Damek.

UPDATE: Ezra Klein reads my mind and pretty much addresses the same subject.

I often find myself pining for a certain way of life. In my fantasy, I live in a small city or large town, living and working within a short distance. Most of my friends live in the same area, and we occasionally hang out at a local bar (or whatever), see movies together, etc. We’ll play games, chat, make plans and sometimes follow through on them. This is a dream of a life where I’m part of a larger family within my community. It’s not suburban superficiality, it’s not after-work drunkeness.

It’s a fantasy cobbled together from many places, including small town life as depicted in Stephen King novels, provincial culture and neighborhood life as depicted in various BBC TV shows, not to mention my brief experiences in England plus a bit of good old-fashioned nostalgia and imagination.

This isn’t an unobtainable fantasy; it has very simple elements. In fact, as much as I would like to live in a smaller city or town someday (cities being more efficient than suburbs, but small towns being most efficient), there’s no reason this fantasy can’t be realized even in a big city like New York. I know there are areas in the city where this sort of life still exists, or is being recreated again. But not, to my knowledge, in my neighborhood — yet, anyway.

Having friends isn’t necessarily the problem — it’s having local friends. If your friends live all over the place, transportation time is an obstacle. When you find yourself spending more time travelling to a picnic than actually picnicing, you really think hard on attending future picnics.

Not to mention that friends who live far apart have weak bonds, which end up being sustained mainly as an excuse to party. And then the parties suffer: when parties become the only time you socialize, they have little substance. Your lives aren’t quite so relevant to each other when you realistically live in different communities, in different professions, and spend very little time together. The topics naturally tend towards the superficial, like pop culture, and how long does that stay interesting?

You can hang out with co-workers, but that just means you can go into more depth when talking about work. And then you’re back to pop culture, and you’re still spending your time with people who live far away from you.

So what is needed? For myself:

1) meet neighbors; make local friends. By far the most difficult, most important element.

2) find amenable spaces for socializing. Not the typical UES frat bars. Certainly there must be some more neighborhood-oriented, friendly places. They don’t even have to be bars; a neighborhood coffee shop can serve the same purpose. (And if you start going someplace regularly enough, that may help with #1 — although iPod addiction could prove an obstacle…)

3) work closer to where I live. Also hard, but doable. And a change of work to a local locale can help with #1 as you meet your new co-workers.

4) think of things to do with people. Even with neighborhood friends, talk only goes so far. There’s a reason most bars have darts or billiards, and that humans invented cards and board games. Having a regular gaming night with local friends would be outstanding, be it at a bar or in my home.

One objection to this would be to argue that I should just embrace long-distance community, the city as one large neighborhood — brought closer together by public transportation, and socially enhanced by technological tools like cell phones and online networking (meetup.com, etc.). “21st century community.”

To such an argument, I say, “Fuoaahh!” I don’t like that sort of thing. I’m not into virtual networking and having fluid compartmentalization between interest groups (a meetup for pool lovers, another meetup for wine lovers, a different meetup for hiking lovers!), or hoofing around town and calling people for spontaneous nights out. It doesn’t satisfy the need for real, meaningful community. It feels too superficial and effervescent to me. I want solid roots, a family larger than my family, people I might even vacation with once or twice. I want my fantasy, because the fantasy seems more real.

So. Anyone know of any good UES neighborhood hangouts? Other suggestions for creating small-town-style community? Or should I just go open up my own neighborhood pub with pizza and wifi and hope for the best? Investors?

Of course, even after all that, density would still prevent the kind of community connection I’m thinking of. While I don’t want the suburbs, with their individualist structure and faux, Stepfordish community — a massive city like New York enters the other extreme, throwing so many people together that the very concepts of “local,” “neighborhood” and “community” are perverted.

How “neighborhoody” can a local hangout be, even just three blocks away, if 1,000 people separate it from your home? Even an extended group of regulars would still be such a small percentage of the larger neighborhood that a certain irrelevance and alienation would prevail. You’d have a family, but they’d be dwarfed by their surroundings, your tribe’s identity abstracted from the larger, city-wide political entity.

So I’d still prefer a smaller town, with a stronger sense of integration. But not so small that it doesn’t have some lively culture, a theatre or two, more than one restaurant… Say, population 200,000 or so?

However, given my current circumstances, better a block association than no association at all…