I spent last Friday night gawking at a party for a book on subway paint, hunting down a likely AI-generated singles mixer, getting recruited for a 3D-printing AI startup, and carousing at a Downtown Brooklyn hookah lounge (regrettably, while wearing clogs). Strictly speaking, I had not been invited to any of these events.
I had found all of these parties on Eventbrite (yes, it still exists), the website where New Yorkers post event listings for everything: offbeat plays, middling clubs, Mars simulation trainings, and occasionally, even job openings. Every few months, I spend a Friday night attending as many free, oddball events as is physically possible in one evening—sourced from Eventbrite's distinctly weirder crowd than competitor apps Luma, Partiful, or the evil-coded Posh—and I think you should too.
Eventbrite Night, as I call it, is a way to stretch time, to cold-plunge into unknown corners of the city that you will never fully know and will probably never return to. It has introduced me to experimental podcast producers, artificial intelligence zealots, and highly flirtatious personal trainers. In my view, Eventbrite Night is the best way to escape the rut of your social routine, leave your apartment, and meet some New Yorkers doing incredibly strange and incredibly cool shit. And you can do it without spending more than the cost of a subway fare (as long as you force Eventbrite to show you only free events).
Want to know where a typical Eventbrite Night might take you? Here's everything that happened to me last Friday night: the good, the bad, and the AI-generated.
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