a dock or shipyard. And when I asked how they stopped kids from climbing on them and what happened when they fell, the sweet Danish librarian paused, thought, and said, "...our parents are not so litigious as yours are," and I think about that ALL. THE. TIME. There's so much cool stuff I want to do that I'm so afraid of doing because other people are afraid of the worst. For instance, the main branch of the DC Public Library installed a slide from the second floor children's room to the first floor and me and all of the other librarians (I no longer work there) were terrified and apprehensive because someone (a child too small) was going to get hurt on it and then someone (us) was going to be yelled at even thought someone else (the parent or nanny) had been the one to actually put them on the slide.
This is all to say -- creating cool spaces and community bonds takes risk, but it's terrifying to be the face of the risk because what if what if -- and then your whole job becomes What Iffing the risks instead of doing cool things.
was this dokk in arhuaus? their library is AMAZING. they also have social services in the building too! and a lovely bell that rings every time a baby is born in the nearby hospital.
No, it was the library at Helsingør -- https://helsbib.dk/bibliotek/biblioteketkulturvaerftet
I really fucking love Danish libraries. They're so good.
There's a park right by my house with large soccer fields that are empty 90% of the time, but they only allow random people to use them for one evening a week. The rest of the time they are "reserved" for the civic kids' league. It pisses me off so much because the kids use them for about three or four hours perhaps two times a week.
ALSO GOLF COURSES.
Lmao I also have a dislike of golf courses (the space! All the watering! Fun/sad fact: when you drive by a golf course during the summer you’ll see the temp go down by a few degrees because that’s how heavily they’re watered!!) but mostly because I have (perhaps an irrational) dislike of golf. I find it synonymous with the old boys club, leaving your partner and kids at home all weekend, just Stereotypical Whack WASP Man Stuff (TM) that I grew up around.
Also apparently golf is becoming less popular and it makes me so, so happy. 🤗
Golf carts can stay, though.
Ugh, the GD golf courses. !!!!!
A big one is the challenge of finding each other. On the internet, it's easy to find people who have similar interests or perspectives as you. But in real life...how do you find someone who likes the same genre of books or who wants to talk about philosophy or whatever? I would love to hang out with more ace people, but it's almost impossible to find them, not only because I live in a very conservative and religious area, but also because most people don't tell other people they're ace. It just doesn't come up.
Let's say I want to start a book club to read scifi novels written by women. (I want to do this.) The public library will help me, provide the space, even include it on the library newsletter, but there's a huge barrier to finding other people who would want to read those books. Some of them might see the library newsletter or a sign hung up in the physical library. But many simply will not.
I want a book club! But I don't want any of the book clubs that already exist. My tastes are niche, I guess.
So I talk to my friends online about whatever book I read lately instead, and that is a good thing, but not as good as if I also had the option of doing it with people in real life.
As a librarian who has started (and failed to start) many new programs -- my trite advice is to not give up. There is surely a library staff member who shares some of your tastes and would be thrilled to take an hour off of desk time to help facilitate. And after that, it just takes time and patience to grow things. There will be a few events where people don't see the marketing or don't have time and it sucks (nothing NOTHING is worse than storytiming to ONE kid -- it's a lot of eye contact) but you show up next time and the next and surely, sometime at some point, someone else will come, too and THAT will be awkward (again, probably a lot of eye contact) but it will grow. Things that don't require people to put some skin in the game -- free things -- are so easy for people to blow off, so you just have to ride it out until the skin becomes fun and friends. Good luck!!
Really want to up this. Always...always, someone is *thinking* about going to that thing you are doing, but is a little nervous or the time didn't work out. Consistency is key...there is always a silent audience, thinking about joining you.
Re: bookclubs, I was successful using Meetup years ago, not sure if it is useful anymore, but I just started a feminist bookclub by myself and folks just showed up randomly. Benefit of being in a liberal city though.
I don't know how many groups I've started but it's double digits. I count on the first six months being touch and go.
I want to piggyback on what Christina said about her library experience. I work in public libraries and my experience starting new programs is very similar to hers. And I have the same questions as you do about meeting people in person and starting groups.
I agree with Christina about having a consistent time and location for the group meeting, and needing lots of time (several months in some cases) for the group to take off. I've had some success advertising with flyers in local coffee shops (that I know are homes to communities that may be interested in programs I'm offering at my library), posting the event on MeetUp, posting on online community calendars, and of course posting flyers in the library and on the library's online calendar. They key is it spread the word in multiple places. I'm sure there are more spaces to share the event.
I've found groups this way - flyers in local coffee shops, friends reposting them on Instagram stories, and online community calendars - but it can be hard to overcome the shyness of meeting new people in person as opposed to discussing things online, where the barrier to entry feels more accessible (for me at least).
I second the focus on commitment. I wanted a zine club in my smallish city so I decided to team up with a librarian and make it happen. It's tiring that I don't get help making flyers and posting them or keeping up with the social media every.single.month, but I made the commitment to see this through as a personal decision, no matter what. And attendance has had its ups and downs, but I truly believe it's doing good and attracting awesome people. So, if you really want it and commit to making the effort no matter what, you CAN make it happen. It's truly about commitment and consistency.
I feel this! I encouraged my husband to look for a book club (scifi) recently, but he couldn't find one in our area that was still active that interested him. Perhaps he is a bit too niche also? He's recently been reading books that have both the Hugo and Nebula awards.
If we lived in the same place, I'd start a book club with him!
I relate to your whole comment but as a fellow ace want to add to that specifically. I'd like to hang out with other ace people too, but, like, being ace in itself isn't really much to talk about -- at least not without getting very personal, which you're probably not gonna do with strangers. Occasionally an ace (online) friend and I share memes or random observations, but it's not exactly something you can build an entire friendship around. I live in a city and my local LGBTQ+ org has an ace meetup but I've never gone, because, like, what would we talk about?
This is really challenging for me, too! I live in a fairly small town, but there's a university here, and I am SURE there are others who share some of my niche interests, but HOW to connect?
Exactly! I know they're out there! But they're a smaller concentration than they would be in other places, so it's just hard!
Not a small change, but for my diseased ass, and now the millions with sister-disease long covid, not being so f'n sick.
On all days, I am in pain, exhausted, and feel like I have food poisoning and the flu. Many days, I get myself fed and go to the bathroom—period. On a good day, I can add briefly getting out of the house, and do 90m of work or attend a telehealth appointment. On a great day, I can add a shower. On a stratospherically rare day, I can add in a hang, but often at huge cost.
The last time I hung out with my galpals I was crashed for a full 8 days—no ability to work, leave the house, and only got one or two showers in while in serious pain and duress.
For people like me, online community and Facebook becomes a lifeline—no one needs us to shower, leave our houses; no one is giving us COVID through the wifi.
We need research, awareness, treatments and dare I hope, cures.
Thank you for sharing these realities. I know it takes precious energy just to add it to this discussion!
It’s really easy to be down on online community when there’s a chance in hell of having anything else … but for a lot of us, it’s just not possible and you’re so right that it’s a lifeline.
I can relate. I have chronic migraine with constant sensory sensitivities. Even if I’m feeling well enough to leave my house, the public spaces that are available are inaccessible to me due to fluorescent lights, loud music, proximity to a busy street, and/or big crowds. And those are the barriers BEFORE factoring covid into it. I can’t get sicker. Chronic migraine made my life small and then covid came and made it even smaller.
My community is on facebook and twitter but those platforms suck. The loss of twitter as a public space right after losing IRL public spaces due to covid risk has been devastating.
*bathrooms in public spaces! Our city has a ton of parks and public spaces but many have no bathrooms or bathrooms with extremely limited hours. I can't enjoy a day at the park if there's no restroom.
*spaces for families. So many spaces are designed for adults or kids. Why can't a space be both?! A few friends are actually starting a business to make adult friendly spaces more accessible to children and I'm excited to see what they build.
*reliable public transit. It's been a disaster here since the pandemic. I'd love to drive less but when the alternative is waiting 20 mins for a bus that never comes, I'll stick with my car.
*multi-purpose spaces: you can't eat in a library, there's no table in the park, no bathrooms in the square...we need to rethink and rebuild so that spaces can serve more than one purpose.
I second the bathrooms in public spaces! So often it gets talked about as an issue for the unsheltered population which, yes is very true. But also folks with kids, folks with disabilities, folks like me who just have small bladders and want to be able to use a public restroom without having to either sneak into a Starbucks or buy something! Especially during Covid, this was a huge problem. I think our communities would be better functioning if everyone had access to free, or very low cost like in Europe where it's a euro, to use a clean bathroom while out and about.
I appreciate the note about multi purpose spaces. Yes. Yes. Let there be a cafeteria in the library. A table and community poster/announcements display in the park. Etc
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.