Critical Proximity

So, continuing the previous post, how does one create an academic social community whilst detached from academia? Alternately, how to insinuate myself into an existing academic social community? My in-betweeness doesn't help, to some extent - on the cusp between senior graduate student (though done) and junior faculty (though job-less). Both camps, it strikes me, view me with some suspicion, though I may be radically over-projecting and over-analysing. So I'm contemplating geographical proximity is the first step - move up by Columbia, acquire library privileges, and as I reduce the drinking and socialising attempt to spend more time working on my academic work at least in academic environs. But that's purely passive, and no more than a first, symbolic step, though necessary to get my proverbial ass in proverbial gear. But beyond that? Part of me wants what I chose against - an American-style graduate student community. But I won't be taking seminars with these people, and wont be similarly afflicted by the strange infantalised adulthood that graduate school offers to its coterie. Something out of my field, perhaps? A critical theory reading group, advertised on Craig's List? God knows who and what that might turn up. I'll be attending a tea party thrown by academics, but precisely the sort who don't need any more academics in their lives, and downplay shop-talk and work-community precisely because they exist in its very core. These are all rhetorical, as I don't really expect suggestions on an all-but-defunct blog, but I'm wondering (best sex and the city voice) how to be an academic without an institution?