You can buy friends with gifts. Buy some beers, booze, weed, etc and offer to share it with random people. You can also make things to give away, like brownies,

You can buy friends with gifts. Buy some beers, booze, weed, etc and offer to share it with random people. You can also make things to give away, like brownies, sourdough bread, needlepoint, wooden trays. Granted, it's not a great strategy, because are they really being your friends, and is this really a healthy behavior? But it does work, at least as a way to open up conversations. You can also do the ballsy thing and just walk up to random people and say, "Hi, I'm new here, and I haven't made many friends yet. Want to hang out sometime?" Ask people about themselves, and once you find out what they're into, offer to do the thing they're into with them, or ask them if they might teach you. The more actual common interests you have, the more likely that you can meet people though that interest. Oh, and learn a lot of jokes. Bad jokes, or any jokes, really. Everyone likes to laugh.