Previous Image 1/2 Next Image

I’ve lived in Petworth since 2015, by way of Mississippi and Chicago. My people are a thousand miles away. I landed in a neighborhood with dads up and down the block and didn’t know a single one of them. What I had plenty of was friends. What I didn’t have was an institution.

The pandemic got me serious about fixing that. I literally walked the street talking to the other dads’ wives, convincing them to kick their husbands out of the house on Thursday nights for trivia at our neighborhood dive bar. What I’d built worked, but it only worked because I was doing all the labor. I couldn’t hand that off — until I found something that could. With Choros now in the mix, it’s still running, and stronger than ever.

Here’s what’s real: everything in this city takes planning. Finding the spot, vetting it, lining up schedules, chasing the group chat. The fun isn’t the problem. The work around the fun is, and that’s why grown men stay home. The friends don’t disappear. The time, the coordination, and the follow-through do.

I call what Choros does social brokering. The scouting is done, the vetting is done, the invitation is there, and the hangs that fit how I operate land on my calendar before work and the honey-do list eat the week. It solved a problem I didn’t see coming: around week three, my neighborhood guys drifted back into their patterns and the group chat went quiet.

When I saw a Reddit post about an app doing what I’d been doing by hand — trivia, D&D nights, whiskey tastings — I got curious. I’m not on social media, so believe me, I know what “an app for making guy friends” sounds like. I had that same face. I trust, but verify. I talked to Alex, the founder, and ran my own tests.

Close to 50 activities and mass quantities of chicken wings later, I have my answer. Live jazz, billiards, darts, breweries, a peak Super Bowl party at my house. A few dozen solid connections and a handful of real friends; the kind I see every week, not the kind I keep meaning to catch up with.

Being welcomed, and able to show up as my genuine self, is what makes that table a room other guys can walk into. That’s not a marketing line. That’s the job I’m doing most Thursday nights.

If this sounds familiar, take a look at Choros and pull up a high-top at trivia in Petworth. Standing offer for first-timers: best wings in the city, and your food and drinks are on me. That’s how I was raised.

Making time for these guys gives me more for my family, not less. That’s the part nobody tells you.