I like to meet people. I'm in a new city. I like great methods!
The first meetup I went to had a general geek theme. Fans of science fiction, fantasy, comic books, animation, etc. (I'm a HUGE fan of et cetera!) were all welcome to meet in a pub and talk about their obsessions.
I went, and it was pretty great! There were about 30 people there and I got to have a good, long discussion with about eight. I met a man in his late 50s who loves comic books, a man in his early 20s who loves Tolkien, and a man in his 40s who may or may not be a pathological liar (if you want more details, you'll have to speak with me in person).
The next meetup I went to wasn't actually organized through meetup.com, but I couldn't very well name this blog entry "A Tale of Two Meetups and One Thing That Was Posted on an Art Gallery's Website." There's an art gallery named The Horse Hospital, after the previous function of their building (which may give you a clue to how old this in-the-middle-of-the-city building really is). They occasionally screen films there and they were screening a British made-for-TV movie called Penda's Fen. Now, I had never heard of Penda's Fen but I went because they were screening the movie using an actual 16mm film strip on an old-timey projector (as opposed to most theaters which have switched to digital projection). I thought it would be cool to check out...turns out I was wrong...it was actually SUPER COOL!
I intentionally sat in the back, next to the projector. Once they started up the film I heard that great whiiiring sound as the film was fed through the machine, and the classic film strip count-down danced across the screen.
10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, (spliced in frame of some 70s girl's high school picture), 4, 3, 2, 1...
The movie started and it looked pretty great! You know that faded, orange-tinted quality of pictures when they've been sitting in a drawer for 30 years? Just imagine if the bell-bottom wearing people in those pictures started moving around and talking before your very eyes! The story of the movie was pretty interesting too...but the main thing was seeing it on 16mm!
After the screening I went and had a little chat with the projectionist, who I knew wouldn't mind me geeking out about how cool it was. She said that the picture of the girl they spliced into the countdown was actually a very common thing. It was usually tradition for the film lab technicians to put in a picture of one of their female co-workers. I have since done some more research and found out these girls are referred to in the industry as "china girls" most commonly, or sometimes "leader ladies."
The third meetup I went to was a brand new one where people get together to discuss religion and philosophy. That was super fun and informative, mainly because everyone came from such a diverse background. In addition to four or so Brits we had two Italians, two Arabs, a Frenchman, and me, the only Yankee. The discourse was interesting, fun, and (almost) always very respectful.
There was, however, one fellow who made it a point to nitpick every single statement made, even somethings fairly basic and obvious to everyone else in the room. At one point, after about 90 minutes of this, I made a comment and he said, before I even finished my thought, "Well, I disagree." I nodded my head and stated, very simply, "Of course you do." It got a good laugh from the whole room, except for the disagree-er himself, who I don't think even heard me...he was to busy launching into his nitpicky objection.
Nevertheless, all three meetups were super fun and I intend to do more of them, not only here in London, but even back in CA!
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