Feel like I'm hitting a wall here. Trying to meet people just to have some local connections is hard, forget trying to organize.
Everybody knows each other forever and few are interested in knowing outsiders. The only people open to new connections are immigrants, naturally, who are worked hard and have few interests outside the grind and their families.
There is no social life, as we still envision it, still existing. No social spaces to congregate. There's a couple of bars that are only busy on Friday and Saturday nights. A couple of supermarkets, a walmart type store, and that's it.
The lawyers, doctors and accountants in the town seem to exercise together in groups and live outside the town, socializing in hotel restaurants & bars even further away from the town. I haven't seen any kind of other organized group activity.
Amber was right about rural towns.
Anyone got any interesting ideas on how to build some community IRL, without using online social networks?
e2a thanks for all the suggestions folks, appreciate it. Gonna start some kind of group outdoor activity maybe. We'll see.
edit - appreciate the effortposts folks. Just fyi I've moved to a foreign country several times, for multi year periods, and found work independently, so it's not like I'm unused to flying solo. Maybe I just had a vision of rural social structures and communities that doesn't exist anymore. Any manufacturing that existed here has been offshored. Agriculture is hyper mechanised now so no work there. Retail is dead.
The 24hr gas station that was an institution here apparently - a family owned diner, convenience store, carwash, that provided a lot of employment over decades - is now card operated gas pumps, no staff. All the money that the business used to circulate into the local community now goes offshore, where the family that still owns and operates the business operate it remotely. Capital no longer needs workers and is free to simply extract directly to offshore accounts.
There a farmers market around? Being a regular there is one of the few ways I've met people.
Local bars tend to be good too. Go to a few to get an idea of the vibe in them then become a regular. Dive bars are good for meeting blue collar workers, they tend to be rather conservative but tend to be really pro union. Craft beer places have a ton libs but I've run into a few comrades there.
Yeah, thought the same thing. It was a couple of racks of vegetables and some clearly commercial organic honey, with a freezer van selling commercial organic chicken, in a car park. The staff were very unwilling to say where anything came from lol. lib voice They didn't even have artisanal coffee!
Been doing some solo drinking purely to see who is around. Pain in the ass tbh, a few beers kinda writes off a day. The answer is no one is around. People come out in tight groups at the weekend, zero during the week. Dunno how these places are staying open. The signs advertising police camera surveillance and actual police cameras outside the town bars, with a view of all coming and going, are a nice touch.
That really sucks. I guess being in a tiny town (less then 3k) makes a difference. Any where you become even a semi regular at people start to know you. Although I've been here for almost seven years and still don't have anyone I would call a friend, but that's probably more because I'm an extreme introvert than anything else