DO PEOPLE “HANG OUT” ANY MORE?

Hanging out on the hood of my friend’s car. Summer 1984

Remember hanging out?  Sitting around? Shooting the shit?  Gabbing? Pondering? Talking about everything and nothing at all? Do people even talk anymore? Like in person?

Scrolling through nostalgia accounts on Instagram, looking at  photos of young people from the 70s and 80s, takes me back to my childhood and teenagehood in the 70s and 80s, sitting on the floor in the hallway of a college dorm, smoking Camel cigarettes and talking, talking, talking.  About boys. About parties. About life.  About politics. About classes and professors and summer plans.  Gathering is a lost art. Sitting in the woods or at the beach or on car hoods, in the park or in parking lots, late at night. I really miss youthful hopefulness and restlessness and just plain old hanging out, when you’d share your longing to get going with your life.  Talking about endless possibilities of what you might do once this is over. 

If you lived in the northern climes, and especially near the Great Lakes, a good part of the year was gray and cold. The cold wasn’t so bad, but the lack of sunshine was really  challenging.  And once the gray gave way, there was brown season.  No leaves. Most days cloud cover would hang over the atmosphere.  And the wind across the lake was cutting from November through April. So once the “unlocking” ended, and it would usually be close to May before that happened, the desire to be outside was overwhelming.  Those first days when you didn’t have to wear coats were so liberating.  So breathtaking that you just had to find your friends and BE OUTSIDE. And when hanging out was a good portion of my life, the best hanging out was most definitely outside. 

In middle school, on spring days  when the weather finally turned, when the air smelled like sun and earth and daffodils, my friends and I would often make a last minute decision to forgo taking the bus to walk home from school.  A whole gaggle of us would skip or gallop down the sidewalks, our sweaters or jackets tied around our waists.  Sometimes we’d sing songs or chant.

I don’t know but I’ve been told….

Sound off one two

Sound off three four

Or 

There she was just a walking down the street

Singing Do Wah Diddy Diddy Dum Diddy Do

Snappin’ her fingers and a shufflin’ her feet

I lived on the complete opposite side of town from school so it was quite a hike but I didn’t care.  It felt like we were doing something radical or wild.  Time spent away from the supervision of adults was always exhilarating when we were thirteen or so.  Oftentimes we’d make a pitstop at the Bomber House downtown to get a pizza sub that they were locally famous for. We’d sit on a bench in the park and just enjoy the gooey sloppiness of that delicious tomato-saucy, cheesy,  toasted sub roll concoction that only the Bomber House could make.  There was nothing else like sitting on a park bench with your comrades,  eating a Bomber House pizza sub, hot and wrapped in tin foil and wax paper on one of the first glorious days of spring. 

Also while in middle school, hanging out  listening to record albums was an integral part of socializing. We’d peruse Good Vibrations, the record store/head shop, browse for the latest album drop, or whatever record we thought would make us look cool to our friends or people we wanted to be our friends.  We’d ride our bikes to each others’ houses, show off our latest purchase, hang out and listen, marvel over the cover or the record sleeve, pore over the lyrics,  talk about boys and make weekend plans.  Sometimes we’d make brownies or mac and cheese.  Sometimes we’d ride to other friends’ houses just to see what they were doing.  We’d gather on our bikes in the road on dead end streets under the streetlights in the evenings in the summer, or over by the creek, hoping boys we liked would ride by and maybe stop.  Other times we’d ride downtown to get a Slush Puppy, then sit on the newspaper box outside the door of Convenient Food Mart slurping blue raspberry ice until we got a brain freeze. Maybe we’d ride up to the park to watch boys play Little League or Babe Ruth.  These were the days waaay before girls’ sports leagues. We’d park our bikes and swing on the swingset for a while, get some penny candy from the snack bar, walk around and goof off before it was time to go home. 

Another gathering place was Tin Man Hill, or Solitary Hill as we referred to it, on the college campus in town. It got its nickname from the metal sculptures positioned atop a small rise.  The actual name of the art installation was The Conversation but no one ever called it that.   We’d gather there to get a good vantage point of the goings on on campus, and it was where we’d hang before informal cross-country practice in late summer before the actual season started. We’d sit cross legged in the grass, gabbing as team members would arrive, one at a time or in pairs, either on foot or by bike.  For the record, I was a terrible runner.  I had no stamina or stick-to-it-ive-ness.  And I was short.  I certainly did not have any of the physical attributes or mental toughness needed to be a distance runner.  I was only there for the boys.  All my crushes were on the cross-country team. 

Another spot on campus where we’d hang was the lower level of the campus center.  We’d buy six packs of Genesee Cream Ale from the convenience store there and drink while we played The Troggs’ Wild Thing over and over again on the jukebox.  We’d hang out for a good few hours; surprisingly no one ever asked why the hell a group of  fifteen year olds was there drinking on a Friday night.  The other cool place to hang at night was on the far side of Fort Apache, the complex that housed  the power station for the campus.  There was a rise on the  back of the complex that abutted the NYS Thruway from which you could watch traffic. It was neat at night to see the lights of the cars and semi trucks speed past.  It was a sort of secret hiding place because from the front of the building no one would know you were there.   And hanging out in secret made it so much more exciting.

In the 70s and 80s going to the Point,  Point Gratiot park on Lake Erie, was essential for hanging out.  Everyone went there in the summer.  The beach would be jam packed, kids blanket to blanket on the sand, smelling of Sea and Ski,  Hawaiian Tropic or Ban De Soleil,  boom boxes blaring, kids throwing dead fish or seaweed at each other in the water.  On windy days the waves were huge and we’d jump into them as they crashed onto the beach.  Days like those made Lake Erie indistinguishable from the ocean, save for the fresh- water.   We’d walk out past the deep parts to get to the sand bar where the water became shallow and we’d recline and float in the water.  It was the place to see and be seen.  We’d spend all day just hanging out in the water and on our blankets, walking back and forth looking for boys, hoping to see our crushes. Sometimes we’d go back in the evening and sit up high on the lifeguard stands, just talking and looking out at the horizon or the waves.  There is nothing more beautiful than a Lake Erie sunset.  People who had summer birthdays would often have their birthday parties at the lake in one of the pavilions.  And there were always graduation parties out there as well when we were older.  Gathering by the lake was a ritual part of growing up here in the 716. 

Cigarette smoking is bad for your health.  It causes cancer, emphysema and a whole host of other health issues.  I do not recommend smoking cigarettes.  However, decades ago smoking and hanging out went hand in hand.  Smoking was a social act.  It bonded you with other people.  Sometimes you’d meet new people through bumming a smoke or a light.  People stood or sat around smoking and talking. Smoking was central to hanging out while I was in college. And hanging out during college was different in that we were more contemplative about the world at large. I have a clear recollection of the night the US bombed Libya.  It was April, 1986.  My friends and I were disturbed and worried.  We headed down to the lakefront from our dorm, cigarettes at the ready, and laid on the grass on the rise above the boathouse and docks our college owned on Seneca Lake, smoking and  pondering our future.  Frightened about the use of bombs and the violence.  We wondered where the world was headed.  We were young and fresh and idealistic and intelligent and questioning. 

Another year in college I had a friend who had a beautiful dorm room in the apex of the top floor of a dorm on “the hill”, where the women’s dorms were on campus.  The house was named after Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman in the US to receive her medical degree from Geneva Medical College, the precursor to Hobart and William Smith Colleges.  I remember just hanging out in my friend’s room after we were done with classes for the day, smoking and talking, watching the Oprah Winfrey Show before heading down the hill to Scandling for dinner.  This was our routine.  We did it every day.  Like clockwork.  After dinner we’d go to Smith Library to study or write papers.  After a few hours or so of work, we’d get tired of studying and wander around looking for people to talk to or hang with.  There was a large  sitting area with  floor to ceiling windows facing out over the hill and the William Smith part of the campus. I think it was nicknamed the airplane room.   The view was beautiful and it provided a really good place to hang out.

Other nights after dinner we would be in no hurry to go study so we’d just sit in the dining hall and chat.  We’d stay so long they’d have to push us to get going so they could close. In the early spring we would hang out in “the circle”, which was a large  grass circular area  in the center of the women’s  dorms up on the hill.  We’d lay on towels or blankets, again with someone’s boombox probably set to Casey Kasem’s top thirty countdown, soak ourselves in tanning lotion and water from a spray bottle for ultimate tanning results, and smoke and gossip and hang in the sun until people decided that they needed to go study or eat.  I remember again the smell of the earth in that spring sunshine. It was very particular- it smelled of possibility, of anticipating the activities for that evening, of what we were going to do after the lacrosse game, of upcoming finals or research papers, of summer vacation plans. 

I’ve found that the older I get, the less hanging out there is.  Any time I get together with people it’s mostly for a specific purpose, a particular agenda.  When I do hang out, it’s mostly just by myself these days,  and definitely without cigarettes… but still contemplating my future, still worrying about the world, and still wondering about the endless possibilities of what I might do once this is over.  I still hope it’s something exciting and fun.