Comment by bsnnkv | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bsnnkv | Hacker News Reader

I live in Seattle, Cap Hill. Before I moved here and when I first moved here (from London) people told me that Seattle was a terrible place to make friends and build a community. My experience has been exactly the opposite; this has been the best place I've ever lived for making friends and building community, especially as a sober person.

The order of importance, I have found community here in:

- Swing dancing, both classes and going to shows with live jazz bands to dance (I was never a dancer before moving here)

- Lifting (there are great locally owned gyms in this neighborhood)

- Getting to know people who own or work at local businesses

- People who have similar tech interests, that I meet from a mixture of the previous 3 places

Finally, and I think this is a really important thing to do, I try to organize events, either in my home or in any one of the local parks in the summer, where friends I've made in different parts of my life all get together and also get to know each other

> Finally, and I think this is a really important thing to do, I try to organize events

This is generally the thing Seattle is missing -- people that organize and then tell people to show up at X place on Y date. Most of the time, it's a million people that all say they would love to hang out more, but nobody ever makes solid plans.

I think it depends on more factors than just location. I am older and live on the eastside of the Seattle metro area, and our neighbors have been generally unfriendly. When we first moved in we invited a number of neighbors to a backyard BBQ, and afterwards, none ever reached back out to us, and even worse, another became extremely aggressive towards us. It's been over four years since.

We're thinking of moving, but housing prices are incredibly high and volatile.

East side as in Bellevue?

I moved from Bellevue to Seattle proper because I found the neiborhoods there to be insufferable. Like you mentioned: no desire to socialize, hostility to any kind of group activity, serious mistrust of neighbors, etc. There is a reason there are almost no neighborhood bars or “social” areas in Bellevue, just tall office buildings and sprawling McMansions.

Seattle proper is much more pro-social and I probably doubled my happiness when I moved across the bridge.

Location is going to significantly impact the number of opportunities. I love that about big cities, but I miss the peacefulness of the country.

Oh! I'm on the east side. I've been attending Brazillian Zouk classes, but I've been interested in swing. Where do you go?

And I completely agree about event organization! It really introduces you to a wider swath of people than your initial search may have turned up.

Way to go!

Swing It Seattle has dances with live bands in Cap Hill at least once a week, and they also have multiple classes going on at any given time. Really pleasant environment, great people, can't recommend it enough!

> Swing dancing

Swing It Seattle? Me and my wife go to the wednesday dances :-)

The one and only! I'm there most Wednesdays and Saturdays too! If you're in the swing & things Discord group, I'm "jado"!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com