Steampunks
While William Gibson and Bruce Sterling's The Difference Engine is often credited with coining this small subculture, steampunk stems from science-fiction set in the Jules Verne era. It began as a literary subgenre and spread into art, design and popular culture. It features futuristic gadgetry mixed with Victoriana, whodunnits, time travel and adventure.
Start your education with a trip to Kew Bridge Steam Museum, London (steampunk.kbsm.org), where you can see Britain's biggest collection of steampunk artefacts. Or visit Europe's biggest steampunk festival, Weekend at the Asylum, in Lincoln from 9-11 September (steampunk.synthasite.com), then purchase pleats and cravats at A Child of the Jago (10 Great Eastern Street, London, achildofthejago.com), a designer ode to the East End's destitute past. Find dining decadence at Soho's Kettner's (kettners.com), an old haunt of Lillie Langtry and Oscar Wilde, then party like it's 1889 with a vaudeville-esque soirée from Secret Sundays (facebook.com/SecretSundaysEvents). White Mischief (whitemischief.info) curates steampunk parties around the UK, and steampunknews.co.uk lists anachronistic events around the globe.
Ghonouie Hoss
Chaps
Chaps adopt the clothes, mannerisms and lifestyle of an English gentleman of the 1940s, while jettisoning elements that do not appeal, such as blood sports, bigotry and jingoism.
A Chap's day begins in the dressing room (after a breakfast of devilled kidneys and Lapsang Souchong), where he will plump for, preferably, vintage tweed which has seen a bit of life; in warmer weather he'll reach for linen and flannel, or a boating blazer if he's feeling racy. A Chap will never leave the house without a titfer: trilbies and tweed caps for winter, panamas or straw boaters for summer.
He may enter a tobacconist in the hope of tracking down the old version of Dunhill's Early Morning pipe mixture, then cocktails will be taken with chums at 5pm sharp, in an establishment with old-world charm and a debonair clientele – so, not the Ritz or All Bar One. A Chap will visit Vintage at the South Bank or Goodwood Revival, rather than Glastonbury. Some Chaps like to dance, but only if the band is a full swing orchestra. And forget sleeping under canvas; Chaps prefer to take a room at a village hostelry and motor up to the site every day in the Morris Minor.
Gustav Temple, editor of The Chap magazine, thechap.net, which lists events suitable for such fellows
Pug owners
London Pugs, a social for people who own pugs, meets on the first Saturday of the month in Green Park. Pugs steam across picnic blankets like asthmatic footstools as owners – part-time models, retired dispatch riders – chat like parents at the school gate. "It's a good way to learn about your dog," says Bob, a regular with Poppy and Daisymay. "If one owner has a problem, chances are another knows a remedy." And it's the ultimate doggy workout: "Tahti's so exhausted by home time," beam Mario and Roberto.
• meetup.com/londonpugs
Jennifer Cox
Modern pirates
Tony Rotherham says his house looks like a museum: there are swords, muskets, pistols, a crossbow and, hanging on the back of a door, his sea cape. As his alter ego, Captain Jack Vincent, Rotherham leads a pirate crew, the Sea Thieves. They make paid appearances at public events, putting on displays of piratical shenanigans, and tour the UK educating people about the golden age of piracy. Rotherham is an actor, but the Sea Thieves, formed in 1998 (and not all of them men), come from all walks of life, and sometimes get together just to "chill out and be pirates". They find a beach, light a huge fire and brush up on their pirate skills. The Sea Thieves welcome new members, but woe betide anyone whose interest runs no deeper than the Pirates of the Caribbean films: "There's a lot more to it than wearing eye make-up and beads in your hair," says Captain Jack.
• The Sea Thieves' next appearance is at the Ipswich Maritime Festival, 20-21 August, maritimeipswich.co.uk; sea-thieves.com/seathieves_mainpage.htm
Rachel Williams
Vintage obsessives
My name is Fleur, and I am a vintage addict. I don't mean I buy key investment pieces or accessories to wear with modern outfits, rather that I wear an authentic 1940s look every day. I've dressed this way for more than six years now, and have watched as the popularity of all things old-fashioned has surged. Vintage is very trendy now; these days, you can hardly traverse the street without passing retro cupcakeries filled with chintzy china and shops stuffed with anachronistic floral frocks. You can take a vintage vacation in a kitsch caravan (vintagevacations.co.uk), or book a vintage hen party (vintagepatisserie.co.uk), while reproduction clothing companies like Heyday! and Rocket Originals are numerous, and events for vintage enthusiasts abound – from intimate club nights like Black Cotton to the huge Goodwood Revival. All very well, but those of us who have been dressing this way for years will be glad when popularity wanes and prices come back down.
Fleur de Guerre is a vintage style blogger, diaryofavintagegirl.com
Dorkbots
"People doing strange things with electricity" is the tagline to the international Dorkbot movement. This monthly gathering of artists showcasing electronic work in the broadest sense started 10 years ago in New York and has spread to more than 100 cities worldwide.
Alex McLean (yaxu.org), an artist/musician working with live coding and programming, says the only conditions for showing work at Dorkbot are that it involve electricity in some way, and be a little odd. He is part of Dorkbotsheffield (dorkbot.org/dorkbotsheffield), which holds events open to all. There are also Dorkbots in Bristol, Newcastle and Cardiff.
MadLab (madlab.org.uk) in Manchester is another such hub, and home to Manchester's very own Girl Geeks (manchestergirlgeeks.com). The MGG's tea parties are not to be missed, though if you're a boy, you will miss out unless you find a girl to go with. Lady geeks meet on Sunday afternoons for tea and cake and a spot of particle physics/mathematical origami. They have events lined up throughout August, September and October, and during the Manchester Science Festival (22-30 October).
Dale Berning
Ultra runners
Everyone has run a marathon these days. To set yourself apart, you need to start running ultras: officially that's anything over the standard 26.2 miles, but for real kudos, it has to be 31m (50km) and above. Mimi Anderson (marvellousmimi.com) is a veteran ultra runner as well as the female world recordholder for the longest treadmill run (403.81m, since you ask). She says: "I've run over mountains, on frozen rivers, sand, canyons and snow. I love the freedom it gives me. Over the past few years Ultra running has grown enormously, and new races are springing up all the time. Whether you are new to the scene or a veteran there is a race out there to suit your abilities. The camaraderie is fantastic – living in a tent for seven days with strangers, or running with someone you have never met before builds a bond that will never be broken."
Future races include the Glenmore 24 in Scotland, a 24 hour race on 3 September where you do as many laps of a four-mile course as you can in 24 hours. Or Extreme Energy (xnrg.co.uk) arranges ultra runs, such as the Druid Challenge, 84 miles over three days on 11-13 November following the ridgeway from Buckinghamshire (£135pp incl. food and accommodation). Or might you fancy the Enduroman series? One Enduroman UK event is a 2.4-mile swim, 116-mile cycle then a 26-mile run, but on the Deca Enduroman UK you do one of those every day for 10 days. Or try the gruesome Enduroman 100 – 97 laps of a 1.04-mile course.
Rachel Dixon
Hipster swingers
If you thought swinging was just for seedy couples bored after several decades of marriage, think again. Hipsters can reinvent anything, even swinging, it seems.
"Kinky Salon London is the arty sexy party run by volunteers for fun, not profit. Imagine a cross between the movie Shortbus and the festival Burning Man and you'll have the right idea," says Tobias Slater, who has imported the concept from the US and Amsterdam. Also on the menu is After Pandora (afterpandora.com) a members' club that describes itself as "the thinking pervert's playground".
These clubs have a different policy from outfits such as Manchester's Fever (feverparties.com), which is for slim and goodlooking young couples and women under 40 only – and Killing Kittens (killingkittens.com), whose tagline is "for the sexual elite". Kinky Salon and After Pandora are for all body types, all sexualities and all degrees of experience.
If you do want to swot up on your bedroom skills beforehand though, there's no better place to do it than at one of luxury London sex shop Coco de Mer's Salons (Covent Garden and Brompton Cross, coco-de-mer.com). With beginners' classes in spanking,massage and bondage, there's something for every sexual appetite.
Katie Antoniou, editor of Run Riot (run-riot.com)
New-wave nudists
Naked events specially for under-30s are arranged through a group called YBN (british-naturism.org.uk/youth).
"I got into naturism after seeing a documentary about a naturist beach not far from me," says David, who is 22 and got into it with his girlfriend when they were students, and now works for nakedhub.co.uk. "What attracted me was the feeling of liberation and being able to relax free of clothing."
There are many naturist events in the UK, such as beach days, swims and camping weekends. RD
Intellectual clubbers
The notion that learning ends when we finish full-time education has never been further from the truth, and an increasing number of young hedonists are turning from music and clubbing towards more cerebral entertainment. At events such as the Wilderness Festival (wildernessfestival.com) in Oxfordshire this weekend, brainy speakers from organisations like Intelligence Squared and The Idler are as much an attraction as the headline music acts.
For something more active, London Chessboxing (londonchessboxing.com) adds the excitement of live boxing rounds to the suspense of a game of chess; while Bright Clubs (brightclub.org) in many British cities bill themselves as "the thinking person's variety night", inviting comedians, musicians and academics to discuss themes from dark matter to grey matter. There's even something for the kids from We Colonised The Moon (run-riot.com/think), who are hosting 101 harmless experiments online, such as inventing solutions for anti-gravity and time machines, and auditions for astronauts.
The Idler Academy, a "bookseller, coffeehouse and school" (idler.co.uk/academy), promotes freedom through cultivated leisure, with events such as The Way of the Dude with Oliver Benjamin, the "world's most thorough Big Lebowski fan and founder of the Church of the Latter-Day Dude"; upcoming courses include beginner's Latin and urban birding.
Gavin Pretor-Pinney, author of The Cloudspotter's Guide and The Wavewatcher's Companion, is also a co-founder of the Idler, the magazine for the creatively indolent. He will be giving a talk, entitled From Cloudspotting to Wavewatching, at the Royal Meteorological Society in Reading on 28 September (email marcia.spencer@RMetS.org). KA. Run Riot (run-riot.com/think) has a section dedicated to such events
