---
title: "Night Out"
description: "Night Out: Where are we going tonight?"
url: https://www.joekarlsson.com/work/night-out/
---

# Night Out

Where are we going tonight?

2015 · with Jessie Copeland, Alex Anich, Brian "Boots" and Nolan "Skinny Fatman"

[See it live →](https://night-out.joekarlsson.com/) · [View on GitHub →](https://github.com/JoeKarlsson/night-out)

Night Out is for the part of the evening where the group text goes in circles about where to go. Pick a few bars near you, send everyone the link, and let the group vote. When you vote, the link on your screen updates and you send the new one back to the group.

If you're not near any bars, or you don't want to share your location, Try it with demo bars fills the map with made-up bars in Honolulu, where it started.

## Try it

This page doesn't share your location with embeds, so here it runs on the demo bars. Open the live site to find bars near you. [Open it full screen →](https://night-out.joekarlsson.com/)

[Embedded: Night Out, playable in the browser](https://night-out.joekarlsson.com/)

## Screenshots

![The Night Out vote page: "Vote on tonight, 3 bars, no votes yet", a share link with a Copy link button, a map of downtown Honolulu, and The Last Call, Moonlight Tap Room and Pink Flamingo Lounge each at 0 votes](https://www.joekarlsson.com/images/projects/night-out-2026-vote.webp)

The vote page and its share link

## How it's made

Meteor · MongoDB · Vite · Leaflet · OpenStreetMap

The first version, in Meteor in 2015, asked Google Places for bars and pushed each vote to everyone live. In November 2026 I rebuilt it as a static site with no server. If two people vote on the same old link at once, the plan splits in two. A phone that opens both links merges them, but a bar they both voted for only counts once.

Bars come from OpenStreetMap within 2.6 kilometers of you. The bars you pick and every vote are packed into the link after the #, so the link is the whole plan, and each vote page ranks the bars by votes.

_Diagram: How Night Out runs a vote with no server: it finds bars on OpenStreetMap within 2.6 kilometers, you pick 2 to 12, the link itself holds the bars and the votes, each friend votes and sends the updated link back to the group, and every vote page ranks the bars by votes_

[See it live →](https://night-out.joekarlsson.com/) · [Get the code on GitHub →](https://github.com/JoeKarlsson/night-out)

[← All works](https://www.joekarlsson.com/work/)