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Social Fabric NYC

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About Social Fabric NYC

Think something fits on here? Email liamrosen@gmail.com and I’ll check it out.

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Table of Contents

Portals to Community

Event Hosts

  • Sugary - “New Yorkers who seek to build meaningful connections around the joys of art, music, culture, food and supportive unity.”
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    Liam’s take
  • Lamp Club - “Significant events for funky people who hate overhead lighting.” New School-affiliated.
  • Under The Table - food/music parties
  • The Fifth Place - “an invitation-only, absurdist social gathering held within different venues in New York. Each time you visit The Fifth Place you're given a new set of rules by our Directors of Behavior which shape your interactions with the other guests.”
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    Liam’s take

Third Spaces

Brooklyn and Queens

  • 57 (Williamsburg)
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    Liam’s take
  • Boshi’s Place (East Williamsburg) - “a space that celebrates game making as a craft“
  • Brooklyn Spark (Bushwick) - community workshop and makerspace with woodworking, 3D printing, electronics, and textiles
  • Hex House (Williamsburg) - “an art studio and community space. Our 4,000 sq ft warehouse in East Williamsburg is a space for making, learning, celebration, & ceremony.”
  • Interference Archive (Park Slope) - an organization dedicated to archiving, showcasing, and producing zines and other material related to social movements. Events include gatherings, archive sessions, and zine workshops.
  • New Women Space (Williamsburg) - “100% of programming/operations led by womxn, POC, Q/TGNC individuals + allies”
  • Pioneer Works (Red Hook)
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    Liam’s take
  • Principles GI Coffee House (Gowanus) - a “rabble-rousing gathering space masquerading as a cafe” that hosts bike alleycat races, coffee crawls, and other events
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    Liam’s take
  • RecCreate Collective (Clinton Hill) - event space for arts-inclined people to “get messy” and create, ($20-$35/event)
  • telos.haus (Williamsburg) - Google Calendar
  • ThirdSpace (East Williamsburg)
  • Woodbine (Ridgewood) - “a volunteer-run experimental hub in Ridgewood, Queens for developing the practices, skills, and tools needed to build autonomy. “
  • Wonderville (Bushwick) - DIY music and gaming shows, workshops and meetups

Manhattan

  • CX (Soho) - “a small team of creatives who set out to build a new kind of social platform — one that offers more authentic, accountable, and meaningful connections”
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    Liam’s take
  • Fabrik (TriBeCa and Dumbo) - hosts a lot of events run by full-time community organizers
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    Liam’s take
  • Index (Chinatown) - a coworking and community space (mostly paid events)
  • Maxwell (Tribeca) - the anti-Soho house. Members-only, accepts 5-15 new members per month.
  • Sovereign House (LES, 185 E Broadway) - Dimes Square affiliated, underground
  • The Explorers Club (UES, ~$20/event) - “supporting scientific expeditions of all disciplines, and uniting our members in the bonds of good fellowship for over a century”

Assorted Interests

Reading

  • Quiet Reading- “free weekly events in libraries, parks, and cafes”
  • Reading Rhythms - read to curated playlists/live music
  • Yu & Me Books (Chinatown) - book launches, signings, and talks from primarily BIPOC/queer authors
  • Alex & Books - occasional non-fiction reading parties ($10)

Plants

Sports

Games

Health and Wellness

  • Ice Cold Club (Williamsburg) - rooftop space for cold plunges fused with occasional yoga and breathwork

Conscious(ness)

Kink

  • Hit Me Up - Ethical Non-Monogamy and Kink workshops and events
  • Space Invaders Social Club - Hosts regular social events for “ENM, polyam, non-traditional, + curious folx”
  • Open Social - social (non-play) events for emotionally non-monogamous peeps

Local Activism

Musicians

Deeper Conversations

  • The Deep Dinner - monthly spirituality-focused dinner conversations. All faiths welcome. ($45)
  • Olio - free and paid gatherings that use art, literature, and conversation prompts to skip the small talk

Creatives

  • A Third Place - creative pop-up workshops around NYC ($)
  • Arts Crafts Interface Design (aci-d) - Events to get interface designers out into the real world, getting inspired by field trips and each other’s physical work and side projects (via weekly hangs). Goes on hiatus in the summer.
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    Liam’s take
  • Crafters of New York - work on crochet, knitting, or other crafty projects in a group social setting
  • LARPA (Bushwick) - collective fostering experimental perspectives on digital culture
  • Drawing Room (Midtown & Brooklyn) - “a big, cozy living room where creativity is our common thread” ($)
  • Gather - “reignite child-like play and become present in wonder. Each Session is led by an artist who shares their unique crafts in intimate settings.” ($)
  • wavefield (Bushwick) - a video art educational space
  • Hack Manhattan (Midtown) - a makerspace
  • CreativeMorning Clubs - variety of frequent (2-4 per week) meetups - not just in the morning!
  • Olive Tree Writing Club - focused Sunday morning writing sessions with space for introductions and small group discussion at the end
  • Secret Riso Club (Bushwick) - risography/screenprinting workshops and member mixers ($)
  • Studio45 (Bushwick) - sister-led event and workshop space ($)
  • Kaleidoscope Gallery (Bushwick) - workshops, classes, art exhibitions and open studios

Looking for more? Check out akin, a comprehensive listing of creative spaces and events in New York City.

Climate

Energy, Power, and Utilities

  • Data in Power - Crystal Soo, an expert on utility rates and regulatory affairs, gathers both energy and utility professionals and laypeople together for casual monthly chats about data and energy.
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    Liam’s take
  • DER Task Force - Once-a-month meetup of forward-thinkers exchanging ideas about how to make a cheaper, cleaner, and more resilient grid through distributed energy.

Tech

Aggregators

  • Gary’s Guide - the most comprehensive tech events aggregator, updated at the beginning of every week
  • The Knowledge Shop | Founder Events - slightly better UI than Gary’s Guide but perhaps fewer events
  • Supermomos - young professionals, plurality Asian. Cool concept where you gain or lose momo points for attending or flaking on RSVPs

Specific Tech Interests

Spaces

  • Fractal Tech (Williamsburg) - one-part coworking, one-part startup accelerator, one part event space.
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    Liam’s take
  • Betaworks (Meatpacking) - longtime tech space hosting hackathons, talks, and panels
  • GUMBO (DUMBO) - a community of NYC-based indie game developers
  • Recurse Center (Downtown Brooklyn) - monthly “Localhost” presentations and socials. RSVP early because space is limited.
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    Liam’s take
  • South Park Commons (Noho) - NYC branch of the SF institution
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    Liam’s take
  • NYC Resistor (Downtown Brooklyn) - hacker collective and makerspace

Hosts

Dinner Clubs

Social Clubs

  • 222 ($$$) - curated public experiences based on preference matching
  • Among Friends - “a social club for everyone”
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    Liam’s take
  • BORDERLESS - uniting people from around the world to share their local cultures through potlucks, food tours, parties, and language exchanges
  • Midnight Cafe
  • Parlor Social Club ($$$)
  • Verci - a second home for creative, ambitious tech-enabled people in NYC. See https://www.verci.com for more details.
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    Liam’s take

Women’s Social Clubs

  • New York Junior League - “advanc[ing] women’s leadership for meaningful community impact through volunteer action, collaboration, and training”
  • The Camaraderie - “a women’s collective that offers a world of genuine community… away from the corporate mindset, built on a foundation of radical kindness, and free from pressures and pretenses”
  • Girls Gone Hiking NYC - “building sisterhood on the trail. join our slow-paced day hikes accessible from NYC”

Volunteering

Street Cleanup Groups

Volunteering Aggregators

  • NYC Service - the city’s official volunteer site. Geared more towards organizations that offer ongoing opportunities.
  • New York Cares - a third-party organization aggregating volunteer opportunities. Tends to be geared more towards one-off opportunities, but not exclusively!

Less Specific Aggregators

These event listings cater to some subset of the general crowd. There’s hardly a filter, rather just that you have to find a website and subscribe to find out about them. In my experience, this is actually enough to curate some very high quality people and conversations.

General Aggregators

General aggregators have the lowest barrier to entry. In a city like New York, this often means contending with people who (either by lack of will or lack of social value) have not put effort into finding more selective events. There are always some diamonds in the rough, but the average open-invitation event here will be a grab bag.

  • Eventbrite
  • Meetup - many low barrier to entry events have been co-opted by for-profit “social” organizers who cultivate a bad vibe. Can still be a good way to find very specific interest meetups, though.
  • Facebook Events - tends toward performances and large public events
  • Partiful - not an aggregator per se, but if you go to a lot of private parties, you’ll start getting invited to Open Invite events where people mass invite their mutuals