How to Hang Out When It's So Nice Out

ISNO...

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Emily Bice

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9. "Sit on a Park Bench and Feed Pigeons."

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RS

A couple weekends ago I was at the beach. The vibes were high, all kinds of people were lounging and swimming and surfing. There was an engagement party. There were people I’ve never met but stalked on Instagram. There were babies and dogs and footballs and kites. It was that town square vibe that everyone fantasizes about.

Why, on this day, was it like this? Because it was a crucial 6-10 degrees warmer than it should have been.

Nice weather is the great common denominator of Good Hangs around the world. When the weather is nice, I feel invincible. But there are many styles of an ISNO hang… 

Now my style is obviously going to the beach. I want to wake up early, go surfing until my arms give out, get a burrito, sprawl on the beach and fall asleep for like 17 minutes, watch the sunset and then go dancing into the night (without a jacket).

Harry, I am curious what your ISNO-hang-style is?

HK

I cry less than once a year (yessir!)...Harry Potter 7b does it to me pretty consistently, but other than that it feels somewhat random. I’m also on Don’t Cry PEDs which certainly helps (hurts?). 

One time I cried was when I was biking home very late at night from a podcast recording right as the weather was about to turn in Spring / Summer 2021. I had semi-recently vaxxed and was feeling incredibly chipped up and ready to run through a wall for my friends whom i hadn’t seen or hugged in far too long. Anyway, I was biking home and I was hit with the unmistakable scent of hot garbage– a smell extremely common in New York from June - to September. I started weeping mid-electric city bike ride home. New York was back, baby

That is all to say that I believe the ideal ISNO response for me and my ilk is to eat a bespoke breakfast leaning-meal in the middle of a city that won’t exist in 50 years. To me, that is getting very close to god. Win Son Scally BEC and a cold brew that aims to kill me? Beam me the f**k up!!!

I know that you and I, Randa,  literally know each other through an esoteric nature camp based on the book Walden that we both went on (a little good hang lore for you freaks out there) but I don’t care– 70 and sunny is best absorbed in the middle of a giant city. Fuck Thoreau….his mom did his laundry or he had sex with his mom or something or maybe his mom was a witch? In any case, he knew nothing about drinking a cold beer on a rickety wooden chair on Vanderbilt when they closed the road. His proverbs were mid.

I’ve long felt that the hyper-urban ISNO day feels somewhat overlooked by the cultural critiques of our day. Events like drinking a high noon on a roof, or going to Pig Beach to watch a college basketball game have (unfairly) been labeled as passé or even…dare I say….basic. Now if you want to critique that type of shit as being boring or a waste of good weather, fine. But I’m sorry I’m riding for my big 10 college style of urban hanging. Bartender…please pour me your coldest, most chilly beer! 

And while im at it…Hamptons? TRASH. Never been. Wont ever go (obviously not true I would go) but ideologically im out. I’d take a sweaty night at the back patio of a bar you never knew had a back patio over anything in Long Island’.

RS

Are you colluding with our readers to push the NYC agenda?

I have no problem with the urban ISNO style, I even enjoy it sometimes. Eating small new american plates on a back patio is a better dining experience than getting sand in my burrito, i’m not afraid to admit. The benefit of living in SF is that we have an ISNO surplus, which enables you to sample all the styles ISNO has to offer. I won’t judge an ISNO style, I will only judge if you stay inside to trade cryptocurrency instead of going outside.

HK: no totally i do get the sense you love when its nice out 

And you know what…I do too…which is why we put together a little ISNO index so our readers can find some likeminded folks.