How to Build Community Where You Live
Why becoming a regular, putting in the hours, and enduring the awkwardness matter more than you think
I’ve been thinking a lot about community lately.
My oldest turned 13 in late December, and a few weeks later, we celebrated his bar mitzvah. For those who aren’t familiar, a bar mitzvah (or a bat mitzvah for girls) is a Jewish coming-of-age ceremony that marks the transition from childhood to adulthood.1
To commemorate this milestone, we gathered his community at our synagogue. Friends and family came together on a rainy Saturday morning to witness him lead parts of the religious service, read from the Torah, and give a speech about what he’s learned.
As part of the service, my husband Ross and I gave him a blessing.
Ross and I joke that we each play a specific leadership role in our family. As an introvert who loves details, Ross mainly covers internal (he plans and cooks all our meals, for example). As an extrovert who loves the big picture, I’m external (I manage our social calendar, plan gatherings, etc.). We agreed to divide the blessing accordingly.
As I considered my external-facing wishes for my oldest child, I immediately thought about community.
This post is inspired by my blessing (the full version appears at the end of this post as a paid subscriber bonus, along with one of my favorite photos).
Community is not something that just happens.
As with most things, it helps if you’re intentional about building and maintaining it. For example, I’ve lived in my current home for over 14 years. However, it’s only in the last few years that I’ve truly felt part of the local community.
Perhaps it’s because after years of commuting downtown, I now work from a rented office a few blocks away. But it’s more than just that.
Here are a few other things that have helped me build community locally:
We sent our kids to our local school. In San Francisco, kids aren’t guaranteed admission to their local public schools, but there are ways to increase their odds.2 Attending our local elementary school helped us meet families nearby. Our kids go to a different school now, but they remained good friends with a few former classmates; they can walk to one another’s houses, which is a game-changer.
I became a regular at local businesses. It doesn’t take much to be considered “a regular.” I visit a few local businesses 2-3 times a week (my rented mailbox and a strength studio). A few times a month I meet someone for a drink at a nearby bar, and I refill our bottles at a zero waste store. Being greeted by name at these local small businesses makes me feel like I belong.
We got a dog. I knew that SF famously has more dogs than children, but I never realized the power of this subculture until I joined it. Within days of getting our pup, I met many new neighbors. My daily walks with Dewey force me to interact with other people. The weirdest thing about these interactions, in my opinion? Everyone wants to know my dog’s name but not mine. What’s up with that?!
Community is not the same as your friends.
I learned this on a cross-country bike trip after I graduated from college. Around 30 of us set off from New Haven to bike 4,000 miles across the country to raise money for Habitat for Humanity. I wasn’t friends with all my fellow cyclists, but boy did I feel part of a community, especially after I had an accident on the trip. I’m not in regular touch with anyone from the trip, but we were so strongly bonded that several of us gathered for breakfast at our 25th college reunion to relive the memories of that summer, which remain quite vivid in spite of all the time that’s passed.
Katherine Goldstein has written eloquently about how community is different from friendship. Instead of rehashing her points, I’ll put her excellent post below:
Several years ago, I started taking tennis lessons at the municipal tennis center near my house, and I’ve built a tennis community I see every week. I wouldn’t call everyone I’ve met a friend, but that’s ok – that’s not why I picked up my racket after a 15 year hiatus (here’s why I did). Instead, my tennis community enables me to play tennis, which is one of my favorite ways to spend time these days.
Community is not the same as connection.
Community creates the conditions for connection, but it’s not a guarantee.
Once you’re part of a community, it takes both time and effort to make friends. A widely-cited study suggests it takes about 40-60 hours to shift someone from an acquaintance to a casual friend and about 80-100 hours to transition to being a friend.3
These hours need to occur within a relatively short timeframe for friendship to actually develop – spreading 100 hours over several years doesn’t have the same effect as spending that time over a few months (which explains why my bike trip was so bonded).
While you’re putting in that time, it will likely feel uncomfortable. When our older son switched schools at the beginning of 4th grade, our family joined a new school community. Our son made friends quickly, but it took months years of effort — showing up at community gatherings and feeling awkward — before my husband and I felt like we had friends.
So why subject ourselves to this discomfort? Because connection is the point of life (yes, even if you’re an introvert – again, the wise Katherine Goldstein has written about this).
Community is an antidote to doomscrolling.
The news is truly horrific these days, and it can be hard to resist doomscrolling. But when you stop scrolling and connect in person, the world feels better.
As part of my son’s bar mitzvah program, he’s required to volunteer. He and I recently put in a shift at a local food pantry, where we found ourselves lugging heavy boxes of cucumbers at 7:30 am on a Saturday. For the next several hours, as neighbors manuvered their carts around folding tables set up inside a church nave, we handed out cucumbers. Many people smiled at us. A few thanked us for being there. One even gave me a flower.
When the parade of food pantry clients had ended, the volunteers stayed to clean up. I asked a volunteer leader how long he’d been coming, and he replied, “Nineteen years.”
He used to live next to the church, and one of his apartment’s windows faced the church’s garbage bins. His wife fretted that the noise would wake up their sleeping baby, so one morning, he went over to the church to see what was going on. He discovered the food pantry, stayed to volunteer, and got hooked.
I get how that could happen. During my time handing people cucumbers, I forgot about all the bad news. I left feeling connected, grateful for the food in my own pantry, and proud of my son for not complaining about our early morning plans.
Abby’s Latest
With much of the US facing frigid temperatures this week, it feels like a good time to stop gatekeeping my favorite broth.
When I lived in New York City two decades ago, a restaurant called Hearth was a five minute walk from my apartment. Its prices were above my twenty-something self’s budget, so I didn’t go often, but when I did, I remember the food as being delicious and especially nourishing.
When I discovered that Hearth’s chef, Marco Canora, started a broth company called Brodo (broth in Italian), I quickly placed an order — despite the fact that my younger self would have definitely rolled her eyes at this behavior.
A nutritionist recently recommended I get more protein and collagen, but I don’t love them in powdered form. I’ve experimented with different bone broths, but I haven’t found any as tasty as Brodo’s. Plus, Brodo’s have 10 grams of protein per serving, are shelf-stable for one year, and make the perfect afternoon tea or coffee substitute. I hear prices are going up February 2, so you may want to order a sampler box now!
Deliberately yours,
Abby
P.S. Paid subscribers, read on for the blessing I gave my son…and see one of my favorite photos (click “view entire message” or open this in the Substack app).
