Question about my new town
 

Hey gang. So here's my story. I recently moved to Sioux City, IA for my job. The tough thing, as many of you know, about moving to a new town is making new friends. The first few months of living here I was able to visit college friends nearby and was content. But now, its summer and they're all gone.

In an attempt to make friends I've joined a gym, started going to church again, tried going to bars, and tried hanging out at hip places like coffee shops for long periods of time. Tried going to Target, WalMart, etc. and striking up a conversation, but I get the "mind your own goddamn business" look.

I think the gym still holds promise, as does church. Bars, however, going solo without any friends just seems weird. When talking to guys, they won't give me the time of day (I think mostly because they're too focused on trying to get some or slummin with the frat buddies) and with the girls they just take it as I'm hitting on them (ok, ok, I was.)

Funny thing is, I don't consider myself socially awkward or anything. I'm a perfectly normal, decently good-looking, gainfully employed, 23 year old guy. I've had no problems meeting people in other places. Even abroad, its been easy (I think because people are always interested in the American, so having that as a prop helps).

I'm not asking for advice to get laid or anything. But just plain making friends would be nice. Any thoughts or advice?

Or I hear lately Blackpeoplemeet.com has been a hit.

My wife's from Sioux City. Not much going on up there in my opinion. I'd just start drinking heavily. I could also get send you the contact information of my wife's two, whore ass sisters. Lot's of fun those two, let me ****ing tell you. Actually, if I had to move to Sioux City, I'd start looking for another job.

Sioux City?

That sucks. Well...maybe; where did you move from...?

Start at work. There has to be someone at work that you could hang out with that us from that area. They could take you out for drinks, introduce you to some locals, and presto you have friends in IA.

Also, maybe a cigar lounge? Or martial arts?

Ask Hootie for advice

If they're not 45 year old crack whores I'd give it some consideration.

There's a roller derby tournament up there June 23-23. Look it up. I was supposed to go, but I wouldn't have been skating, so I'm staying home and holding a garage sale instead.

Walk around with a corn shuck in your mouth, a nascar hat and some chew in your mouth. That will get you started.

Moved from farm town SW Iowa. So this is quite a bit bigger. Not like I'm "lost in the big city" or anything. I'm sure there's cool people out there.

The problem with that is almost everyone in the organization is within 3 years of retirement. That's the whole reason I was brought in, as part of the succession plan. I'm the youngest of the lot by about 15 years. So my coworkers aren't exactly the type of people I would hang out with.

Where at? I'm from farm town SW Iowa.

When I was in college I actually went to a derby between Omaha and Sioux City. That was some entertainment...

Granddaughters, that's your ticket.

Doesnt exist on google maps.

Were you the only person that lived there...?

PMed you

Ain't it the truth!

Cigar bar sounds cool. I have a cigar shop I frequent, but they don't have a lounge. I don't think Sioux City has one, but I'll look into it.

Bob Roe's, Miles, Townhouse, Princes, Jack's if you're looking for friendly bars.

Jerry's, Tony's, Westside, El Fredo's, Bob Roe's or Townhouse if you're looking for good/cheap pizza or meal.

North Sioux City has plenty of casino bars if you're looking for gambling/friendly atmosphere.

Whatever church you joined should have plenty of things you could volunteer for that would get you introduced to good people.

SC is a good town.

I knew something was wrong with you JR

Try looking up Sherm's Smoke shop in South Sioux. I've never been there but my BIL goes there.

My wife said the Ickey Nickle is a good bar.

Try joining adult received leagues? Softball is usually the most popular, yet least interesting.

Thank's man. What's the demographic of those bars? I've tried the ones down on 4th street a bit. I live in Northside/Leeds btw.

Know anything about the Ickey Nickel? I've seen it but never been.

Walk up to the cigar lounge and kick the door in. Walk inside and eyeball every mother****er in there. Then announce, "I came here to chew bubblegum and kick ass and I'm all out of bubblegum." I guarantee you that will get some conversation going.

Thats the one I go to all the time, but they don't have a lounge :banghead:

This. Forgot about the Nickel.

That one's probably the closest to me. I should check it out sometime.

Meetup.com

You can find groups in your area that share your same interests. Thats how our chiefs group here in the Tampa area found each other.

If you can walk there, make that mother ****er your home.

The new Bob Roe's northside in Leeds is popular.

The Nickel is a nice bar. Volleyball leagues and all kind of stuff going on there all the time.

Ok this is easy. Do the bar thing but be prepared to put in the hours.

#1 pick a bar that has the kind of crowd you want to associate with.
#2 start going there REGULARLY, don't skip around to other bars unless the one you picked is lame and u need to pick a new one... I'd recommend a genuine pub if there is one (if there is no dart board, it isn't actually a pub)
#3 avoid places that are "bar and grill" types... they usually have much larger staffs and it will take longer
#4 make sure you go on slow nights .. best bet (if you want to go all super stalker) is to find a cool bartender who doesn't just work busy nights and be one of the only guys at the bar on the slow nights
#5 ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS sit at the bar itself.
#6 Go back and make damn sure you paid close attention to step #1, this is a golden opportunity to PICK the type of friends you'll have, don't waste it

Done. Eventually, on the slow nights, you'll meet the regulars and get a chance to say you just moved in from out of town, etc etc .. Then when you go on a busy night you'll have an "in" with plenty of people to meet more of their friends

I would, but its in such an odd location. Its out on this kind of factory road that doesn't have any other businesses within it for a mile each way. Just industrial stuff.

I'm probably a mile and a half away. Maybe a bit more. But there's not sidewalks to it and you'd have to walk along highway.

4th St is yuppy expensive shit where people go that want to be noticed. All the places I mentioned are mostly neighborhood type joints you'll see the same people frequently.

From the sound of your location I'd start with the Nickel, Bob Roe's north, or the Townhouse and follow the rest of AC's advice.

Being within stumbling distance to your home has its advantages.

Bob Roe's is pretty close. I'll check that one out along with the Nickel.

That's a great plan AC. Sioux City will make me a drunkard and I'll spend all my money at the bars. But I'll have friends.

I never said it didn't carry any risk! :D

Actually you just need to go out one extra night a week on slow nights and it should still work just fine. And hell, how expensive can bars in Sioux City be!

Not sure if that has its advantage in the long term.

Haha they're really not. Even the 4th Street bars are cheap compared to anywhere else in the world (except Buffalo Alice's, screw them, who do they think they are charging that much for a beer? And the bartender chicks are too busy texting and talking to their friends across the bar who aren't even buying drinks to serve the patrons).

You get off 4th St and you'll find a more sincere friendly atmosphere.

You have any hobbies? I like to run, so if I were ever to move I could always find a local running club.

I think most of the clubs and team stuff is done through the rec center downtown. I need to go check out what sports they have coming up.

I went to high school in Sioux City. I dont miss it, but I would just join clubs. Do you golf? Hang out at Green Valley Golf Course at the 19th hole and strike up convo of other golfers. Maybe hit up the casino. Theres usually the same group of guys that do poker night at certain bars around there and its all free.

Ya, I golf. Joining a club would be a good idea too. If they weren't so damn expensive.

Maybe we could meet up to watch a game.

Golf is a great suggestion

No offense to the Iowa people, but I would save up and get the hell out of Sioux City. Lifes too short to spend your 20s in Iowa. Move to a bigger city and get out of your comfort zone.

I'll second this. Not sure what kind of participation there is in Sioux City, but around here there are tons of groups to join. The nice thing is that you can find groups based on your interests (rather than just going to a bar), so it's more likely you'll find people you actually like being around.

I'd be down. Are you in Fargo though? Thats a long ass ways away.

Seconding this, I got the F out of Sioux Falls the second I could and have lived all over Colorado, and did stints in Southern Cali and Tampa. That area of the country is depressing and everyone gets fat because half the year there is nothing to do but sit inside, drink, and eat. I had a friend move back to SF after taking a similar path to mine who still had a lot of good friends there and considerable lady skills, he was absolutely miserable. Start working on your exit strategy immediately, especially if you have no friends there. Make your next city at least a million plus and preferably somewhere further South, however Minneapolis is pretty cool but still windy, cold, and depressing in the winter.

Also Sewer City smells like shit, literally.

There's your key. Develop an Australian accent and a backstory and you'll have more friends than you can shake a jar of vegemite at.

I think he should go Sikh. It's more noticeable.

I thought this article about Sioux City's airline code was kind of funny. It's odd to me that we can't get a personalized license plate with a curse word on it, and yet the feds force an unsavory word onto this innocent city.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/05/opinio...x-city-airport

Sioux City SUX, and that's OK
By Bob Greene, CNN Contributor
updated 8:57 AM EDT, Sun May 5, 2013

(CNN) -- "We don't really care what the federal government wants to call us," Aran Rush was saying the other afternoon. "We know that we're a good place."
Rush is the executive director of the convention and visitors bureau in Sioux City, Iowa, and we were discussing what has happened to the little airport with the big problem.

The problem was never the airport itself. By all accounts, Sioux Gateway Airport, serving Sioux City and the surrounding area in northwest Iowa, northeast Nebraska, eastern South Dakota and far southern Minnesota, is a fine facility.

But the three-letter identifier -- the three capitalized letters that appear on baggage-claim tags, that are used nationwide to refer to the Sioux City airport, that pilots and air-traffic controllers use to designate Sioux City -- has long been a headache for the town.

Every city, in this era of marketing and branding, likes to present itself as something special -- a destination that is sparkling and inviting, a wonderful place for families to settle in, or for businesses to set up shop.

So, to the dismay of Sioux City, it has not been especially helpful that, for as long as there has been commercial air travel into the town, travelers have glanced at the tags on their checked baggage and have noticed that the official designator for the town is:
SUX

Yep. Generations ago, federal aviation regulators gave Sioux City that identifier. It was a shortened version of "Sioux." That was in the years before those three letters took on a somewhat unfortunate tone.

Los Angeles International Airport was LAX; O'Hare International Airport in Chicago was ORD; LaGuardia in New York was LGA; Sioux City was SUX.

No big deal.

Until it was.

No city, no airport, wants to be connected to those letters. It's not a great calling card, not an ideal howdy-do to the world beyond the town's borders. Many people find the word (however you spell it) offensive -- and if you, by chance, think the word is not very nice, try to consider how the proud citizens of Sioux City have felt.

On two occasions -- in the 1980s, and again at the beginning of this century -- Sioux City earnestly and formally petitioned the Federal Aviation Administration to change the letters. The word just wasn't doing the town any good.

On both occasions, nothing happened. I covered Sioux City's second attempt to get rid of SUX; a spokeswoman for the FAA at the time signaled to me that the town's odds of getting three new letters were slim.

The Sioux City airport director at the time told me the FAA informed him that the only reason it would change a three-letter identifier was for safety considerations. He conceded that he didn't know how SUX could be construed as a safety issue, "unless pilots are laughing so hard when they hear it that it distracts them from doing their job."
The reason I got back in touch with Sioux City's leaders last week is that recently the federal government has shown it will speedily get involved in aviation-related issues when it wants to. Congress stepped in to ease air-traffic delays caused by federal spending cuts; the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration, to put travelers' minds at ease, backed off on its plan to allow passengers to bring small knives onto planes.

So I wondered if Sioux City was still trying to persuade the government to allow it to get rid of those three dreaded letters

"We decided to go completely the other way," said David Bernstein, president of the airport's board of trustees. "The FAA wasn't going to change it, so it wasn't going to do us any good to whine about it."

Thus, the town made a bold decision:

It would embrace the SUX designator. It would make it part of Sioux City's charm -- a whimsical part of the civic personality.

T-shirts were printed up with those three capital letters on the front; hats and postcards and coffee mugs and balsa-wood airplanes and silver-wing pins were manufactured, all jauntily bearing the letters. On I-29 between Sioux City and Omaha, Nebraska, a big billboard was rented, displaying, in huge type, those letters, as a way to lure passengers to the airport in Iowa instead of the one in Nebraska.

"In warm weather, you can walk around Sioux City and see people wearing the T-shirts all the time," Bernstein said. "At our coffee shop in the airport, between one-third and one-half of net revenues come from the sale of items with those three letters on them."
The city -- in the words of tourism director Rush -- has "very successfully made lemonade out of some lemons. Our treating the situation with good humor has emblemized the spirit of Sioux City -- one of grit and determination, something no label from the government can change." The airport commission's Bernstein said that "it's better to be memorable than to have three initials no one can really recall."
In fact, in the spirit of all this, the town ended up renaming the official website for the airport; it is now www.flysux.com.

And who, on a national scale, can argue with that message? These days, with overcrowded planes, long security lines and hefty fees to check baggage, flying often really does ... well, you know.

What will Sioux City do about the letters in future years? It could once have sought counsel from two of the most famous people ever born there: twin sisters Ann Landers (Eppie Lederer) and Dear Abby (Pauline Phillips), who left Sioux City to become the two most renowned newspaper advice columnists in history. But both have passed away, and are no longer available for commiseration.

So the town is on its own. The mayor, Bob Scott, a lifelong resident, told me that he wants the world to know that Sioux City doesn't do what those three letters on the baggage tags says. It is, he said, a great place to live, "and we're thankful for that."
He sends emphatic word to potential visitors that they will be warmly welcomed:

"Absolutely. We'd love to have them.

"And," the mayor said with a laugh, "they can buy a T-shirt."