Dating Tips for Single New Yorkers, The Definitive Guide

Newsflash: Dating in NYC is hard. Whether spoiled for choice or paralyzed by it, dating in NYC sometimes feels so much like The Hunger Games.

So you’re single. You’re back on the market. You’re on Hinge, Coffee Meets Bagel, or Bumble. You’re on a quest to find your true love, but we all know what a hilarious endeavor dating can be.

Here you’ll find some tips for easier dating, and some help from scientific studies over the years. Enjoy:

Make Dating In The City Much Easier:

Stay Close To Home

It’s tempting to widen your Tinder distance settings so you have more options to work with, but going on a date with someone in a faraway neighborhood in another borough is going to take time that you don’t have. If you already struggle to find time for dating, stick to people who live near you.

Spend some time on your appearance

This is common sense. Even if you’re going to a casual bar, your date’s not going to be impressed if you show up in a T-shirt. Pick out a nice outfit, and be sure you don’t smell like you slept on a sewer grate.

Message First

This applies to guys and girls. If you really like someone and want to go on a date with them, there is no reason to wait to send a message.

Meet In A Familiar Place

Even if there isn’t a specific bar or cafe that you both know, at least choose an area that you both know. That way you’ll be able to relax and won’t have to worry about figuring how to get home if you need to leave.

Consider Non-Bar Options

Bars can be loud and dark, so you have to shout your conversation and you can’t really see each other that well. Having a date in a park could be a refreshing change that allows you to actually get to know someone.

Split The Check

This is the 21st century, and this is an expensive city. There is absolutely nothing wrong with splitting the check. Ladies: if he still really wants to pay for you, let him pay, but you should at least offer to go dutch.

Where to go:

Say you disregard our advice on staying close to home, a study done last May shed a lot of light on the city’s dating spots that will most likely score you a second date, and those that will kill the romance at the starting block. The dating app Hinge had some insights that will seriously up your dating game.

On Hinge’s blog, they outline the best and worse places to take a prospective partner as well as the best and worst date types for our city. They collected the information by surveying over 8,000 of their Members (in NYC, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, and Washington DC) about their first date experiences — specifically, what did and didn’t lead to a second date.

Without further ado, here are their findings. Firstly, the most (to least) successful date types to land that second date:

Here’s a hookup for some cheap cinema tickets. You’re welcome.

Now the most and least likely date spots to land you date number 2:

• Here’s that info again in clickable link form, for that perfect first date:
  • The Penrose (1590 Second Ave)
  • Central Park
  • Good Night Sonny (134 First Ave)
  • The Wayland (700 E 9th St)
  • Dear Irving (55 Irving Pl)

How to Break the Ice:

You have gone to that perfect date spot, or you’re looking to break the ice with Mr/Ms Right, what conversation topic will make the talk flow? It could be as easy as knowing where s/he’s lives

R. Luke DuBois is a multidisciplinary artist that treads the fine line between art, culture, and technology, he reveals human stories hidden in data. In 2010 he started out on a journey that would lead him to the map you can see here. DuBois collected data by creating profiles on 21 different online dating sites and services, across every zip code in the US. This gave him access to some 19 million dating profiles to dissect the words they used to describe themselves.

The project is called “A More Perfect Union,” and below are the results for NYC!

DuBois notes:

“In Chelsea, in Midtown Manhattan, the words are “modern,” “creatives” and “aesthetics,” because that’s where a lot of art galleries are. If you look downtown near Washington Square Park, you’ve got “voice” — as in “Village Voice.” Sometimes, though, the words don’t really make sense. You’ve got words like “cowardice,” “combustible” and “insubordinate” — they just pop up because more than one person in that zip code used that word in their profile.”

CHECK OUT THE FULL NEW YORK CITY MAP HERE

…or check out R. Luke DuBois‘ Ted talk on this study here:

Featured image source [jellyfields]