Category: Social

Social life: friends and community

Looking to meet new people? Try Meetup.com

If you haven’t tried it yet, Meetup.com is a great platform to meet all sorts of interesting people (gay, straight and all). It is a pretty popular platform in London, where you can join (I’m focusing on the gay/LGBTQ+-groups here) anything from naked yoga groups to learning to speak French.

Sadly, in Lisbon it isn’t quite as big and varied… but it is still a great, free resource to connect with others in town (not just LGBTQ+ folks). On the “comunity” side, there are at the moment basically two main groups:

The Comunidade Queer & Friends-LGBTQIA Portugal is a VERY active group that combines many events, not all of them LGBT-events. The group offers you the chance to connect to many people from all across the LGBT spectrum in Lisbon – and many events are arty and cultural in nature – and really showcase queer life in the city. Don’t be afraid if you don’t speak Portuguese – most of the events are more than happy to welcome non-Portuguese-speakers.

For alternative, arts and community LGBTQ+ events in Lisbon check out this meetup:… Click To Tweet

Lisbon LGBT Social Meetup Group has been a little dormant recently, but the new organiser (cough, cough, yours truly) is trying to revive the group at the moment. The idea for that group is to be more social and international, so doing things like bar crawls, brunches and regular drinks.

For drinks and socials in #gayLisbon with an international touch, check out… Click To Tweet

Please bear in mind that you don’t really to choose between the two groups: membership to meetup.com is free for people joining one, two or twenty groups – so you can simply join both. So, whether you’re visiting Lisbon – or staying here for good … remember to come along and make some new friends 🙂 !

Four Alternative Ways of Meeting New (not only gay) Friends

Moving to a new city is exciting. And it also means having to find new friends… which can be a daunting task – especially as an adult and working from home… I know from my SWIPES analysis that friends and an active social life are very important to me… I literally get grumpy when I’m left on my own for too long. So I need to address this as a high priority point as soon as moving. Thus,  I came up with a few strategies I’ll use when getting to Lisbon (of course, you don’t have to move cities to use these strategies – they work just as well “at home”). As some of these strategies have already worked well in London for me, I’m quite hopeful I can do something similar in Lisbon. Though first, two strategies which seem popular and easy… Continue reading “Four Alternative Ways of Meeting New (not only gay) Friends”

Pride: Why we should go – and why it still matters

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London Pride (I’m on the left in case you wonder)

Isn’t Pride just a commercialised street party, sponsored by big brands and full of pretty boys in skimpy clothes? And anyway, does it still matter?
I recently posted about my summer plans, which include going to both Lisbon’s Arraial Pride and Orgullo in Madrid.  Pride in many countries has become a big business: Madrid Pride brings around 2million people onto the street, London Pride is awash with big businesses sponsoring it. And yes, I totally understand that some people get completely fed up with all the commercialism taking over what once was a profoundly political event. Similarly, with Portugal being 4th, the UK 3rd and Spain 6th in the annual ILGA Rainbow Ratings, it seems hard to argue that life as a gay men faces heavy discrimination in those countries (not fully equal mind you… but nowhere as bad a s 20, 30 years ago). So… why bother going to attend Pride? Here is my somewhat personal list of reasons you too should come out to join Pride: Continue reading “Pride: Why we should go – and why it still matters”