X
    Categories: Outings

Free time? How about a cartography meetup?

If you’ve been whiling away your summer playing Sotomayor-confirmation-hearing drinking games (“They said ‘litmus test!’ Shot!”), you probably could be doing a lot more to entertain yourself. There are, after all, hundreds upon hundreds of people out there in the borough casting out blind but optimistic fishing lines of friendship on the internet, looking for Scrabble buddies, book club members and even fellow unemployeds to fill out a work day morning pick-up soccer game. It’s called Meetup.com, and it sometimes reads like a wonderful post-college campus activities handbook. In fact, you could spend the whole week Meetingup with different groups and expanding your horizons without spending too much money. Here’s a look at what the week ahead has to offer:

Tonight, you can see what the Canucks are all aboot at The Brooklyn Maple Leaf Cocktail Hour meetup, 7 p.m. at Sheep Station in Park Slope.

From there, if you like giving your brain cells a workout and killing them at the same time, pop over to Bar Matchless in Greenpoint for the Greenpoint Chess Meetup at 7:30 p.m. And it’s two-for-one beer night too? Check and mate.

Meetup wouldn’t be Meetup without the requisite plea for Ultimate Frisbee participants and this week finds a crew in Prospect Park at 6 p.m. Wednesday on the ball fields between 9th and 15th Sts. on the west side. The organizer threatens to have Buzz Aldrin punch you in the face if you don’t go, which scares us, because that man has Space Powers.

If you aren’t in a rush to shower after throwing the disc, the Brooklyn Kraft Haus is hosting its monthly open craft event at Fall Café on Smith Street starting at 7 p.m. The post says you can bring a project to work on, though it’s unclear how they would react if you just asked for a bowl of macaroni and cheese.

If you struck out picking up craft chicks, then on Thursday at 7 p.m., try the Master the GAME meetup, which may not turn out to be in Brooklyn but is too good to leave out here, because it includes this offer: “Meet local wingmen and highly trained dating coaches who are naturally attractive in all aspects of life. We cut through the fluff and filler and give you the raw ‘how-to’s’ and ‘whys’ this pick up method works so well so consistently.”

Or for a slightly less testosterone-fueled evening, take your knitting over to Sweet Melissa in Park Slope for Thursday Night Knitting until 10 p.m. They say everyone is welcome, “even crocheters.” Oh snap! Stitches throw down!

You can knit yourself a handbag to put your Paris Hilton dog in before heading over to the Small Dog Playdate on Friday at 7 p.m. for pooches under 20 pounds.

On Saturday, start your day with the Elite Bodies Brooklyn Bootcamp Class meetup at 8:30 a.m. under the Brooklyn Bridge. The class costs $35, which is why we guess it’s the “elite” bodies bootcamp and not “scrawny snarky blog writers” bootcamp.

After that, boot up your Google Map app and make your way over the Rebar in DUMBO for the Mapping Party meetup, which sounds less like a “party” and more like “sitting around drawing maps.” There, you can learn how to help create maps for Openstreetmap.org, sort of a map version of  Wikipedia, which, as we know, is 100 percent accurate all the time. They’ll even give loan you a GPS to help you make some maps.

A group called Brooklyn is Better Than Manhattan hosts a beach meetup at Coney Island on Sunday afternon. There’s the promise of beach frisbee followed by beer drinking, a combination that goes a long way toward proving the group’s name.

You can start your week with the hope of casual anonymous sex at the Urban Swinger Party at 10 p.m. Monday. Ladies: wear your skimpiest attire; Men: shorts and tanks (but no denim shorts, guys. This is not Nam, it’s swinging. There are rules). $20 for single ladies, $50 for couples and $75 for single dudes. We don’t know what snake dancing has to do with it, but that’s the picture they posted (because “naughty sizzlin’ excitement” wasn’t enough?).

That should be more than enough to keep you off the couch for the next few days, but there are hundreds of more options. Remember: Idle hands are the Devil’s playthings. So grab those knitting needles…

Tim Donnelly :