One thing I find interesting is the way that there are lots of different societies that exist on top of each other but which don't intersect in any way, it's almost as though they are in different dimensions. Like the neighbourhood society I described above was completely separate in every way from the hipsters who inhabited the same area and the two groups had only the most minimal interactions. Also I was part of online communities and another due to football...
When I first moved to London I became friends with a guy who worked in a trendy clothes shop near Carnaby Street and he along with all the other feckless hipsters who worked in those shops made up their own community. They would wander from shop to shop when it was quiet and take each other coffees and so on. At the end of the day when the shops closed a guy would come round and sell some stuff and they would have a lock-in in one or other of the shops - my friend's one had a cellar/storeroom place below and most of the others had something similar we could use - and we would stick some music on, drink a load of beers etc and have a miniature party of sorts.
The nature of that job meant that staff turnover was high, some people would be there for ages but most would change quite quickly and new people would join, they might bring along friends like me. People who had stopped working there would stop by. In fact now I come to think of it I met a guy who had been in the year above me at school - turned out he owned a little boutique there to my surprise. He was not the one I would have necessarily have predicted to escape small-town drudgery for the bright lights of the big city... but no doubt he would have thought the same about me.
I found a very similar thing happening on Bica in Lisbon. One of the first people we met at once we moved here was a guy who owns - along with three other people - a restaurant on that street. He invited us to go there for food which we did. We soon realised that there were a load of people who hung around there regardless of whether or not they were eating, ultimately it turned out that that restaurant formed the hub of a a community on that street. Next door was a very small, cute place which literally had two or three tables. The chef there Marco was a long term mate of our friend from next door. I think he had worked at our friend's place in the past and the rest of the waiting staff seemed to be pretty much interchangeable between the two restaurants. Along with those two there was the place opposite and another bar down the street that was easy to spot cos it had a dummy with its bright blue legs sticking out through the window into the street and people used to kinda drift between all of those. Marco worked in the one at the bottom too at times and my friend Fred DJ-d a few times in the place opposite. In the evenings the street would be full with people from these places smoking and drinking and hanging off/swinging on the tram as it went past. At about 10 or 11pm on weekends (and often on weekdays) the cage-fighting dealer guy would come around and supply everyone and often there would be a lock-in, sometimes we would be there until 11am, sometimes we would go a club and when it finished have the after-party at the restaurant.
Sadly, during lockdown, two of the four restaurants shut down (and I reckon the other two are only just hanging jon) co really they rely on tourists. When our good friend
@suspended came to Lisbon we did go to my friend's place early evening but he saw a mere shadow of what used to be there. I dunno if you remember Gus but there was a bit where we went outside for a fag and the people across the street were all waving and saying hello... that was the sad remnants of a once thriving community... but hopefully it's getting back on its feet again now and this little restaurant workers scene will be back once gain.