Party like it's 1996

The final installment of a six-week challenge to rediscover hanging out. Five weeks of lo-fi time travel, aimed at curiosity, serendipity and real connection.

Nineties fever is back

The New York Times is writing about mix tapes. MapQuest is popular again. The nostalgia is everywhere, but the point was never the aesthetic.

“1990s fever is sweeping the nation.”

Real life is negotiable

Summer ends and everyone goes back to normal. But normal is a choice, and hundreds of reader emails say people are hungry for something closer than what they have.

“What is real life? What does it have to be? Can't our real lives change?”

Hold office hours

Tammy picks one Saturday a month and parks herself at a bar or coffee shop in New York. Stop by or don't. Either way, her friends always know where to find her.

“But one Saturday per month, you know where to find Tammy.”

Make it a treat

Low-stakes rituals work because they respect how busy everyone is. Nobody has to RSVP, nobody has to feel guilty, and showing up stays fun instead of dutiful.

“a treat rather than a vegetable”

Watch one show together

A reader named A misses the weekly TV her family watched as a group. Pick one show for your household or friends, watch it over dinner weekly, and you get something to talk about.

“Nowadays, it seems like everyone's watching their own thing.”

Your library still parties

Laser printing, story hours, movie nights, Japanese conversation, communal quilting, board games, DVDs. Whole institutions in your town never left the nineties.

The town wants you out

Parks and rec departments run sports leagues, choir concerts and craft fairs. That bar you liked hosts events, and its owner is in the business of getting you off the couch.

Be one of the organizers

Community gardens, civic associations, amateur theater, food banks, farmers markets, your neighborhood church. Someone builds those. The question is why not you.

“What if you were one of those people? Why shouldn't you be?”

Your phone is a friend first

Readers apologized for using phones during the challenge. No need. A phone finds the bar, routes you around subway closures and gets you a ride home at the end.

“Your phone wants you to meet your friends!”

Then it turns on you

Once you are actually with people, the phone starts selling you somewhere else: who is out, who is having more fun, what you are missing. So it stays in the pocket.

“Then your phone wants to spirit you away”

Three questions before you reach

Will this connect me or disconnect me? Am I grabbing it to dodge awkwardness? Could I get this by asking a bystander or a friend instead?

“Questing in the dark?”

Actually call people

Yes, they will answer with "are you OK????" Push past that and you get a real conversation. Or start a monthly letter club, join Postcrossing, order stationery you feel obliged to use.

Be bad at things

Write a poem. Learn pickleball. Cook with kohlrabi. Plant a cutting from someone's fig tree. In the nineties we made our own fun badly, because nobody was watching.

“We could dance like no one was watching, because no one was watching.”

The grape juice test

Ariana foraged three pounds of grapes, strained them seven times through a coffee filter and got half a carafe of mid juice. The hour off screens was the actual reward.

“The final product was kind of mid. However, the process of making and creating? Perfection.”