Ah, that makes sense. Yeah, new businesses, special events, or major shopping areas seem to be the places you run into people the most.

My city has one main central shopping area, so if I go there on a weekend it's quite likely I'll run into someone I know, or be seen by a student/coworker and hear about it later. The weirdest chance encounters I experienced were when I was on my way to Thailand two years ago. While in transit, I ran into 5 different groups of people I knew in the airport, at a rest stop, and on the airplane, not realizing that our travel plans overlapped a little bit. (No one else was headed to the same destination, but we all were traveling around the same time.)