Making Friends When You're New In Town
Illustration from We Should Get Together: The Secret to Cultivating Better Friendships by Kat Vellos
If you’re moving to a new city, or have recently moved to a new city, chances are you’re running into one of the most common friendship challenges: making friends in a new place. If you’re like most adults living in modern cities, there’s also a high chance that this is a situation you’ll find yourself in many times throughout adulthood.
When it comes to making friends in a new city, the first step is to get your mind in the right place: Are you thinking of this as a scary and intimidating challenge, or an adventure full of possibility? I suggest thinking of it as the latter.
Before you move to your new city
Before you arrive in town, set yourself up for success by priming the pump. Ask your existing friends, acquaintances, and coworkers if they have any friends in your new town that they’d be willing to introduce you to. Once you get those introductions, meet up with your new potential friends with a spirit of optimistic openness.
When you source these introductions, go broad. Research shows that most of our new opportunities (eg. jobs, friends, partners) come into our lives through our loose ties, rather than the people we’re closest to. Why? Because the people we’re closest to usually have all the same information that we have. What does “loose ties” mean? These are people in your network that you’re friendly with but don’t spend time with on a regular basis, for example the people you chat with at yoga but have never hung out with, or former coworkers that you’re friendly with but you only touch base once in blue moon. Our loose ties tend to have access to different people and opportunities, so they can open more new doors for us.
Once you’re in your new city
Ok, so you’re in your new town. Most of your boxes are unpacked, you figured out where to order a pizza close to your new apartment, and you need some friends! Here are three of my top tips for finding them.
1. Be invitational
When you meet someone you really like, whether it’s your Uber driver, someone friendly in a shop or cafe, neighbors, or someone you chat with at your bus stop, invite them to hang out again. Sometimes people feel anxious to get together one-on-one, so invite them to a group hangout where you get multiple people together to listen to music, and share some potluck snacks and simple beverages.
I did this once by inviting new neighbors to come hang out outdoors for muffins and lemonade. I hand-wrote invitations and taped them to people’s front doors. I baked a tray of lemon poppyseed muffins and stirred up two carafes of lemonade: it probably only cost $10. It’s not really about what you serve, it’s about the intention of making new friends and bringing people together. Over 15 people showed up, eager to meet other neighbors too. If you don’t want to have people indoors at your place, and you don’t have an easy-to-use stoop or driveway, use a local park or public square. If you want to take this idea to the next level, check out the story of Curtis Kimball who decided one day, “I'm going to be the dad of the neighborhood and just make everyone pancakes.”
If you don’t want to start from scratch, scroll through your online friends or put a post on your social media letting people know that you’re in the area and you want to meet up with them. For scripts you can copy-paste, check out my guide to turning online friends into IRL friends.
2. Be participatory
Find out what local events and gatherings are happening in your area and then show up — wear something that makes you feel fun and put on your friendliest attitude. Look up gatherings on Meetup.com, or google “events in [your city]”. Art Walks and Gallery Walks are a great idea, because you can spark up conversations about the art you’re all looking at together.
When you’re there, smile and strike up conversations with other attendees and the gallery hosts. If you vibe with a couple folks that you’d like to see again, simply say, “I’m having a get-together with some friends and neighbors in a couple weeks. I’d love to invite you to join us.” Then make sure you extend those invitations to your new friends and neighbors! If someone invites you to something, even if it’s not your #1 favorite activity, go anyways. The conversations you get into could make it all worthwhile.
I also strongly recommend seeking out communities of practice that already gather around one of your hobbies, skills, or interest areas. Groups that are already meeting on a regular basis for that unique purpose are likely to be a source of new friends that you already have something in common with. The other big benefit here is that you don’t have to invest a lot of energy in scheduling the hangouts if the group already has a recurring schedule. Examples: Gardening groups, role-playing games that happen every Wednesday night, sports leagues with a regular practice schedule, book clubs that meet biweekly or monthly, weekly knitting circles, and cause-based volunteering groups.
Hot Tip: If you feel nervous giving new acquaintances your real phone number, offer to DM someone on social media or get a second phone number through a service like Google Voice, Sideline, Flyp, or Burner.
3. Be experimental
Put on your courage pants and try something new! Go to a local park or public square then set up a couple of folding chairs and a sign that says “Free Friendly Conversation from 2-4pm” or whatever time you want. If you don’t have folding chairs, just use a park bench. Pick a place that has a good amount of foot traffic; this won’t work if you pick a lonely sidewalk that no one walks down.
To bring people over, you can also hang signs advertising “Free Friendly Conversation on Saturday from 2-4pm” on nearby telephone poles, on the NextDoor app, or on your neighborhood’s Facebook group if they have one. Once someone sits down to join you, you can improvise your conversations or make it a bit of a game by using prompts like the Better than Small Talk conversation cards here in my shop. This might sound like a weird idea but you’d be surprised how well it can work. If you need inspiration, check out Thomas Knox’s Emmy-nominated project called Date While You Wait which is based on the exact same idea — he invited people to join him for mini dates on a subway platform while they were waiting for their train to arrive. Spoiler: He was wildly successful.
The challenge of making friends when you’re new in town is something that millions of adults can relate to, including your new friends and neighbors — they were all new in town before too! The lovely thing about being new in town is that you bring a burst of fresh energy with you. You have more creative license to bring people together, to extend unconventional invitations, and you can be a breath of fresh air for the folks on your block or in your neighborhood.
If you’ve been wanting to experiment with exploring new sides of your personality, this is a perfect opportunity to try it on, since the new people you meet don’t have anything to compare you to — the You that you show them is the only You that they know.
Have fun! If you decide to try any of the above ideas for making new friends, I’d love to hear how it goes! Feel free to drop me a line any time.
All best wishes,
Kat Vellos, author, We Should Get Together: The Secret to Cultivating Better Friendships