Making friends when you go to hang out.

WildMan · Posted: Thu Jun 07, 2007 4:56 pm Post subject:

I live in Las Vegas, though right now I'm on an extended visit to my homeland of Los Angeles. I finally found a great place to hang out that's right up my alley: it's a hipster lounge type place called "The Griffin", up on Fremont St., just a wee little bit east of Las Vegas Blvd. I finally found a place in Vegas where my kind of people can be found. My second favorite place is Champagne's Cafe, followed by the Freakin' Frog (several friends that work there), and then the Double Down Saloon. I haven't had very good experiences with most other places, particularly a place called the Dive Bar, which is very near to where I live.

So anyways, I've always wondered how to make new friends at such a place. Some nights I'll manage to get talking to strangers at the bar and have excellent conversations about all kinds of cool stuff, and then I'll exchange e-mail addresses with them... but then I'll neglect to write to them. I guess it would help if I actually wrote to them! So the solution to that one is obvious.

But other times, I'm hanging around by myself and everyone else seems to be caught up in talk with their friends or preoccupied, and the majority of the time I am all too reluctant to butt in and introduce myself. And the majority of the time that I do try, they give off uneasy/annoyed vibes that compel me to turn back to my glass. Now, for some reason, the best people to meet are people visiting from New York. Man, I swear, that has to be the best town for an Aspie!!

So what's a good way to edge in on people and introduce myself, without weirding them out or pissing them off? I would really like to build a decent social circle, as the people that I hang out with are almost always colleagues/coworkers. It's been a mystery to me as to how people manage to make friends well beyond their circle of family/work/school/church, etc.

Also, I see interesting-seeming people in my age bracket hanging around at my apartment complex who apparently live here. They seem rare, as most people who live here are working-class families with small kids. I often wonder how I could introduce myself to them as I'm walking by. Sometimes they look at me and think the same thing I'm thinking of them: "hmmmmm... that dude seems interesting. And he lives here, too."