Pictured: A late-August evening in the stands at Medlar Field

A few weeks ago, I was sitting in the fifth row on the first base line at Medlar Field, ready to experience my first ever State College Spikes game. ($14 tickets for great seats, by the way. Yummy bratwurst acquired on route to our seats. And it was the first sweatshirt-worthy evening of the season!)

Anyway, I was sitting there chatting with a friend, taking in the sprawling view of Mount Nittany and the ridgeline as it stretched off into a beautiful, late-summer evening.

It was LaVar Arrington bobblehead night, seats were filling up, and I looked around and felt a distinct sense of community.

While Beaver Stadium (and our local hotels and Airbnbs) fill up with tens of thousands of out of towners on game weekends and the Bryce Jordan Center brings concertgoers from all over, this event felt more like a local thing.

It made me reflect on my college experience in Oxford, Ohio, a small town similar to State College. I rarely thought about the residents of that town or considered what they did while I was going about my days as a student. It was easy to imagine that the bubble I experienced every day was all there was. I carried some of that mentality with me when I moved to State College in 2015. “This is a college town. It must be all about Penn State.”

(As you may know if you’ve been reading along for a while, I’ve been having a blast proving myself wrong.)

The game and community atmosphere were great. It felt like a professional sporting event crossed with a hilarious backyard barbeque, with little kids trying to catch water balloons in baskets on their heads, two teams dressed as hamburger buns racing to see who could build the fastest human burger (will never forget this as long as I live), and a fireworks display that blessed us with a Barenaked Ladies throwback on the playlist as fans watched from the field – exclusive post-game access!

I asked my friend, a seasoned Spikes game goer, why more people don’t attend these games. Her response? “Because they’ve never been to one!”

And I get it. Now that I’ve been, I’ll be back.

Three days later, on another feels-like-fall evening, I found myself in a backyard down the street from our house at our neighborhood block party. I was sitting there talking with a neighbor I’d just met as twenty or so other neighbors chatted on the patio around me. As new-ish additions to the neighborhood, it was our first time meeting almost everyone in attendance, and my husband and I walked home that night feeling like we had hit the jackpot. Kind neighbors. Funny neighbors. Neighbors with cool life stories. Neighbors with gardening wisdom to spare. Neighbors with a pool and an invitation to swim!

Neighbors who care enough about building a sense of community to host a block party and start an email list to make sure we can all regularly stay in contact.

These are my neighbors. Sitting around me at Medlar Field and hanging out in a backyard down the street. Dancing in the street to music at a Tuesday night Pugh Street Shutdown and enjoying a mid-summer meal during Happy Valley Restaurant Week. Running into an acquaintance while getting some work done at Webster’s and chatting in line for tomatoes at the farmers market.

The people in our community have made State College a great place to visit. But we’ve made it an even better place to live.