ยป Bowling Alone in Victoria
A lot of people who move to Victoria claim that it’s hard to build a social life here. They’re from somewhere else, so it’s at least reasonable to think that they’re comparing to other cities rather than just complaining that their social life isn’t like Friends. But a lot of people in my social group are moving here after university, which is of course the ideal socializing circumstance.
I grew up in Victoria and I’m not completely happy with my social life. I suspect other natives aren’t either. So it doesn’t really matter if it’s relative: Victoria’s social scene is not living up to its potential.
Some of the most literal urban tribes I’ve seen in Victoria are sports leagues: team mates and rivals party together, travel together, take care of each other when they’re sick, etc. So in the past I’ve looked at sports as being the city’s only stable social groups. But I should have thought more carefully about my running metaphor: running is easy to do by yourself and most of the runners you see are by themselves.
My friend Nina moved here recently. We were discussing my difficulty organizing Community Circles in my social group and she offered this theory: Victorians are not in exclusive cliques (tribes) that can’t be broken into, instead they’re all off doing their own thing. Victoria is a city full of people bowling alone. Who knows if it’s happening here more than in other cities (bowling leagues are a Middle American thing, right?), but we should try to figure out how to fix it regardless.
Other social groups form around regular nightclub-goers, or book clubs that combine the joy of reading with a thorough exploration of vinology.
The common thing between these two data points (which are enough to draw a trend line) is fun. Community Circles don’t sound fun, so people don’t do them.
Or maybe the common feature is common drug use, mostly alcohol? A recent issue of Monday Magazine said that alcohol consumption is dangerously prevalent across the segment of Victoria’s population you’re talking about. “Dangerous” in the sense that people don’t understand that mixing alcohol and any other drug is super ridiculously harmful.
Anyway, that’s another rant: Perhaps you should organize your Community Circles around some kind of communal drug (probably alcohol) abuse?
Jack
23 Apr 10 at 11:51 am
I agree with the bowling alone idea. People are lazy and like to be invited out and would rather stay home Saturday nights then pick up the phone and make plans. What I do is when I want to be social is think about what I want to be doing in my social life, and then go out and do it and find people to do it with. This summer I want to go camping on the weekends. I now have a goal to find people to come camping with. I also am poor so I will be spending a lot of my social time volunteering at social events I want to attend.
Karen
24 Apr 10 at 1:53 pm