By Nico Alonso
In a neighborhood of 230,436 people, according to the NYU Furman Center, it’s easy for someone on the Upper West Side to feel like a transient little speck.
And it’s not just newcomers who feel this way. According to the NYC Department of Health, “Loneliness … is felt by “more than half of New Yorkers … at least some of the time.” This issue, sometimes referred to as a “crisis,” other times referred to as an “epidemic” has become one of New York City’s biggest public health concerns.
One couple decided to do something.
Instead of asking for companionship, they offered it in one reddit post on r/upperwestside. Their thread extended a warm invitation for people to meet at the AMC Lincoln Square 13 after a 7:00 p.m. showing of Practical Magic 2 with the goal of getting people to watch the movie and discuss a common interest in a private room at a nearby bar afterward. “It’s like a book club, but for movies,” the post said.
The thread received responses from 26 users and 27 upvotes, building on the success of their very first post from almost two years ago, which amassed 65 responses and 91 upvotes.
I spoke to the married couple behind it all –– owner of the UWS Hangout Discord server, Bronwyn McNutt, and organizer of the UWS Movie Club, Brett Dorman. After moving to the Upper West Side from Seattle in May 2024, Dorman took a software engineering role at a local startup, while McNutt worked in the non-profit sector.
Their “not-so-secret secondary goal,” they said in their Reddit post, was “to meet the neighbors.” They see the “monthly-ish” meetings as a “great way to build community, especially as someone who moved to the neighborhood recently.”
Last month’s gathering at Gebhard’s Beer Culture was lively and welcoming, and everyone made an effort to make sure that everyone was included in conversations. Chatter bounced from the film, to Oscar predictions, to catch-ups about daily life. This group clearly works like a well-oiled machine.
To Dorman, forming the club “was selfish because we moved here two years ago and didn’t know anyone in Manhattan.” The couple’s idea came from “a brainstorm of ‘what are things we like to do that other people probably like to do?’”
“We were pretty intentional …. We knew it was harder to make friends when you’re, you know, past college age,” McNutt said. “I actually am worried about loneliness –– societally, I think that is a problem, and I think community is really important. especially local community, both for the social aspect, but just mutual support and like, you know, having a friendly face around.”
Other movies they’ve called to discuss so far have included Sinners, I Love Boosters, The Phoenician Scheme, and Project Hail Mary.
Club member Taylor Niziak said that joining the club “was kind of like a New Year’s resolution that I’d start putting myself out there and attending things like this.” When first moving to Hell’s Kitchen and later to the UWS, Niziak felt “a little bit lonely … even though I was living in a huge city, [I felt] that my world has kind of gotten vastly smaller.”
Niziak’s favorite part is “Having people so nearby that I get to spend time with in a casual way, it feels really nice not having to plan things weeks in advance and being able to walk right out my front door and go to a local bar … It’s actually pretty intimate … I guess it feels like I have community for the first time since living here in four years, which is really nice. It’s nice to have friends, of course, but having that sense of community, I think is really unique and really really important.”
The movie club is organized on the Discord server, UWS Hangout, owned and moderated by Dorman and McNutt. This behemoth of a server is populated by 1,082 members with subchannels for different plans and interests such as art, board games, food and drinks, and trivia.
“[It’s ]broken up into so many different channels where there’s something for everyone. It feels approachable,” Niziak said.
The longest standing active member of the movie club, Ash Singh, shared that the most frequent and popular event is “probably the bi-weekly brew crew, which is just a bunch of people hanging out at a bar.”
On the note of loneliness, Singh added, “I think … an issue with the city is when you first show up here, if you don’t know people here, it’s like being in a sea of people, but you don’t know anyone, so that’s kind of where that … comes from.”
What Dorman and McNutt have shown is that, while loneliness is a real problem on the Upper West Side and New York as a whole, it doesn’t take any practical magic to make friends. All you need is a little effort.
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Good idea.