This is JOIN 101’s fifth installment of “What are you doing alone that you could be doing together?” — a series highlighting civic innovators we’ve encountered on JOIN OR DIE’s community screening tour who have asked themselves this pivotal question…and put their answers into action.
This week, John Crowley shares his journey of bringing the lessons he learned being raised in his grandfather’s Irish pub to the the streets of Petaluma, California.
You can listen to John’s story above and find the full transcript and helpful resources below. If you or someone you know is ready to follow John’s example of gathering neighbors in creative new ways — share this story…and let us know what you create!
Onward to the next American joining revolution,
Rebecca Davis and Pete Davis
Rebecca: Today we meet John Crowley, who learned everything he needed to know about social science in his grandfather’s pub.
John: I worked there from the age of 12 to when I left Ireland at 22. I saw what community gatherings were. I saw the dynamics of people and how they interacted — and what this third space called the Irish pub was, and its value in society. And then when I came to the United States, I looked for the same thing and didn’t find it. America’s got great bars and great restaurants, but the idea of a third space where everybody gathers — from the mayor to the teachers to the bricklayers, just gathering in one spot — I didn’t find that and it was troubling. I said, well: How are you supposed to make friends? In Ireland, you move to a community, you go to the local pub, and you’ll meet your neighbors there.
Pete: So John decided to bring that Irish spirit to his new community in Northern California.
John: I’ve been here in Petaluma since ‘93. I ended up writing a lot of code for cruise lines and airlines and things like that. Paid the bills, but it wasn’t terribly fulfilling in that respect. So I started what I called “The Social Crawl”— it happened about four or five times a year. I’d send an itinerary out: meet at Volpi’s at eight o’clock, Graziano’s at nine, someplace else at ten. Sounds like a bar crawl, but the theme of the evening was: Bring a book that changed your life.
That automatically gives you the impression that it’s not really about the alcohol—it was about connecting with people. And the theme added a certain fun aspect to it. If I tell you about the book that changed my life, you’ll very quickly know whether you want to have another conversation with me.
And you have to have these things repeating every two or three months, so people will bump into the same people again. “Oh yeah — you’re that interesting person who read that wonderful book about mountain climbing. I remember you.” That kind of repeated meeting of people helped form bonds and friendships. I have friends from 25 years ago that I met on the social crawl — and a lot of other people in town do too.
That was, I guess, my first foray into community building, and realizing the impact it had on people’s personal lives, business lives, everything. People got married out of it. People found friendships, jobs, places to live.
Pete: And then John actually opened the Petaluma equivalent of the Irish pub.
John: I opened a café. I wanted to take the best parts of an Irish pub, the best parts of a Californian café, merge them together, and put civic engagement very far on the top of the website — basically expecting people to have conversations with the people at the next table.
Our tagline is a W.B. Yeats quote: There are no strangers here, just friends you haven’t met yet. When you set out with the intention of: we’re not just selling sandwiches or coffee, we’re doing a lot more than that — I wanted it to be a social and cultural hub of Petaluma. And it’s kind of that, and then some.
Next year it’ll be 20 years. It’s been wonderfully successful. Pre-COVID, we had five nights a week of live music. After COVID, I thought: although I love music and it does gather people together, in some cases it actually hinders conversation. I asked myself: What do we need more of? So after COVID, we went back to one night a week of music — but then the other nights we invented what we call community dinners.
We move all the tables into one big long table in the café depending on how many people have RSVPed. And we invite everybody who… fill in the blank: Speaks Italian. Works as a nurse. Last week we had blacksmiths and metalworkers. A couple weeks ago, Camino walkers. So we have these community dinners designed to help people create relationships. You come in, you sit at the big long table, you get a name tag, and you sit beside somebody you’ve never met before — but you will have something in common with them. There is some common element there, be it blacksmiths or Italian or whatever it is.
And some of these things are huge—they’re up to 40 people. You know, some of these things are quite interesting. The Greek language one was tiny, maybe five people. But they’d all lived in Petaluma for 20 or 30 years and never knew each other existed.
We’ve since experimented with — and again, this is working really, really well — we invite everybody who lives on your street. It’s kind of like a block party where you don’t have to do anything — you just show up at the café at five o’clock and sit beside your neighbors. In many cases, they’ve never actually met each other. It’s wonderful to see people sit down and quizzically look at each other: Are you my neighbor? Don’t you live two doors up? It’s magical to see that first conversation. And you can’t have a second conversation without the first one. And, you know, after they’ve had some interaction at the cafe, hopefully they’ll see each other when they’re putting the trash out tomorrow or walking the dog the next week.
The café’s mission is to build social capital, build community, and be a pathway for people to connect with other people living around the corner that they don’t know.
Pete: Next, John wanted to take the community-building energy of the café into the streets.
John: There’s a thing called a passeggiata — Italian for, roughly, a nice pleasant walk after dinner. The idea was suggested to me about 20 years ago when I was running the social crawls, but it didn’t come to fruition until a couple of years ago.
The idea is simple: on a Wednesday at 6 PM, you leave your house, you look up and down the street, and you see everybody else leaving their houses. You bump into your neighbors. It’s going to happen at six o’clock, every Wednesday, throughout the summer months. And we’re encouraging people to walk down to their local park.
For a while I kept having to explain what the word passeggiata meant. Last summer I thought: Why am I keep explaining an Italian word that doesn’t mean anything to people? Let’s rename it. Let’s call it: Wednesday Walk. Make it simple. Make it really easy.
What’s the worst thing that can happen? You’ve gone for a nice walk by yourself.
We’ve paralleled that with another idea called The Wednesday Picnic. Picnics was even quoted in the Join or Die movie
[JOIN OR DIE narration: Turns out in 1975, Americans picnicked on average roughly five times a year. By 1999, it was down to two.]
John: A friend of mine came up with the idea of a Wednesday Picnic — she just invited 20 or 30 of her friends: I’m going to be at Wickersham Park next Wednesday at six o’clock. No need to RSVP. And Maybe 10 or 15 showed up.
What that did was lower the bar for participation to practically nothing. Just bring a sandwich, come and hang out with people. Bring a packet of crisps and a water and just socialize — rather than going through the effort of getting your house ready and cooking for everyone.
We put the Wednesday Walk and the Wednesday Picnic on the same day, so that people walking alone will see something happening at the local park and maybe think: Maybe next Wednesday I’ll send an email to my neighbors and say come down. And again: What’s the worst thing that can happen? You had a nice walk by yourself, or a nice sandwich by yourself in the local park.
Rebecca: John organized groups in town to help get the word out about Wednesday Walks and Wednesday Picnics.
John: We’ve got maybe 10 or 20 participating organizations — churches, schools, Healthy Petaluma, our healthcare district, Blue Zones, Cool Petaluma. A lot of people realize it’s a great idea and want to get on board. Through churches, through schools, through every avenue, we’ve got quite a huge inroad of email addresses. We’ve also done it the old-fashioned way — going around putting signs up on telephone poles, so people walking past can say, “Oh, this is a good idea. Well, if I’m gonna go for a walk, I might as well go for a walk at 6:00 PM.”
We wrote an op-ed in the local newspaper saying this is the kind of think you can organize yourselves — self organizing! You’re not RSVPing to anybody. So it’s a wonderfully low-bar, participatory kind of thing that has potentially life-changing possibilities at the end of it.
It’s also about reclaiming public spaces. We have these wonderful parks — but if nobody uses them, what’s the point of having a park?
The most wonderful serendipitous things have happened. A colleague was saying she and her husband go for the walk and spend that time just reconnecting — and they’ve bumped into neighbors, and they’ve gone to the local park and bumped into other neighbors, who introduced them to other neighbors. There’s little pockets of serendipitous community building happening all over.
And so we’re organizing to put a lot of energy into making it happen next summer — combination of Wednesday walks and the Wednesday picnic, and maybe some other, low-hanging fruit ideas will happen on that Wednesday as well. Again, to help people bump into each other accidentally and realize there’s some there there. Who knows?
What’s the point of living if you don’t have friends and a community?
💡 Learn more
⇛ Follow the latest from the Aqus Community Foundation.
⇛ Check out upcoming events at the Aqus Cafe.
⇛ Hear John speak at the upcoming Social Capital 2026 Conference and Human Algorithm Summit.
⇛ Watch a longer video about John’s work in Petaluma recorded by the International Social Capital Association — Social Capital in Action: A Blueprint from Petaluma’s Civic Experiments.
🍿 Bring JOIN OR DIE to your community
Want to host a JOIN OR DIE screening with your community? Let us know using the button below and we’ll get in touch with more information about how to host:
Or join for an upcoming Zoom info session:
Wednesday, March 25th from 11:30AM ET to 12:00PM ET — Zoom Presentation on Community Screenings with Director Rebecca Davis
Wednesday, April 1st from 12:30PM ET to 1:00PM ET — Zoom Presentation on Community Screenings with Director Rebecca Davis
📣 Spread the message
Know someone who’d be moved to action by John’s story?
Inspired by someone who you think we should feature in a future WAYDATYCBDT who chose to do something that they could have done alone…together? Comment below!
