The People Make The Place
I just got back from St. Pete last week, feeling more refreshed than when I left…a rarity for me when I travel. I’ve been trying to find the words for why that is, and I think I just figured it out.
The short version is that I went to Florida to reconnect with two of my old friends. We all used to live in the same city, and then life did what life does and scattered us across three different states. What I thought was going to be a little escape and a necessary reconnection of the three of us turned into one of the most genuinely nourishing weeks I’ve had in recent memory. Initially, the plan was to visit our friend who was getting treatment in Tampa, but the treatment schedule changed, and so our plans pivoted. Gracefully, one friend’s mom offered her house while the friend was out of town. And now, suddenly, all of us were piled into this beautifully lived-in home in St. Pete — sleeping in, staying up too late playing games, waking up to a pot of coffee that was always already brewed and hot by the time anyone shuffled into the kitchen.
It felt like a middle school sleepover in the best possible way, like the parents had gone to bed early and given us full run of the house, except in this version, we were the adults, and nobody was actually going to bed early at all.
What made it feel so different from other trips I’ve taken was this almost eerie absence of the low-grade hum of anxiety I usually carry with me everywhere I go, whether that’s with family or friends or traveling solo. I kept reaching for that familiar tight feeling in my chest, and it just…wasn’t there. We moved the whole week between whatever felt right in the moment: from “parallel play” at a café while all three of us had our laptops open and nobody was saying a word, to wandering around downtown St. Pete with cups of gelato in hand giggling at the touristy art, to a friend’s boyfriend taking us sailing and then ending the day poolside at his parents’ house for an impromptu grilled dinner where the wine kept appearing and nobody was keeping track.
There were never fewer than two of us together at any given time. It was harmonious in a way that I don’t have a better word for.
I spent a lot of the flight home trying to understand why it felt so different, and I think it comes down to two things that are deeply intertwined. The first: just being with people who genuinely get you. Not in the sense that you agree on everything or share all the same opinions (because honestly we probably diverge quite a bit on certain things), but in the sense that you align on the fundamentals: generosity, hospitality, being able to laugh at yourself and at the absurdity of things, caring about the small pleasures of a good meal and a good drink and a good conversation and a comfortable silence. Nobody needed to steer the ship. Nobody needed to be made to feel welcome. We just were.
The second thing is hospitality itself, and I mean the real texture of it, not the concept. It was a house key passed back and forth between us. Coffee already made. Taking turns driving (and making the playlist for said drive). A dinner that materialized at a poolside because someone wanted to feed people. A magic trick from a dad who just wanted to share something that delighted him. Someone volunteering to pick up pizza so the rest of us can continue talking on the back deck. A bookshelf full of interesting things, a couch, and the implicit permission to just exist without an agenda. These are not grand gestures; they’re small ones, stacked on top of each other. And what they build collectively is a room where people can actually exhale.
I have spent a lot of my life chasing the right location, the right city, the right energy in a particular neighborhood, the lushness of the trees, how warm the winters are, and how much there is to do outside. And I will always believe that environment shapes your experience in real and important ways. But this trip reminded me pretty firmly that what you’re actually looking for when you’re chasing all of that is community and warmth and the specific, hard-to-manufacture alchemy that happens when people know how to be together and genuinely want to be.
That’s what I came home wanting to build, facilitate, and pour into everything I’m doing with FlyBoy.
I started thinking about tables while I was on the plane back: long ones outside in the early evening with good light on them, all the dishes I’d want to set out, the way FlyBoy would sit there as part of it, a beautiful and considered option for whoever wants it, and no fanfare about it in either direction. Something to offer to the person who’s pacing themselves between generous pours. Something to sip when you want something interesting and complex in your glass, but you’re not in the mood for alcohol. Something to include the person who’s training in the morning and still wants to stay fully in the room. I want all of these people at the same table, nobody marking their choice as significant, everyone just present and together and having a really good time.
That is the feeling I have been trying to bottle/can, and I didn’t have a clean way to describe it until this week in St. Pete gave it back to me. FlyBoy is about the table you’re setting and the ease you’re creating. It’s the kind of room where everyone lingers a little longer because nobody quite wants the night to end yet.
The space doesn’t make the room. The people do. And I’m building a drink that knows how to show up for them.
Wheels Up!
Margo, Founder of FlyBoy AperitifFlyBoy is a non-alcoholic aperitif in development. Follow along at your own pace. And sign up for our waitlist to be the first to hear about our flavor drops.
