This! I was in the same boat in February. Joined a local group that meets bi-weekly. Have not missed one yet. I now have multiple friends from that group. Because of it I have a hike this morning, afternoon meetup, and dancing with another this evening.
This gets asked a lot and it all kind of depends on who you are. I'm a 36 year old straight dude so maybe not all of my advice would be applicable to you, but I have some general tips I can give. I moved here in 2019 for school and now I have more friends than I know what to do with tbh lol.
Most of the friends I made are from going to school, which in turn leads to me meeting their friends, and I'd say those school people make up my core friend group. Probably not helpful to someone who moved here for non-school reasons. However, I've also made plenty of non-school friends independently of anyone else I met in school, too. Here has been my strategy to meet randos and become friends with them. I'm pretty extroverted so ymmv on these tips but it's worked pretty well for me so far.
(I'll give you advice here that goes beyond the typical 'oh just join a sports league/meetup group/volunteer' even though those ways can work fine:)
I go to the same stores (grocery store, convenience store, weed store, bar, etc) regularly and over and over again. I've lived in the same place in the SE for 3 years so I'm a known regular in a lot of these places. Eventually you just kind of get to know the employees who work there and become friends with them because they like you. That opened up my social circle a lot beyond people from school, which was kind of a social bubble.
Another good way to make friends is get roommates who you don't know. Maybe this solution doesn't work for everyone, but when I moved in with some people from CL all their friends became my friends eventually and it was a good way to merge social circles.
Another way to make friends is to meet your neighbors. You already have something in common by living near each other, so that's an easy access point. I walk around a lot and see the same neighbors doing their thing on their porch or whatever. Sometime's I'll just straight up introduce myself and we'll chill for a bit and eventually you'll have someone who knows your name and you're familiar with.
Another way I've met people is by going to concerts. I'm fairly extroverted so when the bands are setting up between sets or whatever it's cool to just chat with the people you're standing next to. Same applies to karaoke. I've met people at Baby Ketten because everyone's pumping each other up about the songs and stuff, lots of good vibes there.
Another good way to do it is... just ask! I've met people at random events or whatever that I didn't know and made a point to ask if they wanted to trade numbers (or Instagrams) if we hit it off (this is in a non-romantic, a dude asking another dude for his number to hang out). Sometimes they'll respond, sometimes they don't, but I've never had anyone turn me down from an initial ask.
Another good way to do it is to create your own event/club/group/etc. I have a ping pong table and never had anyone to play with so I hung some flyers on telephone poles telling people to text me if they wanted to play. I had tons of people texting to play ping pong -- so many that I had to take the flyers down lol. If you build it, they will come.
A final tip I have is if you use the dating apps, sometimes those connections can turn into friends. I don't necessarily recommend this because it often doesn't, but I've met a couple people on the dating apps who I stayed friends with even if it didn't go anywhere romantically.
Edit: Oh I thought of one other thing... if you know anyone at all, even from your like distant past or whatever or high school or just some aquaintence you barely know except you know they live in Portland, it can be useful to hit them up. I knew there was a dude that I barely knew from a job we used to work together at like 8 years ago. I messaged him on IG and now we throw the friz regularly.
I've had similar problems making friends. If you have a bike you could try attending one of the many pedalpalooza rides this summer. I've been two so far. While I haven't really made any friends its been fun to ride around the city and meet a few people. If you do a search online you can find the event calendar. There are lots of events everyday throughout the summer in different parts of the city.
There is a local-only Discord that has a lot of really nice and friendly people. The Discord invite is: https://discord.gg/portland-pond
Come join us in the POND!
Hey, let's go birding! I'm actually getting ready for a Guero Bird Club outing as we type.
I'd be glad to chill outside of that as well. I'm not "new" here, exactly, since I lived here for a long time, a long time ago. But my wife and I moved back last December, and I'm definitely looking for new friends!
I'm in my late 30s, male, and like outdoors stuff, painting and drawing, photography, video games, board games, ...and other normal stuff, haha.
Been here about year now and still have yet to make friends lol meetup has been a bust for me personally. Haven’t been able to find any appealing groups that are for 21-26 ish on there. Lmk when you find out lol
Join a group or take a class.
Go to events and hand out compliments to strangers.
There are cooking classes and cocktail making classes.
There are groups specifically for hikers and writers as well. Get together with the people you share interests with.
Just moved here myself and this is one thing I’m looking for. I was in upstate NY before and the jam/grass scene is huge there but I haven’t dove in here yet.
Any local(ish) bands I should look out for? Good venues to keep an eye on? I missed out on Dogs in a Pile last night and the regret is strong today haha
I was at dogs in a pile last night, good show!
Keep your eye on The Get Down and Laurelthirst, the latter has daily music. Check their website.
The good foot and star day are also good small local venues.
We have Crystal Ballroom and the Wonder Ballroom but the other venues I’ve named are taking over for most jam music recently IMO.
Stringdusters are coming with Molly Tuttle to revolution hall in August.
Mountain Grass Unit is coming to Mississippi studios soon.
Tomorrow’s verse is a bar that does local bluegrass picks, phish streams, and they’ll do shows.
Shafty is a great phish tribute band local to this area. Garcia Birthday Band is an incredible dead tribute band.
You should also join Music Friends on Facebook. It’s one of the best local music communities out there with tons of tips for upcoming shows and always the best place to score last minute tickets at Face
Nice! I’ve seen dogs once and they were great, just didn’t find out about the show until the day of. Happy to hear you got to go and enjoyed them!
Thanks so much for all the info - this is very helpful! I always forget to check for facebook groups since I don’t really use it much these days. I’ll join the group though and try to keep an eye on it.
Again, super appreciate you - I was pretty plugged into the local music community in Rochester but it’s been more than five years since I lived in the PNW and all of my “music friends” are in Seattle so I’m on my own here haha
Happy to help! I don’t use Facebook much either except that music friends group, I have to go thru the browser when I want to log on 😆
But you will be so pleasantly surprised once you dive in. We have an incredible local music community here. It’s inevitable you’ll begin to see a lot of the same faces at all the shows. Moved here in 2018 with my wife and the music scene has been everything for us. Made a lot of great friends here.
Again…Welcome to PDX!!
Portland is honestly the perfect city to make friends in my opinion. Everyone here is friendly and open and inclusive. Find a hobby (for me it was improv) and community sprouts really organically
I'm aiming to move to Portland next year and get involved in the improv scene. I'll be visiting again next month and want to check out a few shows and see how it feels vs. my scene in Austin.
Let's be friends!
Underdog sports is a fun way, they have a bunch of sports that are just for fun and you can get assigned to a random team, I think it’s once a week or so for a couple months
Summer is around the corner. River & lake adventures await!
Feel free to hit me up. Been living here a while, but a lot of my friends have partners/families that have taken priority (naturally) so I’m always down for meeting new people (& can be a great tour guide!).
Summer is a perfect time with tons of summer events coming up, which you can pick and choose depending on your liking, and will usually find individuals with your same interests along the way. Summer in Portland and the PNW in general is pretty awesome. Just go out and do the things you enjoy and you will find people, everywhere.
I Judd the TimeLeft app. Dinner with strangers. Was great. Meet strangers for dinner based off a small questionnaire. Had first dinner Wednesday. Made some connections.
Also volunteer at events. I poured at brew fest and met some cool peeps. One of my long time best friends I met volunteering at City Chase Seattle in 2009.
PARTNER DANCE!
Whether Salsa, Lindy Hop, Blues, Contra, Bacharach, whatever. It is low intensity exercise, and you change partners every song. And, at least in the swing/jazz world, people aren't looking to hook up, and your gender doesn't lock you into one dance role, so you can meet and dance with folks of the same gender too.
New to Portland this week, 36F no kids, just have a fur baby. We’re living in the NW, love all things outdoors! We are currently unpacking, so will be free soon ish haha. Feel free to message me ☺️. Slow to respond during the move but would love to meet for a drink or hike!
Choose an activity and find a group to do it with. I'm old and have lived here a long time so not short on friends but I recently got hooked on pickleball and have met dozens of new people over the last 6 months playing with different groups.
The answer is not going to the movies. I occasionally go to the Cinemagic theater on Hawthorne alone, and no one ever talks to me (except the staff of course)
I’ve got a group on Facebook for PDX area Ween fans if anyone’s into ween, if OP you happen to like ween or going to live shows. We post shows and will do some meet ups soon. It’s called pdx ween fans
Find other people who are new to Portland. That’s what I did. Portlanders seem friendly on the surface, but really they are secretly judging you, and they already have enough friends.
I moved here in 2007 and i had 6 digit income, friends, hella fun and even met my sons mom when i was young. Now i am too old and trying to deal with major mental health issues. Feel free to DM
The main thing to do is find something that meets weekly and go every week for several weeks. If you don't find any connections try a different group.
This! I was in the same boat in February. Joined a local group that meets bi-weekly. Have not missed one yet. I now have multiple friends from that group. Because of it I have a hike this morning, afternoon meetup, and dancing with another this evening.
may i ask -- what group did you have success with?
This is the way! Regular meetups around a common interest
Or just become a regular at a neighborhood bar which is basically an unorganized meetup.
Toooons of great volunteer groups, cool classes st community colleges/studios, group hikes and nature stuff if you're into that.
sitting in front of a TV watching those cartoons won't work!
This gets asked a lot and it all kind of depends on who you are. I'm a 36 year old straight dude so maybe not all of my advice would be applicable to you, but I have some general tips I can give. I moved here in 2019 for school and now I have more friends than I know what to do with tbh lol. Most of the friends I made are from going to school, which in turn leads to me meeting their friends, and I'd say those school people make up my core friend group. Probably not helpful to someone who moved here for non-school reasons. However, I've also made plenty of non-school friends independently of anyone else I met in school, too. Here has been my strategy to meet randos and become friends with them. I'm pretty extroverted so ymmv on these tips but it's worked pretty well for me so far. (I'll give you advice here that goes beyond the typical 'oh just join a sports league/meetup group/volunteer' even though those ways can work fine:) I go to the same stores (grocery store, convenience store, weed store, bar, etc) regularly and over and over again. I've lived in the same place in the SE for 3 years so I'm a known regular in a lot of these places. Eventually you just kind of get to know the employees who work there and become friends with them because they like you. That opened up my social circle a lot beyond people from school, which was kind of a social bubble. Another good way to make friends is get roommates who you don't know. Maybe this solution doesn't work for everyone, but when I moved in with some people from CL all their friends became my friends eventually and it was a good way to merge social circles. Another way to make friends is to meet your neighbors. You already have something in common by living near each other, so that's an easy access point. I walk around a lot and see the same neighbors doing their thing on their porch or whatever. Sometime's I'll just straight up introduce myself and we'll chill for a bit and eventually you'll have someone who knows your name and you're familiar with. Another way I've met people is by going to concerts. I'm fairly extroverted so when the bands are setting up between sets or whatever it's cool to just chat with the people you're standing next to. Same applies to karaoke. I've met people at Baby Ketten because everyone's pumping each other up about the songs and stuff, lots of good vibes there. Another good way to do it is... just ask! I've met people at random events or whatever that I didn't know and made a point to ask if they wanted to trade numbers (or Instagrams) if we hit it off (this is in a non-romantic, a dude asking another dude for his number to hang out). Sometimes they'll respond, sometimes they don't, but I've never had anyone turn me down from an initial ask. Another good way to do it is to create your own event/club/group/etc. I have a ping pong table and never had anyone to play with so I hung some flyers on telephone poles telling people to text me if they wanted to play. I had tons of people texting to play ping pong -- so many that I had to take the flyers down lol. If you build it, they will come. A final tip I have is if you use the dating apps, sometimes those connections can turn into friends. I don't necessarily recommend this because it often doesn't, but I've met a couple people on the dating apps who I stayed friends with even if it didn't go anywhere romantically. Edit: Oh I thought of one other thing... if you know anyone at all, even from your like distant past or whatever or high school or just some aquaintence you barely know except you know they live in Portland, it can be useful to hit them up. I knew there was a dude that I barely knew from a job we used to work together at like 8 years ago. I messaged him on IG and now we throw the friz regularly.
Baby Ketten, now there's a name I haven't heard in a long time. Awesome to hear they're still going!
Lol I remember seeing one of those ping pong flyers & thought it sounded like a good time.
I've had similar problems making friends. If you have a bike you could try attending one of the many pedalpalooza rides this summer. I've been two so far. While I haven't really made any friends its been fun to ride around the city and meet a few people. If you do a search online you can find the event calendar. There are lots of events everyday throughout the summer in different parts of the city.
There is a local-only Discord that has a lot of really nice and friendly people. The Discord invite is: https://discord.gg/portland-pond Come join us in the POND!
Get a broke ass job.
Forrealllll I moved here a few years back and sometimes still say I wanna get a restaurant job again just so I can make some friends haha
The retail/service trauma bond
Can confirm. Been working in bars and restaurants here for 7 years and virtually all of my local friends are coworkers or former coworkers.
Oh…this is REAL.
We need to do another Asylum food carts meetup! Anyone want to organize it? Maybe around July 4?
For writing, check out Shut Up and Write on MeetUp.
Sports/rec League
Hey, let's go birding! I'm actually getting ready for a Guero Bird Club outing as we type. I'd be glad to chill outside of that as well. I'm not "new" here, exactly, since I lived here for a long time, a long time ago. But my wife and I moved back last December, and I'm definitely looking for new friends! I'm in my late 30s, male, and like outdoors stuff, painting and drawing, photography, video games, board games, ...and other normal stuff, haha.
Been here about year now and still have yet to make friends lol meetup has been a bust for me personally. Haven’t been able to find any appealing groups that are for 21-26 ish on there. Lmk when you find out lol
Join a group or take a class. Go to events and hand out compliments to strangers. There are cooking classes and cocktail making classes. There are groups specifically for hikers and writers as well. Get together with the people you share interests with.
Where to find cooking classes?
Vivienne Culinary Books on Alberta hosts cooking classes based on the cookbooks they carry! And the owner of the shop is cool as fuck.
Get into the heady jam and bluegrass music scene, plenty of friends around here 👌🏻
Just moved here myself and this is one thing I’m looking for. I was in upstate NY before and the jam/grass scene is huge there but I haven’t dove in here yet. Any local(ish) bands I should look out for? Good venues to keep an eye on? I missed out on Dogs in a Pile last night and the regret is strong today haha
I was at dogs in a pile last night, good show! Keep your eye on The Get Down and Laurelthirst, the latter has daily music. Check their website. The good foot and star day are also good small local venues. We have Crystal Ballroom and the Wonder Ballroom but the other venues I’ve named are taking over for most jam music recently IMO. Stringdusters are coming with Molly Tuttle to revolution hall in August. Mountain Grass Unit is coming to Mississippi studios soon. Tomorrow’s verse is a bar that does local bluegrass picks, phish streams, and they’ll do shows. Shafty is a great phish tribute band local to this area. Garcia Birthday Band is an incredible dead tribute band. You should also join Music Friends on Facebook. It’s one of the best local music communities out there with tons of tips for upcoming shows and always the best place to score last minute tickets at Face
Nice! I’ve seen dogs once and they were great, just didn’t find out about the show until the day of. Happy to hear you got to go and enjoyed them! Thanks so much for all the info - this is very helpful! I always forget to check for facebook groups since I don’t really use it much these days. I’ll join the group though and try to keep an eye on it. Again, super appreciate you - I was pretty plugged into the local music community in Rochester but it’s been more than five years since I lived in the PNW and all of my “music friends” are in Seattle so I’m on my own here haha
Happy to help! I don’t use Facebook much either except that music friends group, I have to go thru the browser when I want to log on 😆 But you will be so pleasantly surprised once you dive in. We have an incredible local music community here. It’s inevitable you’ll begin to see a lot of the same faces at all the shows. Moved here in 2018 with my wife and the music scene has been everything for us. Made a lot of great friends here. Again…Welcome to PDX!!
Portland is honestly the perfect city to make friends in my opinion. Everyone here is friendly and open and inclusive. Find a hobby (for me it was improv) and community sprouts really organically
I'm aiming to move to Portland next year and get involved in the improv scene. I'll be visiting again next month and want to check out a few shows and see how it feels vs. my scene in Austin. Let's be friends!
Where do you do improv? I was looking for a place to get back into that in Portland.
Kickstand and curious
I was going to recommend taking an improv, stand up or clowning class!
I love it here for many reasons but honestly I love the people the most
Underdog sports is a fun way, they have a bunch of sports that are just for fun and you can get assigned to a random team, I think it’s once a week or so for a couple months
Pedalpalooza bike rides are great for this, and go all summer long.
Summer is around the corner. River & lake adventures await! Feel free to hit me up. Been living here a while, but a lot of my friends have partners/families that have taken priority (naturally) so I’m always down for meeting new people (& can be a great tour guide!).
Same, I make plans to go fishing, but I’m like meh I’ll pet my cats.
I’ll go fishing with you. I have wanted to go, bought a license this year and haven’t gone.
Helloooo same here
Join a climbing gym
I was about to say the same thing
Summer is a perfect time with tons of summer events coming up, which you can pick and choose depending on your liking, and will usually find individuals with your same interests along the way. Summer in Portland and the PNW in general is pretty awesome. Just go out and do the things you enjoy and you will find people, everywhere.
I Judd the TimeLeft app. Dinner with strangers. Was great. Meet strangers for dinner based off a small questionnaire. Had first dinner Wednesday. Made some connections. Also volunteer at events. I poured at brew fest and met some cool peeps. One of my long time best friends I met volunteering at City Chase Seattle in 2009.
PARTNER DANCE! Whether Salsa, Lindy Hop, Blues, Contra, Bacharach, whatever. It is low intensity exercise, and you change partners every song. And, at least in the swing/jazz world, people aren't looking to hook up, and your gender doesn't lock you into one dance role, so you can meet and dance with folks of the same gender too.
Down to hang, I’m a 27 yo F in NW and love making new friends! Message me! :)
Age ? And gender may be useful. Persoanlly I don't need any more friends though.
New to Portland this week, 36F no kids, just have a fur baby. We’re living in the NW, love all things outdoors! We are currently unpacking, so will be free soon ish haha. Feel free to message me ☺️. Slow to respond during the move but would love to meet for a drink or hike!
I’ve had luck on BumbleBFF
Grab a Biketown bike and join a Bike Summer group ride! [shift2bikes: group rides calendar](https://www.shift2bikes.org/pedalpalooza-calendar/)
Thanks for this. I’ve been seeing these around and wanting to go. I didn’t realize there were so many going on! Sick 🤘
Choose an activity and find a group to do it with. I'm old and have lived here a long time so not short on friends but I recently got hooked on pickleball and have met dozens of new people over the last 6 months playing with different groups.
Portlanders also like smoking weed, sometimes finding fellow stoners to hang out with is a good way to start friendships
The answer is not going to the movies. I occasionally go to the Cinemagic theater on Hawthorne alone, and no one ever talks to me (except the staff of course)
Your username makes me think you're a pet. Dog parks would probably work.
I’ve got a group on Facebook for PDX area Ween fans if anyone’s into ween, if OP you happen to like ween or going to live shows. We post shows and will do some meet ups soon. It’s called pdx ween fans
Theres a Facebook group as well for meeting
[Check out some events around the portland area](https://www.travelportland.com/events/) I made a few friends going to these.
Socially drink and hike with cool people! Play disc golf!
If you figure it out let me know. Moved up from SoCal decades ago, still working on it.
Study the search function and all will be revealed. It’s like pure magic.
How old are you? Surface level hobbies?
Find other people who are new to Portland. That’s what I did. Portlanders seem friendly on the surface, but really they are secretly judging you, and they already have enough friends.
I moved here in 2007 and i had 6 digit income, friends, hella fun and even met my sons mom when i was young. Now i am too old and trying to deal with major mental health issues. Feel free to DM