But do you invite other people, or have some way of introducing others to it? That's kind of what I'm getting at: regardless of the activity, there's a social disconnect for getting people involved if they're not already in a circle of friends--and the few circles I was in didn't intersect at all.

It's not necessarily an insurmountable gap but it's enough to intimidate most people who aren't already outgoing, or who are accustomed to a friendlier town.

I grew up in Redmond, went to college at WSU, and moved into Seattle in 2002. For the longest time after that, when walking into a bar or show, I had to keep persuading myself that people were not going to point and scream at me like Donald Sutherland in the 70's Body Snatchers movie.