Most everything associated with Christmas can be found at the store: eggnog, ornaments, wrapping paper, and gifts. Even Santa can be found at the store, if you’re willing to wait in line with children. But there is one thing you may need this Christmas that doesn’t come under any tree, and that’s friends.
Anyone who is new to the area, or has been too busy with work or school to make much time for nurturing friendships, may find themselves without many invitations to celebrate the holidays.
It doesn’t have to be that way. In fact, improving your social life this holiday season may be as easy as heading to the management office of your apartment building. “I try to do whatever I can to help tenants meet each other,” says Diane Montero, manager of LaSalle Towers, a 68-unit building on the Near North Side. Part of her strategy is to organize simple activities, particularly ones that don’t involve extreme athletic ability or pricey equipment.
For example, once a week during warm weather, tenants get together to walk. “I know that several of the tenants in the group are now friends,” she says. “It’s so easy to talk to each other when all you’re doing is walking.” If people want to get involved, all they have to do is ask, according to Montero. Sometimes they don’t even have to do that.
Montero gauges people who may need help meeting others by asking tenants what they did over the weekend. “If they tell me all they did was rent videos, then I’ll try to hook them up with someone else who watches videos, too, and perhaps they’ll go out to the movies together.”
The building doesn’t have a Christmas party, choosing instead to hold a pre-holiday party in October. Part of the strategy is to “give people time to get to know one another so that when Christmas does come around they’ll already be friendly,” says Montero.
At Barrington Lakes, a complex with 790 apartments in northwest suburban Barrington, manager Lois Phelps believes building management can help tenants get into the holiday mode. “We have a social director who works until 11 some nights,” says Phelps. “It’s important for people to feel that this is home and this is where you can find friends.”
The setup at Barrington Lakes is ideal for attracting people to gather in groups, both large and small. The complex has a club house with two pools, a weight room and a common area with a big screen television. “On Monday nights we get people together to watch football,” says Phelps. “It’s a friendly and informal atmosphere. You don’t have to sign up, you can just come on in.”
Such relaxed gatherings can make it easier for people to meet one another, but once you’ve moved in, you must be prepared to introduce yourself to as many people as you can, advises Nancy Gallas, a public relations executive who moved to Chicago from Minneapolis a year and a half ago.
Gallas rented an apartment in a 39-story high-rise on the Near North Side and says the management office gave her a lot of help when she first moved in, telling her about the kind of people who lived in the building and the neighborhood, but she feels people must take the initiative as well.
“It’s easy to say hello and keep walking, but that’s not going to make you friends,” says Gallas. At the pool, for example, she would never sit in a lounge chair off by itself. “I would go out of my way to sit next to other people,” she says.
“If people were in the pool and I just felt like laying in the chair I would force myself to jump in so I could be part of the group.
While Gallas was able to talk to people she didn’t know, not everyone is comfortable approaching strangers. Psychotherapist Sheila Kimmel says those people fear rejection. She makes her living helping people overcome that fear in private practice and teaching adult education classes at the Discovery Center with such course names as “Talking to Anyone Anytime” and “The Secrets of Charisma.” She is also the author of the book “How to Get Out of Your Own Way.”
“With the holidays coming up there will be this mood to get into the spirit of things, to go out and be joyful, but it’s hard to be joyful if you’re lonely,” says Kimmel. Her first piece of advice for people is to relieve the pressure they put on themselves. “Stop saying to yourself that you’re not smart enough, you’re not good looking enough, you don’t know enough. Too many people do it and it’s too negative,” says Kimmel. “Those kinds of thoughts inhibit you and stop you from being yourself.”
She says to break the ice at a party or even in the elevator, make an observation, but don’t be “gloomy-doomy.” Be upbeat. For example, if it’s raining, say, “when we get outside I’m sure it will be sunny.” Kimmel says that will make the other person respond because it’s a “fun and surprising thought” and could open the door for more conversation.
Compliments, she says, are also effective. “Pick an article of clothing, or compliment the person on their laugh, their eyes, their smile,” she says. “But use tact. Don’t assume someone is pregnant.”
Lincoln Park resident Steve Louie says the easiest approach for him is a simple, “hi,” followed up with eye contact. He knows it’s not the most original way to start a conversation, but thinks it’s the most sincere. “It’s hard to know what to say to someone you don’t know, or even if the other person feels like talking, so I figure I’ll just be friendly,” he says.
Last year, Louie “lived in a building with several hundred apartments and it was hard to meet anyone,” he says. Louie says management offered little help, rather it was interested in collecting rents, not being Santa Claus on a mission to deliver friendships. This year he’ll celebrate the holidays in a two-flat, where the landlady in a building next door “sort of passes information around about who lives where and how you should go about talking to them.” Louie says he may tap into the woman’s informal network before the new year.
At the New York, a 47-story building at 3660 N. Lake Shore Drive, management frequently organizes parties and gatherings for tenants, including a Christmas party. “When people come for the party they get to know one another and it makes this building feel more like a home,” says the building’s concierge, Divna Kostic. “Often parties are held right in the lobby, so people don’t have to go out of their way to go.”
In smaller buildings, tenant Christmas parties may not be an option, and residents who opt to celebrate will have do the planning and inviting on their own.
So what do you do if you don’t know your neighbor? “You could always post a note on the bulletin board or simply knock on someone’s door,” answers LaSalle Towers’ Montero.
“I’ve invited people over that way,” says Juli Solczyk, who lives in a Chicago building with 24 apartments. “It’s not only a great way to meet people, but if you invite your neighbors they can’t complain about the noise.”
Plenty of apartment dwellers either use this strategy themselves or have been on the invitation lists of neighbors who do. In buildings where the management office is off-site and which don’t feature common lounge or activity areas, it is even more important to take the initiative yourself if you really want to meet the people around you. “In a little more than three years of living in apartments I’ve made some really close friendships with some of my neighbors,” Solczyk says. One couple in particular are such close friends that they joined Juli and her family for Thanksgiving in the suburbs.
Very few apartment buildings or complexes would dare discourage neighbors from getting to know one another. A sense of bonding with one’s neighbors makes for a more satisfying home life, and that’s good business for landlords and their property managers. By the same token, however, there are some buildings that won’t go the extra mile to become catalysts for matchmaking, saying that this shouldn’t be the job of building management.
“We try our best to let people know what’s going around the complex, but we won’t introduce them to one another,” says Jennifer Taylor, building manager for the 325-unit Greenway development in Carol Stream. “If people can meet on their own, fine, we would never discourage that. In any case, we don’t have much demand to help people connect with each other. Most of our tenants seem to want to make friends on their own.”
In the case of LaSalle Towers, manager Montero says that the building will help its tenants build neighborly networks by encouraging them to do things like slip party invitations under doors. “We encourage people to do what they can to be social,”says Montero.
If you retained any of the lessons your mother taught you while growing up, the one that will serve you best when looking to establish social networks with your neighbors is to play nice and get along with the other kids. This is what people respond to, especially those in a similar situation.
Don’t be afraid to make the first move, as Nancy Gallas advises. Most people feel restrained by something, but once you break the ice, you have the opportunity put down the foundation for enduring friendships.
