Community joy where everyone learns your name
Original Medium Post HERE
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How can a few people move community joy forward? Here’s one story.
“Linda. LINDA. LINDA.”
We were sitting at a worn wooden bench, next to wood-panel
ed walls featuring military honors and photos of the owner’s sons, while sharing a pitcher of beer and brainstorming. We had been saying Linda’s name, when an already slightly inebriated regular customer walked in and said it louder — and on repeat.
We were at Eddie C’s, the Bar I still called My Bar — because when I had first arrived in East Boston, it was a bar without a name. I loved this bar, with its beer-wet floor and jukebox that hadn’t had a song added since around the time I was born. We loved Johnny, our bartender. He generally joined us in having a few beers. He refilled our pitcher for free all night. Before they had an ill-fated foray into serving tripe (I think to comply with a law requiring bars to serve at least some food), and even during that ill-fated foray, he would go pick up pizza, or have it delivered for us.
The group I was gathered with was the Mayor’s ONEin3 civic engagement committee. I was part of the inaugural class of this group dedicated to making Boston a great city for people ages 20–34. We had several subcommittees and in this, my second year, I had joined the civic engagement committee partly to solve a problem I had: I wanted to connect more with people in my community.
I lived in East Boston, I loved this bar, and I generally just went there with my friends from outside East Boston. I didn’t know people my age in the community, other than my roommates and one other friend who was a member of the Mayor’s ONEin3 committee (who continues to be a good friend today). I didn’t know many other people of any age in my community other than my awesome Italian neighbors who shared their homemade pizza and invited me to eat under the vine in their backyard.
So I suggested we start hosting neighborhood nights where people could meet each other. We were at Eddie C’s, at my suggestion, to test out a potential venue.
As we left Eddie C’s, our very friendly regular customer again called out Linda’s name. The committee wasn’t sure this would be the best place for an inaugural community gathering — and we decided to look for other options.
Our ONEin3 leaders, Isabel and Devin, enrolled a member of the city’s young entrepreneurs group, Rob Pyles, in the planning. I didn’t know him before, but he was to become one of my closest friends in the neighborhood. Rob suggested the pizza place where we ultimately landed for that first neighborhood night.
It didn’t take too much marketing. We shared info about the Neighborhood Night through our newsletter and our network. Rob shared it through young entrepreneurs in the neighborhood. Flyering could have worked too (or social media posts now, but this was still back in the early Friendster days).
More than twenty people showed up. We were all brought there with a shared (if subconscious) recognition: joy lives in community. Rob had already started building community in East Boston and showed the answer to a question we will dive into in a future post: how can you (or any one person) help move a community joy movement forward?
Neighborhood nights ended up being replicated across Boston neighborhoods. Many of the people who met that first neighborhood night were to have many fun Eddie C’s nights ahead of them. Many of my closest Eastie friends either came from that first Neighborhood night — or were introduced to me by people at that night. And many from that group gave a lot back to the very special East Boston community.
So if you have a few people in a place seeking to build more community — perhaps a Neighborhood Night could help. Here are a few steps for getting started:
If you know anyone in your community already, ask them to meet up to plan. If not, you can get started on your own too.
Find a favorite local restaurant, bar, or community common space with room for people to move around and connect with each other. Pick a day and time with them, where they will allow you to have a group gather at no cost to you (unless you want to pay for anything — but no cost works really well)
Develop some flyers to put up on community bulletin boards and post on social media. Give people at least 2 weeks to plan to attend. Mention who should attend, the purpose of community building and getting to know neighbors, and other simple logistics.
Try it out. Even if only 1 other person shows up, that’s one more connection in your community — and your community joy movement is growing!
This is a very slightly updated version of a Medium post providing simple, powerful tools to drive increased joy--for ourselves, our workplaces, and in our programs. The full series, and other posts are at: https://medium.com/@justinpasquariello (this post was published in March 2023).
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Rob & I gathered with friends for East Boston Social Centers comedy night several years later. Courtesy of East Boston Social Centers/ Eastie Times