LOWER EAST SIDE, Manhattan (WABC) — Making friends as an adult is hard, especially in a city of eight million strangers. But one man in New York found a surprisingly simple solution: a flier, a phone number, a record player and a book club.<\/p>\n
When you hear book club, you probably picture a quiet living room, a bottle of wine and a heated debate about character development.<\/p>\n
What you probably don’t picture is a packed music venue, strangers dancing together on a Tuesday night and an album playing front to back on vinyl.<\/p>\n
Walk into Arlene’s Grocery on a Tuesday night and you’ll get a small but promising glimpse of a generation. People are laughing, singing and dancing. An hour earlier, most of them had never even met.<\/p>\n
“Just getting a group of people together to listen to an album, front to back, talk about the artists, talk about the music,” said George LoSasso.<\/p>\n
That’s the Vinyl Word.<\/p>\n
Think book club, but instead of chapters, it’s albums. And instead of strangers, the participants are friends who just haven’t met.<\/p>\n
LoSasso said it feels like people are looking for more authenticity.<\/p>\n
And in an age where younger generations are seeking things out for TikTok or Instagram, attendees at The Vinyl Word say there is a real movement to get back to physical spaces with each other.<\/p>\n
“I just want to keep cultivating this community, this is like something I want to be able to look back on when I’m an old guy, and I’m like, you know, I used to be this cool thing,” LoSasso said.<\/p>\n
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