Sultan wasn’t finding the tech scene she was in super social. And she’d often hear others in her circle bemoaning the idea of their losing connections when friends got married or worse: moved to New York.
This sense of disconnect was in stark contrast to her childhood growing up in the Middle East, when Sultan said she recalled constantly meeting new friends and being “always around people.” Here in the Bay Area, she’s observed “a little bit of a difference in social culture and tendency of people to do that, at least in the SF community.”
Jordan Senigar, the founder of the Leave Your House Project and East Bay resident, echoed this. “A lot of people want connection, but the Bay Area can honestly feel really overwhelming and expensive,” she said. “It’s really easy to feel like community isn’t accessible if you don’t fit a specific mold.”
“Especially in SF,” Sultan said, “where people are so enamored with tech and digital experiences, I think people have forgotten that at the end of the day … we crave connection.”
With all this in mind? I spoke to Sultan and other Bay Area hosts on how to throw an excellent party — from logistics like invites and food to vibes like music and themes to getting your friends to actually show up.
What kind of event do I want to host?
The main goal of your first event is getting people to just show up, Sultan said. So make your gathering something easy for you.
And the possibilities are endless. According to Anita Osuala, a spokesperson with Partiful — the popular online platform that allows people to create customizable private or public event pages — users have been getting creative with events that go beyond birthdays and house parties, according to trends she said she’s observed from “a mix of both product data and behavioral patterns we see across invites on the platform.”
Osuala said Partiful is seeing the platform used for more “admin night” invites and chore parties where, as she put it, “people tackle life tasks together”: like paying the bills and scheduling dreaded dental appointments.
There is also the everlasting appeal of off-kilter or ironic events — like the Timothée Chalamet look-alike contest in 2024 and their subsequent spin-offs, including San Francisco’s pre-Super Bowl Bad Bunny look-alike showdown.
One Partiful Sultan came across was made by someone who claimed to never have eaten an Uncrustable and was inviting people to watch them “try an Uncrustable for the first time in the park.” By Sultan’s count, the event had around 400 RSVPs.
Your gathering can even be “stupid stuff like that,” she laughed. “How low maintenance is this?”
On a personal note, I can attest that movie-themed events are crowd-pleasers, too. Last year, I hosted a Conclave-themed party in honor of the 2024 papal thriller starring Ralph Fiennes and Stanley Tucci.
And as the Academy Awards on March 15 grow closer, hosts of an Oscars party could have a lot of fun printing and passing out ballots for people to predict winners and compete with each other.
Childhood throwbacks are also always a winner. The Leave Your House Project’s first “adult field trip” was “indoor recess”: “a little throwback to elementary school days where you play four square and do double dutch,” Senigar said.
“Small, simple moments can create really meaningful community because that’s essentially what we did when we were kids,” she said. “We had to make do with what we had … ‘Okay, we don’t always have to spend $600 and go to Monterey. We can just do something local.’”
And what about dinner parties — those gatherings that are often considered the cornerstones of adulthood?
Given that they can be a stressful affair with all of the cooking and preparations they entail, going potluck style for your first party can be a more manageable way to host a dinner in your home, where people can chip in with food. Hosts shouldn’t have to “bear the financial burden” alone, Sultan said.
How should I think about food?
The days of college party catering — A.K.A. a bag of chips and beer — may be behind you. But that doesn’t mean that food for a party, even a dinner party, has to be a fancy five-course meal.
Yasmine Davis, a San Francisco resident dubbed (by a friend) as “the queen of SF dinner parties” on TikTok, said that she started hosting dinner parties before she ever had a dinner table.
The idea of hosting people for dinner can be stress-inducing for many people, said Davis, and it’s often motivated by feeling they don’t “have the right materials to do it.” But “I was just having people over, and we would sit down on the floor, and I would just put everything on my coffee table,” she said.
Davis herself is a cook, and said that it “actually brings so much joy to me, my friends actually enjoying the food that I’m making.”
But she added that hosts shouldn’t have to over-purchase food for a dinner party or an event, because “when people are at a party, they’re being so social that they don’t eat as much as they would at a restaurant.”
Davis said she often focuses on finger foods and crowd-pleasing staples like vodka pasta, crispy chicken cutlets and a big salad. She also enjoys seasonal-themed dinners and meals — like a winter-themed meal with cosy grilled cheese sandwiches and soup.
“It’s also cost-effective if you don’t want to spend an arm and a leg on this food for a party,” she said. “You could be so creative with the salad and make it look so beautiful with edible flowers and different pickled things in it.”
As for drinks, hosts should always make sure to have other cold beverages on hand other than alcohol, she advised.
How should I prepare my home for hosting people?
Sultan is an advocate of cleaning up the space before people start showing up, and notes that even a small act like wiping the table can make a big difference.
Another major requirement for her is emptying the fridge, to stop days-old leftovers from taking up space from your party snacks.
While Davis herself has found it fun to explore tablescaping — the art of arranging silverware and decor — she acknowledges that getting overly focused on the aesthetics of a dinner party can bring people a lot of stress: not to mention the cost that wrangling matching cups, plates and table covers can incur.
In these cases, Davis said it may help to focus on the food more. “I want to make sure people are enjoying the food at a party,” she said.
For my part, I am a stickler for good lighting — i.e., never subject your guests to the too-harsh overhead ceiling bulb. And a small thing I’ve noticed that always makes people smile: printing out a “menu” for a dinner party. We have fancy restaurants at home!
What should I do during the party?
To many people’s surprise, the Leave Your House Project’s Senigar considers herself an introvert. But she said she steps up when it comes to hosting duties.
“Hosting is about the guest experience, not always about how impressive something looks,” she said. “You really have to be adaptable, you have to be flexible, and you have to be calm and welcoming and intentional because it sets the tone for the entire space.”
During an event, Senigar will drive herself to stay extra mindful, checking in on guests to see how they are feeling and talking to people who seem to be standing by themselves.
“It lets the attendees know that they’re welcome and they don’t have to navigate the space on their own,” she said. “Whether the event is perfect or not, they will remember that moment.”
It can be “really anxiety-inducing for new people to come to events alone,” Sultan said — so “literally when they come in, just be like, ‘Hey, oh my gosh, I have someone I want to introduce you to.’”
“And introduce those people and have them start a conversation.”
As the host, you may have a picture-perfect idea of an event in your head. But Davis said, “When you try to over-complicate it, it’ll just stress you out a lot” — especially at the beginning of your hosting journey.
However, “as you get more comfortable, you can experiment with other things,” she advised. “Keep it as simple as you want and just add different parts of yourself that you would want to shine.”
One of those shining things should be music. “It gets so awkward if you go to an event where they don’t have music playing, because then you can just hear everyone’s conversations,” Sultan said.
I, for one, love making a collaborative playlist on Spotify, which allows anyone attending to add songs during the party. (Although, beware — people may also try to annoy you with this generous function.)
How can I make sure my friends actually show up?
Now here is the true host nightmare. People — maybe even lots of them — RSVP … but then they don’t show up.
And while yes, emergencies happen and sometimes people get too tired and just don’t want to leave their house, it can feel like a rather vulnerable moment for a host. Sultan’s advice here is to over-invite people, because there will always be last-minute cancellations.
When it comes to the number of invites she sends out, “my rule of thumb is ‘always 20% more,’” she said. “And it has never failed me.”
Asking invitees to bring a plus one is a good way to boost attendance with people who are vetted by friends, Sultan said. And when it comes to those “I’m just not feeling it tonight” folks, Senigar said she tries to “meet people where they’re at, especially for people who don’t go out as much.”
“I’m really honest — but in a gentle and supportive way, kind of like in a big sister way,” she said. “I’ll literally say, ‘If you wanna make friends, you have to leave your house.’”
“And it’s not judgmental,” she stressed. “It gives people a clear next step, and it lets them move at their own pace.”
