midnight cafe: reflections & visions
notes on connection, community, conversation
This project began a few years ago when I was bored during the pandemic and wanted to have ✨ intellectual ✨ conversations with my friends. But slowly it began to morph into something else. In the past two years, we’ve hosted 35+ events, including salons, “introvert parties”, reading & meditation nights, and curiosity dinners. Across all the events, we’ve had 150+ different people participate. Lots vulnerable conversations, many new friendships. And perhaps most importantly, we have demonstrated to ourselves and the world that it’s possible to organize our social lives in different ways than we’re used to.
Along the way I’ve learned many things like:
people have soo much to say! all my friends—and basically everyone new I’ve met—has such a rich and layered inner world and is so willing to share more of this inner world with others.
a whole lot of conversations about a whole lot of topics are basically never going to happen if you don’t explicitly initiate them. for example, what do the people around you think about their parents, and what do they think about becoming a parent? or, what is everyone’s relationship with jealousy? or with money? or with their siblings?
lots of people want to have social spaces that diverge from the nyc norm of going out and drinking and spending a lot of money.
Where do we go from here? I don’t have a clear answer right now, but I know there is a problem to solve. People are siloed in their apartments, we don’t have shared physical spaces to connect, we don’t know our neighbors, it’s not easy to just “drop by” your friend’s house or a common room unannounced. Coordinating social things is hard, everyone is busy, and hosting takes a lot of energy.
In trying to solve this you run up against certain structural problems: rent is expensive, getting around is time-consuming, and physical space is hard to come by. But there are some inefficiencies here too. Huge office spaces are left empty at night. Cafes close at 5pm even though there are people who want spaces to co-mingle in the evenings. (And bars tend to be annoyingly loud and just…a different vibe.) People have living rooms where they can host people, but the coordination costs (inviting people, setting a time, figuring out food/snacks/activities) are high. What if we had a network of spaces—office spaces, living rooms, cafes—and a network of members, and found some way to solve the coordination problem of “connecting people and spaces together to foster authentic and meaningful conversation”?
There are many directions Midnight Cafe could go. It could just be “more random fun events in nyc”, which is nice. But it could be something more. Maybe we could have a weekly after-hours “cafe night” at an actual cafe, from 8p-12a. Maybe we can have cohorts and a shared library. Maybe we can have this:
Just spitballing. My hope in sharing all these thoughts is to find people who are excited about this, who have ideas or resources and want to create something together.
Other versions of this
Thankfully, this is a problem many people are working on already:
Verci: “a campus in NYC for the curious, the misfits, the self-starters, and every creative in between.”
Interintellect: “a platform for cozy, interactive online discussions on your favorite topics” with many in-person activities now too.
The Commons SF: “a community and third space dedicated to open-ended curiosity, co-created play, & collective flourishing in the heart of San Francisco.”
The Neighborhood NYC: “it's like a campus but for adults 😊”
Lightning Society: “A community of mentors and friends creating a more collaborative, intentional and inspiring lifestyle.”
If I were to distinguish Midnight Cafe from the others, I would say it veers more towards vulnerable conversations and intellectual curiosity and also just sitting together and vibing. But I don’t think we even need to distinguish it from the others, because there are so many people who want communities like this, that we need more organizations doing this, not less. There is clearly demand for connection and interesting conversation, and we all need to experiment with different approaches for meeting this need.
Coda
I want to get us out of default modes of engaging with the world and with each other. Even as someone who hosts ostensibly uNcOnvEnTioNaL events, like celebrating my birthday by meditating on the beach with friends on a saturday night in October, I’m still way too comfortable sticking to the grain. (The beach idea was just something I stole from a lovely friend of mine.) We keep forgetting how much agency we have to shape the world around us. I’m inspired by things like this:
So weird!! But so exciting!!
Next event
With all this pontification out of the way, our next event will be a cozy gathering on the evening of January 19th at a cafe in the East Village. Details are still being worked out but reply to this email if you’re interested.
PS if you haven’t already, follow our instagram page.