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Come Together
MeetinDC's Mikey Herd founded the social group four years ago to "create an environment where everyone's invited," he says. An anniversary party at his Alexandria home drew about 200 members, including Maria Robertson, from left, Charann White and Annette Delallana, shown with Herd.
(Mark Finkenstaedt Ftwp - Mark Finkenstaedt)
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"Once you realize that people are all the same, you can talk to anyone." That's what Mikey Herd thinks. The San Francisco transplant founded MeetinDC four years ago, because he wanted to find more non-work friends and to "create an environment where everyone's invited," he says. He could, he says now, write a book about how much people's social lives matter to them, how "when you're stuck in a box, stuck in a house, you go stir crazy."
Herd, who also works full time as a computer technician, marked the group's anniversary recently with a house party for about 200 of his closest friends. Which is a sliver of the 75,000 who belong, at least technically, to Meetin chapters across 90 cities in the United States and abroad; there are 6,500 registered members in Washington.
His is among the broadest and most democratic of the social organizations around town. Anyone can join, anyone can plan a gathering and no one makes a profit.
That's how Romel Punsal found himself hosting the indoor rock-climbing event that Connolly -- and a dozen other friends and strangers -- attended last month.
"I'll tell you what -- it's weird when all you do is go from your job to your apartment and you do that all the time," says Punsal, a 27-year-old New York City native who moved to Washington three years ago. "Especially in a city with so much potential. You feel really isolated.
"You walk up Clarendon Boulevard or Dupont Circle and see everyone walking up the street with 10, 15 people, and you're like, 'How did you get all that?' " he says.
For a year, Punsal just kept his head down. He focused on the government contracting job he had come here for. He shot up to Baltimore to hang out with the couple of friends he had up there. And he just felt isolated.
When it got to be too much, he signed up for a MeetinDC ski trip -- a move that seemed risky at the time.
"You realize you're going to show up at something and potentially everyone else could know people and you'd be the new kid, and that's nerve-racking," he recalls thinking. "But we all have a common interest, so the atmosphere is more welcoming."
So he started going to more activities, even hosting some. Wine tastings. Happy hours. Jazz concerts. Laser tag excursions. MeetinDC's only real parameters are that someone has to be willing to plan an event and other people have to want to go. Even if it's just to dinner. And even if attendance totals only two.
There is a relative anonymity to the group, at least initially. Members usually go by first names only and aren't required to give out much personal information over the Web. Eventually, though, real friendships develop and people break off, maybe finding that they don't need the same structure anymore.
That has been the case for Punsal, but remaining involved has become almost a way of returning the favor, and a way to continue exploring the city.
