Free Conversation

I was on Second Street, as I am often, and stopped to hang out with a small group of people at a booth. Andrew, Robert [Andrew's brother], Angela, and Matt.

In the photo: Angela (left) and Andrew (right).

Andrew set up a booth on Second Street in front of Washington Mutual with a “Free Conversations” sign hanging above his booth. Every other Saturday, he and his friends sit there and have conversations with passer byers. The purpose of this was to have people converse with other people on whatever topic desired, but with rules. I thought it was a project, but they just wanted to talk to people.

Andrew came up with the idea after the end of a bad relationship with his previous girlfriend. He went to LB City Council, pitched his idea, and he now has a booth on Second Street where he just sits there and try to have other people converse with him and his friends. After his bad break-up, he just wanted to talk and thought having a place for people to talk when they have issues to talk about was a great idea for others and himself.

I think this is genius and I adore him for wanting to talk about his issues with someone else, and having a booth for other people to converse with him about their own lives. He mentioned wanting to get people to talk more and for people to be more open about conversing with others. I think talking to strangers about our own personal problems is so much easier than talking to a friend or family.

My sister, Susan, her friends Joy and Cherry, and I sat with them for 10-15 or so minutes having random conversations with them. It was a great way to end our night. It started to rain, which we didn’t notice until we began walking to my car. We were so caught up with having a conversation with them we did not notice that it had began raining and that we were cold.

Oh, oh, and I bumped into to Szymon on Second Street. Szymon’s an engineering student who spends most of his time around the Engineering buildings. Since I don’t hang out with the engineers around the Engineering buildings, I don’t see many of my friends anymore.

I met new people tonight and had pleasant conversations with them. Tonight was all good.