[welly]

How do you think people used to make friends? I'll give you a clue. Work, school, university, clubs for particular interest groups (hiking, pottery, computers, flower arranging, making beer etc.)

All of which still exist and if nothing else is easier to discover these days than in the past.

[ravenstine]

Meetup.com, for all its follies, is still a great place to meet lots of people with common interests.

[welly]

Absolutely this. It's been a pretty consistently useful tool over the past 10 plus years since I've been using it in various locations to get involved with cycling, tech meetups, hiking, drinking beer. One of the most useful websites out there to get away from staring at a screen!