I went to a couple of miniDopeFests, far less than full-blown events just regional people getting together. Result, at least here in the big city, was a noisy venue, a long table, 15+ people, and an inability to hear more than 4% of anything anyone said or do more than smile and nod if I had the general impression that someone was intending to direct a question my way.
(Overall impression: this whole “meet in person” as a supposedly more intimate and ‘real’ phenom than sharing thoughts on a message board, is a heckuva lot more isolating and detached. I don’t particularly care what you look like and in all other respects I get more from you online)
What if we did get-togethers of 10 people or less, in a deliberately less noisy venue? I don’t mean a snob-society of the 10 People Who Matter, more like a “put your name in the jar and we’ll draw until 10 people drawn say they can make it” sort of thing.
For a dissociative alien-being type of person, I’m actually pretty interested in people, at least in quantities small enough to cope with, and where conversations have a chance of including everyone present.
I, for one, would rather be left out of 6 or 10 in a row if when my name is drawn I get to hang out with some of you people in a quantity small enough to actually talk and hear and so on.
One of the benefits of a regular dopefest is that you can get away from the people who are annoying you. And if I’m attending a 'fest, I’m looking for some goofy fun, not some serious conversation. But hey, that might just be me.
Of course, it might be nice to see if we could find locations where there are areas for people who would rather have some quiet conversation. Or do it so that we have dinner at one place, and then the group could split into a “go somewhere for an actual conversation” group and a “go to a bar and act like an idiot” group. (and I mean idiot in the nicest way possible.) The conversation group would probably be pretty small.
FWIW, I remember having a nice conversation with you at a dopefest. You were sitting next to me. It was at John’s Pizza in Times Square.
I know this doesn’t work for every location, but we usually cap the three-day KC Dopefests with a cookout. One cookout was at my (old) house, and the others were at a local park. Assuming the weather isn’t crappy, it’s easy to mill about, talk to whomever you want, and get to know everyone without having to deal with the confined space of a bar/restaurant. It’s worked out pretty well.
Here in Philly, we call 'em Doper Dinners, because we rarely have more than 10 people show up, and there have been a slew with 4-6. With the smaller ones, it tends to be one conversation – with 10 or 12, usually there are two or three conversations, and you may end up at the wrong end of the table to talk to someone you wanted to meet, but it’s generally doable. Try setting something up more spur-of-the-moment (this Friday, not agonizing over a date six weeks out) – it will probably self-select to the size you want.
Pick a date here in the next week or so and then pick a venue where it is quiet and you should be able to find a small group of people who want to hang out and chat. Perhaps set up a day where a few of us get together, pick up a pizza and go have lunch in Central Park? I would totally be there for that.
OK folks… in another concurrent thread pertaining to American ethnicity I bemoaned the shortage of German restaurants. Anyone up for German food tomorrow thursday or Friday?
Problem with that is that I don’t have a specifc place in mind. OK, decisive mode on…
Mexican, perhaps at Cafe Español on Carmine St @ 7th Av? Or Dos Caminos at 3rd Av / 50th?